#like i just continue to find more ways to be disappointed with the xiv base. constantly.

[shivasdarknight]

Time for your regularly scheduled, "Killjoy Hour with Enya" because we're being a killjoy about Dawntrail (:

So first and foremost: fuck Square and the XIV team for taking this angle. We could've gone any direction and we're going with Colonizer The Adventure. They looked at what we did on the Steppe with Hien and went "let's do it again! :D"

Mandatory CW for racism as it pertains to the indigenous peoples of North America, Mesoamerica and South America, and discussion of the genocide enacted by Spain against Mesoamerica and South America.

(Sections and the first letter of each sentence have been bolded for ease of reading)

But to explain further: Square has a really awful track record with their take on Tural, the "New World", especially in their handling of the Mamoolj'aa that are in Eorzea. This has been an issue since ARR and has been frequently criticized due to their extremely anti-indigenous writing. The way they handle the Eorzean tribes (which have been known as "beast tribes" and "beastmen" for a good part of the past decade that XIV has been around, I Should Not have to explain to you why that's deeply problematic) is an issue in its own right, but I'll only touch on what we've seen of Tural in the game itself and why this doesn't bode well for Dawntrail.

Let's get the obvious one out of the way first, this fucking shit:

For those unaware, this is the New World set. It's a craftable gear set from Heavensward that players can wear as a goddamned costume. I shouldn't have to be saying this in 2023, but this set has caused a great deal of controversy because it's a bastardization of plains tribe regalia. Square never should have added it to the game, but here it is and players constantly wear it in further offensive glams.

The only instance of this set being used with NPCs is in the Blue Mage quests and what we see of the Whalaqee. Again, to those unaware: the ARR Blue Mage quests are an extremely racist storyline that plays into white savior narratives and more offensive caricatures. The only representatives that we get to interact with of the Whalaqee are a little boy in this outfit (who's also extremely pale), and two Mamoolj'aa who are the lackeys of Martyn, the job trainer for Blue Mage - a white man! Further, the magic is notably not from Eorzea and is instead a cultural practice of the Whalaqee that Martyn took and turned into profit, and he's who you're supposed to work for. You are - yet again - considered a master of the practice, and this is written in mind with a default white man in mind considering Meteor being the stand in for everything. There is in-game appropriation of cultural practices, clothing, and tools but it gets worse the further you go into them.

The main plot of the ARR quests is that the Whalaqee are dying from a plague brought toTural by Martyn and other researchers with the Arcanist's guild 🙃 There were two trips: one to study Blue Magic, and one where people from the first trip went back because they found ceruleum in the sacred lands of the Whalaqee and began drilling for it. But remember: you only get to meet the Whalaqee through the two Mamoolj'aa and the Whalaqee child. The fate of the tribe rests in an Eorzean's hands because they put the medicine behind a bet for the further profit of Ul'dah. Win the carnival and make the owner a bunch of money and you get the medicine; lose, and they go raid the place for ceruleum and wipe out the tribe. It's a deeply offensive storyline that turns past and ongoing horrors that indigenous peoples - especially those of North America and Mesoamerica - have faced and are still facing into some trivial goal for a questline for a joke job that's solved through the white savior trope.

Then, of course, there's how the Mamoolj'aa are generally treated. Like the other ARR tribes and anyone the game doesn't consider civilized, their dialogue is written in broken speech patterns to reflect "lower intelligence." They're one of the only ARR tribes (next to the Qiqirn, who only got that somewhat through the SHB Qitari quests) that haven't gotten any kind of humanizing that the others have seen over the years (and even then, that's only been recently). Throughout ARR-HVW storylines, they're portrayed as extremely aggressive, are often throwaway mercs for hire around La Noscea, and they have them use this "cultural dance" of theirs that's described as extremely suggestive and is frequently used to sexually harass the white women of Eorzea. They're also seen in the Wanderer's Palace (Hard) as "aggressive barbarian" types who enslaved the Tonberries, which were originally the Spoken of Nym (so y'know, predominantly white society that became malformed and gangrenous tonberries). And your job as the Warrior of Light is, naturally, to exterminate them. There's other stuff like the naming of abilities they use (frequent use of barbarian/barbaric, which in it of itself is problematic), the totems and standards that you're actively encouraged to destroy, the shaman stuff + the fact that again: they're the only ARR tribe that never got the same kind of humanizing lens that tribes like the Sylphs got early on, or like the Amalj'aa got only recently.

Dawntrail looks to be as if it might be that humanizing effort that began in Stormblood and was most prominent in 5.X (ARR-SHB tribe side quests don't count as it's side content, not MSQ), but of course there comes the problem: beyond them never treating the Mamoolj'aa with any respect in the content we already have, they've already framed 7.0 as you meddling in the rite of succession for this new area. An area that is ruled by a two-headed Mamoolj'aa that we have to help overthrow (which is not new, as a two-headed Mamoolj'aa was already shown in The Wanderer's Palace (Hard) - but that one was portrayed as brutish, unintelligent, and played into inbred stuff as...the final boss of the dungeon who gets a special end dungeon cutscene to showcase the Tonberries brutalizing his corpse). And again, this plot thread isn't new! We already helped Hien do that to the Steppe back in Stormblood! This is yet another instance of the game treating imperialism and colonization as a fun thing for you to get in on, especially since they're using the setting and the getting to the setting as a summer vacation.

The fact that they are framing Dawntrail as summer vacation-like is insidious. You are a party of fantasy Europeans sailing to fantasy Mesoamerica/South America to meddle in their governing process.

And let's quickly go over that: the fact Tural is the "New World" as you search for "a city of gold."

These names are rooted heavily in European colonization. The idea that Europe is the "civilized Old World" and that the Americas were the "uncivilized, waiting-to-be-conquered New World" is what drove the colonization of the region, especially in Mesoamerica and South America. The term "New World" is inseparable from white supremacist narratives about the colonizers that engaged with the peoples of the Americas. It's bad enough that XIV introduced Tural as "the New World" to begin with and populated it with a fantasy race that's characterized by violence, a lack of intelligence, and sexual harassment + a gross caricature of North American plains nations, but they have now made it into the destination for the Scions' "summer vacation adventure"? So that you can go do an imperialism there, too? They even framed it as some tropical paradise as if that's not an extension of how colonization of these regions is perpetuated today through the tourism industry.

The other term - city of gold - was a myth that was used as the excuse to ransack Mesoamerica and South America. You've definitely seen it, as that was the entire plot of Road to El Dorado. It was under this pretense that Spanish colonizers decimated indigenous populations in the search of glory and gold. The search for the "city of gold" in the "New World" was a mass genocide - enabled through widespread massacre, and a vicious plague that wiped out 80% of just the population in Mexico alone.

In Mexico, the pestilence reached the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, before its fall in 1521. Pathogens also reached Peru, inciting a civil war among the Incas. Both of these situations were extremely favorable for Spain. The plague—cocoliztli—was the most devastating post-conquest epidemic in large parts of Mexico, wiping out somewhere around 80 percent of the native population.

(from "How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics" by Richard Herzog on JSTOR)

This is not a subject to touch upon lightly in any respect. And for XIV to use it for their "fun adventure in a foreign land" is deeply inappropriate and frankly disgusting. But is anyone surprised? This is the same company that ignored the demands of the Saami council to remove the offensive Far Northern attire from the store.

What I'm disappointed the most about, however, is the number of fans chomping at the bit with angles about a tropical tourist destination, taking the summer vacation angle the devs are actively encouraging, and even stuff with pirates (do not get me started on how white pirates contributed to colonization of the Americas). As a friend put it very aptly: how do you see "new world," "city of gold," and a fleet of European ships sailing towards fantasy Mesoamerica and not get skeeved out at the prospect? This isn't something you should be excited about because they're having us role play imperialism Yet Again. But this time, it's all to the tune of "tropical summer vacation in a foreign land". And y'all are excited to join in?

I don't want the expansion to turn out this way. We barely have any information on this, I understand. But what I've laid out here is what the game has already done with regards to Tural's pre-7.0 depictions and what they've shown they want to continue perpetuating. If Dawntrail turns out to be somewhat decent (and it better be better handled than Thavnair and feature fewer white people populating the countries that are inspired by black and brown cultures), then fine. But as it stands, Square has not given us any reason to trust them in how they've handled their indigenous stories leading up to 7.0. This entire concept is rife with the potential to be extremely offensive and extremely racist, and the main takeaway most fans seem to have from this isn't that this is a gross depiction of indigenous cultures, but instead a fun summer vacation with the Scions?

Really?

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #dawntrail #ffxiv fanfest #fanfest 2023 #final fantasy #ff #racism #long post #original #im fucking tired #i just wanted a void expansion. maybe meracydia #but instead we got the One thing i was hoping xiv would never touch again due to how poorly theyve handled references to it #im both surprised and not that everyone is scrambling for this shit despite everything about it #like i just continue to find more ways to be disappointed with the xiv base. constantly. #like the positive reaction to this is genuinely sickening and i can't believe that /this/ is the angle they're taking going forward #like wow amazing we get ffx references mixed in there with racist bullshit thats been perpetuated since the 15th century #ngl im really dreading this and what comes out of the extremely racist parts of the fandom #like the fuckers who make ''feral tribal ocs'' in jungle areas who Definitely Do Exist #considering we've got literal fascist fuckers? yeah. i'm. very worried about the launch of this expac #especially with what's going to happen on the fandom side of things with racist new ocs

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Top 10 Games of 2019

This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:

-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go. 

-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.

-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.

-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.

Alright, he’s the actual list:

10. Amid Evil

The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.

9. Ape Out

If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.

8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.

7. Resident Evil 2

It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.

6. Judgment

No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.

5. Control

Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.

4. Anodyne 2

I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people. 

3. Eliza

Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.

There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.

Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.

2. Death Stranding

For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.

The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.

Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.

1. Outer Wilds

The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again. 

What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.

The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.

#outer wilds #death stranding #eliza #anodyne 2 #control #judgment #resident evil 2 #fire emblem: three houses #Ape Out #Amid Evil #games #video games #GOTY

[coolgreatwebsite]

Guest Article: Wheel Able's Video Games Post of 2019

Wheel able is an avid computer user and Game Boy Advance owner. Do not follow him on Twitter. Gamer's. Lately, I have been doing a bit of self reflection, which has, surprisingly, led me to realize some things: - It is the end of the year - I have played several video games - I am more or less literate - At this point, I have two options: try to realize more things, or type a bunch of words about video games.

10. Kingdom Hearts III

This game is so stupid. This whole series is so insanely stupid. For some history, I had only played a bit of the original Kingdom Hearts, and all of Kingdom Hearts II before jumping right into this one - so I definitely understood about as much as one possibly can when it comes to this series. For me, this meant that I knew to expect some great music and I guess some idiots wearing trench coats who like to sit in a stupid circle of thrones that are entirely too high off of the ground. No person could reasonably sit on them - they're too tall. Suspension of disbelief only gets you so far, and Too-Tall-Chairs are where I draw the line. Make them smaller.

9. Little Town Hero Contrary to what the previous entry may lead you to believe, I tend to care most about gameplay when it comes to JRPGs. That's not to say I will ever turn down a nice soundtrack or some ridiculous horse shit story about killing Anime God, but when it comes to your battle system, please just give me something that requires the use of my two remaining brain cells. Please, for the love of god, make me feel smart for once.

The battle system in Little Town Hero is something like a mashup of Mario Party and Magic the Gathering. I have never played Magic, but I know it has something to do with cards - which is essentially what Little Town Hero's mechanics boil down to (underneath a pretty JRPG exterior). Throw on top of that a board game map with environmental gimmicks, and you've got a battle system which makes me feel like I am actually thinking. And learning. And in the end, that is probably what every game should do (make me feel like I'm improving myself). 8. Pokemon Sword & Shield

I think Pokemon games are at their best when they're not trying to be anything more than what they are - simple adventures that make me feel like a dumbass kid again (as opposed to a dumbass adult). Conversely, I find these games to be at their worst when they force you down tunnels to ensure that you're laser focused on some overzealous Save The Galaxy From Evil story line. That's not to say SwSh (pronounced "swisshh" btw) isn't guilty of that to some extent, but for the first time in a while, it seems like the Pokemon team had the confidence (or lack of time) to not get in the way of the classic, grounded goal of becoming the very best Pokemon Master, like no one ever was (because they were all too busy trying to get the online features to work). 7. The Outer Worlds I don't usually have nearly enough awareness to realize that almost no Role Playing Games actually encourage Role Playing, but The Outer Worlds managed to have me paying attention to the decisions I make - which is just not something I ever do in any situation. At a certain point, I found myself actually thinking about how my character would handle certain situations, rather than myself (Role Playing?????).

To be fair, I have played basically no western RPGs, and a smarter man than me would point out that other western RPGs have had similarly good writing for years. But this "smarter man than me" sounds like a complete nerd, whom I definitely plan on bullying. 6. Link's Awakening

The original Link's Awakening soundtrack is one of my favorites due to its charm and earnest goofiness, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that Nagamatsu's arrangements were able to maintain that character. My favorite tracks of his were the underground dungeon and Mabe Village tunes. Anyway the game is still good. 5. Trials of Mana I played this game when it was still "Seiken Densetsu III", but now that it has an English title, that means I can put it on a list. I don't make the rules (citation needed).

This game is easily among the SNES's greatest offerings, and I'm pissed off NOW, knowing that I should have been pissed off back in like 1995 when they decided to not localize this game. No amount of anger I have in 2019 will ever make up for the pure fury I was clearly entitled to as a child.

4. Sekiro

The original Dark Souls is possibly my favorite video game, and I have yet to come across a FromSoft "SoulsBorne" entry that I don't like (there are plenty of """"souls-likes"""" from other developers that I don't care for, though!!).

Being a total Shit Coward, it took me all the way until Bloodborne to play these types of games without a shield - and I only did so because that game encouraged a more aggressive play style through its mechanics. Sekiro essentially requires that same approach, along with doubling down on the necessity of parrying. The result: Man It's A Hard One. While the gameplay in Sekiro is likely my favorite of the SoulsBunch, the setting and lore unfortunately didn't really do much for me - landing it at 5th place on my Souls Ranking List (please look forward to my upcoming video on WatchMojo dot com). 3. Resident Evil 2

I was too scared to play the Resident Evil series as a kid, so I just watched my brother play them instead. Now that I am a powerful and wise adult, I can play these games for a full thirty minutes without even crying once. 2. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night I've waited years to battle Dracula again, and it looks like I will have to continue to wait for more years, because Dracula is not in this game. What a disappointment (10/10).

It's a good thing I can't get enough of these Samus Belmont style adventures, because it seems like at least a handful of them are released every year. However, this one was at least twice as important as the others, because it was made by a man in a cowboy hat. Anyway, don't forget Dracula in the next one, Mr. Vania. I'm guessing you just forgot since it has been a while. 1(a). Ori and the Blind Forest

Like I alluded to earlier, I am indeed following the arbitrary GOTY guidelines and only including games that were released in 2019. BUT with the release of Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition this year, I think I can include this one?? Please do not call the police.

1(b). Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbrongus

Hey can you include expansions in a GOTY list? Somebody please email the president of games journalism and let me know. I am posting this list in five minutes and I don't want to fuck this up. Help 1. Outer Wilds Being fairly unintelligent, I am both terrified and curious when it comes to things I don't understand. Space is one of those many things.

I booted up this game on a complete whim while looking around on Game Pass one day, and I'm convinced that's the best way to experience it. Since Outer Wilds is a game based entirely around exploration and learning, it'd be silly of me to say a bunch of stuff about what's in the game - and I am definitely not a clown, from the circus. When so many games are carefully crafted to make the player feel big and strong and important, Outer Wilds constantly reminds you of your insignificance. I can only hope that this game teaches others what I have known all along: it is actually good to be/feel small. Well, that's it. I've played all the video games. Unless they, for some reason, decide to make more next year?? That seems like it could potentially be bad.

#article #guest submission

[emperor-uncarnate]

My Top 20 Favorite Video Games

(Listed in the order in which I played them)

Pokémon Red Version - Along with my matching red Game Boy Pocket, this was the first video game I owned that was purely mine and not handed down from an older kid. I still go back and replay this every couple of years on that very same Game Boy Pocket or on the 3DS Virtual Console. I know there’s FireRed and a whole series of more modern Pokémon games at my disposal but the original Red Version easily gets the most nostalgia points. Sometimes that’s what it’s all about, no? Banjo-Kazooie - Similarly, the N64 became my first home console that wasn’t a hand-me-down and it came equipped with both bear and bird (complete with “screaming about it on Christmas morning”). After going back and replaying this almost twenty years later I gained new appreciation for how goofy and colorful it is. Treasure Trove Cove is so fucking catchy. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle - From its kickin’ soundtrack to its satisfying controls to its random-ass virtual pet simulator this game has it all. Multiplayer was always pretty exciting too, I remember many an afternoon trying to one-up a friend during a grind race. No 3D Sonic game compares to this if you ask me, although Sonic Heroes and Sonic Unleashed come sort of close in their own ways. What I wouldn’t give for a proper Sonic Adventure 3... Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes - I remember playing this at my local arcade in my youth before eventually getting a port of it for the Xbox 360. The look of its 2D sprites are phenomenal and - if it will help you understand why I love this game - I’m singing “I Wanna Take You For a Ride” to myself as I type this. Metroid: Zero Mission - This was the first Metroid game I ever actually beat, and it was the game that made me fall in love with the series. I love Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Samus Returns as well but I like Zero Mission’s visual style the most. I was so thrown for a loop when Samus lost her Power Suit towards the end of the game but it only made getting it back that much sweeter.  Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - I started playing this one in 2004 but didn’t officially beat it until way later in 2017. For a while I had a pattern I’d go through every few years of “start playing, enjoy it for a while, get lost, and start over for some reason.” Took me thirteen years to get serious about it but it earned its place as my favorite of the 3D Metroid games. I felt so fulfilled once it was complete, like I was achieving a childhood dream. Kingdom Hearts II - I don’t think I would’ve gotten into this game if not for my friend’s suggestion but I couldn’t thank him enough for it. This is another one of those games you only vaguely understand when you’re a kid only to realize how complex and intuitively designed it is in your adulthood. After the long wait, Kingdom Hearts III proved to be pretty satisfying but I just have too much history with its predecessor for it not to win a spot on this list. Jak 3 - Though my interest in this series burned fast and bright, this game still sticks out to me as one of the best I’ve ever experienced. I played the third installment before Jak and Daxter or Jak 2 but that’s fine because it’s the best goddamn one. Driving around in the desert, swapping out gun modules, and taking flight on some janky wings made of light were definitely the highlights for me. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - I got into this game during the latter period of Wrath of the Lich King but I didn’t feel like an official WoW player until this fiery, grim expansion. It was the first real online game I’d ever played (if you don’t count Neopets and Adventure Quest) that I started as a Night Elf Warrior in a PVP server and ended as a Worgen Hunter in a non-PVP server. Because fuck the Horde, that’s why. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - I got Skyrim on a whim because I literally couldn’t think of anything else I wanted for Christmas in 2011. There was no hype for me, I knew nothing ‘bout no Dragonborns, but I thought “heck it” and dove in anyway. After originally playing it on Xbox 360 and replaying it more recently on PS4 (with a slew of mods) I can say with confidence this game continues to blow me away. I always seem to find something new even though I feel like I know it like the back of my hand. I did get involved in The Elder Scrolls Online later on but Skyrim is still where it’s at. Soul Calibur V - I was first introduced to the tale of souls and swords (eternally retold, of course) through Soul Calibur II and only because you could play as Link on the Gamecube version. Fast-forward to 2012 and I was still on board with its story and cast of characters but its character creation was really what kept me hooked. Soul Calibur VI turned out to be a little disappointing but I definitely got the most out of its fifth installment and I’m guilty of having played for hours and hours on end. Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward - What began as a free trial because I was bored turned into a years-long interest in yet another MMO. While the base game was okay it really picked up speed with Heavensward and I was hooked from that point onwards. After a certain point I caught myself not skipping cutscenes and discovered - oh hey - the story’s actually really good. Star Wars Battlefront - I loved this game when it came out on PS4 and used it often to get my insatiable Star Wars fix. Aerial combat was my downright favorite part of the game and I loved smoking some TIE Fighters in an X-Wing or in the Millennium Falcon. Its sequel Star Wars Battlefront II could’ve made this list but EA was being a real dirtbag about it and now I find it hard to look back on happy memories of it the same way. The 2015 game is thankfully unsullied by those sour elements, however, so I’d say its gotta be my favorite Star Wars game ever. Overwatch - This game came to me at a time when I only wanted to play games that had character creation. I was hesitant to get to know all the characters and lore but I’m overjoyed I did since they’re so rich in personality and fun details. Once I got the hang of characters like McCree, Soldier, Reinhardt, and Widowmaker I was absolutely sold and I still play it two years later. Sonic Mania - The delightful trailer for this game got me all riled up but I wouldn’t know just how great it was until I was playing it myself. I don’t think I could ever truly enjoy my previous favorite 2D Sonic games (Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD) ever again because this game just feels better than all of them combined.  The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I didn’t really grow up with the Legend of Zelda, only ever playing A Link to the Past and Twilight Princess, but I immediately knew I was going to enjoy this open world take on the series. Just the sheer freedom of what you could do and where you could go was enough to reel me in and its aesthetic still amazes me with how great of a mood it generates. Final Fantasy VII - I still remember going into a GameStop when I was in high school and naively attempting to buy a used copy of this game for the PS1. It was an “epic fail,” as I would’ve said at the time. But over a decade later I downloaded it on the PS4 and went to town, getting my full FF7 experience at long last and loving every minute of it. Very stoked for the remake; it’s probably my most anticipated game right now. Marvel’s Spider-Man - What a surefire hit this was. From the moment the first gameplay footage was out I knew this was going to be the must-have web-swinging, wall-crawling good time. I love that there are so many ways to play the same character and everyone can really embody their own version of Peter Parker. I’m also from New York City so seeing a digital rendition of Manhattan was a real treat (even though they changed uptown a lot and my old apartment doesn’t exist in the game). Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Nine of the other nineteen entries in this list feature a character who’s playable in this latest Smash game. I get that people like Melee for reasons and whatever but how can you not like SSBU, the game that has it all? I’m still riding the high of Banjo and Kazooie entering the fray and I absolutely cannot wait to see where things go from here. Never had more fun playing local multiplayer in my life. Red Dead Redemption II - Never cared for Grand Theft Auto and the first Red Dead Redemption was fun but damn, there’s nothing quite like its sequel. I’m still working my way through the story just because I’ve spent so much time out in the wide open world, taking my time and seeing the sights. I might be a city boy but I have a deep appreciation for the American West and if this game ain’t just the prettiest damn thing I ever did see... hoo-WEE! Top shelf.

#video games #pokemon #banjo-kazooie #sonic #metroid #marvel #kingdom hearts #jak and daxter #star wars #soul calibur #final fantasy #skyrim #spider-man #super smash bros #red dead redemption 2 #breath of the wild

[essayofthoughts]

New prompt: Pietro makes a deal with some kind of villain/higher power to come back to life - but not without a price. For every day/ week/ month of life he is given, he must kill. Can either start with him trying to keep it from Wanda to protect her, or he could let her in on it right away, but in either case, she is way too ready to help. Dark!twins, angst and violence ensues.

June 22nd 2017, 1:34:00 am · 3 hours ago

Send me fic prompts!

AO3 Mirror.

i.Pietro cheats. The deal he made was loosely worded, was agreed simply - death for life. He cannot kill people, will not, could never shame and disappoint Wanda so. He kills rats and mice, pigeons and gulls, spiders and flies and wasps and gnats, small things that no one will miss. 

He has to kill each day, kill many times, if it is insects, but with his speed it is easy, easy to keep to the deal he made with Hel, to feed her hordes in exchange for his continuing life. He runs, catches flies and birds with his hands, crushes the life from them and whispers a prayer in her name.

It has been years since he prayed, years upon years. The words feel strange on his lips.

ii.Pietro came back covered in dirt, clawed his way from his grave back to Wanda’s side. She woke, and felt his mind swirling at the foot of her bed, woke and saw her brother, pale and wan and covered in dirt, as though someone had taken his corpse and placed him at the foot of her bed.

And then Pietro had opened his eyes and croaked, “Wanda.”

iii.Wanda has not questioned his return. Doctor Cho, when asked for an assessment, said she did not know, but that her best guess would be his improved homeostasis, his altered metabolism. Vision concurred, and Doctor Banner and Thor were not there to voice an opinion.

Pietro makes his small sacrifices in Hel’s name, and keeps his secret.

iv.There are insect carapaces in the folds of Pietro’s clothes. There is blood beneath his nails. Wanda spots these small things, and knows no one else will see them, takes his hands in hers and scrubs under his nails with scarlet, stretches scarlet around him and pulls carapaces from his clothes.

There is none so close to Pietro as she and she will do all she can to protect him.

v.“Pietro,” she asks one evening. Her voice is soft, her hands dancing soft scarlet out to light the room. “Pietro, how did you come back?”

It spills out of him in a wave, words tripping over him as he tries to explain everything.

A deal, an offer-

Hel, goddess of the dead-

She said I could return if I fed her hordes-

I sacrifice. I sacrifice each day.

Wanda watches him, cups his face in her hands, runs her thumbs in hard lines across his cheeks.

“How?” she asks him.

vi.Wanda helps him. She catches flies in her scarlet, catches worms and ants, catches birds and mice and rats, when they fight she fights fiercely, when people attack she fights them off, snaps necks as though by accident and shows no fear or shame.

“You are my family,” she says. “My only family, all I have left. I have lost you once. I will not lose you again.”

Wanda kills in Hel’s name for his sake. Single whispered prayers each time, “Death for life, Death to Hela for Life for Pietro.”

She does not stint, she exceeds Pietro’s efforts. With more than bugs dying, with Wanda’s wilful sacrifice of cats and dogs that wander into the way of battle he is stronger and faster, less tired, more able. With a human life he thrives, with two he is almost as he was. Wanda smiles to see him so, takes his hands in hers, cups his cheeks and presses a kiss to his brow.

vii.No one notices the extra deaths. Or: they do, and they excuse it as growing power, ask her simply to try to keep at least one attacker alive for information. Steve is the worst, when he asks it of her, earnest and honest, pleading to a sense of morals she has sacrificed along with every life she gives to Hel.

She sacrifices still, finds ways to make them as often as she can. Three bugs a day can sustain Pietro. Two birds can last him a day and a half. A cat or dog, something well loved, that causes a small death of happiness in those who knew it, can last him almost a week.

A person, a person can last him a month, if they are cared for enough by those around them, if they are vital enough in energy.

When Wanda kills all but the leader of a squad, Pietro seems to shine.

viii.There is strife on Asgard, trouble in Wakanda. The world is warping around them when a ship comes sailing through the void of space and crashes into orbit around earth.

“Thanos,” says the one human of the crew. “Thanos, destroyer of worlds.”

“The Infinity Stones,” says the women of green and blue. “You must hide them. Our father will stop at nothing.”

The stones are these: the Tesseract, taken, and the Aether. The purple stone of power is claimed, the green of life, the orange of time, the yellow of mind yet remain.

“I hold the mind stone,” Vision says. “I will not let it fall into his hands.”

Time and life, however, those may yet.

ix.The twins recoil from Stephen Strange, recoil from the magic he wields as though burned.

“Wanda,” says Pietro, “It looks almost like your powers.”

It is not, but he speaks true.

“Pietro,” says Wanda. “If he knows magic, he may know that of sacrifice.”

x.The twins avoid Strange, help guard his stone as they do Vision, as they do the green-glowing vortex of power they discover with the life stone, but they do not speak to him if they can help it, turning into each other, away from all else, as Wanda finds more and more deaths to keep Pietro powerful and strong as Thanos draws nearer.

“He has the space stone,” Bruce asks Thor when the two arrive on Earth, charred and smoking with the remnants of a battle. “Why does he not just warp space to get here?”

“The effect,” Thor says. “He wants to make us afraid.”

“He wants a battle,” says Gamora. “He likes watching people fight for their lives before him.”

xi.The battle is…

It is glorious. Thanos has brought Chitauri to bear upon them, and every Chitauri on its own feeds into a yet vaster network, each one cut off is like voiding the eyes of some great behemoth, making it blinder and blinder until it falls to pieces. Wanda kills and kills and kills, breathes prayer after prayer, watches the death fill Pietro with life and strength far beyond the usual scope.

Pietro is killing too, tearing armour plates off the Leviathans, vaporising the other soldiery Thanos has brought to this place with nothing but his growing and growing and growing speed.

Thanos, it seems, was not expecting a blur that moved almost faster than thought to be his opponent.

xii. “Where did you come from!?” Thanos yells, trying and failing to target Pietro, warping space with his gauntlet only to find Pietro has evaded it once more. “You were dead!”

Hela, thinks Wanda. Hel brought him back against your vision.

Pietro is a blur, is almost invisible, if Wanda could not feel his mind, see him with invisible eyes, she would not know where to find him in the slew of death and danger of the battle. Pietro runs, Pietro leaps, life and life and life once more filling his veins until his blue shines as bright as the Tesseract.

Pietro tears the head from Thanos and, for a moment there is peace.

Then the shadows rise.

xiii.“Hel,” says Thor. “I killed you.”

“Me?” Hel asks. “You, kill me? I am the goddess of death Uncle. Death cannot hurt me any more than lightning could hurt you, or lies hurt my father. All they do is help us.”

Thor stands at the base of Thanos’ dais, Hel atop it, her helm of spreading horns spreading and spreading until they shadow Thanos’ corpse, until they seem to fade into the void of space itself.

“So much death,” she breathes. “I feel alive again.”

xiv.This is a different battle and the twins are torn in it. Hel can erase a life with a snap of her fingers, can throw a knife out of nothingness, turn shadow into a blade of steel and death. For all they have added to her power, given her soul upon soul to turn into Draugr to march at her side, they know she will not hesitate to kill them both if it comes to it.

She is goddess of death, after all, and she no longer needs them as pawns to make her stronger.

She stands above Thanos’ body, above his half-filled Gauntlet, basking in the power of all those dying beneath her. Her power sings storms onto earth, sings quakes into space, destroys ship after ship of Thanos’ people, until they stand in a mausoleum in space, just them, and the dead around them.

“You have a choice,” she says to the Avengers. “Fight me, and die, or let me rule you all.”

xv.It is not even a question what the Avengers will do.

xvi.No words are said. No words are needed. Thor lifts his hammer and even in the void of space, lightning burns, thunder sings out.

“Oh, Uncle,” sighs Hela. “You already failed once.”

The twins look to each other, Pietro shimmering with blue around the edges, still shining with the life bought from their sacrifice of Thanos - Thanos so ancient, Thanos so powerful - shining with the energy of all those they killed before that.

We kill her- Pietro thinks.

Can we? asks Wanda.

Sacrifice her to herself, Pietro thinks. An always loop.

Sacrifice her to what she is goddess of, thinks Wanda, feed her power, and yet end her.

Pietro vanishes from her side.

xvii.“We sacrifice you,” says Wanda, and Pietro is already gone from her side, the other Avengers left staring and confused. “We sacrifice you, Hel, goddess of death, goddess of the cairn, the wolf’s sister, and we sacrifice you to death itself.” 

Pietro’s hands blur into being around Hel’s head, grasp around the horns to cradle her skull, a hold at once delicate and like iron. 

“We sacrifice you to yourself,” says Wanda, adamant and certain, scarlet dancing out to hold Hel in place. “A sacrifice of always and for always, of death and into death, until forever are you ended.”

Pietro tears Hel’s head loose from her neck with a single, violent jerk.

xviii.Wanda runs up the dais, taking it three steps at a time, leaping over Thanos’ limp arm, the dangling gauntlet to embrace her bloodied brother.

“Wanda,” he whispers into her neck. “Wanda.”

The blood covers him, an unrestrained spurt from the stump of Hel’s neck drenching his body like that of blessing blood, a sacrament. Hel’s head still dangles from his hands.

Pietro buries his face in his sister’s shoulder.

#nanyoky #ask #wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #mcu fic #my fic

[dawnstruck]

dust and devils on my conscience

FMA RoyEd Pacific Rim 'verse. Non-linear story telling. [Read on AO3]

Mankind, like cockroaches, are tenacious little beasts.

i.

A kaiju is a fearsome thing. Vast and vicious and near-on invincible.

But mankind, like cockroaches, are tenacious little beasts.

They thrive, they survive. Even if many of them die. Even if Death, for some, is a promise.

xviii.

The first tentative step a Jaeger takes is always the most exhilarating. Like a roller-coaster ride, only that you are the loop, the sky, and gravity all at once.

Roy used to love this. He thinks he might be able to love it again.

The water crashes around them and then they move forward.

v.

Two truths. Roy wasn't in love with Maes and Maes wasn't in love with Roy.

That doesn't mean it hurts any less.

xiv.

“Revenge?!” Edward snaps. His metal fist beats against the metal wall to his right, just once, but it seems to set the entire room and everything in it ringing. “You honestly think this is about revenge for me?!”

The gleam in his eyes is furious. Roy does not flinch. He has faced down monsters. A mere boy does not intimidate him.

“Al and I have saved millions of lives,” Ed continues, “We've gone out there again and again, just like you and Hughes have, and you dare belittle me by simply calling it revenge?!”

It would be easy to make a quip about Edward's height then, but his rage is a curious thing. It makes him appear larger than he is and yet there is still so much of a child in him.

“If anything,” Ed adds and his voice is merely a whisper now, like the aftershocks of an earthquake, “You should get some revenge yourself.”

vi.

It's a strange feeling, to mesh your mind with someone so intricately and then have it ripped away within what is little more than an exhale. It's hurts and then it heals and then there is still that frayed edge, forever there at the seams of your conscience.

Roy resists the urge to pluck at the lose ends so he doesn't come undone.

xv.

“Sir,” Riza says, “Permission to speak openly?”

“Permission granted, Lieutenant,” Roy says, tiredly.

“Brigadier General Hughes enlisted to protect his family,” she says. She does not pull her punches, but she gives him a moment's notice to brace himself. “You owe it to him to continue doing so.”

Roy knocks back the whiskey and tries to drown the truth. But, like his nightmares, it swims.

viii.

The Elric brothers are the golden boys of the Jaeger program. They are young, handsome, congenial. Their sob story appeals to the public, both of them orphaned when a kaiju attack laid wreckage to the Australian coast line.

Their accents are as broad as their smiles and, all over the world, boys and girls alike collect posters and action figures of them.

Their Jaeger goes down somewhere close to Kyushu and, though official sources report them to be alive and stable, they do not appear in any morning shows for quite a while to come.

vii.

Riza outmatches him in the compatibility test. It's no surprise, really, but Roy cannot find it in himself to be disappointed. He's not sure he wants to let anyone into his head anyway.

It doesn't work with Jean or Heymans either. General Grumman pinches the tips of his mustache but does not concede defeat. He keeps sending other candidates at Roy, new recruits and seasoned pilots, but none of them are Maes, so it doesn't matter anyway.

iv.

Originally, they enlisted because it was the right thing to do and they took the test because they were curious. They hadn't known each other for long, barely enough to really call each other friends instead of comrades, so no one expected them to be drift compatible.

Their Jaeger is called Pyro Polaroid, a beautiful shiny thing, all gold and navy blue. Maes makes a fuzz after every battle, lamenting the scratches in the paint job as one would with a beloved old-timer.

Later, in his more macabre moments Roy thinks that maybe it was a good thing that Maes died because at least this way he didn't have to witness how Roy quite literally single-mindedly dragged Pyro Polaroid back to the shore and let her collapse against the cliffs. He didn't have to see her be decommissioned and ransacked for spare parts. He didn't have to watch Roy break just as efficiently.

ix.

The rumor reaches Roy when its subjects are already there. Then again, it's kind of hard to miss a giant Jaeger being flown into the base.

Roy doesn't have to guess who it is. The flaming red paint and black markings are enough of a giveaway.

Fullmetal Alchemist, despite the extensive damage she must have sustained, was a younger model and had thus been deemed worthy of repair. Similar things can be said for her pilots.

Alphonse Elric is being carted around the uneven floors of the base in a wheelchair, but his handshake is strong and his smile genuine.

“Looking forward to working with you,” he tells Roy as though it weren't unlikely that he'd ever walk again.

“Where on earth has Ed gone?” a young woman behind Al huffs. She has her hands on her hips and grease smears all over. She must be one of Fullmetal Alchemist's engineers.

“Probably making sure his baby is parked correctly,” Al replies, rolling his eyes. To Roy he says, “He's very particular about who gets to touch her.”

Who's going to co-pilot her then, Roy wants to ask but doesn't because the answer sure as hell is not Alphonse.

xi.

Edward fights as though he were participating in an illegal street fight, not looking for a drift partner. He's got his opponents on their backs in a matter of seconds and impatiently taps his bo staff against the floor mats as he waits for his next challenger.

“Come on,” he drawls. His skin glistens with sweat underneath his black tank top but morphs into scar tissue on his right shoulder. Somewhere in the crowd someone mutters how the automail gives him an unfair advantage. But drift compatibility is not about brute strength. It's about chess.

“Was that really it?” Ed asks now. His face is turned toward Grumman but his eyes are on Riza and her neat clipboard. She hesitates.

“There is one,” she says and when her gaze cuts over to Roy, Ed follows.

xxv.

The sunrise is made of seven colors, dyeing the sea and the sky. But the sun, the sun itself is bold and golden and almost bright enough to hurt Roy's eyes.

He does not look away.

xix.

They lose Arctic Briggs in the waves and Greed is rendered useless when Lan Fan is injured.

Ling gets her out, barely, and she survives, barely. Her remaining hand is red with her own blood as she clutches at Doctor Rockbell's bony wrist.

“Automail,” she grits out through the pain, “I can still fight. Give me automail.”

It took three years to get used to automail, one if you were as determined as Edward, but everyone knows that they only have days.

And yet, amid all the chaos and the destruction, it's easy to read Lan Fan's stubborn spite as hope.

“All right,” Doctor Rockbell says and gives a tight nod.

“Set the clock to zero,” Grumman orders and the bleak metal walls of the Shatterdome reflect his words like a mockingbird's song.

xxi.

Ed kisses like their staff fight might make one expect him to. Looking for openings, for weak spots, just this side of dirty. Roy matches him, kiss for kiss, and this is like their fight, too, this feeling of being alive, of being equal, of being in the right place at the right time.

xii.

Izumi Curtis coughs red blood into white handkerchiefs and observes Roy with narrow eyes.

Like him, she had once managed to pilot a Jaeger on her own. Unlike him, she had ended up with physical ruin instead of mental one.

“I found the boys in the rubble, hidden under the corpse of their mother,” she tells Roy what he has already heard on various radio shows, “I saw them grow old enough to enlist and I saw them nearly die at Kyushu. At some point you have to learn how to prioritize the world before your own fear.”

“I'm not afraid,” he says.

“Not of the kaiju,” she agrees.

xiii.

Roy tells himself he is merely embarrassed when he goes down the rabbit hole. He blames it on being unfamiliar with Fullmetal Alchemist and with how long it's been that he's been inside of a Jaeger at all.

He manages to jerk himself free, vaguely aware of the frantic voices breaking through his headset, only Riza's calm and reasonable. He does not look to his left to see Edward's face. He does not want his pity or his scorn. He does not want to think about how that boy has been inside of his head.

“I'm done here,” Roy croaks and runs away once more.

ii.

Roy flirts with show hosts, takes selfies with fans and ruffles little children's hair. He gives autographs and press conferences, wears tailored suits and debonair smiles. He's the bachelor, the playboy, the unattainable dream. Maes is the opposite, the family man, the goofball, the nerd, who makes dad jokes and shows off pictures of his family and his stamp collection.

They work well together, maintaining the perfect equilibrium of what the public wants to see. Dashing heroes, guys next door.

Maes does not talk about how Gracia silently cries whenever she has to watch him leave. Roy does not admit that maybe sometimes he drinks a little too much whiskey to forget the last trampled city and the corpses that came with it.

Instead, they are invited to dinner parties at the White House and appear on a sports car commercial. They are living the life, only that there is a lot of death involved, too.

xxii.

“We will pilot Greed,” Izumi announces. Sig is a mountain beside her, steady and silent.

“What?” Alphonse bursts out, “But you can't! Pinako said if you ever step foot into a Jaeger again, it's gonna kill you.”

Izumi smiles, fondly.

“Look around, kid,” she says, indicating the listless disarray of the Shatterdome, “If I don't do this, we are all going to die anyway.”

She looks over to Ed, catches his eye. His teeth are clenched and his arms crossed, but he holds her gaze. Then he gives a nod.

“Brother!” Alphonse protests. He looks very pale in the lights of his lab and it makes the red veins in his eyes even more glaring, “You can't-”

He breaks off, doesn't finish. It's the moment in which he realizes that he is not only going to lose his mentor but his brother, too.

“Oh,” he says, his voice tight with tears. But he must know that, one way or another, this was always going to happen.

x.

“Don't,” Doctor Rockbell says evenly, never even looking up from her newspaper. Smoking is not allowed in the base but no one seems to have told her that and so she is puffing away on her pipe.

Edward, who had been feeding Den scraps under the table, sends her a withering look.

“It's the end of the world,” he says, “The least we can do is die fat and happy.” It's says it easily, evasively. They all know it might be over soon. He says it as someone who knows better than others. Better than most.

“Why are you still fighting,” Roy asks, not sure if he even wants to know the answer, “If you think it's the end?”

Ed's eyes, even in the harsh fluorescent lights of the base, are as golden as few living things should be.

“Because if I don't,” Ed tells him, “It's gonna be game over either way.”

xvi.

Drift compatibility, generally speaking, makes sense.

Olivier Armstong and Artyom Buccaneer make sense because he has been serving under her for years. Ling and Lan Fan make sense because they grew up together. Sig and Izumi Curtis make sense because they are married and still madly in love.

Roy and Ed, on the other hand, should not make sense.

Ed's mind is a flurry of contradictions. Smiles tucked into the corners of his loved ones, Alphonse, their mother, Winry, Pinako. Izumi with a halo of the morning sun, a dead kaiju at her feet and a defunct Jaeger at her back, Izumi pale and with coughs shaking her asunder. Snippets of Al's mind interwoven with his own. Brandings of the precise moment in which Al lost feeling in his legs, of when Ed felt nothing but the absence of his own limbs. Metal grinding against kaiju scales, metal grinding into Ed's flesh and bone, fusing with his skin. Weeks and weeks of sitting by Al's bedside, waiting for him to wake up. Months and months of being useless, useless, useless. Day after day of dreadful news, broken walls, broken bodies.

And watching, always watching, as Winry and the rest of the team sew Fullmetal Alchemist back into her former glory, some uneven stitches here, some scars there, and Ed knows that you are never just piloting with your partner but with your Jaeger as well. He'll brave the oceans with her yet again and even the idea of doing it without Al doesn't hurt as much as it ought to.

Revenge, Roy had thought, when it had always been so much more than that.

xx.

“Oi,” Ed says, flicking an automail finger against Roy's wrist. The impact reverberates through Roy's bone marrow. “I'm not fucking piloting with you if you're hungover.”

“We share our minds, not our actual brains,” Roy tells him from experience. Maes had never complained about sympathy headaches the morning after Roy had drunk himself into a stupor again. But he had given Roy steady looks, not necessarily disappointed, but lingering a little too long for comfort. Ed is doing the same now, though his eyebrows are pinched, his eyes somber.

“What would you like me to do instead?” Roy says, offering a skeleton of a smile. He and Olivier had never gotten along but she had been Alex's sister and Roy blames himself for his failure. Without her and Buccaneer piloting Arctic Briggs, humanity is one, two, a dozen steps closer to extinction.

“Dunno,” Ed says. He scuffs the heel of his boot against the floor, shivering slightly. He's wearing an oversized sweater to fend of the perpetual cold of the Shatterdome. Does he miss the Australian heat? Does he miss his arm and leg underneath the phantom pain? Does he miss his mother like Roy misses Maes?

“Dunno,” Ed repeats, “But grief's gonna fuck you over if you don't fuck it back.”

“And how do you...,” Roy says, tilting his head to the side in mildly drunk curiosity, “Fuck grief back?”

Edward grins, boyish and brave and full of bad ideas.

“You fight,” he says as though it were a gospel.

A moment of enlightenment and then Roy sets his glass aside. He prays.

xvi.

Roy, to his chagrin, estimated the Elrics. Not just Edward, but Alphonse, too.

There is more to them than sun tanned skin and the lucky coincidence of being drift compatible.

“I had to do something,” Alphonse says with red bleeding into his hazel eyes. Roy wrinkles his nose against the invasive smell of the kaiju brain on the slab, but Edward doesn't even seem to notice, fuzzing over his younger brother like a nervous bird.

“What did you see?” Grumman wants to know.

“Their world,” Alphonse says and then he explains.

xxiii. Sex, in its many forms, is a form of survival. On the one hand, there is procreation. On the other, there is the instinct to affirm life, the urgency of one's last moments.

Cheap whiskey, Roy knows, does not compare to orgasm, but Edward's eyes have the same color.

The boy has not done this often, Roy thinks. Too earnest to bed one of his many groupies, too busy to bother with anyone else. On the surface, Edward seems to consist of little but Jaeger, kaiju, and his pickpocketed family. Underneath that, however, sits a deep-rooted fear of pain and loneliness and abandonment.

So he lets Roy fuck him in the face of death and destruction, and Roy fucks him in spite of it. He puts no promises into his kisses, no reassurances, because he doesn't have any. Instead, he weaves solace into Edward's hair, gentle reminders that for now – for now – they are here and alive and in each others' arms instead of each others' heads. It's little and lacking, but it's all they have and that makes it precious.

Roy does not dream that night.

iii.

“Ah,” Maes says, when they are playing cards without any gambles, “What will you do? When it's done, I mean.”

He never seems to doubt that it would be done, eventually. That humanity would win the fight and that life would return to how it was before the first kaiju appeared.

Roy thinks of how Maes himself would probably leave the military and take up a desk job somewhere else, something that allows him to be with Gracia and Elysia, something that doesn't count down his days like the war clock at the Shatterdome. Tick tick. Reset. Tick tick. Reset.

Roy, however, is not like that. Roy sees the horizon only when there is a new monster appearing on it. Roy never plans beyond that.

“I'd like to watch the sunrise,” he says and reveals his hand.

xxvi.

Mankind, like cockroaches, are tenacious little beasts.

xxiv.

“You mad cunt,” Edward yells against the wind. His hair is already wavy with sea salt, even though it can't have been more than a few minutes. Logically, Roy knows it can't have been more than a few minutes, even though it felt like eternity.

The memories of passing through the portal are both hazy and knife-sharp at the same time. He entered another world, another planet. And, what's more, he almost died. But he didn't.

“Are you all right?” he asks, somewhat numbly. There are voices coming from out of the escape pod, questions on whether everything worked out on their end, promises to come get them soon. He thinks he can hear helicopters in the distance.

“All right?” Edward repeats as though the definition of the word had just been fundamentally altered. The combination of his accent and adrenaline slur the words until he sounds almost drunk on elation. “All right?”

His fingers are on the collar of Roy's suit, a tether that is tender and terrible at the same time. His clammy forehead presses against Roy's.

“This is General Grumman,” Grumman's voice drones out of the pod. He sounds tinny and far away. The moment remains untouchable.

“The breach is sealed,” he announces, “Stop the clock!”

Roy kisses Ed.

#fma #Fullmetal Alchemist #RoyEd #Pacific Rim #fanfic #mine