#zanza the divine | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

h-worksrambles · 2 years

Text

What your favourite Xeno series game says about you

Xenogears: The elder statespeople of the fandom, you’ve been around since the franchise’s inception. You first played Xenogears as an impressionable teen in the 90′s and thought it was the greatest story you’d ever experienced despite not knowing what in god’s name was going on for most of the runtime (I’ll bet Evangelion is favourite anime too, huh?). Now that you’re an adult with the frame of reference and critical analysis skills to find the substance behind all the weirdness, you love it even more. Disc Two was really not that bad, guys. Part of you wants a remake, but you’re also terrified of how it could get screwed up. You have a visceral hatred of modern day Square-Enix.

Xenosaga Episode One: As far as you’re concerned, the writing took a step down since Soraya Saga stopped being involved in the series. You’ve dug deep into the behind the scenes history of the franchise and so you know that this was the entry in the trilogy that Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga had the most input on. As such, this game represents to you more than anything what Xenosaga could have been. You have likely read Perfect Works cover to cover multiple times and have written novel length fanfics in your head about what sort of things would have happened in the full six-part story. You’re always very meticulous about checking your email. Xenosaga Episode Two: You tend to avoid internet discourse because you’re so tired of people in the fandom dunking on your fave. You like the battle system more than Episode One because at least the attack animations aren’t thirty seconds long this time. You never fail to remind Xenoblade players that this game did the break system first. THE SECOND MILTIA THEME SLAPS, YOU TROGLODYTES! Jr. is probably your favourite party member and you loved watching him take centre stage and digging into his backstory. You maintain that Albedo is the greatest villain in this entire franchise and you’re probably right. Xenosaga Episode Three: You know this trilogy was cut short, but you were still super impressed with how well this game wrapped it up. You maintain that Yuki Kajiura deserves to be brought up more when discussing the franchise’s music. Godsibb is straight up a better version of Zanza the Divine and you will die on that hill. You either love Shion or absolutely despise her, there’s no middle ground here. But those of you split on Shion can put your differences aside to give a much deserved ‘screw you’ to Kevin Winnicott. You will probably keel over in joy if KOS-MOS gets into Smash, so you make do with sobbbing into your copy of Project X Zone. Xenoblade Chronicles: The zoomer equivalent to the Xenogears fans. Whether you were around for Operation Rainfall, or hopped on later, this was your first Xeno game, and while you certainly like or even love the rest of the series, none of them quite hit for you like this does. The sense of scope never fails to impress you, even on replays and you can’t help but spin the camera all around as you play. You appreciate the ways the sequels have built on this game, but think this entry’s gameplay is still a blast. You still find using the vision system to turn the tables on a tough fight super satisfying. You love the world and story of this game and frequently watch streams or reactions because you can’t get enough of people losing their minds over the plot twists. People assume that you think Melia is best girl but you laugh because you know the greatness of the Heropon transcends all petty waifu or husbando wars. You’re also probably the most meme-y sector on the fandom and have binge watched Theaggyu’s videos god knows how many times. Xenoblade Chronicles X: switchportswitchportswitchportswitchport.... You are one of the poor saps who still owns a Wii U in 2022, and given how the Switch has pretty much lifted its library whole sale, this game is probably the sole reason why at this point. Well that and the eShop. It kills you that this game so rarely comes up alongside the likes of Breath of the Wild or Witcher 3 in discussions of the best open worlds in video games. You’re something of a power gamer and you love to push the class system to its absolute limit to decimate bosses. You watch 1 minute solo videos of Telethia the Endbringer and have to resist the urge to drool. Truthfully, you don’t really try to defend the story from its criticism by the rest of the fans, because the writing in the side quests is where it’s at! You have an instant violent reaction to potatoes. You feel for the Xenosaga fans but you also kind of resent them because at least they got two sequels to their unfinished story. Xenoblade Chronicles 2: The Xeno series has ALWAYS BEEN ANIME so SHUT UP! Unlike the X fans who have just been kind of doing their thing in the corner, you’ve been caught in the crossfire of the 1 vs 2 wars for a while now and you’re frankly sick of it. This is your favourite combat of the series by far, and you have put a shedload of time into the DLC challenges. You adore the characters and wish people didn’t get so hung up on some of the goofier designs. When one of your friends tries the game for the first tile, you always send them Chuggaaconroy’s guide video. Still, for all the fandom debacle, one thing you share with the Xenoblade 1 fans is your love of memes. You might even say you...don’t forget them. When Pyra and Mythra came to Smash, you were there in the battlegrounds of Twitter to maintain that they were a great addition. You can never watch the ending without crying. The most likely fans to read/write fanfiction. Torna the Golden Country: You may not have entirely loved Xenoblade 2, or at least had some major gripes with it. But this prequel fixed pretty much any issue you have with that game while retaining what you liked. You’ve always felt the past Xeno games were kind of bloated and love that this can give you a substantial experience in 20 hours, instead of having to wait 20 hours for the game to fully open up for you. When people say X or 2 have the best combat, you laugh in Vanguard Switching. Lora is a treasure and did nothing wrong in her whole life. Jin and Mythra are some of the best characters in the series and so help you, you will call down Siren on whoever says otherwise. Whenever you hear the word ‘community’, you freeze up on the spot. I said that 2 fans always cry at the ending, but honestly this ending reduces you fits of sobbing that put them to shame. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: You need to let me into your house and use your time machine RIGHT NOW.

#xenogears #xenosaga #xenoblade chronicles #xenoblade x #xenoblade 2 #xenoblade 3 #xeno series

218 notes · View notes

jewishgir · 5 months

Note

my biggest issue with the X ost is the flight theme is great but it doesnt fucking loop :(

ugh the flight theme... yeah let's actually go ahead and outline the problems with the soundtrack because it's driving me crazy:

the way the main battle theme has lyrics that go "hello? is this thing on? am I all alone? is anyone there? I need a bigger gun. help if you can. please wake me up. not to sound cliche, but this world SUCKS" this is fine actually. leave it it's hilarious.

the mixing is dire. most of the time you can ignore it but in scenes (and these tend to be important, emotional scenes) where the background music has vocals, you can barely hear what the characters are saying. in battle, if the music has vocals you can barely hear the voice lines.

the boss theme No.Ex01 (my personal favorite in the game) rivals Godsibb and Zanza the Divine but it doesn't play until Chapter 7, like 40 hours into the game, and as stated above, the mixing is a problem.

in the endgame and for superbosses, the only song you're every going to hear in battle is Wir Fliegen. this includes battles where No.Ex01 plays. tbh I tend to avoid using overdrive at all in major boss battles so the music won't stop.

the fucking flight theme... whether or not it's actually an okay song is lost on my because every time I press R2 it starts over. you can't even just jump in your Skell anymore once you get the flight module. okay, maybe this is a problem with the controls and not the soundtrack, but the theme still shouldn't start over ever single time you land. also most of the time you're not in the air without combat long enough for even thirty seconds of the song to play, so it makes the fact that it's starting over every single time you take flight even more maddening. best part of playing the game in Cemu? you can turn the flight theme off.

when it comes to songs with German lyrics, the vocal performance is as great and dramatic and hammy as it needs to be, but the English vocals leave something to be desired. I'm not saying the singing isn't good - it is. I'm saying that it doesn't carry the game like themes like Small Two of Pieces or Beyond the Sky did.

the city themes. this is actually probably the main problem and the primary reason the soundtrack got the criticism it did. compared to the rest of the soundtrack, the city themes sound like absolute ass. they sound like public domain songs. they sound LAZY. don't think they sound all that bad? they play the entire time you're in the city. when you're exploring the area. when you're picking up missions. when you're talking to NPCs. when you're equipping your characters. when you're equipping your Skell. when you're buying stuff. when you're selling your loot (which takes a long time).

it's such a shame these problems overshadow the music in the game, and that the music's reputation precedes it, because 95% of the music is absolutely fucking fantastic.

#xenoblade #xenoblade chronicles x #xcx #shiv.txt

10 notes · View notes

eaglefairy · 2 months

Text

I have no liveblog to offer this weekend, so instead please take 2000 words of Meyneth analysis because I have opinions and I'm no longer afraid to share them. Summary: According to the canon of xenoblade 1, Meyneth is either an existentially less powerful god than Zanza, or her stated morals are in direct conflict with the actions she takes within the plot of the game. I walk through the reasons the former is at most implied by the game while being contradicted by the game's events and lore and what about Meyneth's characterization points towards the latter explanation. Huge thanks to @likestoimagine16 for chatting with me about this and looking this over before I posted it, it was super fun!

(Before we begin, a note: all of the following analysis is based solely on the canon of Xenoblade 1. I will not be incorporating any potentially relevant information from 2, Future Connected, or Future Redeemed. Anything from after the first game is just not true to who Meyneth is or to the characterizations of the people surrounding her in 1.)

Introduction For all of her stated importance in-game as the Mechonis's soul, Meyneth really does not do a lot during the game. The sum total of her actions are as follows:

Speaks to Zanza at Prison Island, begging him to cease their war and let the living be at peace

Saves the party from Egil at Galahad Fortress

Briefly acts from within Fiora to guard the party from Gadolt after his boss fight, but does not speak

Reveals herself properly for the first time in Agniratha and exposits the history of the Machina to the party

Saves the party from the explosion and holds them in the air long enough for Miqol to catch them

Battles Zanza at Mechonis Core and dies

At first glance, this doesn't seem too terrible. Zanza also doesn't actively do a ton over the course of the game; in fact, he probably does fewer discrete actions as himself than Meyneth does. There is one big difference between them, though: Zanza is inactive because he has a plan. He's controlling the narrative via the passage of fate, making him extremely active even if the party and player don't know he's there. Meyneth, on the other hand, is almost entirely reactive to what Zanza is doing and gives us no indication that she has any sort of plan to fight him. The most she does directly as a means of fighting him is ask to talk to him at Prison Island (which Zanza immediately rebuffs) and then debate him on philosophy before dying at Mechonis Core.

Option 1: Weaker God I can see two potential explanations for this inaction. Option one: she’s just less powerful than him, and so any attempt by her to fight him is immediately doomed to fail. There are some things in-game that support this. Most strikingly to me, she and Alvis never directly interact. For a while I was concerned that they never directly acknowledge each other’s existence at all, leaving open the possibility that Meyneth doesn’t know Alvis exists*. Alvis does have a single line of thought immediately pre-Mechonis Core where he acknowledges that it’s Meyneth residing within Fiora. However, Meyneth herself never acknowledges Alvis. If only Zanza has direct access to Alvis’s power in Providence, that would in fact make Meyneth significantly less powerful and extremely disadvantaged against him.

*To be clear, I don’t actually think this is the case. Based on everything else in the game, it would be absurd if Meyneth didn’t know about Alvis. Where else could she possibly get her divine power from? However, I do think it’s notable that the writers didn’t consider it necessary or narratively valuable to show Alvis and Meyneth interacting as an overall indicator of her status in the narrative, so I’m pointing it out here.

However, very little else in the game supports this. Both Zanza and Meyneth have titan bodies, they seem to be about evenly matched within those bodies given that the battle at the beginning of the game ended in a standstill draw and not Zanza winning right then and there, and both Zanza and Meyneth seem to have created successful civilizations of people on their titan bodies.

If anything, Meyneth might have been “better” at it, as the Machina worship her directly while neither the Homs nor the High Entia know of Zanza. The Homs do hold the Monado in reverence as the fabled sword of the Bionis that can cut through Mechon and they have their funerary rites centered on the Bionis, but neither of those require a direct knowledge of Zanza of the kind we see the Machina have of Meyneth. The High Entia I find even more interesting; while it would make sense for them to have intentionally erased the cultural knowledge of Zanza after the first battle of the titans when they sealed Arglas and the Monado away, there’s no evidence of that cultural knowledge ever existing, considering there are multiple side quests concerning High Entian history and not a hint of Zanza’s presence as an object of worship. (Would the Valak Mountain War God count as an aspect of Zanza in this sense? Interesting idea to think about…)

Additionally, Zanza says “Now that I have both Monados, I should be at one with the passage of fate,” during one of the cutscenes before the final boss fight. That implies that Meyneth’s presence in this world as the bearer of a Monado interfered with his control over the passage of fate (which is corroborated by Shulk interfering with Zanza’s sight during the final battle). That in turn suggests that Meyneth had some amount of power over fate as a god, if we believe control over fate to be something that can be divided as Zanza alludes to in his dialogue. All of this leads me to believe that if Meyneth is a weaker god than Zanza, it doesn’t affect any of her actions in the backstory or during the events of the game.

Option 2: Weaker Writing That leaves the other option: a writing flaw in which Meyneth’s stated character does not align with her actions and morals within the game. We’ve been through her actions, but what are her stated morals? She believes in the right of life to self-determination. She sees Zanza’s actions specifically as directly in conflict with said stated right, and potentially the existence of gods as a whole. Most of all, she believes in peace to the exclusion of things such as revenge or justice. She (and the other Machina) want Egil to give up his plan of revenge and live in peace with them to heal from what Zanza has done. When she’s speaking to Zanza telepathically on Prison Island, she asks him how many more he’ll kill and then tells him she’s there to talk. Even when they’re battling in Mechonis Core, Meyneth is more focused on arguing against his philosophy and telling him that gods should not interfere with the lives of their people.

This is the heart of the problem. Meyneth is portrayed as an unconditionally good character, Zanza’s rival in every way who wants mortal lives to be lived in peace, not under the tyranny of gods. However, her actions and apparent values within the game make her near criminally passive against a god who fundamentally does not care about any of that. Zanza creates and destroys all life in order to sustain his own existence (and I have to assume also Meyneth’s? If she’s figured out the secret to divine immortality and hasn’t shared it with Zanza to make him stop that just makes her even worse, so…). Narrative choices are narrative choices, but that Meyneth would still be at the “I can fix him” stage after who knows how many cycles of this is a narrative choice that strains my disbelief.

Characters choosing to adhere to their morals even when it puts them at a disadvantage against their enemies is not a bad thing; however, having her hold to pacificism to this extent just makes her seem selfish and callous. It is simply incompatible with her stated goal of opposing Zanza when Zanza’s actions are so extreme. And to be clear, her choice to continue to try and talk Zanza down wouldn’t be so bad if the narrative didn’t absolutely stonewall her for it. It’s very clear that Zanza is not open to negotiation, and Shulk doesn’t win by convincing him that living beings have inherent value outside of the resource they are to him. It just makes Meyneth look silly to keep trying to talk the genocidal maniac down from doing genocide.

Objections Before I conclude, I want to take a moment to address some objections I could see to what I’ve laid out here so far. First, as far as her actions go, Meyneth does have Vanea place her into Fiora with the stated intent to get closer to Shulk, but it’s still unclear what the end goal was there. Was it to counterbalance Zanza’s influence on Shulk as the wielder of the Monado? If so, Meyneth does remarkably little towards that goal. The party isn’t ascending the Mechonis because of anything Meyneth said to them, they’re going up to fight Egil. They don’t even know Meyneth is there until Agniratha, and the exposition there is mostly delivered by hologram. Meyneth never directly interacts with Shulk about anything, let alone the cycle of war, which I feel is the bare minimum action if her goal is to erode Zanza’s influence on Shulk.

Notably, there are some suggestions in-game that imply peace with Zanza could be possible. While I wouldn’t believe Zanza’s definition of “friendship” that he says he longed for at the end of the game to be reliable or at all similar to what friendship actually is, Alvis does repeat that Zanza wanted friendship and I’m much more inclined to take him at his word. After the final battle, Alvis says that Zanza’s future and the desires of the party (and by extension Meyneth) could have coexisted, “but that time has passed”. However, the game doesn’t indicate exactly when the time passed; the timing certainly implies that it was Zanza’s death that ended the possibility, but there’s no reason it couldn’t have been earlier.

In addition, we’re given no indication of how likely that event was. Given that nothing else in the game supports Zanza’s world being compatible with the freedom of mortal lives, I find it likely that the chance was infinitesimally small, something never quite impossible but extremely unlikely nonetheless. While this does open up the possibility that Meyneth was justified in continuing to try to talk to him, the way it’s tossed in at the last second and is only told to us, never shown in any way throughout the game (through, say, High Entian legends or any kind of relationships between Zanza and his disciples) make me more inclined to believe it’s a last-second effort to add false depth to Zanza’s character.

Conclusion Overall, Meyneth suffers from a lack of focus that is sadly common to many of the female characters in xenoblade 1. A lack of insight as to her inner thoughts combined with her extreme pacificism make for a narratively weak character who seems to be either fundamentally weaker in-story than her sworn nemesis or so committed to talking to him and making him realize the error of his ways that it literally gets her killed. I find it most likely that the writers simply intended for her to be weaker than Zanza for unspecified reasons: disappointing, but not surprising.

What gets to me the most is that it didn’t have to be this way. Even if she were just as strong as Zanza and/or more willing to fight against him, she would still have a significant disadvantage against him that sets the ground for the conflict seen in the game: her care for the lives and wills of mortals. Her care to minimize collateral damage in the form of mortal lives will always give Zanza the upper hand in battle, whether directly in the form of attacking mortals being another way to hurt Meyneth or indirectly in the fact that Zanza has no qualms about manipulating mortals to do his will, while Meyneth likely would consider such a thing to be immoral and avoid it. That, to me, would be a far more interesting setup than what we got in-game.

If you made it all the way to the end, thanks for reading! Please drop a comment or leave some tags, I'd love to keep discussing this.

#original tag #xenoblade chronicles #xenoblade chronicles 1 #meyneth #fandom meta #my writing

5 notes · View notes

alubanana · 1 year

Text

ok so listen

massive xc1 and xc2 spoilers ahoy but something occurs to me

with Malos in xc2, his whole thing was that he essentially inherited his moral compass/hatred for humanity from Amalthus upon his awakening and that’s partially the reason he did what he did, right? So like what if the same is true for Alvis?

This is all assuming Blade awakenings work the same in the xc1 universe as they do in the xc2 universe, but assuming his OG Driver is Zanza, could Alvis have also gotten Zanza’s ideologies and whatnot from him? It could make sense, esp considering Shulk’s “is this really what you want?” line. This is especially interesting if you consider the fact that Alvis is shrouded in fog beast mist and has the same sort of design in his wings as Zanza has in his.

I just wonder, if that is true, how that incorporates into Alvis’s motivations in xc1 (why he would side with Shulk, why he’d go against his own driver, etc.). I also wonder if Alvis got Zanza’s god complex as well, and doesn’t mind stamping over his own Driver to achieve divinity.

I dunno, just some food for thought

#xenoblade chronicles #xenoblade chronicles 3 #xenoblade chronicles 2 #xenoblade spoilers #nintendo direct

24 notes · View notes

liminalitycarb · 5 months

Text

Xenoblade 2 - Final Chapter (Part 1) - And thus, boy met girl.

It looks like we're in the end-game people! And we start with... why does this suddenly feel very familiar?

... We're in space... and that... is that the space station from....?

The space station is under attack? Well doesn't that just ruin the fun. Good thing mission control is here to make things right! ... right?

FUCKING... ZOHARS...

... I think they're having a Gundam battle outside... Is this space station about to have a colony fall experience?

And... apparently the Siren that we've seen utilized was just a mass produced model? That... is both disappointing and horrifying at the same time.

Now I'm invested in wondering why this space station came under attack by a rebel group. What.. what were they doing that caused people to rise up to try to take it?

No choice, time to initialize that BIG ASS MECH we saw in Pyra/Mythra/Pneuma's memory! ... or apparently they got a 401 error.

Professor Klaus.... wait... wasn't he the guy who turned into Zanza in Xenoblade 1? SO THESE GAMES ARE 100% CONNECTED IN THE FINAL HOURS?!?

Yep. Time for a few of the same scenes we saw in Xenoblade 1 of Klaus and his coworker becoming Zanza and Meyneth. Though I feel some things are... slightly different? Or at least expanded upon.

While that "Conduit" (fucking ZOHAR) might be from some divine entity... it is not a gift... Zohars are NEVER GIFTS...

... Okay I need to look up what "meta-universe manifold" would even mean....

"We've burned everything. Time for a clean slate!"

No wonder there are so many "Let it burn" people in Xenoblade... the person who seems to be responsible for remaking the universe had that IN THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR MIND FROM THE BEGINNING.

And thus, did he activate the Zohar, have energy go through the... I can only assume particle accelerator ring around the planet, and thus did Xenoblade 1 come to be.

Oh? But it seems we get to see our shadowy "Architect" a bit more. Though... I wonder how he ties back to Klaus, and Zanza? And... why is Alrest so different from the world of Xenoblade 1?

#CarbXenoblade2 #Xenoblade Chronicles 2 #Xenoblade #Let's Play #Final Chapter

2 notes · View notes

kimzee-the-great · 1 year

Text

Guess who finished Future Redeemed today.

There will be spoilers below the cut, so be warned.

Now I've been a Xenoblade (I have yet to be able to play any Gears or Saga games) since 2016. I have played and beaten every game in the series. And I have to say that Future Redeemed might be either right at the top or pretty damn close to it.

To be honest, I think I'm just gonna shout all my feelings here. So I apologise if you don't like walls of text.

It felt like a game made for fans of both 1 and 2, and the fact that the original Xenoblade Chronicles is my favourite game of all time (I have a monado tattoo and a Shulk cosplay to prove it) really helped me just fall in love with this DLC.

There were just so many references, so many areas and so much just felt familiar. I cried when they let you walk around Colony 9 and you got to see how it had changed.

But I think the thing that got me the most, was when the party went into Origin. We got to find out more about the Savorite Rebels. We got to find out more about Klaus' world. It was a massive pay off and I'm so happy that it happened.

And that fight against Alpha. That music gave me massive Zanza the Divine vibes and it fit so well. And also the music continued if you went into a chain attack!!

And the fact that we got to see that both Rex and Shulk had children and we got to meet them. The fact that they were trapped in that cycle and had no idea who Rex and Shulk were to them broke me, when I picked up the hints the game was dropping.

Although the thing that broke me the most, was definitely the thoughts that stuck with me. This game might be the last in the Klaus saga. Meaning that this might be the last time we get to see anything from the characters in this game. And that does make me really sad. I know that before we knew of this game, we thought we might have seen the last of the MCs from the previous games. But now it feels all too real.

I do hope they come back in a future game, but if they don't, I will really miss hearing Adam Howden voicing Shulk.

Okay my ramblings are over. Thank you for reading this mess. For your time, I offer you a cookie 🍪 .

There is probably more I want to say, but I can't think of anything right now. But I am looking forward to whatever Monolith have in store for us next.

#xenoblade #xenoblade chronicles 3 #future redeemed #future redeemed spoilers #XBC3 FR Spoilers #XBC3 FC #XBC3 Future Redeemed Spoilers

6 notes · View notes

seagullcharmer · 2 years

Text

cosplays i wanna make once i recover from surgery:

-natalia's adventurous princess costume title

-kris deltarune

-finish the various link cosplays that are sitting around

-zanza the divine

-get a labcoat and just be klaus lol (once my hair grows back)

-princess peach

-i don't want to make pyra's actual costume but i do want to get a red wig. maybe also use it for luke fon fabre <3

#libra.txt #most of these i've wanted to make for a while just haven't gotten to 'em #the sewing room is always cluttered. and i am exhausted #i have the materials for all of these except zanza (and the labcoat lol)#anyway i'm just throwing this out here #my surgery isn't until fall anyway but. i like to hope #i wonder if my waist size will change once i lose a kidney......#is that messed up to think abt? idk #i keep joking that i'm gonna use my surgery scar as a template to draw abs #(my scar is gonna go basically all the way down my abdomen :'-)#i log onto tumblr once a month and overshare everything #wahoo

4 notes · View notes

thelvadams · 2 years

Note

when u get this u have to put 5 songs 🎵 u actually listen to, publicly. then, send this ask to 10 of your favourite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool)✨💟

i’d be lying if i said most of the music i’ve listened to recently hasn’t just been soundtracks from games i’ve been playing:

1. Time to Fight! (Bionis’ Shoulder) - Xenoblade Chronicles OST (why did they have to make the battle theme such a bop) 2. Zanza the Divine - Xenoblade Chronicles OST 3. Red Sun (Metal Gear Rising Cover) - GO!! Light Up! (MGR’s soundtrack was already legendary, but these covers actually manage to improve upon it) 4. Hidden Truth - Destiny 2: The Witch Queen OST 5. Tallon Overworld Depths - Metroid Prime OST (trying to manifest a remake announcement)

#asks #rivensbane #thank you daisy 🥰#'chris can't you just listen to normal music?' no absolutely not

2 notes · View notes

sirbaltheus · 9 months

Text

youtube

[Kinda spoilerish for Future Redeemed]

Man, Monolith's music team really went all out with the final boss theme. Like, seriously, they took Zanza the Divine and created one hell of a track for Alpha, not to mention that insane form that he changes into for the battle, as expected from him of course (oh Ontos, you rascal). It's like Rex says in a cutscene, the gifts of Klaus keep on giving! And then there are the connections with Xenosaga but I'll leave that to the series experts, my unga bunga brain can't handle all that.

#Some rambling #Xenoblade Chronicles 3 #Future Redeemed #Double Spinning Edge because why not!#Common variety nopon Riku was here #Youtube

0 notes

mango-fizz · 1 year

Text

zanza the divine is a sexuality

1 note · View note

chemicalbrew · 2 years

Note

[plays zanza the divine on kazoo ominously]

I'll have you know that it's been a whole night and I'm still laughing uncontrollably at how this sounds in my head. I am blessed to have such funny friends fr

(@radellama also sent him in, but he also conceded this is the superior joke, as he should have. Y'all know me so well.)

First impression

I literally went into half a year old DMs for this. You just know this is going to be something else.

Love how this last one is effortlessly dated so you can Immediately Understand the surrounding circumstances... a tragic tale full of yearning and fundamental misunderstandings... because, looking back, I can just see how I had a literal tiny tsundere arc over a character. It's not like I like him or anything... < is going to have him in her head rent-free in about uhh. three months.

I'm struggling to give a more serious answer, because, as we all know, my perception of xb1 is still fucked (more so than usual), so when I try to think back to actually seeing him, all I remember is basically going 👀👀👀👀 and also projecting my own favorite ideas while trying to imagine where things would go next. And naturally, having all that end up in some degree of disappointment (gee I wonder why...). But yeah, nevertheless, I was immediately drawn to how he looked and uh. Sounded... yeah you know what I mean.👍 I just hid it from everyone for a while, including myself.

Impression now

m. man. this guy. He's in the microwave and he also is the microwave. His voice is so ridiculously strong in my head, despite (imo) barely having a chance to digest his character during my cringe fail playthrough, that it's consistently fun to write both serious business and pure shenanigans. He's a poor little meow meow, but he's also here to just fuck shit up. He thinks he's all that, and he is all that, but he will perish anyway. He contains multitudes and is also a fraction of a bigger picture. We would literally have nothing without him, but he ultimately threatens to ruin his very creations without much of a second thought about what they are or mean. He can just do whatever he wants because he's so smart (his job was being smart.), but he's not ever smart enough to get his shit together.

We love to see it. The myriad of contradictions and the rise leading to the inevitable fall that later gets recontextualized... it's so fundamental. Don't look at me. He literally haunts me sometimes.

Favorite moment

At this moment it's honestly easier to pick a moment I wrote myself than something that actually happened. But since I'm not willing to stoop that low... let's just keep it sweet and short and say the experiment as depicted in xb2 specifically. (have you seen those hands? of course you have.) There's honestly not much reason to have a preference for one iteration of it over the other, but I was naturally more receptive to everything it stands for while playing 2, while also being able to recognize it in advance this time around. It was a real oof (affectionate) moment.

If you want something tangentially related, I've been rotating Shulk's 'there are two versions of me' in my brain ever since I bothered to glance at the script x_x

Idea for a story

Listen, there's a reason he's in the microwave. I don't really have anything that resembles an actual story (you would have known otherwise lol), I just want to have more chances to study him like a bug. If I wasn't a coward, I would have probably tried to write more pre-experiment exposition (like I almost did that one time, but it was kinda a glorified vent that should not have turned out as well as it did... like help;...)... since it's obviously important and fun to explore, and you can be so cheeky with it because of the theming of the series (where we used to be, etc, you ALREADY KNOW.)... but nope, it's a bit much for me.

Unpopular opinion

I'm tempted to skip this because I don't really have a grasp on what the 'popular' opinion on him is in the first place - a lot of people either don't really care or are wildly misinterpreting him, and\or being actual weirdos. Because of this weirdness I sometimes feel like half the shit I say about him is unpopular, despite being a pretty good line of thought (if I do say so myself-), but at the same time most of it feels like it's so reasonable that every sane person on Earth would agree. so uh.

This definitely doesn't count as unpopular, but like. months in, I'm still perplexed by how some people seem to think he doesn't look good in DE. That's an objective glow-up, the hell do they mean😭

+ something very obvious, but. You cannot afford to completely ignore what 2 does to the character. I'm not sure how to put it, but just... the connection he as the Architect has to Alrest, a world that, despite best intentions, was so close to sharing the same tragedy he wanted to prevent... and then on the other side, in another world, creations of the same hand having to stand and fight against what their creator brought on himself, being given almost no chance to reason... I don't know, it all makes me froth at the mouth internally. Looking at the two games together just reinforces and strengthens what the first game tried to tell alone... And the second game adds to it in a beautiful way.

Favorite relationship

Must resist the berry jokes.......

Okay, so. This is obviously a byproduct of me projecting and just having a messed up vision\experience\opinion of the game, but also, really, it's just gotta be Shulk. Who doesn't love a vessel for something dangerous and almost otherworldly having to stand up for themselves (while also being dependent, at least initially, on said dangerous being and practically owing him your existence)? And that being further complicated by knowledge of what the ultimate goal of said relationship might have been, received far too late? There's just something so. rotatable about it.

Favorite headcanon

I keep thinking about how we gave him sun-like powers one time because it fits ridiculously well. Like, at this point, if you said any version of him wasn't hot to the touch and almost blinding to the eye, I wouldn't believe you.

Also, I'm still laughing at the idea of him having been an English\bio major. The implications that leaves of him knowing compsci\STEM not because he studied it particularly rigorously, but just because he can... Yeah, it tickles my brain. I like it.

#i need to replay xb1 fr fr fr... i keep biding my time #i still cant believe people like the result of my microwaving. he's too powerful #long post #the divine #zero.txt #uhhh i think that's all.. i dont really want to put this in the xb1 tag

2 notes · View notes