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familyagrestefanblog · 3 years

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Ml Meta analysis: Adriens current absents, season 4 structure and theory on whats to come

Here I am back again with my endless rambling.

I'm just as worried for our cat son as everyone else (maybe even more) which is why I tried figuring out for my own sanity why he is so absent currently.

Upfront I wanna warn yall that I wrote this post in one rush this night and therefore had no time to do alot of editing. So things can probably get a bit more messy than usual but I tried to write it clearly, while writing 2 other ml essays as well. This is the one drawback of having so many episodes in such a short time, I have no time to write my posts x3 I had another theory planned for before Optigami airs but I don't think I can manage before tomorrow.

But let's not waste any more time. Grab a snack and here we go:

It's 2am right now but I think I just realized why Adrien/Chat Noir is being sidelined so much recently.

Sure, yes, it'll come into play in the very obviously set up Ladynoir drama later on but what I wanna talk about now is more the structure of how s4 is most likely written in terms of both Marinettes and Adriens side of the story. And then deep dive a little on why I think so.

You see season 4 is now reaping what has been built up from s1-s3, but this also includes that you have to take the time now to properly recreate the new possibilities out of the loose pieces of the broken status quo.

Seriously, season 4 has to handle and reinvent ALOT. The show got now officially announced to have 7 seasons, which is exactly the amount of seasons Astruc said they have story for. I couldnt find the official tweet from Thomas himself but I one from another source:

And now look take a look at the possible shows structure:

- s1-s3 was the first status quo and built up everything so now they can pay off after pay off while...

-... S4 is now the transitional season where the old status quo gets left behind as we work towards the new one.

-I have nothing to proof this of course, but in the same sense it would now make sense that s5-s7 where/are planned to play out under the final status quo. If I'm not wrong at first the show was under contract for 5 seasons, which would mean that after the transitional season 4 there was only 1 season of the final status quo for sure. Still, done right it could have been worth the wait. But this isn't where Miraculous will end. The show actually got the 7 seasons the creator wanted and THIS is how I think the long term plan makes the most sense. Nothing all too complicated but still hella effective in its execution.

But now back to our two main characters, because Marinettes and Adriens development are the two aspects that will raise the show to the intense heights of the s5-s7 status quo.

From s1-s3 Marinette was the active player but she was hardly involved with the actual PLOT of the show, since most of the plot and backstory of the show lies directly with the Agreste family. She only started to get her own plot when she literally created a new one by getting involved with the miraculous lore, because the closest Marinette got to the Agreste plot was "The collector".

Adrien in the other hand was always literally right in the middle of the plot but he wasn't enough of an active player to bring us further either.

Season 4 is now going to add the missing parts for both of them and as the very beginning of the season showed us: there are going to do it SEPERATLY.

This is why "Truth" and "Lies" have been structured the way they are (One Marinette-centric the other Adrien-centric). Yes, Marinette and Adrien are meant to end their story victoriously together, but they are simply not the people they have to be to become such a powerful team. Certain aspects of their journey they have to do... basically disconnected from the other one. The "Miracle Queen" endcard shows it quite nicely as well where they are heading now: away from each other.

Obviously the season started with Marinette growing into her new guardian status including everything miraculous related, since she is the main lead and because the new ways the episodes can now utilize everything Miraculous need to be established first before we deep dive into the messed up Agreste mystery.

So while I totally agree that it is annoying to get so little Adrien/Chat Noir content currently I also understand the practicality behind it. As I said, before s4 Marinette was the active main character who mostly didn't really have her own plot. So now adding her plot aspect and have her ACTIVELY figure everything needed out means that right now Marinette/Ladybug is the active focus main character who is solving a huge part of her s4 character arc. That simply drowns out Adrien as the currently still mostly-inactive secondary main character who, yes, may be right in the middle of the shows emotional + villain plot/lore/backstory, but that side of the story simply isn't in focus at the moment.

And I gotta say, I'm kinda glad they're doing it this way. Because I'm gonna be honest, when the season starts giving us Adrien/family Agreste episodes like "Lies" and "The collector" (in this case "Gabriel Agreste" for example) again, I don't want the narrative to be forced to spend time with something guardian lore based just because they didn't took their time to do it earlier.

So, as we see on the s4 episode raster "Gabriel Agreste" is episode 9. Honestly, I expect most of it (especially the ones near the beginning, so ep. 5 included) til that episode to be Marinette based the way everything else til now did (besides Lies obviously and Guilt trip didn't hardcore focus on Marinette/Ladybug either and that's because it's after "Gabriel Agreste") in the spirit of "Truth". It's just the needed set up from Marinettes side of the story and I can live with that.

Because we actually saw the change after "Gabriel Agreste" already in "Guilt trip".

I don't know why some people pretend like Chat almost cataclysming himself after hearing how guilt-eaten Nino is for Adriens sake isn't a huge indicator that the episodes afterwards will not only acknowledge but also DEAL with Adriens/Chats situation and problems. Remember, we are talking about CHAT NOIR here not Adrien Agreste. The show has always portrayed and acknowledged ADRIENS issues very straight forward and with the proper seriousness (especially when it comes to his family), whereas Chat Noir was often mostly used for comedic purposes with some exceptions of his problems being properly delt with (since Marinette/Ladybug was mostly oblivious to them, since Adrien keeps them hidden so well). But now in "Guilt trip" LADYBUG was confronted head-on with just how much negativity Chat has inside and how quickly and extremely he drowns in it.

Sure, correct, the episode also has his negativity "washed away" rather quickly by Ladybug opening up to him on how important he is to her

But this is in character for both of them as "Lies" very clearly showed us that the way BOTH OF THEM behave here is where the problem lies. There Ladybug was freaked out after Chat threw his life away once again but quickly accepted Chats very direct avoidance of the confrontation, since he seemed to be alright to her.

Something I also find noteworthy here is that Ladybugs dialog is "Seriously, you need to stop doing this to me!", which is.... a VERY Marinette-centric way of acknowledging the problem.

It completely shifts the issue away from Adriens extremely alarming self-harmful/suicidal tendencies and instead only calls out how it affects Marinette (whose feelings here are definitely valid, don't get me wrong!). It showcases perfectly how unaware Marinette still is of her partners inner tumult at that point and also parallels how Marinette called Adriens life "perfect" at the beginning of the episode (This is no shade towards Marinette, in general the entirety of "Lies" is about showing us just how harmful Adriens Chat Noir persona actually IS to him so these two moments of her being oblivious to Adriens and Chats immense problems very much fits into that episodes narrative and sets up what's about to come. I still have an entire essay in the making for "Lies" but, guys, it's just getting longer and longer. I suck xD).

So the fact that an episode after "Gabriel Agreste" brings this scenario back, just a little different but ALOT more revealing of Adriens immense problems to his partner, is VERY telling. Besides other things it tells us that this happens at the beginning of the arc that deals with (at least) Chats issues since Ladybug is still way too quickly too ready to accept her partner as "completely fine" again just because Chat makes it seem that way (while some negativity increasing guilt bubbles still to stick to him.).

And yet, others have already pointed it out that Ladybug IS noticing what Chat wanted to do and reacted accordingly...

she just didn't speak of it the way it is because it overwhelmed her, which calls back to Ladybugs "You have to stop doing this to me!" dialog.( For a great breakdown of her dialog HERE is a link to @flightfoot post)

In "Lies" Marinette was way too stressed by her new guardian role to even consider Chats side of it and therefore only spoke of her own, but in "Guilt trip" she's already past that stressful arc. So here she is immediately able to recognize Chats suicidal action for what it is, come to his (much needed) aid and lift her partners spirit the best she can by emotionally opening up to him (which is something we KNOW is incredibly hart for Marinette).

The difference between her reaction in "Lies" and in "Guilt trip" shows that Marinette has her guardian role already mostly handled and is now mentally able to be there for others again, so the extremely Marinette-centric "Truth"-like episodes are mostly passed. Now the episodes can bring Adrien/Chat Noir more into the game again and even shift to "Lies" - like episodes because MARINETTE can pay more attention to him again and isn't faced with something new, important and overwhelming Miraculous related every step she takes.

And THAT is extremely fair from a narrative standpoint.

---

I really need to stop elaborating so much on these posts because I'm only NOW actually getting to the point of where Adriens journey will disconnect for a while from Ladybugs. Sorry guys.

Okay, to understand where I'm going with this I will have to quickly explain how I always saw Chat Noirs place in the Ladybug+Chat Noir vs Hawkmoth war ever since s1.

Because here is the thing: Adrien wasn't able to truly leave the battle field ONCE since the origins. Marinette was completely out of Hawkmoths and Gabriels reach once she detransformed, which balances out her basically being the personification of the good sides force. And Gabriel literally decided whenever or not the battle is even ACTIVE right now! Besides that he is in complete control of his own actions and environment, which gives him all the necessary time, safety and downtime he needs to act as the personification of the evil sides force.

Marinette and Gabriel always knew when they were safe and off the battle field, but ADRIEN never had that and it left him LITERALLY right in the middle of both Ladybugs and Hawkmoths sides.

You see, because before Adrien became Chat Noir he basically was part of Hawkmoths side just by default. He was born into this family, that's his father and lost mother and everything he knows. Adrien didn't/doesn't even have to KNOW that he is part of Hawkmoths side, he's his son at some level he just IS! And I'm not saying this as anything negative, Adrien coming from Hawkmoths side is literally the reason why he became Chat Noir!

Because whereas Gabriel is having the time of his damn life as evil terrorist, created out of tragic and sinister circumstances, ADRIEN on the other hand couldn't handle his families environment and very same circumstances anymore and accepted the role as Paris' hero to escape his heritage for a while.

Keywords being: a WHILE.

Something unique about Adrien I always loved is the fact that he is the villains abused, isolated and overworked SON, who becomes a hero to escape his depressing life and YET it was never Adriens intention to LEAVE IT. Adrien merely wanted to use his time as Chat Noir to let of some steam and breath freely while doing some hero work so he can go back into his civilian life and try to one day successfully ment his broken family. He couldn't handle the current situation anymore but he still always saw worth in his family/father. I have SO MUCH respect for that!

But him not intending to leave his family and instead regaining strength as Chat Noir to continue to hold onto it came with the downside of him not being able to fully become part of the good sides people/force either. Hence why Adriens/Chats place always felt so lost in comparison to Ladybugs and Hawkmoths clear positions. He's caught in between their extremes trying to balance out BOTH at the same time. What an impossible task!

So he couldn't put in the same focus as Ladybug into being the good sides force because he is literally burned out from his civilian life on Hawkmoths evil side. But he also couldn't be involved as an ACTIVE member of his fathers evil force, because he chose to find refuge in his friends and as a hero on Ladybugs side.

Adrien unknowingly is part of BOTH the shows two extreme moral sides of good and evil and this season we will see Adrien/Chat Noir grow into his own within BOTH sides as well.

Because he simply couldn't have done so right away in s1. Now after 3 seasons Chat Noir is more than solidly established as one of Paris Heros and his time with Ladybug, the other heros and his normal friends helped him greatly to find his place on the good side. "Lies" set this up as Chat Noirs arcs starting point that now he has to stop connecting "being heroic" strictly with following Ladybug (as Marinette is the STAND IN personification for the good side, she's still a flawed human being like everyone else and not the ultimate force of perfect and good. Big difference.) just as he has to start looking past his fathers sympathetic moments/qualities to see that Hawkmoth isn't a 100%, inhumane monster just because he is the stand-in personification of evil in their fight, but the man he calls Father and still needs to be taken down. (I talked about this in more detail on THIS post)

Adrien has to seperat himself from Ladybugs path and focus on his family and I believe it'll start with the much dreaded (but expected) Ladynoir fight.

Funnily enough, what I'm talking about was actually already set up in "Frozer" I just didn't remember that for a bit. In "Frozer" we saw Ladynoir having a fight which caused Chat Noir to go his own way in the episodes battle.

I always found it interesting that the episode didn't had Chats decision, to not follow Ladybugs lead here, turn out to be a huge mistake. Almost every other show would have done so but now I think I understand. This episode and s2 in general SET UP the s4 conflict, s3 LEAD UP to it and now s4 DELIVERS it.

So what happened in "Frozer" is a direct parallel to what about to go down:

Ladynoirs fight will cause Chat Noir to not simply follow Ladybugs side anymore the way he used to, but note, he DOESN'T leave the good side AND they make up again in the end after Chat saves Ladybug from the akuma. He just does things on his own because he isn't on great terms with her for a while. "Frozer" showed Chats decision to not only NOT be a mistake but also a necessary part of defeating the akuma, just the way it'll be in s4. Damn, Adrien breaking away from Ladybugs side, the way she (unintentionally tho) did at the beginning of the season, to focus more on himself and his family will be the game changing factor, when Adrien will have his completing arc where he goes from "not active character within the villain/backstory plot" to "ACTIVE character within the villain/backstory plot".

And we already saw with Marinette how many fast breakthroughs we get through these completing arcs. Which is also a reason for why Adriens/ Chats arc comes later in the season, because BUDDY. Once Adrien starts to actively uncover his families mystery and fathers secrets Gabriel is SCREWED! Adrien will gain the needed inside knowledge that complements Marinettes Miraculous power; and reunited they can take on whatever the hell kind of scale the Agrestes plan actually is.

So how to end this post? My biggest intention was to raise hope for everybody (myself included lol) who is right now very concerned and upset about how side-lined our boy is at the moment. But I prefer doing so in a way that actually works with canons context instead of sugarcoating what I don't like. And Adriens/Chats current position I definitely do NOT like but accepting it as realistic outcome from s1-s3 and set up for the escalation for both Ladynoir and his home situation gives it the proper purpose and pay off (narrative and character wise) that it SHOULD have.

Basically, the endcards of "Truth" and "Lies" show it perfectly.

It looks like ShadowMoth is turning a blind eye towards Adrien/Chat Noir because of Ladybugs new guardian status and "greater importance". But Gabriels tunnel vision on Ladybug will leave him vulnerable to his own sons secret actions against him and Gabriel won't see it coming until its already too late.

#Miraculous #Miraculous ladybug #ml theory #ml analysis #ml season 4 #ml show structure #Adrien Agreste #marinette dupain chang #Gabriel Agreste #Chat Noir #Ladybug #Hawkmoth #ml forshadowing

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seventhfracture · 3 years

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For the fic ask game: Q. 1, 2, 6, 9, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20, 22 [for the fic 'Prisoners'] & 23 please? <3

1: Is writing cathartic or stressful for you? Veeeeery cathartic. Writing is my fun time. It's my stress relief. Which is probably one reason why I write so much. I've got a stressful life and writing helps me relax. But I do get frustrated and hit problems in stories plenty of times too.

2: Do you focus on attention to detail when you read fics? Are you more or less attention to detail focussed when you write fics? When I read fics unless there's some big obnoxious continuity error I either don't notice or don't care. Even if I did notice I probably wouldn't bother saying anything. Just doesn't seem like a big deal when I'm reading. If the curtains were blue last chapter and red this chapter, that's fine!

Annoyingly when I write I try to be consistent and keep details consistent. I sometimes wonder if its worth the effort but when I'm writing I like shit tidy.

6: What are some topics you will never write about? I don't think anything is off the table??? I've read all kinds of fics that made me feel some sort of way. If I had something I thought would make an interesting story I'd probably just write it. A03 is a wonderful place in that you can post almost anything and tag it appropriately so other people can make safe reading decisions for themselves.

9: Are there any fics you’d love to see but don’t want to write yourself? What are they? I have several ideas that sound AMAZING to me but I'm not the best person to write them.

Beastars: there's a statue in the city that if you hold its hand, and you're the right person, it'll come to life. Soulmate AU based off a pinterest prompt. I feel like Mobster!Louis/Knight displaced from time!Legosi would be fantastic

Death Note: I want a fic where Light lives with L and very young Mello and Near. L and Light are married but since Near was adopted/born they haven't been intimate and Light doesn't really know what's wrong. Light starts investigating. Realizes he doesn't actually remember before Near was born at all. Turns out? Light is a monster and L and Naomi (L's actual wife and the kids Mom) tried to bind him. But in doing so Naomi died and Light literally replaced her role in the family. Hence why L can't really get close to Light easily, too emotional. Big emotional reveal. And Light has to decide what to do with that information. Does he let L know he knows? Does he try and become a monster again? Does he want to keep this new life?

13: Do you prefer writing multi-chapter fics or single-part fics? Do you prefer reading multi-chapter fics or single-part fics? Writing- depends on what the fic needs. Some fandoms actively want longer or shorter fics. FFXV for example loves vignettes but Beastars wants 44 chapters lol. So that effects my choices a little sometimes.

Reading- I really much prefer to read oneshots or very small fics. I don't have the focus for a long, big, fic.

15: Which fic that you’ve written relates to you and your personal life the most? A lot of me goes into any fic with trans characters, obviously. But different parts of me go into every fic. There's one fic in particular I want to write that would be very personal but I haven't found the right way to start it yet.

17: What has been the proudest moment for you so far since you started writing?

There's two, probably.

1- I had a period of several years where I wrote but didn't post anything. Too much trauma. But then I started posting again. I'm proud of that. 2- When "Telepathy" broke over 1k in kudos I think I died a little with just... shock.

18: Do you feel like your work gets enough recognition? What kind of feedback do you like to receive? I get plenty of attention. I'm very lucky that way. Really what makes me happiest is my regulars who just react to plot developments every week and theorize what's coming next. You don't have to tell me I'm an amazing author. It's very nice but you don't have to say that. I'm super happy just to hear your feelings about what's happening in the story, that's really fun for me.

20: Which fic have you put the most work into? Which fic have you put the least work into? Oh gosh...

Most Work- Probably "Warm Bodies" that has been multiple seasons of writing and posting and it's still growing. It's fucking huge and it takes a lot to make.

Least Work- some of my 300 word vignettes in FFXV that are more tidbits and experiments. More glimpses into a possible fic that could be than a fic in their own right.

22: Have you used any symbolism in [PRISONERS]? What does it represent?

Symbolism is a tricky one. Obviously in "Prisoners" everything is meant to reinforce or bounce back some aspect of L/Light's situation back at L. The cases they solve especially are meant to make extreme some of the emotions of their Kira situation. You and L are meant to see the parallels and soak up how deeply fucked up this whole situation is. There's a distracting romance but everything in the fic tells you "We're in danger".

23: What’s one piece of advice you would give to anyone who wants to start writing or posting their writing online?

Just write. Sit down and write. Anyone who posts will tell you they get dozens of messages saying "oh I have a fic idea" or "I'd love to write {X}" and 9/10 those people never write anything. Lots of people have ideas. You're already way ahead of the game if you actually have words on paper. Even if they're not perfect yet. Even if you're not satisfied with them. You have something. And that's the hardest, biggest, step; making something.

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komoryriku · 4 years

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Is Kairi Capable of Mind Manipulation? : Kairi’s Letters and the Power they May Hold

So. I have some personal theories about Kairi that I need to get off my chest. There’s a lot. Above is a scene from the KH3 opening that I will be breaking down later but for now, please keep it in mind as we go… 

First of all, I’m so relieved that finally it’s been revealed that Kairi was a pawn in Xehanort’s schemes, now I don’t have to waste time arguing for that. All I will say is that evidence of this has been here since kh1:

Okay, moving on.

What does Kairi do exactly? Not too much on screen, but here’s what we know so far. -She holds the power of a princess of heart… maybe. -She is sent out to Destiny Islands to draw out the key blade bearer (Riku) -She writes letters to Sora. -She is closely connected to Namine, loosely connected to Xion, and figuratively comparable to Aqua. -She claims her memories of home are a little hazy for her. -She loves Sora as a friend. -She becomes Sora’s Chirithy.

If you want to know ahead of time what my ultimate theory is, here you go: Kairi has magic powers of memory or mind manipulation, and her letters, specifically, are manipulating Sora. If you wanna see me break down why I think this, here we go.

Pre-requisites to this theory:

I would very much prefer not to have to regurgitate certain things that are common knowledge to people in the soriku fandom and kh in general. This analyst is subscribed to the idea that Kingdom Hearts is written with queer coding and gay intent, that Riku is the Light, the Sleeping Realm theory is truth, that Sora and Riku will be romantically linked in the end. My reasoning is based on my own two eyes as well as the meta discourse surrounding these readings among like-minds, so if you have time, please read:

-Obligatory Sleeping Realm Theory Link -The Necklace Theory (Which is just canon but still not explicit in game) -Queer CoM Analysis

Okay, onward!

Parallels:

We do not know much about Kairi as of yet, but what the games do give us is a string of VERY major, obvious Parallels. We are asked over the course of several games to compare Kairi to 3 specific girls: Namine. Xion. Aqua.

Let me break these down. Again, I’m so glad they finally revealed she’s a pawn so this parallel breakdown isn’t even half as long as it would’ve been otherwise hahah.

Namine.

Namine is said to be Kairi’s nobody. There is so much I find suspicious about that but for the sake of staying on topic, I won’t get into it, that’s another theory for another day (though I will flirt with it the speculation section). More importantly, she is objectively, directly associated with Kairi and the plot begs us to draw very close parallels between her and Kairi.

Namine has special powers. She can manipulate Sora’s memories and the memories of those close to him. The characters believe she can do this because she was formed from Kairi’s heart and Sora’s body, and I don’t know if that’s true, but I do take for granted that she is a nobody formed from Sora’s sacrifice and that her powers exist because of her connection with Kairi. Either way, what does she actually do?

Namine spends her days surrounded by white walls, drawing pictures on paper that seemingly have the power to manipulate Sora’s memories. This is a pretty specific skill she has, and if you ask me her art style is pretty advanced for a nobody who wasn’t even formed that long ago. She has the artistic eye to include reflective lighting in her work, which is not only beautiful and colorful but in my experience, it’s something a lot of young artists don’t even think to consider as beginners. If nothing else though, its a very specific style. I will be bringing this back up later for some really fun speculation.

These drawings she does are beautiful but also specifically are tied to her powers to manipulate memories.

What we also know about Namine is that she is being used for her powers against her will. Better analysts have covered this already so I will simply say Namine is a good and caring person who has magical manipulative powers that people were abusing her for. She betrayed her captors by the end of COM by refusing to hurt Sora any longer. All the while being tied back to Kairi. What they were making her do though, was manipulate Sora’s memories to replace all images of Kairi with herself… but also certain memories of Riku. Specifically, the memory of Riku swearing an oath to protect Sora as he gave Sora his crown necklace during the meteor shower (seriously, please read those pre-req theories). And ever since her debut, the games have never allowed us to stray from connecting her back very directly to Kairi. Namine is the most literal of parallels. Please keep all of this in mind for later.

Xion.

Xion, conceptually, is an extremely complicated character. She is tied to Kairi in ways that are not as literal as Namine, but she is still very closely associated with her. Once again, far better analysts can explain her better than I can, but here are the most important notes I will make about her:

-Xion is a puppet containing Sora’s memories. -The memories creating Xion are a complex amalgam of memories related to Sora himself, Kairi, and Riku.

All we really need to note for this Kairi Theory Essay is that Xion is another Kairi parallel that is directly associated with missing/manipulated memories as well. She is inadvertently taking these memories from Roxas, the Sora parallel, whom she is copied from, and these memories specifically belong to Sora. Twice in a row, Nomura has told us Kairi parallels are related to Sora’s memories being affected.

That’s all we really need to know for now, but I will also speculate further on Xion in relation to this theory later.~

Aqua

Aqua is not a literal Kairi parallel the way that Namine and Xion are. Aqua has no direct ties to Kairi the way they do, and her character is entirely original and not related to Kairi. However, Aqua is still figuratively a Kairi parallel, due to the role she plays in her story. I’ve already broken down elsewhere what role she plays that is meant to mirror Kairi, but the tl;dr of that is Aqua was set up as a pawn to observe, draw out her friends, and create a division between them. Like Kairi as well, she is not to be defined by these acts, because she truly loves her friends and dedicated her heart’s power to protecting them and saving them. She protects Ven’s body the way Kairi protected Sora’s bodily form. She also works to keep Ven from breaking by telling him he has always lived here with them and Eraqus, the same way Kairi as a Chirithy works to help Sora by taking his memory of Riku’s sacrifice away. Once again, even with the loosest of Kairi parallels, we see memory manipulation at play with the Sora parallel.

Chirithy

I will keep this short because I hope that you read the Sleeping Realm Theory and I also trust that you have the critical thinking skills to understand this symbolic (and literal) concept easily lol. Kairi is Sora’s chirithy the way Riku is Sora’s dream eater. A Chirithy is a specific kind of dream eater, however. A chirithy is made to follow you as your companion, and they specifically lead you into new timelines, taking away the traumatic memories you gained that caused the timeline to shift. We see this play out in KHUX, and with controversy, as the chirithies themselves discuss whether or not it’s actually morally okay for them to take those memories. Although that is a question, Kairi’s instincts are, in my opinion, purely and sweetly to protect Sora. She promised to keep him safe, (I’ve been supposing at that point in the loop she knew she was a Chirithy, and she most certainly was his chirithy by then either way given the ears on her hood appearing after Sora’s dream drop occurred). She does take Sora’s traumatic memories away, it is her job to do so, and I believe she does this solely because she means well and wants to keep him safe and smiling, as her letter to Sora suggests.

Unfortunately, what this specifically does though, is removes Sora’s memory of Riku’s sacrifice. It is stolen from him in that sense. Not only that, but because Sora’s memory of Riku’s sacrifice was taken, in spite of the event being etched onto his heart, and the pain of it being scarred into it, Sora credits Kairi as the source of the light he is following in the darkness. We know for a fact that that light is Riku’s because we saw the sacrifice, we remember it, we saw Sora call to it as Riku and receive a response, we even see Kairi twirl in front of the light and back away from it to lead Sora into it because it is not her light. Kairi, in a very literal way, has replaced Riku in Sora’s mind regarding who his light is. Kairi herself does not do this, it is Sora who fools himself because his memory was taken, but nevertheless, Kairi has just replaced Riku in Sora’s thoughts regarding this light and erased his memory of Riku’s sacrifice.

I will suggest more Things in the speculation section~

Now that all of that is out of the way, Lets Talk About Kairi’s Letters.

What do they do? Well, objectively, we do not know. That’s why this is a theory lol. But regardless of any magic or manipulation, letters are a means of forging a connection with others. Letters to friends by nature are words from the heart intended for someone you care about.

But literally speaking in the series, Kairi’s letters do something a little more special. In kh2 they forge a literal connection to Sora from Kairi. Sora is “trapped” in the dark realm with Riku, but pretty content to be so. No door opened, and that was the ending they had happily resigned to. It is not until Sora reads Kairi’s letter, emphasized by the camera, that the door to light opens. At the very least, we know for sure that manipulation or not, Kairi’s letters are capable of doing that much…

Kairi also tells us she writes letters to Sora and doesn’t even send them. For whatever reason, however, she sent the letter in Kh2 as soon as she remembered who Sora was post his reconstruction. And this is pretty much all we know for sure.

If I say “Kairi’s letters are manipulating Sora” thats rather jumping to conclusions, cuz obviously there are missing pieces. All we have is: Kairi—>Letters—> ___ —>Sora.

That’s not enough to make the conclusion. But that’s where those handy dandy parallels come in.

Namine—> Drawings—> Manipulate—>Sora Xion—->Memories—-> Borrowed—> (Roxas—>) Sora Aqua—-> White Lies—> Distract—> Ven Chirithy----> Memories----> Taken----> Keyblade Wielder

So as you can see, the missing piece that fits the puzzle, isn’t so hard to theory-craft. Especially between Namine and Kairi. It is a jump to a conclusion, but it is far from a leap. True or not, this is my working theory.

So it’s time for speculation.  Things that I have been exploring on the other side of that “leap”.

Kairis letters

Let’s start with the first letter we get to read from Kairi.

Pretty sweet sentiments right? But here is the thing about some of those lines in particular… “Many worlds sharing the same sky” is something Sora has already heard… from Riku.

Not to mention, something about this dark realm scene in Kh2 always bothered me… Sora is seemingly in utter bliss with Riku in the dark realm.

He does wanna get Riku home but if they’re stuck here, they are not complaining. And then the camera lingers for a pretty long time on Riku handing Sora that letter. That usually means they want me to notice it and consider it… Okay, time to consider it.~

The letter pretty certainly opened the door to light by forging a connection to Sora from the light world with Kairi. Sora was so content that he wasn’t even connecting to home. Not until he read this nice letter from his friend Kairi. There is nothing manipulative about that on its own… but we have been asked by the games to parallel Kairi to Namine so I think it’s fair to suggest Kairi’s creative writing should really be considered thoughtfully the way Namine’s drawings are. The most basic logic is these letters are affecting Sora’s mind in some way. What further leads me to think this? The only thing Sora was even thinking about in this scene before reading that letter was Riku. Riku’s company, Riku’s injury, Riku’s happiness, Riku, Riku, Riku. And then as someone else pointed out here, Sora sees Kairi in the light world after reading this letter and leaves Riku to struggle to shore on his own.

This doesn’t have to mean anything but we know Riku is injured, We know the Sun is Riku’s symbol, and Sora is running from Riku, eclipsing the Sun, and rushing back to shore where Kairi is waiting to welcome him home. It is jarring when you think about it. How did Sora go from thinking about nothing else BUT Riku to leaving him with a probably-broken-hip to struggle to shore on his own? It is no wonder Riku is always left to think he is going to be alone in life and he has no choice but to struggle out of the darkness on his own.

This mirrors something in particular….

The scene of Sora losing Riku to the darkness in the KH1 opening…

Followed by shot for shot re-animation of Sora chasing Riku’s Light in the KH3 Dive to the Heart.

And something about the scene in Kh1 always really bothered me… Sora was worried sick about Riku when he lost him to the sea- only to suddenly be happy and appear blissfully ignorant of Riku disappearing the moment he sees Kairi. As if he just suddenly forgot about him upon seeing her.

And I think the parallels speak for themselves. (Don’t forget about that beach scene in the Kh3 op either... we are getting to that.)

I’m not saying Kairi and her letters make Sora forget about Riku, but…

I’m also not saying Kairi’s letters replace memories of Riku with herself, I actually don’t know that there’s enough here to make that statement likely… So I won’t… say that…

(I hope you read those pre-req’s because I’m going to assume you speak the KH language regarding Sora, Riku, and Kairi vs, water, land and air, vs Light/Dark, the Sun, the Moon, Dawn, Sunset, Night… all that good stuff.)

Now let’s talk about her letter in 3.

Oh this is interesting. Repeating motifs. Almost as though the game is trying to tell us something crucial.

Full transcript of Kairi’s KH3 letter to Sora that she has no intention of sending:

I'm sorry I left without saying good-bye. Did Master Yen Sid tell you? I'm training to become a Keyblade wielder like you.  That's right. No more waiting for you to come back from your adventures.  I want to get out there and do my part to help.  Merlin has used his magic to bring us to a place where time doesn't matter. We can take as long as we need to complete our training. He's an amazing wizard.  Oh, and by "us," I mean me and lea.  He's really sorry for all the trouble he caused. I told him it's fine, but he won't stop apologizing.  I'll admit I was a little scared of him at first, but I've gotten to know him better. All he ever wanted was to help his friend.  Honestly, it's hard not to like him.  Every now and then, I catch him staring at me. When I ask what's wrong, he says, "I'm not sure. I think I'm forgetting something. Don't know what."  Sora, I think it may have something to do with you.  Your journey is all about helping people: some that you've never met before, and some like Lea that you have. They're all counting on you.  It won't be easy, but I hope you'll remain the happy and cheerful Sora I know.  There's no heart your smile can't reach.

In particular, this letter goes on and on about Lea and how he has turned over a new leaf and deserves forgiveness. Personally, I took this to mean Kairi is really hoping Sora will forgive her for the part she was forced to play in Xehanort’s plot, perhaps her writing even influencing his mind to do so via urging him to forgive Lea. You may notice that this would imply that Kairi is fully aware of her role in Norty Nort’s plot. And to that I say yes, it sure would. But not as much as her leading Sora around to her various “heart” pieces like a moth to the wrong flame in Re:Mind.

Anyway, this is not a letter she intends to send to Sora, and she makes a note of this to Lea, even when he tells her plainly that Merlin will deliver it for her. If we keep in mind that Namine’s art doesn’t even need to be seen by Sora for the mind tricks to work, then perhaps- Sora really doesn’t even need to receive this letter for its influence to work. This would rather make her frantic attempt to send the letter in Kh2 a little strange, but consider this: Her close connections to Sora are potentially based very heavily on these letters. Especially if some of her connections are based on making him forget Riku at various points. Having forgotten Sora in Kh2 until he was reconstructed, and considering that Sora barely reacts to her reunion hug with him, it rather makes a lot of sense that Kairi needed to forge a new connection with him, via one of her letters. In that case, Sora needed to actually read it.

KH3 OP

Beach Scene

Now, finally, I want to talk about that part of the Kh3 opening I mentioned at the very beginning. We are back. Once again, I trust you speak the language of Kh symbolism.

This section begins with Kairi suddenly appearing against a bright white background. Forgive me if I suggest hey, that reminds me of Namine’s white walls, or some blank pages... Next, Sora appears in the empty white environment, which remains white until, seemingly, their eyes meet. And THEN, after that delay, the world of Destiny Islands starts rendering in like a game slowly loading a world on a slow engine. Once again, the motif of Sora standing in the ocean, and running up to Kairi on the shore takes place. He is happy to see her. Perhaps he thinks he found the Light that Chirithy told him to search for. Hey this time Kairi is even running into the sea to meet him instead of waiting for him, just like she said! good for her~. Anyway. As they run out to meet each other, however, lightning strikes. Sora doesn’t see it, but he clearly senses it in some way and stops, (didn’t someone once tell Sora to mind what he hears and not what he sees?~). The camera then zooms out to reveal Sora and Kairi as pieces on a chess board in Nort and Eraqus’ game. Now, this essayist takes for granted that Riku is the Light cuz the text says so. Because of that, my first instinct is to say the purple lighting that we saw represents Riku. A forgotten, heartbroken, lonely Riku. Lightning being one of the most destructive forms of light after all, and Riku would be particularly hurt to know that Sora has forgotten him.

Where is Riku?

What is really interesting about this opening is the severe, odd, lack of Riku. He is missing throughout most of it but in particular when Sora is fighting Xemnas. In the opening for Dream Drop Distance, Riku is very much there, and the animations of him harmoniously fighting with Sora, as well as protecting Sora, self sacrificially are prominent, are there because they want you to remember exactly what happened in that scene and what Riku did.

Only for that to be absent from Sora’s boss battle review sequence in Kh3’s opening. At first, I found his absence annoying but now I’ve come to realize there is a reason for it. The popular theory is that it relates to Sora’s memories being taken away. Riku’s sacrifice most certainly was one of them, thanks to Kairi as his chirithy, but that’s not the memory missing from the opening sequence. It’s basically Riku in general outside of the fall of Destiny Islands, the cast shot, and the shot of him walking into the light from shadow. There isn’t a review of previous games in which Riku played the crucial role he did, and nothing from Dream Drop Distance. To that I personally say, this is most likely foreshadowing that Sora will lose ALL his memories of Riku- as his entry fee to play the Reaper’s Game in Shibuya… Oh yes, TWEWY is also a pre-requisite for this theory lol but you should also play it in general cuz it’s a great story and if nothing else is obviously crucial to what comes next in Kingdom Hearts. Highly speculative, but my assumption is that once Sora beats the game and Joshua returns all of his memories, he will give Sora EVERYTHING back, including anything Kairi has removed as his chirithy or anything she has manipulated as herself.

Further Parallel Speculation

Remember when I said I’d love to elaborate? Well here we are~ We’re gonna get super gay too.

Namine:

Namine is a figure that represents, to me, a brilliant use of queer coding about a queer struggle known as compulsory heterosexuality (or comp-het for short as I’ll be repeating this term a lot). If you made it this far and aren’t lgbt savvy then I’ll tell you that comp-het means compulsively feeling attraction to someone of the opposite sex based on heteronormative conditioning. As Sora roams through Castle Oblivion, he is constantly finding himself misplacing memories of Kairi onto Namine followed by eventually memories of Riku onto Namine. This is one of the most literal depictions of the comp-het phenomenon I’ve ever seen, and it is BOLDLY placed in a mainstream video game from the year 2003. It’s quite admirable in my opinion. Namine’s abilities grant us a convoluted plot so confusing that most people will not understand right away, but to the queer eye familiar with comp-het, it provides a strong implication that Sora may be even more confused than we think about who it is he is in love with. To illustrate, it means Sora thinks he likes Kairi romantically cuz society told him being straight is the default way we live. In actuality, he is projecting his feelings for Riku onto Kairi, (with Riku doing the same until COM and onward), and in COM, those Riku->Kairi feelings are projected onto Namine. She creates another layer of distance between them. But even without her presence, Kairi is still there between them, a question that begs to be answered, and yet another extremely common parallel.

Namine is extremely uncomfortable taking the necklace memory of Riku and imposing herself on it. But when you consider Kairi may have been manipulating Sora, it makes me also wonder how many of Sora’s Kairi memories are actually Riku memories, and whether or not Namine even CAN fix those memories… Just food for thought. Speaking of comp-het...

Xion Xion is an even more convoluted character creation, designed to confuse you even more than Namine does. In my eyes, Xion is very literally comp-het personified. Xion, as far as we’ve been told, is a puppet, a copy of Roxas but blank slate. A literal nobody. They are only what you project onto them. And what did Xion become?

Xion became a real confusing amalgam of so many things. -Roxas initially projects GirlTM onto her. Literally. This makes sense since he already has Axel, a male friend, and his instincts coming from Sora’s memories casually assume a female friend is needed to complete their trio. This is because Kairi was that female friend to Sora. -Over time, as Xion craves becoming whole, she inadvertently receives more memories from Roxas (Sora), of Kairi and obtains her face (albeit with black hair, and there are numerous theories about why that is but this essay is already really long lol). -The strange thing is though- despite having Kairi’s face, the hints we get are that Riku memories are zapping into her too. Not only that, but her death grants Roxas Oblivion as she enters his heart. -I don’t think I need to explain what that implies, but to keep it short, Oblivion is representative of Riku’s oath to Sora associated with the necklace memory. Namine was correct to tell Ansem the Wise that the missing memories are crucial to Sora. I have an analysis on Oblivion vs Promise Keeper that I keep meaning to post but the tl;dr of it is that Oblivion has nothing whatsoever to do with Kairi and EVERYTHING ENTIRELY to do with Riku and his oath to protect Sora. It should have no association with her whatsoever. She is also Roxas’ forgotten friend once the memories of her go away the way Sora’s memories of Riku will. -The manga also much more clearly shows us that the feelings Xion is thriving on from Sora are feelings associated with Riku: the empowerment he feels when fighting with friends.

So if I may, here is the returning theme of projection, of misplaced affection, of misplaced memories. This theme is SO CONSTANT with every Kairi scene and parallel we get, and I do not think it is a stretch to say they are not just here to discuss queer themes of compulsory heterosexuality, but are integral to the plot of KH in a very literal, physical way. In other words, it comes up with Kairi way too often to make mind manipulation a leap. It’s still a jump, but it is not a leap.

Aqua

Aqua is not a literal Kairi parallel the way Namine and Xion are, so she does not bring any major compulsory heterosexuality themes to the table, and her “mind manipulation”, if my theory on white lies between the BBS trio is correct, is pretty minuscule as far as we can tell. This does not mean there isn’t anything to speculate on regarding Kairi’s powers though.

Aqua is a gifted mage, and places a protective spell on Kairi when they meet. This is such a sweet and sentimental moment and I love it so much. She also literally gives her friends way finder charms based on paopu fruits the way Kairi does for Sora. So there are some literal parallels to be found there, but the ideas that concern me most are these-

Aqua is associated with magic. Given that Aqua, Namine, and Xion, are all associated with water, like Kairi, (again I assume you speak the KH language of symbolism and metaphor), and some form of magic (Namine with mind powers, and Xion wielding the key blade), is it possible that Kairi is also a mage of some kind? Or at least harbors the powers of a mage, the way she harnesses the power of a princess of heart?

Re:Mind menu screen art

This is an analysis I’ve been dying to post but only since Kairi has been outed as a pawn spy for Xehanort have I felt free enough to do so without going through the trouble of proving her association with the dark side. You are welcome to dismiss this analysis for reading too much into it but if you’re as deep into this as I am then here we go~

First of all, I want to call attention to how beautiful this art is, and how wonderfully symbolic I think it is, and what it actually reminds me of. Do you remember my comments earlier about Namine having a specific art style, which incorporates reflective light in her coloring? Look at the oceanic blue in Sora’s grey pants and jacket. Look at the yellow from sunlight in Sora’s hair. Look at the blue and yellow reflecting in Kairi’s pink dress and her red hair. Look at the tinge of blue from the sea reflecting on Sora’s paopu fruit. I am not saying this menu art is supposed to be literally drawn by Namine, I sincerely do not think it is lol, this is a symbolic image. But I do think it is meant to REMIND us of Namine’s art.

This menu screen, like the blank pages of a sketch book or notebook, like the beach scene in the KH3 opening, begins with a white screen. Slowly fading in, like the beach scene in the KH3 opening, or a game with a slow loading engine, we have a sketch of Sora. Sora’s feet appear already immersed in the water, as he is eating a paopu fruit, continuing his walk out to sea that we have been seeing him take since kh1 with these key arts. Sora is walking out into the ocean alone, and the coloring fades in bringing the scene to life. This is all the menu art is for KH3.

When Re:Mind was released, the menu screen for it evolved. Now, suddenly fading into this pre-existing scene is a drawing of Kairi, inserted into the moment. Kairi is depicted with a paopu fruit of her own, and she enters the scene with her feet standing on top of the water, not immersed like Sora’s the way they should be considering the depth of the water. This could be a mistake and nothing more… except the water has splash animations added around their feet, meaning this is something someone absolutely should have caught because animations are here drawing our attention to it. This would imply that it means something, so- what? Kairi is not immersed in the ocean, (darkness?), the way Sora is. She is walking /on/ water, not in it. I think this may very well be representative of her protecting Sora’s form as he navigates the new timeline in the dream scape, similar to when we see Riku and Sora walking on water in the dark realm. Or it may represent the way she is navigating darkness but is not immersed in darkness. She treads over it, not through it.

We do not know what this menu screen means. But here is my take on it. Because it is meant to remind us of Namine, we should consider mind manipulation is at play. Because Kairi appears here only after Re:Mind is released, in her Chirithy hood and eating a paopu with Sora, we are to recognize this as the second timeline, in which Kairi has been added to Sora’s journey like a figure in Namine’s art. We should also remember that as Sora’s chirithy, she has removed his traumatic memory of the timeline shift and very specifically removed his memory of Riku dying as he sacrificed himself for Sora. As the title implies, the game wants to remind us of what happened: the timeline being rewritten, as well as Sora’s Memories being rewritten, and in a sense, Sora’s MIND being REwritten. So much to do with mind and memory being affected...

A couple more theories as food for thought:

Kairi’s Grandmother:

You may have been wondering how Kairi could be so pure of heart, as far as we are aware, and yet capable of morally grey things like manipulation at best, and outright terrible things at worst? Well, here is my theory: Kairi’s grandmother has been held hostage and used as leverage against Kairi. For as often as Kairi has been used as a catalyst to bait Sora into acting for Xehanort’s schemes, we know Norty and the powers he works for, (Master of Masters), are no strangers to keeping hostages as motivation for their pawns. I’m just going to fill in the missing blanks between “Kairi’s missing grandmother” and “Kairi acting for the dark side”. Remember her letter to Sora that she didn’t send where she told Sora that Lea was just acting out evil to save his friend, and he’s actually a very good guy and a lovable friend you can’t help forgiving?

I think this is intending to draw a redemption arc parallel between Kairi and Lea that is even more literal than you think. Axel was acting out harshly because he would do anything to bring Roxas back, even willing to destroy Sora to make that happen. If Kairi’s only family was being kept prisoner and threatened with death unless Kairi did what she was told, how can you blame Kairi for her actions? Especially when she started playing the role of a pawn as a helpless child. We don’t know what she’s been through, but probably a lot of traumatic experiences. There is no reason to consider Kairi evil, and although you can explain her actions any number of ways, this one seems the most likely to me.

Her parallels likewise have had a reasonable motivation for their actions if they were even willful at all. 

-Namine herself was being held captive, with the organization forcing her to commit acts of violating mind manipulation. Seeing how genuinely kind Sora was, however, she eventually refused to be their pawn anymore -Xion did not even willfully take Sora’s memories, she was a complete victim of circumstance. Even when wanting to run away, however, Roxas simply was not going to live if she were around to continue absorbing his powers. Thus she chooses to return to Sora. -Aqua is not spying on Terra or trying to drag Ven home because she wants to. She is doing it because Eraqus burdened her with this task. She protects Ven with all she has in the end, and sacrifices herself to give Terra a chance at survival.

Do not assume that Kairi being capable of doing these things, or actually doing them makes her evil. KH has been pretty consistent about showing the ways in which women are often forced by the patriarchy to perform various deeds against their will and there is no reason to hate her for this or think the worst of her when she is more than likely just as much a victim of circumstance as anybody else in her position would be. I think it’s very fair to be mad at someone in her position if you were the one being manipulated by her, but never forget to be fair in your judgement of this fictional character being manipulated by the forces of evil in this fictional world which uses her as a pawn. Kairi can still a good person of good intent even if she had to do bad things.  

Time to reach: Ava

Since I’m already several layers deep in speculation I just thought I’d throw this out there as food for thought. It’s a popular theory that Ava, the missing foreteller, is dwelling within Kairi’s heart, which could possibly mean Namine is Ava’s nobody the way Roxas is likely Ven’s, as they were both dwelling in Kairi’s heart and Sora’s heart respectively when Sora sacrificed himself. Ava is particualrly skilled in the art of Illusions, which is pretty relevant to the idea that Kairi and Namine are directly manipulating Sora’s mind. Namine’s powers involve rearranging memories, and drawing new memories illustration what she is creating. She is literally creating illusions in the mind. If Ava is dwelling in Kairi’s heart, perhaps logically Kairi can use these powers but not directly. She cannot create illusions out of thin air, but can play tricks on the mind with them. Namine forming from Kairi’s heart having meshed with Ava’s heart might thus be able to create mind illusions, using drawn illusions. Is Ava the source of Kairi’s powers? Is Ava the princess of heart which Kairi is using to do her jobs? Well, I don’t know lol. It’s just out there as food for thought.

In Conclusion.... Nothing, really lol

All we have to go on are consistent parallels and strong guesses. Kairi may or may not be able to manipulate minds, and her letters may or may not influence Sora’s mind. I don’t know. It is worth considering though, I think. However, I ask that you judge Kairi fairly, open mindedly, and do not underestimate how powerful she may very well be. I cannot wait to see what will be revealed about her character in the future.

#kingdom hearts #soriku #kairi #kh theory #kh kairi #kingdom hearts 3 #kh3

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mossy-rock-in-a-field · 4 years

Text

Regarding the future of Roots: (important, please read)

As all of you know, 2020 has been full of justified anti-law enforcement protests since late May. If it hasn’t already been made clear by my likes and retweets over the last few months, I am in full support of BLM and abolishing the police. Just want to state that before I lay all this out for you.

I planted the first seed for anti-hero/anti-law enforcement protests way back in chapter ten of Roots, which was published in summer of 2018. Since then, tensions have been building in my story, and I planned on constructing the final arc’s climax around these anti-hero protests, which would ultimately end with the hero system getting dismantled and restructured to be fairer and not as celebrity-based as it is in the source material of BNHA. That’s what my story has always been about, first and foremost; the romance of the two characters was always secondary to the main overarching plot.

However, I am not blind to the parallels between my fanfiction and what’s happening in the world right now. With tensions rightfully rising and the unjustness of the system being more apparent than ever, I’ve decided I can’t continue Roots like nothing has happened. It’d be disrespectful, and I wouldn’t be comfortable with it. Some of you might roll your eyes and say “it’s just a fanfiction, it’s not that big of a deal,” but I’m here to tell you that you are wrong. Even if my plot points for anti-hero protests and uprisings were laid out a while ago, I cannot in good conscience continue my story as if the world hasn’t changed. Fiction influences reality whether you believe that or not, and I have to consider the effect my writing will have on those reading it during these times.

To that end, I have narrowed down my options to the following three:

Option One

I continue Roots from its current chapter, but I only continue the love story and leave out all mentions of the anti-hero protests out of respect for the events of 2020 and the victims of an unjust system. I would instead focus on the romance between Shouto and Izuku and Shouto’s reinstatement as a hero at his agency. I would also edit the last ten/twenty chapters to minimize the references to anti-hero protests so the change wouldn’t be as noticeable for new readers. I would, however, have to leave the apartment bombing in the story since it affects Shouto’s arm and his living arrangement with Izuku. Anything after that point would be fair game for removal and editing.

Option Two

I do NOT continue the story at all, and instead I leave it where it ends right now. I would add an epilogue instead of chapter 47, and that would be the end of Roots as we know it. Short but clean, and I could do a few spin-off one shots about their relationship to fill in some of the blanks leftover by the end of the story if anyone actually wants those. None of these stories would feature protests or anything relating to them.

Option Three

I remove the story altogether from AO3 and instead make it downloadable as a PDF for those who would want to keep a copy, but no further chapters would be updated, and prior chapters would remain unaltered. All translations would be taken down on their host sites at my request. The story would no longer be publicly available.

Regardless of what happens to my story, I will not be resuming normal updates because doing so feels very wrong to me. Please know that I’m not trying to draw attention to myself or my fic with this post. My only goal here is to be as understanding, respectful, and considerate as possible in regards to the people reading my stories at home. At the end of the day my story is simply fanfiction, and it pales in comparison to anything else currently happening right now. I hope you all understand.

Thank you for your time.

—Laq

EDIT: I would like to clarify that by calling them "anti-law enforcement" protests, I was attempting to draw a more direct parallels to my fic in relation to current events. I have been informed that this is trivializing the actual purpose of the protests, which I am truly sorry for. Specifically, the protests are about combating white supremacy and/or fascism. I shouldn't have attempted to narrow them down to something more specific in relation to my writing. I'm very sorry for the mistake, and I'm thankful to the person who reached out to inform me of this!

#trtc #announcement #laq talks

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pianosmasher · 3 years

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I find it... interesting that Resident Evil 8, subtitled Village, is the first to introduce vampires and werewolves to the series. Up until that point, the series had always been about biological weapons, mainly of the viral kind. As a Dracula fan, I immediately pledged myself to catch all the way up on the series in anticipation for VIII after seeing the announcement trailer in June 2020. I basically didn’t know anything about the series, as I was too young for M-rated games during its heyday (at least by my parents’ standards) and had no older cousins or siblings who’d introduce me. I didn’t even make the pandemic connection at first. All I was thinking of was how my new PS4, bought with the money I’d originally saved to go see my mom in Tennessee one last time, was slowly becoming my new favorite thing. It’d gotten my roommate through April with The Last of Us Remastered and it got me through May with Horizon: Zero Dawn. If I’m gonna make the switch from Nintendo to Sony, I may as well get to know Resident Evil starting in June.

The pandemic parallels came in much later. I’m playing them in release order, and it’s not until the second game that the characters have the time and awareness to consider synthesizing a vaccine. The characters in the first game have to figure out what’s going on as it’s happening to them, and it’s important to remember that zombies came back into popularity due to the efforts of that first game, meaning the exact nature of the threat would have come off more ambiguous at the time. The game’s Japanese title, Biohazard, holds the clue: we’ve scarred an ecosystem, and the human damage may be beyond repair. All you can do is try to save all the people who don’t deserve to be there as it happens.

Starting in the second game, I'd hear the characters talk about vaccines. I myself will reach full vaccination status tomorrow afternoon, and here I am playing games with characters who’ve killed just to get close to making one. The difference between our viruses in theirs is that we actually have some hope of curing ours, as in the world of Resident Evil, everything seems unstoppable. Momentum never seems to end once it’s been picked up - not for the virus, not for the destruction, and certainly not for human greed. The player is supposed to survive and nothing more, not live and thrive but to continuously struggle, lose, and sacrifice as they make their way through an environment that is either mastered or deadly to the touch. “Don’t get too close,” the special operatives say to their fellow agents. Resident Evil offers the power fantasy of knowing how to handle something impossible through trial and error. The horror is overcome by learning to live with it.

At least that’s how the first three games work. Starting with the fourth, all the atmosphere, pacing, and level design keep their levels of quality, but instead serve a much more direct fantasy of power in the form of a dread thriller with a pint of action thrown in for good measure. It’s clear that our relationship with the environment had changed by the time it was released. RE4 became the blueprint for third-person shooters, but funnily enough, going back to it reveals that it’s everything around the shooter that allows the main mechanic to shine that deep into the spotlight. The characters, for instance: Leon, now a professional, is infected with the game’s new virus himself early on, and he begins to have nightmares about what it might be doing to his body. If you’ve just come off playing through Leon’s first day as a cop in RE2, this is terrifying. He is practically a special agent at this point, meaning he’s accomplished quite a lot since the last game, so his plot armor can’t exactly be thick. Are we gonna see a character in Resident Evil, a game requiring a lot of death at first, actually die in canon?

More importantly: what does he do now that he has the virus? Is he gonna be okay? Am I hitting myself too close to home? Or is this the only piece of media that feels relevant to me anymore?

Resident Evil 5 takes place in Africa, and despite semiplausible claims of racism actually ends up being a staunchly anti-colonial parable about overcoming a world of fear. Chris Redfield finally lets go of fear when he looks over at Jill Valentine and Sheva Alomar, the two women who have now saved his life too many times to count. RE5 was built for co-op play, and its story is based around the vulnerability and necessity of partnership. It’s not defeating the big bad in a giant volcano that helps Chris live uninhibited. It’s his support network, however small it may be. (There’s even a woman of color in it). The characters of RE have always been at the forefront of the experience, but 5 at least tries to make it clear that there really are people worth fighting for out there, and ten times out of ten, you can spot them as the ones who’re fighting right there with you.

RE6 picks up on this theme of connection, gets high on nostalgia, and plays fast and loose with tone in a sort of victory lap. I’m not finished with it but it isn’t great so far. I also haven’t touched RE7, Code: Veronica, or Zero, as I want to finish those last two spinoffs before I move on to another phase of the mainline titles. And all the while, all my gaming channels are covering RE:Village without really covering it at all. I know that Capcom is bound to have some scientific explanation as to why vampires and werewolves made their debut in the series with this game, as it’d been in development for three years prior to its announcement, an echo of the past finally heard. But still, even if we’re grading on a curve, context is context. How wild is it that a year and change after the pandemic began, a game series known for its bio-weapons turns a gothic corner and drops its original moniker? Indeed, RE:Village is also the first not to have “biohazard” on any release title anywhere, regardless of region. In truth, I can’t quite blame the publications - I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t sit down to write this tonight.

Would I have boarded that hype train in June if the game had kept its chemical warfare? The Last of Us: Part II, another franchise brought to me by Sony, also had its virus and pandemic in the foreground, and that’s a top ten game for me now given my specific experience with it. But then, Resident Evil is special. The beautifully detailed graphics, endearing character moments, atmospheric pacing, motivated sound design, and confrontational control schemes have all made it stand apart to me as a series. I really have no comparison for how these games have challenged me and made me feel during this time. I’ve watched Chris become a soldier, Claire become a mother, Leon become a hero, and Jill come back from the brink, all while underneath the heavy horrors of a natural environment turned unstoppably hostile. One way or another, I’m glad I met them.

This was the year everything in my life took off in directions that I could no longer follow or keep up with. I can’t describe to you how much I feel like I’ve lost, despite all the incredibly important personal work I have done behind the scenes. I realize now that there are some changes that simply can’t be stopped or unchanged, only survived, endured, and adapted to. It’s taught me that we hardly ever seek change - it seeks us, and we are offered the task to accept it or defend against it. There’s something that feels right about playing these games at this time, of that I’m sure. I find it interesting that, by the time I get to RE:Village, the franchise itself will have changed into something quite different. But with each new game I’ve crossed off my list, RE has earned more and more of my trust as a series that knows all too well how changes come and go. Hopefully I will change right along with it.

#Ross writes things #resident evil #a crooked line of growth is still proof that you're growing #isn't that what Darwin tried to say?

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samsoleil · 3 years

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9 and 10?

ask game

V I am sending the most fond vibes in your direction I hope they make it there okay!!

10. Your favourite season and why.

Honestly? Either S2 or S11.

Season 2: Sam has psychic powers and Dean is terrified that his brother might actually be bad, but is still ride or die for him. This is where we can see their relationship flourish without the search for John hanging over their heads. But y'know what does hang over their heads? John telling Dean he'll either have to save Sam or kill him, and Sam who is desperate to be saved and willing to be killed. And then!! when Sam dies!!! Dean saves him in the worst possible way!!!! Also, it's visually gorgeous. You've got the high contrast vibes from S1 but slightly less desaturated and you've still got the grainy film texture. An excellent time.

Season 11: Listen. I still think it should have been Chuck sending Sam visions. And I don't particularly care for the B plot. But Sam and Dean peak in this season for the first time since pre-s4 and it was amazing. It's the immediate aftermath of Sam literally unleashing "a force on the world that could destroy it" to save Dean. Codependency at its peak. And in two mid-season episodes they absolutely nail the S2 energy. I mean, establishing beyond any doubt that Dean loves Sam? And then making him think Sam is dead in the very next episode? Where Sam is also the dictionary definition of BAMF? Not to mention, Sam is just. so understanding of Dean and his messy feelings about Amara. Love that for them.

9. What episodes best encapsulates the brother’s relationship? Does this change throughout the series? Doesn’t have to be the best episode btw.

To answer the second question, the brother’s relationship very obviously changes throughout the show. It’s obviously very codependent from the get go (especially from Sam’s perspective! Literally unendurable), and it varies in toxicity. Some seasons they are very soft! Some seasons I want to shout at Sam to run for the hills and never return. And then there are some episodes in seasons where their relationship is literally awful that are wonderfully tender (like 08x21 when Dean says “You gotta let me take care of you, man”).

Imo, S1-3 are peak brothers. S4/5 are excellent to watch but not the most tender. S6 is on thin fucking ice. S7-10 are, generally speaking, when I would absolutely be willing to kill a man (Dean), but are still SO compelling because these crazy kids are devoted and have no moral boundaries when it comes to the other. S11 is a return to the good stuff! I haven’t seen the seasons after that but from what I have seen, Sam becomes a Dean apologist and Dean just gets worse. But they’re still codependent, so that’s fine. “You were gonna leave and you weren’t even going to tell me?” and “What about me? Would you trade me?” are baller lines. Sam is a grown man but he’s out here saving the world by being Dean’s baby brother. Iconic of them.

OKAY so. First question. I originally had several episodes per season but I have to limit it to 2, this is going to be too long otherwise. Also, as you well know, I've only watched up to 12x06, so I won't include S12 here.

Episodes (and explanations) under the cut!

Obviously, both 01x01 Pilot and 15x20 Carry On. Literally the perfect bookends for this show. I don’t need to elaborate.

01x05 Bloody Mary - Has the moment where Dean actually has an emotional conversation with his brother, because he’s switched on to Sam’s emotional needs. He was willing to let Sam blame him for Jess’ death so that Sam didn’t blame himself! And near the end it has the iconic line "You're my brother and I'd die for you." Dean, right? No! It was Sam!! Anyone with any sort of reservations about whether Sam cared about Dean in early S1 can refer to this episode. It’s episode 5!! of the whole show!! and it has that line!!

01x11 Faith - Sam has absolutely no regrets about someone dying to save Dean's life. In retrospect, this episode says a lot about how much Sam loves Dean.

02x01 In My Time of Dying - Sam can sense that Dean is there, either through psychic powers or because they are soulmates. Both are good. Also, Dean is told that he may have to kill Sam, which influences their dynamic for the rest of the show <33

02x21 All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1 - Dean, on his knees in the mud, telling Sam's corpse that it'll be okay and screaming his name. That is all. Also, after thoroughly chewing out a victim earlier in the season for selling his soul to save a loved one, Dean sells his soul to save a loved one.

03x08 A Very Supernatural Christmas - Sam decorated a Christmas tree with pine air fresheners to give Dean a Christmas. Obsessed.

03x11 Mystery Spot - Dean dies repeatedly, then dies for good for about 6 months, and Sam becomes a ruthless hunter in order to bring him back. Dean spends longer dead in this episode than he actually does at the end of S4.

04x14 Sex and Violence - Dean's siren is literally just a version of Sam that is devoted to Dean and would do anything he says.

04x22 Lucifer Rising - Bobby coming for Dean's life. The VOICEMAIL!! Dean acting as though them being family is a cure-all and saying he'll beat Sam up, but also apologising. I'll take it. And then, of course, the voicemail Sam hears, which is more or less what Dean said in 04x04, and that being what tips him over the edge. The edge, of course, being killing Lilith to avenge Dean’s death, which has been his quest since the end of S3. Excellent.

05x16 Dark Side of the Moon - Ohoho. This episode. You know why this episode is here.

05x22 Swan Song - Same as the above! Dean who doesn't have a plan, just doesn't want his little brother to die alone. Sam, who fights off the devil himself and (essentially) kills himself to save his brother and the car they call their home. That memory sequence, for me, gave Sam the power not to save the world, but to save his brother. The world was just a bonus.

06x11 Appointment in Samara - "Dean doesn't care about me, he just cares about his little brother, Sammy, burning in hell. He'll kill me to get that other guy back." Dean's anger at himself for screwing up and forfeiting Sam's soul was. a lot. Also, Sam begging for his life and Dean just continuing anyway? Horrific. But very testament to their relationship at this point. Dean wants Sammy back and he WILL kill this other guy to do it.

06x22 The Man Who Knew Too Much - Sam being right about the consequences of having his soul put back in. And "You know me. You know why. I'm not leaving my brother alone out there."

07x03 The Girl Next Door - I was tossing up between this and 07x02 but. this has some flashbacks to past Sam!! Unfortunately, it also has Dean punching Sam for using the Impala, the car they both rely on to get around. And Dean murdering Sam's childhood friend for killing rapists. This isn’t an episode that makes you think “Awh, they’re codependent!”, it’s an episode that makes you send Sam vibes screaming at him to get out.

07x14 Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie - Ever think that maybe Sam fears clowns because he associates them with being abandoned? Also, nostalgia vs reality.

08x09 Citizen Fang - The voicemail from S4 is still hanging over our heads. Dean asking “Does that sound like the Benny we know?” and Sam replying “I don’t know Benny.” Dean keeping Benny away from Sam because Sam is apparently the one who will kill monsters with no nuance or remorse. But this episode is on the list specifically because of how pivotal the line "Yes, I do – too well. In fact, every relationship I have ever had has gone to crap at some point. But the one thing I can say about Benny – he has never let me down." is in absolutely wrecking Sam's mental health down the road!

08x23 Sacrifice - For obvious reasons! “You know what I confessed in there? What my greatest sin was? It was how many times I let you down!” and then Dean’s speech of blatant lies. It sounded good, though. Dean really is that devoted, but unfortunately he has amnesia.

09x01 I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here - Autonomy violation. This is what advanced care directives are for. Dean being so dependent on Sam that he would violate his autonomy and trick him into consenting to possession. Dean will do anything to keep Sam alive, including destroy Sam.

09x16 Blade Runners - The parallels between Colette and Sam are unbearable. “Drop the blade.” Also, Dean becomes SO feral when Sam’s cheek gets cut.

10x19 Book of the Damned - Sam’s speech! “But I can’t do it without my brother. I don’t want to do it without my brother. And if he’s gone, then I don’t….”

10x24 Brother's Keeper - Ahahahahaaa. Sam kneeling down in front of Dean and letting him kill him, if he wants. Dean not doing so. Please do not emulate this relationship in your real human lives.

11x04 Baby - Obvious reasons. Also, the perfect example of how these two communicate. Dean clearly states his opinion so that Sam has something to base his arguments around, and then Sam provides his perspective. That meta about how Dean and Sam communicate and how Sam is the major decision maker opened my eyes. Impeccable takes.

11x16 Safe House - The thing Dean loves being Sam (and Sam being genuinely relieved that it was!!). Sam propping Dean’s sleeping body against the fridge while saying “I got you! Stay with me.” Him cradling Dean in his arms and patting his head and Dean being SO confused but not fighting it.

11x17 Red Meat - Okay, I lied about the 2 per season thing, I just needed all three of these episodes. They are too good to not include. Dean joking to hide how scared he is for Sam? Being willing to let all three of them die just because he thinks Sam is dead? Attempting/committing suicide to try to bring him back? Sam fighting through immense pain to get back to his brother? This episode is so good. They are absolute lunatics (affectionate).

#emblian #ask game #answered #spn #V I LOVE YOU!!#kael.txt

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gunnerpalace · 4 years

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hey there! so i used to be a huge fan of bleach, and loved ichiruki, and i was reminded of them today but i haven't been involved with the fandom since the series ended. however, i've heard of different variations of why the series ended/ships happened the way they did, and was wondering if you knew or could direct to me a post that explains that? i apologize if i'm bringing up bitter feelings, but i've always been curious if bleach's ending was a big FU from kubo or if he always intended rr/ih

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a post that really goes over it structurally in that kind of way (from a shipping perspective). I’ll get back to what you actually asked me after some asides, because it’s not so simple to just analyze the ships in a vacuum.

I’ve had my own post about why the ending was a fuck you moment, thematically, because it failed to resolve any of the themes and momentum of the series in a way that would be appropriate (either internally or in the context of the supposed genre of shounen.)

I would also say that the ending was a fuck you moment in terms of lore, backstory, and mystery, because all of the historical and political dimensions (i.e., things involving the Soul King and Great Houses) were unceremoniously shuffled off to Can’t Fear Your Own World. Not that any of those things were ever brought up properly in the manga to begin with; the proper and natural time for that would’ve been at the conclusion of the Soul Society arc, when Ichigo and co. spent a week there, which we saw none of. So I would say that everything in CFYOW is basically retconned bullshit hung off prior convenient plot hooks, and that the same was true of TYBW and LSS/TLA/Xcution as well. There may have been some notes and forethought, but it’s about as “valid” as Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert’s Dune works are compared to the original Frank Herbert ones; it’s second-hand, at best.

(This is setting aside that Bleach was clearly made up as it went along. For example: Noriaki literally admitted that he didn’t know who had killed Aizen in Soul Society until he realized that Aizen not being dead was the most shocking answer; the clear baiting and abandonment of Kisuke as the villain hinted at through various means such as his unclear and later retconned reasons for being exiled, and so on. Bleach was very much a J. J. Abrams-style mystery box work that was made as it went with, at best, rough notes, which is why its themes and focus change, for the worse. I also have a post about why it stopped being special, which is part of a running series I intend to write on how to rewrite it to fix and preserve that)

The best recent thing to compare it to is, really, HBO’s adaptation of Game of Thrones, wherein D. B. Weiss and David Benioff openly admitted to removing or deemphasizing story elements, and ignoring themes in adapting the work. The difference is that Bleach was not being adapted from anything; it degraded due to its own creator not understanding what he had created.

(To put it very simply, because this would be the point of Hyperchlorate Part II and would take a whole post to explain: the ending of the Soul Society arc did not properly establish and flesh out Soul Society as a place with a history, space, and purpose. Instead, the Arrancar and Hueco Mundo arcs decided to be a thematic inversion and deconstruction of the Karakura and Soul Society arcs. This again had an ending that did not establish or flesh anything out after Aizen’s defeat, with an even greater diffusion of focus onto ancillary characters. The Xcution arc tripled down on this by addressing something entirely new and retconned in, only to abandon it midway through in favor of going back to invoking Soul Society. And Thousand-Year Blood War took all of these problems to 11. tl;dr: Noriaki tried themes, people hated it, and so he just shoved in more and more dumb sword fights between people nobody cared about, half of whom hadn’t previously existed.)

So, let’s get back to your question. Let’s talk about ships. I’ve clicked a lot of keys and spilled a lot of ink on this subject over the years, but I no longer particularly feel like searching my own archives (really ought to go back through and organize them better) beyond this post and my own follow-up to it about the chronology of IR interactions, so I’m just going to repeat myself.

First, let’s say that Bleach was not ever a manga about ships.

I’m not disavowing that what Rukia and Ichigo had was special. That was called out multiple times through the focus of the art, the dialogue, and by the characters themselves. (Directly by, for example, Orihime’s outright statement to the effect in Soul Society, and her later jealousy regarding it. Indirectly by, say, Uryuu’s acknowledgement that him saving Rukia first would piss Ichigo off. In fact, the biggest indirect indicator doesn’t even involve Ichigo and Rukia; Shunsui asks Chad why he’s there and Chad says he wants to save Rukia, Shunsui calls bullshit that two months isn’t enough time to risk your life for that, and Chad agrees and says he’s there because Ichigo wants to do it. Shunsui moves on, but his argument is left hanging: why was two months enough for Ichigo? Because, as Orihime will later say out loud, Rukia is special.)

What I’m saying is that that was never the focus. It was explicitly constructed that way.

How do I know? The Grand Fisher fight. The Grand Fisher fight is emotionally charged, bringing up both Ichigo and Rukia’s greatest traumas, and is their one real moment of not understanding each other for a time. It was a triumphant moment that made them truly glad to know one another, and you can see it in their reactions afterward (Rukia thanking Ichigo for not dying, Ichigo asking Rukia if he can keep being a Shinigami). There was a lot to unpack there, and you can see it in the way they look at each other.

What happened immediately after the Grand Fisher fight? Noriaki skipped a whole month. We go from June 18th of 2001 to July 17th of 2001. He deliberately skipped all of the emotional impact of that event, and Rukia being around for Ichigo’s 16th birthday. Just never happened. We never hear about it. Wasn’t his focus as a writer.

Now, I’m convinced that was because he was scared of what he had on his hands. He wasn’t willing to commit to either a couple’s battle shoujo or a shounen with male and female seemingly-heterosexual co-equal deuteragonists who clearly had a strong emotional bond. More specifically, he wasn’t willing to make Rukia a centerpiece of the manga despite having designed her first, having made her the moral and philosophical core of his manga, and having based Ichigo entirely around completing and complementing her. But hey, that’s just my opinion, right? Except it kept happening.

From the Grand Fisher fight onward, the name of the game in the manga, structurally, became keeping Ichigo and Rukia apart.

The moment she was taken back to Soul Society, her prominence dropped. We got emotionally charged scenes of them regardless. Right at the conclusion, after yet another emotionally heavy set of Ichigo and Rukia interactions, we again skip almost a month, from the end of the first week in August of 2001 to September 1, 2001. (Due to some completely unnecessary timey-wimey bullshit with the Precipice World.)

In the Arrancar and Hueco Mundo arcs, they have roughly a day together over the course of three months. What happens after every meeting? They’re shuffled apart and split up, and we cut away. This time, for over a year!

Ichigo and Rukia again have a very emotionally charged meeting in the Xcution arc. And what happens at the end of that arc? We skip ahead another month to TYBW. (Xcution ended sometime in May of 2003, TYBW starts June 11, 2003.)

And in TYBW, Rukia and Ichigo barely meet up at all. Indeed, the focus is scarcely upon them.

In CFYOW, neither of them even appear, let alone have any relevance to the plot.

The implication, in my opinion, is pretty obvious: Noriaki was deathly afraid of dealing with the outcomes of their interactions, and that ultimately became him being deathly afraid of allowing them to interact at all to begin with. Why? Well, as I said in one of the last linked posts:

As an author, sometimes you will find your characters will do things you didn’t anticipate or plan for, and you’ve got two choices: you can go with the flow and do what’s natural and deal, or you can fight it and try and impose your vision anyway.

He refused to let his art take the direction it needed to go in.

Now, some people might say he got bored of them, or of having them together. I say that’s bullshit. And the reason I say is down to three things:

He didn’t ignore them, he did his best to keep them apart. I outlined this above.

He did not emphasize anything or anyone else instead. His focus was all over the place. While, admittedly, Ichigo’s prominence also declined, so did everyone else’s.

It would have served him well to focus on their interactions to expand his universe and explore its lore. The things that were detailed in the databooks and CFYOW could’ve been presented naturally and easily if they were together. But that came with a cost of shifting the focus. A cost he refused to pay.

Let’s talk more about (2) and (3) now.

Regarding (2), Chad and Orihime are inextricably linked in Bleach, because they essentially have the same relationship to Ichigo. “But Orihime loves Ichigo, and Chad is his no-homo bro!” someone proclaims. So what? They’re presented as equal and parallel at every step.

They both gain their powers at approximately the same time.

We are told they gained their powers due to the Hogyouku (in Rukia at the time) interpreting their wishes (and no one else’s, such as Tatsuki, Keigo, or Mizuiro), meaning they probably had the same strength of desire.

They both go to Soul Society “for Ichigo.”

They both utterly fail against Yammy and Ulquiorra.

They both spend most of the Hueco Mundo arc doing nothing.

They are both featured prominently in the Xcution arc, and both fail to see through Tsukishima’s powers despite their love for Ichigo. (Meanwhile, Byakuya coolly tries to murder someone who he thinks is his mentor, in Ichigo’s name.)

They both get sidelined in Hueco Mundo with Kisuke in TYBW, doing little to nothing.

They both are utterly ineffectual in the final fight in TYBW.

They are often portrayed together, they are often as effective as one another, and they are equally as developed in their relationship to Ichigo going forward, which is to say: not at all. The loss of focus on IR did not come with an attendant rise of focus on IH, any more than it did with the sudden rise of IchiChad. Nothing was built in IR’s place. There was no emotional or human content which filled its gap.

This is where the IH ending coming “out of nowhere” stems from: it indeed came out of nowhere, because Ichigo was never shown to have any interest in Orihime in all this time, nor an especially close relationship with her. He never hangs out with Chad or shows a bond with him either. He never hangs out with anyone, in fact. (Indeed, “friends” in Bleach do not do any of the things that friends actually do in real life. Nor do parents. You might say that interpersonal relationships and communication largely don’t exist in Bleach. But that’s its whole own topic.)

I would honestly say that more time and emphasis was given on Ichigo’s pseudo-surrogate mother relationship with Ikumi than was spent on him interacting with Orihime. (I would say Noriaki has serious hangups about relationships of any kind, be they romantic, familial, or friendly, and also has some severe hangups regarding mothers and fathers, but that is also its whole own topic.)

Regarding (3), Noriaki apparently wanted this big, Game of Thrones-style world with a long history and political machinations and so on. This is the whole point of TYBW and CFYOW. Trouble is, early Bleach was successful because of its small-scale intimacy. So how do you go from one to the other? You have to lay the foundations at every step. And Noriaki steadfastly refused to do so at every step. Having Ichigo and Rukia interact, and focusing on Rukia while Ichigo was sidelined without powers, would’ve permitted that organically. Indeed, if RR was the endgame, it would have given time to establish that, were it his desire. (Because Rukia never showed any interest in Renji, and frankly Renji always seemed way more preoccupied with Byakuya.) It didn’t serve his goals, but he did it anyway.

It’s much simpler to say he lost focus, and that he started to hate the manga as a whole. Why else would you have Mayuri fighting a giant hand when that achieved nothing, and Kenpachi fighting Thor when that achieved nothing? It became empty. Hollow, you might say.

But that takes us back to the question you posed: where did the ships come from? Nowhere. IH, RR, and fucking TatsuKeigo weren’t established anywhere. They just appeared. Why?

Well, why did every single character wind up doing the exact opposite of their intended and stated goals in the end?

Why did Soul Society revert to its previous attitude and rebuild the Sokyouku?

Why did nothing get resolved?

Why did nothing change?

Why was it all revealed to have been completely and utterly pointless?

In my view, it’s because that ending was a giant fuck you to the readership and Shueisha. There is no other way to interpret an author pulling a 180° and completely nullifying their characters’ arcs, and their work’s themes. Aizen’s little speech at the end is the cherry on top. I read it as Noriaki saying that he’s showing “courage” in telling us all to fuck off.

As to why? That’s an open question. His relationship with Shueisha was contentious, so maybe he was mad at them. (They gave him a deadline once he was dragging his feet, and reclassified Bleach as a joke manga.) His readership was on the decline after the Soul Society arc ended, so maybe he was mad at the audience. I don’t know. I also don’t really care. What I am convinced of is he decided to blow up his franchise and to not leave a single stone unturned when he did so.

That’s where that “ending” comes from, which is why despite it featuring IH and RR, both are thoroughly unsatisfying and without setup: it was the only way to piss absolutely everyone off, including people who wanted that outcome.

In a way, it was his greatest success since the early days of the manga.

Anyway, this was messy, but it’s not a simple topic to address. The tl;dr is that Bleach was a trainwreck from the very beginning that only succeeded on the merits of its characters, and that Noriaki deliberately avoided the promise it had to be something unique and grand. The ships are just a part of that, and cannot be understood in isolation from it.

#Asks #Bleach

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littlepurinsesu · 4 years

Text

V Watches MagiReco - Episode 3 Review

*Spoilers for Magia Record Anime Episode 3*

And so the Rena and Kaede friendship-ending plotline comes to a very satisfying conclusion! This episode actually had me in tears quite a few times (;Д;)

So many things to talk about and unpack so I’m going to try and keep it as succinct as possible >_< Starting with the most obvious: OH MY GOSH THOSE TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCES. I LOVE THEM. SO MUCH. HOLY CHEESE (♥ω♥*)

Yachiyo was the most elegant water goddess ever. True beauty right there. I have nothing else to say. Perfection. Momoko’s was super BADASS I LOVED IT omg all the flames and kicks!!! They really did a good job showcasing the duality of her tomboyish image and her gentler, “girly” side. Rena’s was like a cuter and more whimsical version of Yachiyo’s (since they have the same water theme), and I really love how the anime took the mirrors in her doppel and featured the imagery so heavily in her transformation! That last shot with the thunder was also super cool! And Iroha leaping off the building with all the feathers was so pretty *___* The bird imagery is as heavy as ever with this transformation, especially with the fact that she’s literally “flying” as she “falls” off the building. I also find it quite interesting how the cloak always comes last with a slight delay, especially with how the cloak was depicted as being almost “its own thing” before she caught up and merged with it!

All in all, these transformations were top-notch, and I love them even more than the ones we saw in Rebellion. They definitely lean more towards traditional magical girl transformations (which I personally prefer), while still retaining a decent amount of the trippy look of the Rebellion transformation style and overall PMMM aesthetic - a really good balance that encapsulates the tone of MagiReco quite well, in my opinion ^^

Okay enough rambling about transformations and onto some plot xD

Mitama finally appeared! Her voice is as Mitama as ever, and I really like the touch they had with how all her movements seem very deliberate and calculated, and very flamboyant. She gives off the impression of a very friendly and approachable person, but you can’t quite tell what she’s thinking or hiding, and get the feeling that there’s definitely more to her than meets the eye. Which is basically Mitama in a nutshell, so A+ for her portrayal. I do wish we saw her do a bit more, though, but it was only her introduction this week, so hopefully we’ll see more of her in the coming episodes :) The Mayu cameo was shorter than the Ren one, but I do like this method of “debuting” characters without shoehorning too many girls into the main plot, so I hope they keep this pattern up.

One small issue I had with the episode was the fact that they seemed to either change or gloss over the tension between Yachiyo and Momoko? This is biased because I’m a viewer who’s familiar with the game story, so seeing them getting along fine threw me off for a moment. But I guess it wouldn’t be an issue with anime-only fans, especially if they really did decide to just do away with the tension and have the two of them as perfectly amicable friends. Which is fine, too. I was just confused for a moment because of my expectations (one of the interesting things when you watch an anime with a preconception of the plot and characters) ^^;; I did like their tension and the way they made up in the game, though, so I’d be a teeny bit sad if they really did cut it, but that’s more of a personal preference, so not really an actual problem :)

Momoko’s super awkward and stiff “apology” was hilarious to watch, though xD Also, Momoko with her hair out!!! Definitely wasn’t expecting that! I thought it was supposed to show how stressed or tired she was worrying about Kaede, but no, seems like she sometimes just walks around with her hair like that. While I prefer her with the ponytail, I always appreciate it when anime (especially magical girl anime) show the characters with different hairstyles; makes things so much more realistic :3 And Mitama doing her hair was super cute, too ^^

The way they went about showing Rena’s internal struggles was really well-done. One thing I’ve always liked about PMMM is how you often get a sense of things being either “not quite right,” or you just have no idea what’s going on. I felt that in the scene with Rena watching TV in her room (Sayuki cameo!), transforming in and out of different characters. It’s strange and eerie, and it disorients you because you’re wondering what’s going on and what’s even real. But it’s a really nice kind of confusion that keeps you on edge, which PMMM is really good at, and I think it was captured very well in this episode.

I personally don’t relate to Rena’s personality or struggles at all, but for some reason she always manages to make me cry. I bawled when I read her Magical Girl Story in the game for the first time, and the little bits of it they incorporated here (much appreciated) got me sobbing as well... I really hope they don’t stop developing her character after the main five enter the scene and Team Momoko takes a backseat. There’s so much to explore with Rena, and I think they’ve done a really good job so far.

Kaede is as precious as ever, and her interactions with Rena were super sweet. I think it’s nice that Rena has a friend who’s so open and patient when she’s trying her hardest to open up and express herself well. The past two episodes really showcased the relationship dynamic between these two, including all of its strengths and weaknesses. I did, however, furrow my eyebrows slightly when they found Kaede. It’s understandable if they wanted to change the brainwashing from the game version of events, but the fact that Kaede seemed so chill and undisturbed when they found her seemed kind of weird to me, and frankly, didn’t make much sense xD I’d expect her to be a bit more scared or even traumatiised after being stuck in a place like that all alone, especially considering her timid nature xD

But the fight against the Rumour was definitely a feast for the eyes. The Rumour looked quite different from the game version, but in this case I think the creative liberty they took actually made the Rumour seem more distinct from a Witch. The barriers aren’t exactly identical in nature, the the huge winding staircases extending into the sky really go to show how large the scale of a Rumour can be. Iroha didn’t do much, but Yachiyo and Momoko had amazing teamwork; the water and fire looked amazing together! And again, I loved the use of mirrors in Rena’s attacks! It’s a unique and aesthetically interesting choice, and also helps differentiate her water-based attacks from Yachiyo’s. Kaede’s trees and leaves also looked lovely!

Backtracking a bit to the very beginning, but I wasn’t expecting Touka and Nemu to make an appearance so soon! That short scene did a pretty good job at showing the basic facets of their personalities, especially Touka’s, as well as their relationship dynamic. It was a really nice way to parallel and lead into the friendship-ending dilemma that Rena and Kaede are experiencing.

And on the topic of things I was not expecting... that Mami appearance at the very end!!! She showed up earlier here than in the game, but I think that scene provided some pretty important information that the game glossed over. Here we aren’t just told that Kyubey can’t enter Kamihama for mysterious, unknown reasons; we’re actually shown what happens when he tries. And seeing Kyubey openly asking Mami to go to Kamihama and investigate gives her a very logical reason to be there when she eventually gets introduced to the game’s main cast. But yeah, seeing Mami definitely had me feeling all nostalgic again ;___; I don’t even remember the last time I saw her, or any of the Holy Quintet members, moving in anime form (;Д;)

Oh, and Lil Kyubey is possibly one of the world’s most adorable creatures ever and I WANT ONE AS A PET OMG (ᗒᗨᗕ)

This week’s review turned out a lot longer than the ones in the past weeks (and I just keep jumping all over the place between topics and not even going in chronological order) ^^;; Probably because I just had too much to scream about because of the transformation sequences ^3^ So I’ll quickly end this now by saying how excited I am to finally see the mightiest magical girl Tsuruno Yui debut next week!!! (*≧▽≦)

#magia record #magireco #puella magi madoka magica #puella magi madoka magica side story #pmmm #fandom #mine #anime #review #magia record review #v watches magireco

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mediaeval-muse · 4 years

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Video Game Review: Assassin’s Creed 3 (Ubisoft, 2012; Remastered 2019)

Genres: action-adventure, third person, open world

Premise: Desmond Miles and his team use the Apple of Eden to locate the Grand Temple of the First Civilization. To open it, Desmond must locate a key, known to his ancestors Haytham Kenway and Ratonhnhaké:ton (also called Connor) who were active during the American Revolution.

Platform Played On: PC (Windows)

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

***Full review under the cut.***

I am evaluating this game based on four key aspects: story, characters, gameplay, and visuals. I will be evaluating the remastered version of this game on its own terms, so I cannot speak to how it is different from the initial release.

Content Warnings: violence, blood, colonialism, racism, domestic violence

Story: Assassin’s Creed 3 initially follows Haytham Kenway, a new PC character and ancestor of Desmond Miles, as he journeys from Britain to America during the 18th century. Haytham is attempting to find the Grand Temple, a chamber once belonging to the ancient First Civilization, with the help of several colonists and a Mohawk woman named Kaniehti:io. Unable to open the Temple, Haytham initiates a romantic relationship with Kaniehti:io, resulting in a son (Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor). It is revealed that Haytham is a Templar when he initiates one of the colonists, Charles Lee, into the order.

Years later, Ratonhnhaké:ton is now the PC character. His village is burned by Lee and his cronies, resulting in the death of his mother. The clan leader gives Ratonhnhaké:ton a sphere which contains a message from Juno. Juno leads Ratonhnhaké:ton to Achilles Davenport, a retired assassin who agrees to train him and renames him “Connor.”

The rest of the game focuses on Connor’s evolution as an assassin, his plan to seek revenge against Lee, and his angst regarding his parentage. I very much enjoyed the moral conflict in Connor’s storyline; Connor is resentful of his father’s involvement with the Templars, but also desires to find common ground with him once he hears of Haytham’s goals. I also really liked the Haytham plot twist, as it took me by surprise and prompted a lot of emotional investment in the family drama.

However, the sheer amount of things to do in the open world distracted from the plot and at times threw the pacing off. I also did not like some of the tropes that this game utilized to tell a story involving indigenous characters. Connor’s mother, Kaniehti:io, was a competent warrior and formidable personality, but was primarily present to have a white man’s child and then be killed for emotional shock value. I also don’t think this game pushed hard enough against colonialism, making the Americans out to be morally right despite their supposed “flaws” and showcasing some violence against indigenous people for shock value. However, I appreciated that this game featured many indigenous actors and put a lot of dialogue in indigenous languages.

Desmond’s story was much improved from Revelations. He’s back to working with his team, which made for fun character interactions, and his father also joins the mix, which nicely parallels the tumultuous Haytham/Connor relationship. The stakes are also much higher than in previous games regarding the First Civilization - whereas the team was previously looking for artifacts in the Ezio games, this game features the exploration of an actual Temple housing more information.

I also played the DLC, “The Tyranny of King Washington,” which follows an alternate timeline in which Washington has been corrupted by the Apple. Washington has declared himself King and rules America with ruthless tyranny. To take him down and combat the power of the Apple, Connor must channel supernatural powers derived from animal spirits. While the premise was incredibly interesting to me, the execution was rather poor, especially in terms of indigenous representation. Kaniehti:io was resurrected only to be killed again, and the story featured a lot of scenes of indigenous suffering, including slavery and violence. I also don’t think the “spirit animal” powers were portrayed in a way that was respectful of the actual religious/spiritual significance of spirit animals in Native cultures. I’m somewhat ignorant, though, so I would prioritize criticism from indigenous gamers rather than mine - see what they have to say about the base game and the DLC.

Characters: Haytham Kenway, the first PC character, is initially pretty likable in that he’s witty and charismatic. I like that he was sarcastic and seemingly well-polished, holding in his emotions like only a posh British character can. He was also shown to be brutal at the drop of a hat, and his feelings tended to get the better of him when it came to certain topics, both of which kept me on my toes. The fact that he is the first PC character creates a lot of sympathy for him, mirroring Connor’s later emotional turmoil when he’s being pressured to kill his father despite desiring an alliance.

Connor is a lot more stiff and broody, which is understandable due to the trauma in his past. While he isn’t very charismatic, I did like him as a character, since he was willing to call out the hypocrisy of everyone around him. I particularly enjoyed the way he highlighted how the Americans were all about freedom for the select (white) few - no one, not even Washington, escapes criticism, and it was refreshing to see a non-idealized portrait of the Founding Fathers through Connor’s eyes. Connor did have his sweeter moments, especially when interacting with the people living on his homestead, and I loved when he found joy in the family he made. I do wish he had been given more joy throughout the game - he so rarely expresses positive emotions that he seems like a stick in the mud.

Side characters, such as the Founding Fathers, were well-realized in that they weren’t portrayed as heroes. Washington is shown to be unable to deal with problems in any way other than by violence, and Adams is called out for his insistence that white colonists need to be free before enslaved Africans can be freed. NPCs living on the homestead are also given unique conflicts and storylines that made them feel real, and being able to converse with them at any point in the game was a fun way to feel connected to them.

Desmond is back to being his pre-Revelations self, balancing charisma and determination in a way that makes him compelling. Nothing is necessarily new regarding his characterization, so he acts more like a staple that links the Ezio games to the Haytham/Connor story, making them feel part of the same continuity.

Gameplay: I really enjoyed the way much of the gameplay from the previous Assassin’s Creed games is updated and reimagined for an 18th century setting. Parkour/free running is simplified, and target lock has been eliminated for a more fluid combat experience. Players also no longer need to use medicine to heal, as health regenerates automatically with time. Players can also use more of the environment to assist with stealth; haystacks and wells make a reappearance, as well as groups of people for blending, but Connor can also hide in tall grass, bushes, and behind corners. I also liked that Connor could whistle to lure enemies towards a hiding spot before taking them out.

In terms of weapons, Connor has access to some staples, such as the hidden blade, sword, bow, pistol, etc. but also has some interesting options, such as the tomahawk and rope dart. All of these options were simple to use and required very little practice to get right, though combat itself felt significantly more difficult than in previous games. Several enemies are difficult to take down, such as the Scotsmen wielding giant axes, but players who like a challenge might enjoy the increase in difficulty.

Connor can also recruit new assassins and level up their abilities, similar to Ezio’s actions in Brotherhood. The recruits are able to be used in a number of new ways, not just in a fight, which makes them fun to play around with.

Connor is also able to control his notoriety in much the same way that Ezio could, though instead of “heralds,” there are “town criers” and instead of assassinating a corrupt official, Connor can bribe a printer to create counter-propaganda. Pretty clever, if you ask me.

Collectibles such as Benjamin Franklin’s almanac pages, feathers, and treasure chests are also available and pretty standard - you collect them, you get rewards. Connor can also participate in side quests and challenges, such as a fight club and assassination contracts. To move around the large map, Connor can use fast travel, though to be honest, the map was so big that exploring it all could get tedious.

Also returning is the concept of full synchronization, which was a pain. Like the Ezio games, conditions for full sync did add some challenge to the game, but it was incredibly annoying to do a mission over and over again in order to reach 100%. I’d much rather have a single goal and go about it my own way without the impression of being penalized (even if that penalty doesn’t affect the gaming experience overall).

In terms of the economy, Connor is tasked with managing a homestead. Instead of improving the property or buying monuments, Connor recruits tradesmen such as loggers, miners, and farmers, as well as artisans such as tailors, innkeepers, and blacksmiths. The former group produces raw materials which can be turned into crafted goods by the latter, which Connor then puts on a caravan to be sold in town. Profits enable Connor to buy more weapons and consumables, and tradesmen/craftmen can be leveled up to produce more profitable goods through “homestead missions” which advance NPC stories.

Hunting is also introduced as a way for Connor to gain resources (such as pelts and meat), which are then used for crafting or for sale at trading posts. To hunt, Connor can use a range of tricks, including reading the environment for clues, planting snares, and using bait to lure skittish animals. I liked that hunting was always an option, but never required, since actually finding certain animals could be a chore. Connor also has the option of playing games such as Nine Men’s Morris to earn money through gambling at taverns, though I personally never opted for that. I did think the idea was clever, as it was a neat way to include micro-games in the larger structure.

By far, the most interesting new addition was naval combat. Connor can upgrade his ship, the Aquila, and go on a number of naval missions which earn him rewards. It took some getting used to, and often, the combat could be cumbersome, but I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit. These missions were never overly long, and some of them had interesting world building details.

The DLC has a lot of the same gameplay mechanisms, with the added bonus of “spirit animal powers” (see my assessment above). Basically, these are supernatural abilities that allow Connor to briefly turn invisible (wolf), fly short distances (eagle), and take down multiple enemies or smash through structures with great strength (bear). These abilities were somewhat insensitive thematically, but fun to use in terms of gameplay; I liked being able to sneak past enemies without needing to dart between bushes, and I loved flying across rooftops rather than jumping and climbing them. However, these powers also made exploring the map somewhat irrelevant - treasure chests primarily included consumables, such as arrows and rope darts, so if players find themselves preferring combat using a blade and animal power, there’s not much incentive to clear the map of points of interest. Nor is there much incentive to do side quests or challenges, as their rewards don’t add much to the gaming experience unless you use a lot of consumables.

Visuals: Assassin’s Creed 3 is a beautifully rendered game. The environments are stunning, whether they are seascapes or the wilderness on the “Frontier.” I also think the cities were well-done and eye-catching; even though buildings and streets were somewhat monotone (earthy tones), they never felt dull and little details made the design pop (things like posters/broadsides or splashes of color here and there).

Connor’s assassin outfit is also appealing in that it mashes up some 18th century fashion with accessories that denote his indigenous heritage. The red and white color palette from the Ezio games is replaced by a blue and white scheme, perhaps to show that Connor is not aligned with the British Redcoats, but even so, it still felt like an assassin uniform. I also liked the designs of Haytham’s cape, coat, and tricorne, as well as Achilles’ nod to his past through his accessories.

Animations were very fluid, and Connor’s combat maneuvers were interesting and varied. I think they were much more aesthetically pleasing than Ezio’s, and I liked how the body movements (tumbling, spinning) made them feel physical. There were some moments when awkward camera angles would obscure my vision, which cost me some kills or opportunities here and there, and there were occasionally some glitchy graphics, but they didn’t pull me out of the game the way Revelations did.

Final Verdict: Despite the plot being weakened by pacing problems and some questionable Indigenous representation, Assassin’s Creed 3 is beautifully rendered and improves on the franchise’s formulae by reimagining the Assassin-Templar conflict in a new setting.

#video game review

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ladykf-writes · 5 years

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Fanfic Writer Appreciation (and a little self love)

Sooooo, as talked about I wanted to do a little promo. I may not always be my favorite writer, but I try to be one of my cheerleaders. And well, if you’re here you obviously have some interest in what I’m up to.

SO! Here’s a list of my currently-published WIPs and some info about them, in the order that I’ve updated them, most recent to oldest.

Feel free to ask questions about any of them!

Dog Whistle (Ao3 || FFN) - started off as a prompt from @snackarey when I reblogged some Soulmate AUs. This one was a prompt for soulmates (Zack/Kunsel) who felt what each other felt - like pain. Needless to say, this went into a canon divergent AU where Kunsel felt some of what Zack was going through when Hojo got a hold of him after Nibelheim. And saved him, setting off an ever-increasing list of revolutionary consequences. It’s nearly 58K, and though I’m a little stuck I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Dewprism: Journey to the [Relic] (Ao3 || FFN) - this actually has a lot more written than I’ve posted, I just got a little frustrated because well... the fandom is teeny tiny and there’s no real feedback. But! It’s an interesting piece. It’s a semi-novelization where I’m taking the old PS1 Classic from Squaresoft, Threads of Fate/Dewprism and merging the two storylines. Basically... you can’t play the game anymore unless you got it from the PSN for your PSP or... PS2, I think? Or emulate it, of course, you can do that. And I wanted to bring the experience to more people, because it’s got such a great story.

It’s Not a Game (Ao3 || FFN) - this is my Avengers/FF7 crossover, and funny story, it was actually born out of a comment back on my old Genesis RP blog about how Genesis would totally be Tony Stark’s favorite character if he played Crisis Core. It’s turned into a full blown fixit I have a type and I actually have like, 90% of the next chapter done, it just doesn’t feel quite right so I haven’t posted it. And am, of course, stuck. There’s a case of choice paralysis here; the premise is that, in the MCU, FF7 is a series like it is in our world, and Tony is a fan. So he goes to make a simulation to do a self-insert... only he somehow transports himself (and Bruce) to a dimension where it’s real. A “Stark-insert” someone called it; and it does use a lot of “Self-Insert” tropes, actually. There’s just so many ways it could go that I’m stuck on choosing exactly how to progress here.

Party of Five (Ao3 || FFN) - the MMO AU! This was actually originally a prompt @up-sideand-down got, that I got permission to take off with. It’s a modern AU AGSZC where they meet online playing this MMO I made up that’s based off of FF7 and modeled after a mashup of like, me studying WoW and my experiences playing SWTOR. I’ve actually got some ideas of where it’s going, I just got too caught up in technicalities and need to reroute it back to the relationships going on.

Welcome to FF7 (series link, Ao3) - this is me hashing out basically what I think went down pre-games. Most of it is headcanon, I cannot stress that enough. It’s based off of the little we know, of course, but there’s just so much we don’t that it’s mostly headcanon. Tons of OCs. It’s a whole series, and they overlap - different sections that follow different departments, mostly. The base story is Welcome to ShinRa (Ao3 || FFN) and that follows the man who will become President Shinra from back when they first discover mako energy. I’ve also got Welcome to the Science Department (Ao3 || FFN) which starts off with college students Gast and Grimoire and how they get drawn into the beginnings of what becomes ShinRa Electric.

And last but not least, honorable mention to Times of Change (Ao3) - this was actually a piece inspired by @deadcatwithaflamethrower‘s Re-Entry series. I desperately need to reread that before I can hope to continue this, but... one day. One day.... I don’t suggest reading it right now, my headcanons have changed and it needs an overhaul. But you’ll see eventually.

And now... the WIPs you haven’t seen. (Under a cut)

By fandom, just to keep things straight, but in no particular order otherwise.

Compilation of FF7

The Snowball Effect (Ao3 || FFN) ... sequel? continuation? - as one of the gift exchange presents I’ve just done this past month, it is definitely standalone as is, but if I ever figure out where I want to take it, I’ll continue that one. It was just far too much fun.

The Price of Freedom - the sequel to To Be Human, which... I’m looking forward to, but I really burnt myself out on TBH so it’s going to be longer than anticipated before I approach this one. TBH definitely stands on its own, but there were some loose ends left to tie up, so we’ll see how that goes. And when it goes, when I’m ready to approach that again. TBH needs some editing, too... lots of work there.

The Unnamed Pokemon/FF7 crossover that I’ve talked about for... a couple years now (yikes) but now actually have a plot for. It’s very interesting to me, putting Pokemon on Gaia, and seeing how that changes everything. Because like, they’d have presumably used Mew’s DNA since there’s no Jenova (I can’t see them using Deoxys, which would be the closer parallel) and since there’s no Chaos, Grimoire is still alive. Which means no extra Drama between Lucrecia and Vincent - and really, there shouldn’t be the stress between Vincent and Hojo over her being sick because Mew would theoretically be much more compatible with humans than Jenova was.

What I’m saying is Seph has three parents and at least one set of grandparents and a much more stable Sephiroth (and Genesis and Angeal, thanks to Lucrecia teaming up with Gillian) leads to some very interesting changes. Like deciding they don’t want to fight the Wutai war anymore. >_>

Hold My Flower - a timetravel fic featuring our one and only flowergirl, who has had enough of people messing up her planet and refuses to just... let it die. She is, unquestionably, a force of nature. No fragile flower to be found here, this is the gal you see in the OG who threatened a mob boss and meant it. Heaven help anyone who gets in her way. She’s going to save the world. Possibly in a Turk Suit, don’t look at me.

The Long Game - Reeve goes back in time, and holy crap this one is a monster I am truly intimidated by so it’s gonna take a while for me to get going on that. XD But basically, similar premise to the above - the world isn’t healing and someone has to do something, so Reeve is nominated due to his position in ShinRa and potential to... he’d say “influence” but let’s call a spade a spade - manipulate people and events to a more favorable outcome.

A third BIT fic is one that I started writing with my friend @askshivanulegacy back in... damn, somewhere between 2011-2013, before we switched to writing SWTOR fic together. It’s one where Zack is sent back in time, and the differences in him post-Hojo change things even before he can start deliberately changing anything. But I got permission to take and remake that, so I intend to, one day. It was Good Stuff. And you can never have too much timetravel.

Dragon Ball Z

So, this is an oooooold fandom of mine - the first fanfics I ever wrote (under a different name, no I’m not telling XD it was ten years ago) were for DBZ, and definitely the first ones I ever read, back in the days of dial up. And I read a couple interesting takes on Chichi/Vegeta fic... and I was talking with @vorpalgirl about it and said I’d love to try my hand at something with that one day. I think they have the potential to be a really great pair (don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the canon pairings but those two have a lot of potential) so... yeah someday I might dip my toes back into Z. It’s on the wishlist, as well as reviving and cleaning up an old unfinished work of mine. Someday~

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Seven Years Lost - this one I’ve been debating a long time, and even did a little on! It’s basically how I rationalize what happens when Link pulls the Master Sword out and - well, spoilers but it’s a really old game so - when he comes out as a teenager and is immediately able to handle a nearly-adult body. It involves a dreamscape scenario where he communicates with his past incarnations and learns from them, and from sharing dreams with Zelda due to their bond.

Sailor Moon (manga/Crystal based)

Second Chances - I read a lot of SM fanfic back in the day, and my favorite ones were... more real? Like, there were more consequences to these 14 year old kids out there fighting for their lives and sometimes losing them. I’d like to tell a story through Minako/Venus’ eyes primarily, covering what that’s like, and then I also just really want a happy ending for the senshi/shittenou? So... yay canon divergence, lol. You guys know the deal by now. XD

Star Wars: Legends Era

United We Stand - SWTOR fanfic, baby! Basically, I’m just dying to see the eight classes cross over each other, and I will bend canon to do it. For anyone that’s played the original class story lines, there is some cross over but believe me when I say there were huge opportunities that were let drop by nature of the game. Just with the two Jedi stories alone... but that’s #spoilers for a not-as-old game so I’ll leave that be and only elaborate if asked.

(And do feel free to ask about any of these! I’d love to hash them out more.)

#writer ramble #rambles #ff7 #avengers #ff7/avengers #threads of fate #dewprism #star wars #pokemon #pokemon/ff7 #dbz #sailor moon #swtor

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gascon-en-exil · 4 years

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Joining the Game Late: S3E10 “Mhysa”

Synopsis

All hell breaks loose at the Twins. Sansa’s still not allowed to curse. Tywin takes the credit for the Red Wedding in the middle of a Lannister family breakdown. Old Nan taught Bran how to tell stories for maximum foreshadowing effect. Walder Frey and Roose Bolton twirl their mustaches while Roose’s son dines on some prime sausage that’s totally not what you think. Yara is so moved by the sight of her brother’s penis that she sets off to be a hero. Sam and Bran compare notes on their plotlines before parting. Davos takes a shine to Gendry and rescues him, only to escape punishment because Melisandre’s fire found the main plot. Arya takes her first vengeance, and Jon has a bad breakup with Ygritte. Shae’s still with Tyrion, but probably not for long. Jaime and Jon have significant homecomings under not so great circumstances, and the show remembers Dany exists just in time for her to crowd surf through her big white savior moment.

Commentary

Like the two previous season finales this one comes off feeling pretty cluttered, except this time even more so. As far as climaxes go the Red Wedding is a comparatively more localized event than the succession crisis and Ned’s execution or the Battle of the Blackwater, and on top of that this season covers only around half a book so its ending lacks much of a natural finality. There is some to be had, like in the sweeping away of the Starks, the two paralleled homecomings by Jaime and Jon, or Bran heading north of the Wall, but this is noticeably more of a midpoint than an ending. Some characters are just left dangling for later seasons, like Theon and his sister (you have no idea how hard it was for me to avoid a BDSM joke with the former...and I get the impression I’m going to have to keep resisting that impulse going forward), or Arya who at the moment seems like she’s going to spend each successive season roaming the countryside and learning how to kill more effectively. I’m not even sure what to make of Stannis being the only ruler to rally to the Night’s Watch call for aid; it really has more to do with what the Lord of Light actually is and wants (thanks, lore and history extras) than anything connected to Stannis’s character. As much as I’ve enjoyed the push and pull between what he wants and what Melisandre wants him to do his personal agency has notably diminished this season and I’m not sure I like it.

All this I’m getting out of the way now, because I need to talk about Daenerys - for longer than she appears in this episode, but for her this is more like a summation of her whole storyline thus far. It’s certainly been...something. For two seasons now GoT has been sort of coasting with Dany, padding her thin plotlines with new material in some places and stretching them out across multiple episodes in others. She’s not the only character given this kind of treatment *coughs*Theon*coughs*, but since she’s so geographically removed from the other events in the show the audience is likely to treat her story as a more distinct element. That’s not a good thing, because at this point it isn’t doing a good job of standing on its own. Season 2′s Qarth storyline wasn’t so bad; it had some good character moments for Dany and Jorah and was punctuated by a strong resolution. Season 3 started Dany off on a big note with her conquest of Astapor and acquisition of the Unsullied, but after that it spent something like five episodes waffling around outside of Yunkai and splitting up its climactic action sequence and this hour’s resolution, in which a crowd of former Yunkish slaves exalt Dany in near-worship for freeing them offscreen somehow because three guys invaded their city and opened it up to an army. Racial optics aside this ending has too many missing pieces leading up to it to feel entirely earned; had the whole Yunkai story been collapsed into two or three episodes at most and there been a stronger connection between the setup and the payoff (maybe, I don’t know, bring out that slaver again so he can be made to grovel and surrender and/or get roasted to death?). Nope, her special ops force backdoors the city and I guess all the slavers are dead now with no other casualties because that’s how sieges work.

The events of Yunkai do however give me the opportunity to talk some more about Daenerys’s motivations and how to fit her present actions into her dictatorial, war crime-laden future. Last season I praised the scene between Dany and Jorah where she admits that she can’t trust anyone (including him) and is able to back up that mistrust with multiple concrete examples. Dany remembers how her brother used and her and how the Dothraki turned on her, and she knows well that she has no allies in Westeros because the people over there are too busy killing each other to care that her roundly hated father still has one living child. It’s therefore not surprising to me that she builds up her follower base by liberating slaves; not only are they numerous and untapped as a political resource in her current surroundings, but Dany believes she can trust in their loyalty because they owe their lives and their freedom entirely to her. The former slaves of Yunkai call her “Mhysa” (”Mother”), drawing an immediate connection to her maternal bond with her dragons who are also unconditionally loyal if not exactly free-willed in the same sense as a free man who has never known slavery. She’s got those in her retinue as well, but they’re loyal to her out of either love/lust (Jorah and Daario along with his mercenary army) or fealty to her late father and disdain for the two men who sat on the Iron Throne after him (Barristan). This interpretation of her methodology may be cynical, but it aligns well with how we know she reacts to people who do not act sufficiently grateful in response to what she perceives to be her kindness (ex. the witch from Season 1) and also foreshadows her descent into Mad Queen-dom once in Westeros. I think there’s also a bookend here with Margaery’s charity work in Flea Bottom in the first episode of the season. Both women - and it is perhaps notable that they are women - are performing good works in service to the unfortunate and the downtrodden, but they’re doing so in a publicly visible way that endears them to the masses and increases their political clout. Daenerys the Breaker of Chains is just a more extreme version of Margaery currying the favor of the people of King’s Landing, and it’s a reminder that in the darkly political world they inhabit honor and compassion are as much tools as anything else.

#Game of Thrones #GoT

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metalgearkong · 5 years

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Avengers: Endgame - Review

5/6/19 **SPOILERS**

Directed by Joe & Anthony Russo (Marvel Studios/Disney)

The original Iron Man came out a year after I turned 18 and graduated high school. Effectively, the Marvel Cinematic Universe began as soon as I started my adult life, each film acting like 2 or 3 checkpoints every year, always giving me something to look forward to. While I haven’t loved or liked every movie so far, the MCU has been incredibly consistent, slowly increasing in quality on average as time goes on, not to mention having that sentimental factor of facing the world along side it. Scale has also increased in these films over time, seeing more and more team-up movies with larger and larger casts crammed on screen. Endgame is the biggest super hero movie of all time, and not just based on box office earnings, but based on fan expectations, concluding such an incredible saga.

The Russo brothers have been a godsend to the MCU, directing what are most of the top tier entries so far, including The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War, and now Endgame. While Infinity War was essentially Thanos’ story, Endgame shifts perspective back to the heroes, picking up the pieces and desperately trying to undo what Thanos accomplished. Endgame is sometimes overwhelming (in a good way), with several instances catching myself holding my breath. One of the best things about this film is the level of pay-off it gives for those who have followed the series since the beginning. While I don’t think I enjoyed it more than Infinity War, Endgame is certainly one of the biggest super hero movies of all time, but sometimes the logic of the story detracts from the emotion and memorable moments of the film.

The movie picks up 5 years after Thanos’ genocide. The remaining Avengers discover a possibility to use the quantum realm (Ant-Man’s shrinking machines) to go back in time and collect the infinity jewels before Thanos does. While this is a “time travel” movie, I like the explanation that Bruce Banner gives that you simply cannot just go back to an earlier time and change the current present; going back in time is like visiting an alternate dimension where what you do does affect that timeline, but yours when you go back continues as its been. This essentially takes care of the “grandfather paradox” of why you couldn’t just go to the past, kill Hitler, changing history for the better. You could tell the writers of this film anticipated question most theater-goers would ask, like “why not just go back and kill Thanos as a baby?” and things like that.

After being rescued from space by Captain Marvel, Tony Stark has officially retired from being an Avenger. He understandably has lost the battle, and resides to live his life with Pepper Potts and their 5 year old Morgan. Tony’s home life and dynamics with his daughter are some of my favorite moments in the movie, as it further humanizes Tony, and offers even more deconstruction of super heroes this series is known for. When the other Avengers think of a possible way to fix everything, I actively wanted them to leave Tony alone and let him have his earned life of peace, even if half the universe was killed off. But, being the guilty genius he is, he can’t fully let it go, and works with quantum tech to make a time machine for the heroes to use. Quickly, they develop a plan to split off and go to different teams and time periods, and retrieve the infinity jewels from their original known locations.

Seeing the current Avengers physically revisit famous scenes from prior movies was incredibly satisfying and felt like an appropriate use of fan service. Some of the best scenes of the entire movie are current heroes accidentally meeting up with themselves in the past, or accidentally coming across people they miss dearly. One of the scenes that come to mind are Steve Rogers meeting his younger self during the events of The Avengers (2012), and the ensuing duel. It instantly reminded me of playing a fighting game with your friend, but you’ve both picked the same character. It was one of the most and creative and clever moments of the movie. The other best time travel moment easily goes to Tony revisiting the 1940′s and having a hear to heart with his unwitting father, getting closure and a feeling for full circle his character didn’t even know he needed.

One one the complaints I do have about the story is that Thanos is no longer the same Thanos from Infinity War. When problems emerge during Nebula’s trip to the past, Thanos from that time period learns that someday he is successful in using the infinity jewels to wipe out half the universe. Through convoluted events, he is able to travel to the future (Endgame’s present) where he faces the Avengers head-on for trying to spoil his plans. This means the Thanos of this film (B) isn’t the same Thanos as in Infinity War (A), as he hasn’t done anything from those events yet, nor has any history with the heroes. Thanos B also seems to have a more malevolent and less complex attitude about using the infinity jewels, and comes off more as a typical bad guy, and less of a complex emotional psychopathic environmentalist, which is what made his character so interesting in the first place.

The other major issue I have with the film is its seemed to shoot itself in the foot with all the time travel multiverses. The movie feels like it breaks its own rules for the sake of the big emotional character scene at the very end. I’m of course referring to “Old Cap” and how he somehow went back to the past to live out his life with Peggy Carter, yet was able to show up back in Endgame’s timeline as an aged man to pass off his shield to Falcon. Once he went into the past, he, by this movie’s own rules, cannot appear back in the regular timeline because visiting the past is basically a parallel universe. What makes it doubly bad is that it’s not in Cap’s character to simply allow the world to go through the turmoil it did while standing aside through all of it. Don’t even get me started on how this would have affected Peggy’s life and the entire conception of SHIELD. If someone can explain to me how this was all possible, please do, otherwise, it felt like either a genuine mistake, or more likely, the movie bending its own rules for the sake of a payoff (which left me scratching my head and took the emotional impact completely out of the final scene of the movie).

However, I’m extremely happy with the rest of Captain America’s scenes. Aside from the scene mentioned earlier (Cap vs. Cap), his use of Thor’s hammer in the end battle was incredibly satisfying and cathartic. I’ve always felt that if anyone was “worthy” of being a good person and warrior, it was always Captain America. Why he could barely budge Thor’s hammer in Avengers: Age of Ultron is beyond me (unless he was faking it to protect Thor’s feelings). Hell, if Vision could lift the hammer, why couldn’t Cap before now? Cap also gets a lot more time on screen in general, which was nice after barely having any lines or presence in Infinity War. Hawkeye, Black Widow, and other side characters also get their best moments of the entire series combined, and it was nice to see the regular people among the Avengers still have emotionally and plot poignant scenes as good as the super heroes.

Thor’s story arch could be seen as criticisms of the film as well. While the universe in its throws of coping with half of all life disintegrated, and how that would affect hugely every aspect of life, Thor meanwhile settles for comically getting fat and doing absolutely nothing. While I still found Thor in-character and funny in this film, upon further speculation, I really wish Thor continued the high he rode after passing what was his darkest chapter in Infinity War. I thought Thor finally settled into his own, and was confused why he regressed into a gag, even if I found it humorous at first. But, I was thankful certain other characters didn’t steal the limelight, especially Captain Marvel. I still find her way too powerful and her personality wildly unlikable and inconsistent. I tried to defend her character in her own movie back in March, but seeing Brie Larson once again strutting her ego made it impossible to root for a supposed underdog. One of my greatest fears of Endgame is she’d use her power to steal the show, and overshadow the legacy of the original characters in their fight against Thanos.

Summing up every great scene or character moment in this review is impossible, and they certainly outnumber the scenes or concepts I disliked. Almost every character gets some resolution or moment in the spotlight by the end of the movie. The final words of Tony Stark, “I am Iron Man,” was a triumphant moment as it capped off the entire series so far, further establishing Tony Stark as the heart and soul of the MCU. While Tony has never been my favorite Avenger, Endgame pays huge respects to him and his accomplishments, and I was a bigger fan of him than I ever was before. Its too bad that the plot raises so many questions in my mind, especially related to time travel and alternate dimensions. Endgame has too many conveniences for the sake of a big bombastic super hero climax, and I wish some of the logical issues with the plot or characters could have been executed differently. If you have any affinity for this series, you owe it to yourself to see Endgame, and while it has many moments of pay-off and awe, it isn’t the series’ most airtight film.

8/10

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stringnarratives · 5 years

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Making a Critical Hit: “Critical Role”

[This post brought to you with major spoilers for campaigns 1 and 2 of Critical Role. Editing and research help for this post by Brady Wallace and John Masserini. ]

“When the livestream begins every Thursday evening, not even many-voiced dungeon master Matthew Mercer (who you may recognize as the voice of Overwatch's McCree, for one) knows precisely where the adventure will go, or if everyone will survive.”

Tyler Wilde, “Permadeath and D&D: The pain of losing a character, and why it can be great”

Nearly every Thursday night since March of 2015, fans of Critical Role have logged onto Twitch to watch the show that bills itself as “a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons.” The show’s first campaign, narrated and run by Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer, followed the adventures of a ragtag (if deeply emotionally damaged) group of misfits calling themselves Vox Machina - played by voice actors Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham - as they defended the mythical realm of Tal’Dorei. For two years, fans watched as the party defeated dragons, traversed other planes and trash whole cities as they thwart evil, and were eager to kick off the second campaign, following The Mighty Nein, in January of 2018.

To say the show has evolved since it first aired four years ago would be, frankly, understating matters entirely.

What started off as a tabletop role playing game among friends in LA became a featured show on Geek and Sundry’s multimedia lineup, which in turn became its own studio with Critical Role spin-off shows, parallel programming, and a record-breaking $11.38 million Kickstarter campaign for its own animated series. The Critical Role Youtube channel has, at the time of writing, amassed 37.6 million views on its videos since it launched in May of 2018 and the Twitch channel has more than 277,000 followers.

But as the community has grown, as the studio introduces more and more exciting projects, and the hype continues to build, two things keep viewers coming back week after week: The compelling story and the people who create it, both of which contribute to Critical Role being an occurrence of “live” narrative that exists in few other contexts.

It is, quite literally, unpredictable.

The show is purposefully unscripted other than DM Matt Mercer’s world-building and overarching plot, though even these things may change depending on character reactions, which are primarily reliant on character personalities and improvised player decisions. A character is totally within their rights to jump off a cliff and plummet to their doom if they so decide (and they have before), though they all -- to our knowledge and the knowledge of the other players, at least -- have the singular goal of pushing forward with whatever adventure they have been tasked.

As players have little foresight into what will happen, this means that character action is very frequently reaction. Details in the world which might be informative could go wholly unnoticed by characters, and just because a path exists doesn’t mean the players will take it. At the beginning of Campaign 2, Fjord (played by Travis Willingham) is on his way to study at the Soltryce Academy to further his magical learning when he encounters the other party members for the first time. However, after a kidnapping, a death and plenty of other wild occurrences, by episode 30, he indicates that he has changed his mind and has decided not to find the school. The character motivation changes in reaction to in-game events and, while potentially not unexpected for the audience, this decision snips otherwise yet-to-be-fulfilled ends of the storyline. In a memorable example from the 30th episode of Campaign 1, Scanlan Shorthalt (played by Sam Riegel), improvises a plan to break into a mansion by polymorphing into a triceratops and bursting through the roof.

All of that to say, Mercer as the DM ultimately has more knowledge about what could happen than what will happen, but is reliant on the actions and reactions of the characters to carry it out.

Not only is there an element of structured improvisation that makes the show unpredictable to the viewer, but the reliance of tabletop gaming on dice rolls to further plot and determine character outcomes can make for quite a surprise. As 20-sided dice rolls modified by character statistics are the primary basis for many actions in Dungeons and Dragons, there is often very little indication ahead of time what dice rolls will be fortunate and which ones will not be.

This is where math comes in. In an odd and cyclical coincidence, one of the most clear mathematical and scientific explanations I’ve found for this actually comes from an article from the National Center for Biotechnology Information database, which, at the end, credits Critical Role for introducing the author to the concept of rolling a D20 with advantage. In “Multiple statistical tests: Lessons from a d20,″ Christopher R. Madan breaks down the likelihood of achieving any number on a 20-sided dice (with a nice chart for my fellow visual learners).

“In the current (fifth) edition of Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop game, many in-game events are determined based on the outcome of a d20. However, to make some events more likely, there are times when players roll a d20 ‘with advantage’, meaning that they roll the d20 twice and take the greater value... For d = 20, i.e., a 20-sided die, the probability of obtaining any specific outcome is 120 or .05. If n = 2 dice are rolled, the probability of obtaining at least one 20 is 39400 or .0975. If n = 10 dice are rolled, the probability of obtaining at least one 20 is ≈ .4013. With n = 20 dice, this increases further to ≈ .6415.”

Any player has a 5% chance of rolling any given number on a fair, 20-sided die. (You can do the math on Critical Role’s rolls here and here, thanks to CritRoleStats.) The result of fight scenes (death, near-death, injury) are reliant on these dice rolls, making scripting these major narrative events impossible. Perhaps the most notable recent example of a plot-bending dice roll occurs in the notorious 26th episode of Campaign 2, in which Mollymauk Tealeaf (played by Taliesin Jaffe) knocks himself unconscious after attempting to cast a blood curse on an enemy, who - unaffected - then kills him.

In a PC Gamer article “Permadeath and D&D: The pain of losing a character, and why it can be great,” Tyler Wilde discusses Mollymauk’s death in the same terms of unpredictability versus other forms of narrative media:

“A scripted show would probably not have casually rolled Jaffe's character, a carnival performer named Mollymauk and a favorite subject of cosplayers and fan artists, into a shallow grave just 26 episodes in. And neither would that show include a scene in which the actor is told they've been written off.“

This death being permanent (at least up until the time of writing) created an echo of trauma throughout the party, changing attitudes and realigning intentions in surviving members, from Yasha (played by Ashley Johnson) fleeing out of grief to others seeking revenge on Lorenzo (played by Mercer), the villain in question.

And while both Campaigns of Critical Role take place in a setting where magic has the power to resurrect the dead, this too may have - and frequently does have - some sort of balancing cost. In the 44th episode of Campaign 1, Vex'ahlia (played by Laura Bailey) is killed in an attempt to recover a legendary set of armor from an underwater tomb. With the help of others in the party, her twin brother Vax'ildan (played by Liam O’Brien) manages to revive her, but only after pledging himself to be a Champion of the Raven Queen, a goddess of death. This, in turn, adds a new level of complication and motivation to Vax’s character, which is reflected through the rest of the campaign.

For roughly three and a half hours most weeks (not including breaks), fans of the show are at the mercy of statistical, individual and emotional variance, and have been since 2015. The campaign-based continuity of Critical Role doesn’t have the breaks common in the “season” of other broadcast series media, running year-round with the exception of major American holidays and the occasional rest week. Campaign 1 had 115 episodes in its main continuum airing from 2015-2017 (although the game had gone on for longer than that before broadcasting) and Campaign 2 has racked up 63 episodes at the time of writing since it started in January of 2018.

On one hand, having a non-traditional “season” format gives Critical Role a lot more temporal wiggle room for building out the narrative and a resulting viewer connection. A show lasting 3.5 hours on average and airing 35 episodes a year for 3 years adds up to about 367.5 hours (or 15 days) of narrative content over those 3 years alone. According to a CritRoleStats count featured in the latest episode of Critical Role commentary show Talks Machina, the show and its one-shot episodes have aired for more than 800 hours total. For comparison, Bingeclock.com estimates that it would take around 3 days to watch all 8 seasons of “Game of Thrones”, 5 days and 1 hour to watch all 10 seasons of Friends, and 18 days to watch all 31 seasons of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. Having such long episodes and long campaigns not only allows for Mercer and the cast to delve deeper into the details of the world and inner workings of each character. As the players’ perspectives and style change in real life, so do the characters themselves and how the audience relates to each in the context of the the overarching narrative. What results is a feeling that the viewer too has been on a journey full of unexpected twists and turns.

On a more minute level (no pun intended), the timing of the game may also contribute to the emotional highs and lows of each episode. While rounds of combat may each last 6 seconds in the world of the game, an involved battle may take more than an hour of play time and particularly tense skirmishes can see audience pressure rise until the last enemy has fallen. Tension is, especially during combat-heavy episodes, unavoidable, but there is some promise that if the heroes make it through, we’ll all be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

From the unpredictability of dice-rolls to the long-term evolution of characters and plot, Critical Role exemplifies the unique draw of live broadcast tabletop gaming: A well-woven narrative with simply too many variables to be truly scripted. From the time that the camera begins to roll to the last seconds of each episode, neither the players nor the audience can predict the twists and turns the characters will encounter. Every skirmish may be someone’s last. Every decision may put our heroes on a new path. And as the story unfolds week by week, all any of us can do is wait patiently for the next Thursday to roll around.

#critical role #CR #titles #title #non traditional

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Metroid Timeline Explained: What You Need to Know Before Playing Metroid Dread

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

In addition to being one of the most underserved first-party Nintendo franchises, Metroid is also one of the few Nintendo franchises to have a strong, consistent, and cohesive narrative canon. The adventures of intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran are actually connected and impact one another in ways that you just don’t see in even Nintendo’s most celebrated series.

You’d be forgiven for not knowing all of that, though. After all, by the time Metroid Dread launches for Nintendo Switch on October 8, it will have been a staggering 19 years since Samus was asked to save the galaxy in 2002’s Metroid Fusion. Don’t know where the Metroid timeline begins and ends? You’ve come to the right place.

In this article we’ll break down every mainline Metroid installment in chronological order, covering their basic plot elements and explaining in detail how each game leads into the next. So in case you haven’t had the chance to experience this entire series for yourself (or if you just need a refresher), this is the Metroid timeline so far…

Metroid/Metroid: Zero Mission

The Metroid story begins with Samus Aran touching down on the atmospheric planet Zebes in the year 205X. Sent there by the Galactic Federation after several other failed attempts, her mission is to help prevent an evil faction of “Space Pirates” from creating dangerous biological weapons by harnessing the unique energy of Metroids: an alien species with origins dating back thousands of years (more on that later).

As the enemy’s chief stronghold, Samus is forced to traverse through Zebes’ many maze-like passageways and structures as she gains new skills, power-ups, and suit upgrades along the way. Areas such as Brinstar, Norfair, and Tourian slowly open up to her until she must eventually fend off two of the most dangerous Space Pirate commanders: Kraid and Ridley. With them out of the way, Samus faces up against their leader, Mother Brain: a mysterious mixture of both a real brain and artificial intelligence.

Defeating Mother Brain in her final form sets off Planet Zebes’ explosive self-destruct sequence. Cut to Samus racing back through debris and back to the surface in an attempt to escape. She makes it back to her gunship, where, in the original 1986 version of Metroid, she flies off after seemingly foiling the Space Pirates’ plans. However, the story continues in 2004’s Zero Mission for Game Boy Advance (an expanded remake of the original game) where Samus is unceremoniously shot down before crashing onto another part of Zebes.

With her power suit now destroyed and only a simple blaster in hand, Samus must take a stealthier approach in her “Zero” suit guise while exploring the nearby Space Pirate mothership in search of a way off-world. Eventually, she stumbles onto temple ruins belonging to an ancient race of aliens called the Chozo. There, while exploring what’s left of Chozodia, Samus uncovers a more robust power suit and learns that she was actually raised here as a child. Soon after, she encounters a mech version of Ridley. A few missile shots later she leaves the Mother Ship to blow up, finally fleeing Zebes using an available escape shuttle and destroying the Space Pirates’ Metroid research in the process.

The Metroid Prime Trilogy, Metroid Prime: Hunters, and Metroid Prime: Federation Force

The events depicted in the Metroid Prime trilogy are mostly inconsequential to that of the main series and exist in a kind of parallel but different timeline from the “Metroid” storyline. Even still, here’s a brief explainer:

Taking place between the original Metroid and Metroid II: Return of Samus, all three Prime games center on the exploits of a substance called Phazon, and Samus’ interactions with it as she does battle with a mutated version of the titular menace (the Metroid Prime). She eventually finds and defeats that menace following her exploration of the planet Talon VI, but the Metroid Prime managed to survive the battle. Harnessing DNA gathered from Samus’ Suit, the Metroid Prime uses that information to transform into Dark Samus: a mirror version of the famed bounty hunter herself.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes picks up from there as Samus searches in the Dasha region of space for a troupe of missing Galactic Federation Marines. This leads her to the planet Aether, which happens to be home to an infected dark substance called Phazon. We eventually learn that both Dark Samus and the Space Pirates are mining the planet for that resource and that the marines Samus was originally sent to save actually died long before she got there. All that’s left to do is repel the Space Pirates and stop them from using Phazon to experiment on a Metroid type native to Talon IV. She does just that by teaming up with the natives to collapse the quickly emerging ‘Dark Aether’ alternate dimension.

Fast forward to the events of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The Galactic Federation has started weaponizing Phazon to the point that the element’s effects are infused into Samus by way of her new PED (Phazon Enhancement Device) suit. The one drawback, though, is that Samus will continue to be corrupted the longer she wears it. In the end, Phazon’s origin is revealed to be a sentient planet known as Phaaze. Little does Samus know that this is also where her Dark counterpart and a sect of Space Pirates are holed up, intending to spread its infection to three innocent Federation worlds. Luckily, this outcome is avoided when Samus travels to Phaaze’s core and causes it to explode. Mission accomplished… at least until Metroid Prime 4 arrives.

Metroid Prime: Hunters and Metroid Prime: Federation Force also (obviously) exist within the Metroid Prime timeline with Hunters occurring between Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2 and Federation Force taking place after Metroid Prime 3. Ultimately, though, both tell largely standalone stories that touch upon previous games but are wrapped up pretty cleanly within those adventures.

In case, you’re wondering, though, Hunters deals with six rival bounty hunters trying to secure an “ultimate power” and ultimately doing battle with a creature known as Gorea, while Federation Force tells the story of a group of Galactic Federation-created mechs trying to eradicate the remaining Space Pirates.

Metroid II: Return of Samus/Metroid Samus Returns

Following her battle with the Space Pirates back on Zebes, Metroid II sees Samus venture to the Metroid homeworld of SR388 to fight the dangerous creatures in their home turf. Her goal this time around is to commit genocide, scrubbing the planet of all Metroids so their power can never be used to threaten the wider worlds in the galaxy. Beginning on the planet’s surface before exploring deeper underground, Samus encounters her targets at various stages of their parasitic evolution, ranging from familiar blobs to more lizard-like threats. It seems that the Federation’s fears weren’t unfounded.

Samus blasts her way through about 50 different Metroid threats, all of which eventually lead her to destroy the Queen Metroid. It’s only afterward that Samus notices a Metroid egg begin to hatch. Not knowing where else to look or go, the baby Metroid chooses Samus as its mother. She then decides to spare this innocent version of the creatures she was tasked to destroy, fleeing what remains of SR388 after a long battle with Meta-Ridley.

That’s about where the original Game Boy version of Metroid II ended, but the 2017 remake (Samus Returns) for Nintendo 3DS offers a slightly expanded ending. In a post-credits scene, a humble Hornoad is found gnawing away on Ridley’s remains before a virus known as the X Parasite swoops in and infects it (a hint at what was to come in Metroid Fusion). Reach 100% completion in Samus Returns and it’s also revealed via unlocks that SR388 was actually home to a sect of Chozo who created the Metroids before having to vacate the planet when the X Parasite threat grew too strong.

Super Metroid

The legendary Super Metroid begins with Samus bringing the last baby Metroid to the space colony of Ceres for study and testing. She attempts to leave before almost immediately being beckoned back by a distress call, where she finds all the scientists dead and the little Metroid larva stolen. Turns out that the Space Pirates hold a grudge. Samus learns that Ridley is to blame for the massacre and that he has taken the last Metroid back to its base on Zebes: the planet where Samus first learned of the Metroid race’s existence in the first game.

After following Ridley back to Zebes and touching down on familiar ground, Samus yet again battles the Space Pirates who are starting to rebuild Mother Brain. This time she’s forced to battle four mid-tier bosses instead of two, as she finds that areas such as Norfair and Tourian have been rebuilt to be more vigorous and enemy-filled than ever before. Super Metroid culminates in Samus doing battle with a giant-sized Metroid, which almost takes her out until it suddenly stops attacking. It turns out the Metroid boss is none other than the little larva that was stolen during the game’s opening.

Shortly after, Samus must go toe-to-toe with a bigger, badder incarnation of Mother Brain. A rigorous battle follows until she is eventually saved by the now not-so-baby Metroid, which sadly falls victim to the hybrid AI’s destruction. This valiant sacrifice wasn’t in vain, however, as its death grants Samus access to the Hyper Beam. This enables her to kill Mother Brain and then flee the cursed planet of Zebes for good.

Metroid Fusion

2002’s Metroid Fusion picks up right where Super Metroid left off, with Samus returning to SR388 to obtain the last traces of Metroids with an accompanying survey crew. Unfortunately, as teased at the end of Samus Returns, she’s quickly attacked by the X Parasite and rendered out for the count. After being brought back to the Galactic Federation, Samus learns that her central nervous system has been infected by the deadly virus. Cells from the baby Metroid she once attempted to rescue are used to try and stave off the damage. The process works, and imbues her with all the Metroids’ strengths, but it also makes her weak to cold and changes her DNA.

Seeking more answers, Samus tracks the X Parasite to the Biologic Space Laboratories (BSL) research station situated above SR388. Her new mission is to rescue any remaining survivors and eradicate the X Parasite for good. However, she soon runs into a new threat known as the SA-X: a version of the parasite able to imitate her human form. Samus encounters the SA-X numerous times while exploring, and the powerful foe keeps Samus on her backfoot and forces her to act defensively.

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With help from her former CO-turned-AI companion, Adam, Samus learns that the BSL station is actually a front for another attempt to clone Metroids (this time by the Galactic Federation). Adam then instructs Samus to bring back the SA-X to them alive, intending to use it as a kind of living weapon that is free of human flaws. However, Samus goes directly against those orders and sets the BSL Station on a collision course to crash into planet SR388 below, hopefully killing all remnants of the Metroids and X Parasites in the process. Did it work? That’s one of the lingering questions Metroid Dread will hopefully answer…

What About Metroid: Other M?

Long-time Metroid fans may be wondering about 2010’s controversial Metroid: Other M and where it fits within the series’ timeline. Well…it’s complicated.

Technically, Metroid Other: M occurs between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion and draws more heavily from the “Metroid” storyline than the “Prime” storyline. While that would seemingly make it part of the storyline that Dread intends to conclude, it’s worth noting that Nintendo did not list Other M as part of that storyline during their marketing blitz for Dread. In fact, they seemed to have intentionally left it off this key infographic:

Such as it is, Other M seems to exist in a weird in-between space. Nintendo hasn’t officially removed it from the canon, but they’re also clearly not drawing from it. At the very least, we can tell you that it doesn’t seem like you’ll need to play Other M to get the full Dread experience.

The Complete Metroid Timeline in Chronological Order

Finally, here’s a breakdown of the Metroid franchise timeline that combines the Prime and Metroid storylines and places them in chronological order:

Metroid/Metroid: Zero Mission

Metroid Prime/Metroid Prime Pinball

Metroid Prime Hunters

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

Metroid Prime: Federation Force

Metroid II: Return of Samus/Metroid: Samus Returns

Super Metroid

Metroid: Other M

Metroid Fusion

Metroid Dread

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