#Except they only exist in Future Fight. A mobile game.
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The Playgirl (ft. LOONA's Yves) [Part 1] [Female Reader]
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This was supposed to be a lengthy oneshot, but I wanna have it out as I write, so... here's Part 1! Just so you know, it's futa!Yves, but I won't really mention it until at least Part 3.
Also, this is entirely female reader!
Can be found on AFF and AO3!
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Everyone knows of Ha Sooyoung.
Most know her by her preferred name Yves, but it is the same either way—the people still have her deeply imprinted in the recesses of their minds. After all, who doesn't know of the campus fuckgirl that only goes for girls?
You are no exception to having knowledge of Sooyoung. After all, she is your seatmate for every class you had, and while she is regularly absent, she is a regular hindrance when present. During lectures, she likes to fling paper balls at unsuspecting classmates, flirt with any female classmate or TA, or play games on her mobile phone loudly. The fact that she is your seatmate only makes it worse, considering she has her feet on the table most of the time.
Now you have to tutor her. The bane of your existence. Ha Sooyoung. Yves. Tutor. Tutor her.
Your look of disbelief meeting your professor's determined gaze melts into a sigh of resignation. You know that no amount of whining or pouting would result in a win for you—Yves had the poorest performance, barely scraping through any of her tests, whereas you aced every test given during your course of study. It would only be natural for you to be tutoring her.
Yves flashes a smirk and wink from the front row of the lecture theatre, giving you a two-fingered salute as the professor leaves.
"Hey, babygirl. Guess you're my new tutor."
"Hi." You cannot help but let bitterness seep into your tone, but you bite down on the bullets you wish to fire.
"You don't seem that happy."
"No, but it's fine. Let's get down to business."
"Uh-uh, not today. I've got a party to get to. How about this, give me your phone."
You hesitantly pass her your phone, and she enters her number in.
"Call me." She flashes another smirk and a wink, pushing her hair back. The phone in your hand displays 'yves 💘'.
-----
When you call Yves, you hear more of the chatter in the background than her voice. However, she is still audible, and that is all you need.
"Hello?"
"Sooyoung. I'll tutor you beginning tomorrow."
"Oh, it's you, babygirl. Sure, see you after class?"
Huh. That was easy.
"Good, please bring along the Calculus textbook—"
Indistinct chatter rings across the line, and you vaguely hear the crowd chanting "Drink! Drink! Drink!" before Yves's voice cuts through the line again.
"Sorry, babygirl, I've got to jet. I ain't gonna win this game of beer pong talkin' to you. See you tomorrow."
Before you can even say anything, the call is cut. You take a deep breath, deciding to let it go. Maybe this would be the only time. After all, innocent until proven guilty, right?
With a long exhale, you throw yourself back into whatever work you were doing.
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When Yves appears after class, she staggers into the classroom, clutching her head.
"Fuck, I shouldn't have drank that much last night."
She crashes on the chair next to you, immediately folding her arms on the table, resting her head on it. Her eyes open blearily when you request for her to take her Calculus textbook out.
"I didn't bring it."
You halt, frustration beginning to build.
"I thought I told you to bring it."
"Well, babygirl, I forgot. Looks like we can't do this today then." Yves rises, staggering towards the door. Repeated calls of her name fall on her deaf ears as she rounds the corner and disappears.
You take a deep breath. Tomorrow.
-----
[You sent a message:]
Yves
Tomorrow, after class.
[yves💘 sent a message:]
Hey babygirl
I've got a party tomorrow.
[You sent a message:]
You're ditching your grades for a party?
A party in the afternoon?
[yves💘 sent a message:]
Come on, live a little, it's fun to cut loose!
Yeah, I need to go set it up.
Wanna come?
[You sent a message:]
I'd rather spend my time productively, thank you. I expect to see you after class. The same place.
-----
Yves is absent again from class. Naturally, she is absent from the tutoring session. Every call you make to her goes unanswered throughout the afternoon.
You hate this. It wasn't as if tutoring her was a choice you made—the professor shunted the task to you, even after all your protests and reasoning for why you shouldn't take the job. The impression that she gives off already isn't anything good, and the fact that she actively is wasting your time only pisses you off even more.
The fact that Yves is your seatmate only adds to the frustration. Her shoes are all up in your face, the sounds of her games in your ears, her paper balls all over your table. Everything she did just pissed you off.
When you reach home, you immediately drop a call to Yves. Three rings of the phone is all it takes before she picks up the phone.
"Hey babygirl."
"Don't babygirl me. Where were you this afternoon?"
"I told you, I had a party."
"So you choose to waste my time?"
"Sorry, babe." The lack of sincerity is evident in her voice. "This is clearly more fun."
"You prioritize fun over your grades? Are you trying to fail?"
"Yo, yo, chill, chill! Cut me some slack! Take it easy. I've got time!"
"The final exams are less than half a year away."
"Precisely." Yves's smirk can be heard through the phone. "I have time."
"I don't. Stop wasting my time. Come tomorrow."
"Oh, fiery. Just my type." Yves chuckles, before she pisses you off even further. "I'll see you, just not tomorrow."
"Why not?"
"I'll be busy nursing my hangover. Ciao." The call is cut.
You growl in frustration, squeezing the pen in your hand tightly. How easily she dismisses you only serves to fuel your anger. How could someone give no shits about their future?
Yves was basically the opposite of what you stood for. To you, school was an obligation—something necessary in order to move forward and succeed. This meant that people had to possess the responsibility to keep to this commitment so they could succeed in life. The future is uncertain, so you should make every effort to ensure that you can forge a path that is as certain as it can be.
Yves, however, treated school like a waste of time. To be out having fun mattered more—life and the future is uncertain, so if she could afford the time to live in the moment, then she would take the time to. Why pressure oneself to engineer perfection when imperfection is how the world runs?
This was a constant argument between the both of you when Yves was present in school. On the days she came, you had to fight to pay attention to your professor since the both of you would argue. You hated having to defend your point of view against her, since she was deeply set in her contrasting view. You hate how carefree she is. How is it that someone can live without worrying that much?
When you let your vision focus, you take a deep breath and go back to your work.
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You are ten minutes early for class. Chatter fills the classroom as per usual. When you reach your seat, your ears perk up at a familiar name.
"... you hear Yves took her home last night?"
"... sex … fucked her the whole night … best time of her life …"
You scowl. Even when she wasn't present, you had to hear about her, and even worse, her womanizing and hedonistic lifestyle. Who cares about her?
"Good morning, babygirl."
The bane of your existence appears before your very eyes, leaning over your desk with her signature smirk. You give her a glare, but not before you fail to resist checking her out.
Yes, she is admittedly hot. But insufferable. But hot. Facts are facts.
Her hair slicked back, check. Leather jacket, check. Fishnets and crop top fitting her… appealing chest, check. Tight pants that fit her figure, check. Fuck, she looks so good.
"My eyes are up here." Yves pushes your head up to meet her gaze with a finger. The smug smirk on her face makes you want to slap it off her. "If you want me, all you have to do is ask."
"Why're you here?"
"Someone who places such importance in school doesn't want her seatmate present? I'm hurt, babe."
"Fuck off. Don't touch me." You shift away from her touch, and Yves grins.
"I came to see you, my favourite tutor. You're interesting."
"Put that interest in your studies."
"No, I don't think I will, not when you're this pretty."
You try to fight the blush that appears on your face, but it seems that you fail—Yves's cocky grin only gets bigger when she reclines in her chair, resting her feet on the table.
This is your second year with Yves as a seatmate. The girl next to you somehow managed to scrape past first year, and now here she is, staring at you with an amused smirk, annoying you just as she had since Day 1.
"Y'know, I mean it when I say you're pretty."
"Thank you." You grit your teeth, though how red your face remains betrays your hidden feelings. After all, girls don't really compliment you that often, let alone a hot one like Yves is.
"Mm, you're welcome." Yves smiles, resting her head on her chair. "I'll depend on your tutoring, babygirl. Goodnight."
"You're going to sleep?"
"Yep. I'll just listen attentively to you later, cutie."
"I would prefer it if you paid attention now."
"What, and stare at the prof's ugly mug? Why would I do that when I can take the time to stare at your beautiful face instead?"
"Fuck off."
"Ooh, you kiss your mother with that mouth?" Yves's grin shows how little offense she takes at your rebuttal. "I like you, baby."
You decide to ignore Yves. Ignore how she easily infuriates you. Ignore how hot she is. Ignore the compliments that make heat rise from your cheeks and neck.
Insufferable.
-----
Yves takes a long time to rise from her slumber. You try to shake her, but Yves remains steadfastly asleep on her chair.
"Yves. Wake up."
"Mmnnngggh."
"Wake up, wake up."
"Five more minutes."
"No." You heave a sigh. "Wake. Up."
"Fine, fine, babygirl. You're such a killjoy."
"Do not 'babygirl' me. Let's start."
You pull out your Calculus textbook. Yves halfheartedly pulls hers out as well, and you flip both books to a summary exercise.
"Do these. I need to know your current ability."
"Only because you're pretty, babygirl." Yves picks up her pen, beginning to work on the questions.
-----
"How are you getting all these wrong?"
Your tutee shrugs, leaning back on her chair. "Who cares?"
"I do! You're going to fail."
"Aw babygirl, you do care about me."
"Shut the fuck up. There's so much work I need to do with you."
"Meh, whatever." Yves stretches in her chair, leaning back to close her eyes. "Do your magic, tutor. Teach me."
"Fine. Let's begin."
-----
Both you and Yves part ways at the gate of the campus. After a tense session involving multiple arguments when Yves used more of her phone than to attempt learning anything you were teaching, or when she started to look up girls on Tinder, you gave up and halted the session.
"See you soon, babygirl."
"Fuck you."
"Anytime, babe. You just have to ask."
"Fuck off."
"Calm down. It's not like we don't have time."
"We don't."
"Not with that attitude."
"Fuck your attitude."
Yves only grins when she hears your reply.
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Another tutoring session, another Yves absence. This time, when you call her, you're met with the obscene sounds of Yves engaging in sexual intercourse.
"Hey babygirl."
"Yves. Where are—huh?"
Wet smacks echo loudly through the speaker on your phone. Someone moans on the other side. Regular thumps ring through your speakers.
"I'm a little busy now, baby."
"Wha—what the fuck?"
"As you can hear, I'm busy fucking someone. Bye."
The dial tone that enters your ears almost makes you smash your phone on the table to pieces. You instead settle on smashing your fist against the table instead.
This is the last straw.
-----
The next time you see Yves, you pin her against the wall. Taken by surprise, Yves finds herself in a position she usually puts others into. Smirking, she relents.
"Didn't take you to be so forward."
"This is the last fucking time I'm taking your shit. I've had it with your constant excuses about parties, or whatever. Now, you choose to go fuck some bitch even when you know you have stuff to do. I'm fucking done. I quit."
"Come on, don't be like that, baby." Yves's cocky grin widens. "Maybe I need some more motivation."
"If having your life planned out isn't motivating enough, nothing will work."
"Oh, but I had this wonderful idea…"
You resist taking the bait, but having Yves pinned against the wall fucks with your judgement.
"What?"
Today, Yves is clad in all black leather. Whatever she's wearing doesn't catch your eye—the fact that your face is so close to Yves's flusters you. The same slicked back hair, scarlet lipstick across her kissable lips, a cocky glint in her eye, catching your gaze before traveling down to your lips, then below…
"I've seen the way you look at me, babygirl. You say you hate me, but all I see in your eyes is lust right now. You want me so bad, don't you?"
"Sh-shut the fuck up." You curse at the slight stutter.
"So how about this? I'll be the best student you'll ever have, and if I ace the exams at the end of the year… hmm."
Yves lets her voice trail off, knowing she has your full attention.
"What the fuck do you want?'
"If I ace the exams, I get to fuck you."
You cannot believe your ears.
"What?"
"I said what I said. I'll be the best student you'll have. I'll ace the exams. And when I do, you'll sleep with me."
"Why the fuck would I say yes to that?"
In an instant, Yves flips you around. Your back is now against the wall, your arms held against your will, held down by Yves's grip. Yves leans in.
"Because you think I'm hot."
You subconsciously lean in when you feel her hot breath on your lips, and Yves leans in as well. Something soft presses against your lips. Instantly, she is off you, smirking.
"See you around babygirl. Don't think about me too much."
So you agree.
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Strange Love (Part 1)
Title: Strange Love
Featuring: Johnny (NCT) x Reader
Rating: Mature. Future updates to include BDSM themes
Summary: Your job is finally recognizing all the hard work you’ve been putting in, and assigns you to a special project that includes travel. The only downside is that you have to team up with your cocky co-worker. In the process you learn about his predilections and what he does to relieve stress in his downtime, and how they might come to benefit you, too.
The copier spluttered and buzzed as it spit out page after page of the same report. Sometimes it jammed and you had to tap it just right for it to start up again, you knew it like clockwork now, not even having to shift your stance or your gaze to do it. You had made friends with the piece of equipment ages ago, this thing was older than some of the new hires in the office.
You had been there for 3 years now, but it felt much longer. You found the job out of college because of its promised upward mobility and company culture, and after a while neither one of those things mattered anymore. You had only had one partial raise and “company culture” really just meant there was cake in the break room once a month.
You didn’t know why you stayed. Actually, you did, but didn’t want to admit it to yourself. You were afraid.
You had always been timid, knowing what you wanted but too anxious to go after it. You could be stubborn and even stand up for yourself, but often you fell by the wayside, worried about making too much of a fuss. You developed a fine-tuned talent for painting on a smile, seeming agreeable, then grumbling under your breath and to your friends over drinks. You would convince yourself things would change, but they never did.
When the copier stopped with its signature grinding halt you snapped out of your reverie, piling the papers in arm to hand them out around the office. Busy-work, per usual.
When you stepped out of the room you immediately looked across the hall to the windowed room of your manager, able to hear his muffled laughter, head tossed back as he slapped his hand on another mans back. Your eyes set into a narrow glare at the other person.
John Suh had only shown up 9 months ago and he was already 2 positions ahead of you, with his fancy degree and family connections. They liked to pretend they didn’t play favorites but it was obvious from the moment he stepped in the door that he had something the rest of you didn’t, connections and his daddy’s money.
Plus, there was just this air of overconfidence he carried that enraged you. Not only did he have an advantage, he liked to act like it was his savvy business sense and charm that got him there.
The most annoying part of all is that no one else felt the way you did.
He was clearly attractive, the only person in the office who didn’t get shit from the boss for growing his hair out or not buttoning up his jacket. Every girl in the office from the 19 year old receptionist to the 67 year old accountant practically swooned when he talked to them. This, of course, made you look like the asshole to your colleagues. They called you distrustful and told you to be a little more open-minded, but you didn’t have patience for nepotism and unearned praise.
If you thought about it too long, the frustration built up and where did that leave you? You went about your business for the afternoon, intent on ignoring his presence like you usually did.
As you neared the manager’s door, he suddenly poked his head out and smiled at you.
“Hey there, can I grab you for a second?”
And then he disappeared inside, through the glass you could see him speak to your nemesis once more. Your stomach dropped, what could he possibly need? You set the stack down on your desk and returned to the office, clearing your throat as you entered since they were chatting and laughing like you didn’t exist.
“There you are, have a seat.” He said as he went to his desk, gesturing to the chairs in front of it. You were surprised when John took the seat next to yours, but chose to pretend he wasn’t there.
“I’ve had this project brewing for a few months now, and whilst going over potential candidates your name came up.”
Project? Your name?
“You’ve been loyal to the company for years, your workflow looks great, and I’ve never heard a fuss out of you. You’re honestly a prime worker for this position.”
“What position would that be, sir?” You asked gently, knowing he had a habit of going on tangents if you let him. Plus, all of this was lip service you’d heard since you started. They were always quick to praise, but never do anything that actually showed that it mattered in a way that helped you. Empty compliments.
“This is our main office, and the system we have here is the best in the business, but unfortunately that’s not the case in some of our smaller offices. They’re falling behind and their technology and practices aren’t getting updated in a timely fashion. Basically, they need help, and that’s where you two come in.”
Two? You peered over at the man next to you from the corner of your eye, and quickly back again.
“I’m not sure I follow. Aren’t these offices spread out all over the country?” You asked.
“Precisely. We’ve opened up a position for trainers, someone who is free to travel and can help these places get set up. You would spend about a week or less in each place, we would make sure you have proper accommodations and a stipend, of course.”
It dawned on you what he meant and you felt a mix of emotions. It was about time someone realized your potential and the hard work you had been putting in, even if you were still confused on how your name got brought up. You didn’t have any problem traveling, there was no relationship or particular thing that kept you tied down in one spot.
“Oh, and the 30% raise.”
You perked up at that, then quickly tried to make yourself appear neutral again.
“That does sound enticing.”
“What do you say? I think you both would be great at it.”
You fully looked over now, and made brief eye contact with the man who offered you an encouraging smile.
“We would be working...together?”
“It’s a two-man, excuse me, two-person job. I can tell you now I think you would make an excellent team.”
You didn’t even know him like that, and everything you did know you weren’t particularly fond of. You had maybe spoken a handful of words to each other, in passing. Things like “excuse me” and “here’s that report you needed.” The idea of having to spend so much time around him didn’t sit well with you, but how could you pass up such an opportunity? it was strictly business, it’s not like you had to be best friends.
“Okay, then.” You nodded and forced an uneasy smile.
“Fantastic! I’ll draw up the paperwork tonight and get you on your schedule within the week. In the meantime, I encourage you two to get to know each other.”
You left the office, intent on going straight back to your desk, but your new partner stopped you.
“I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced, I’m John, but everyone just calls me Johnny.”
He stuck his hand out and you had to fight the urge to cringe, there was no way in hell you were going to call him that.
You were cordial, shook his hand and told him your name, avoided eye contact. Being this close to him you didn’t realize until now how tall he was.
“You want to grab some lunch with me? My treat, we can hammer out some details.”
“I’m a little busy this aftern-”
“It’ll be fine, the boss insists we form a game plan and I know a spot around the corner.” He cut you off and started to walk away as if you already agreed. You wanted to fight him on it, but that wasn’t the best way to start out a brand new position. You sighed and followed.
The “spot” was basically a sports bar, that was practically dead, save for a few people at the bar watching a baseball game. You sat at a table near the back and wished you could get a beer, but you still had a whole work day ahead of you.
“So it’s like, part trainer, part teacher, part IT. Do you have any experience in IT? I actually started out in computer science before I switched to business, my dad thought it was the best for my career path. I mean, I guess he was right because here I am.”
He was….different, than you thought he would be. You only saw him in the office, turning on his charm and worming his way into things. Here, he was talkative and friendly, and it was throwing you off-guard. The casual humble-brag about his background wasn’t making him anymore likable, though.
“No, I majored in English.”
I swear to God if he says-
“English? Aren’t you already fluent?”
You closed your eyes for a second while his stupid laugh rang in your ears.
“Anyway, I think this is going to be an awesome opportunity for us. I mean, how lucky are we to get picked for this?”
“I wouldn’t call it luck.” You grumbled before taking a drink, not really intending him to hear it.
“What’s that?”
“It’s not luck.” You said as you met his eyes fully for the first time. “Not for me. I’ve worked my ass off for this company for years, it’s only luck for people who got a head start.”
You sank your teeth into your tongue just as the words left you, and you could see the smile fade from his face. You suddenly felt flush and thought about apologizing, but he spoke up.
“Ah, so you think I had a leg up?”
“I didn’t mean-”
He waved a hand and laughed. “It’s fine, I know everyone thinks that, you’re just the first person to say it to my face.”
You couldn’t tell if he was offended and playing it off, or if he was really this nonchalant about it.
“Look, no offense, but I don’t think we need to be buddies for this to work. I would rather just get in the field and work things out from there.” You explained as directly as you could.
“That’s fair.” He nodded, to your surprise.
The small-talk ended and when he tried to pay for lunch, you insisted on giving your share. The rest of the day was uneventful, except for the twinge of guilt you had when you thought back on how you spoke to him.
When you got home, you collapsed on the couch next to your roommate, a graphic designer who worked from home and was always in her PJs. You envied her.
“Another rough day at the office, sweetie?” She asked, patting you on the head, condescending but still sincere.
“Remember that douchebag at work I told you about?”
“Oh, the cute one?” She asked with a smile, having seen him when coming to drop off some lunch for you once.
“Whatever, anyway.” You sat up to face her. “The good news is that I got a promotion to a position that lets me travel.”
“Hey, that’s great!” She beamed.
“The bad news is that we have to do it together.”
She looked to consider it for a moment before her lips curled into a devious smile. “On the road for work? Hotel stays? Working in close proximity? Ohh, this is like a spicy romance novel!”
“Ew, stop.” You scowled.
“Only if you stop pretending he’s not hot.”
“Someone can be objectively hot and I can still not like them or be attracted to them. He’s arrogant and he seems to think we’re on the same page somehow. He’s oblivious to his own privilege.”
“Okay, I get that, sorry for teasing you. But hey, this is the break you were looking for, right? Focus on the positive.”
“Thank you.”
She opened up her arms and you hugged for a long moment.
“Maybe while you’re traveling you’ll finally get laid.” She said suddenly into your ear, and you pulled back and glared at her.
“Sorry, sorry! I just know that lately you haven’t really been-”
You stood up from the couch as she spoke. “I’m going to my room now.”
“Let me know if you need help packing!”
You closed your bedroom door and sighed. She meant well, but she had a way of saying things so bluntly that it didn’t quite help. She was right about that, though. Your career wasn’t the only stagnant thing in your life.
You hadn’t had a steady boyfriend in 2 years, and in that time had only experienced a sprinkling of dates that never went anywhere and the 2-3 times you randomly hooked up with someone to great disappointment. Frustrated was an understatement, and you knew part of it was bleeding over into your professional life.
You didn’t expect to have any sort of passionate tryst while out for work, but maybe simply getting into a new scenery would make you feel better?
To Be Continued
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thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy
I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!
I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.
...Eventually.
Spoiler Warning:
Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15
Content Warning:
Discussion of death
Cussin’
Length warning:
5621 words
13 sections
16 digressions
Let’s dig in.
- - - - -
Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.
FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.
((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.
((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))
This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.
((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))
And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.
And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.
((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))
- - - - -
Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.
Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.
Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.
Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.
((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))
Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.
Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.
- - - - -
Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:
Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.
People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.
((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))
The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?
((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))
The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:
(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])
That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.
Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.
((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.
((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))
The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.
((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))
- - - - -
But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.
Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.
Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.
Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.
Right up until the Leviathan fight.
See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--
((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))
Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.
You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.
Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.
Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?
if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.
((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))
now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!
((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.
((inhale...
((exhale...
((and move on.))
We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.
But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?
Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?
- - - - -
Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.
See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.
((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!
((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.
((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))
But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:
“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”
- - - - -
Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.
The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.
This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!
Boundless, terrifying freedom.
From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.
So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?
Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.
For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.
And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.
And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...
Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.
((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))
So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!
Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!
Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?
- - - - -
Aerith dies.
If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.
Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.
Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.
((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))
And that’s the problem with answering that question.
See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.
Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.
- - - - -
But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.
If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.
And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?
And then on top of that, it’s 2020.
I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.
Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?
- - - - -
So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.
FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.
...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?
Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?
Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?
Hey, how come--
- - - - -
Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:
And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.
Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.
At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.
At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.
Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.
Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.
All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,
The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.
So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?
- - - - -
One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.
and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.
((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.
((but, still.
((Really?))
So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:
- - - - -
At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.
Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.
This is Sephiroth’s plan.
- - - - -
Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.
Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.
Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.
There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.
On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.
And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.
((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))
Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.
thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day
#In This Essay I Will but for real this time#but hell if that's stopped me before#ff7 remake#blatant speculation#ff7 remake spoilers#ff7 spoilers#ff13 spoilers#ff15 spoilers#I dip into spoiler territory on more but these ones get a deeper dive#also if any of y'all know how to get images screen-read-able please lemme know#the screenshots are to point out that the game itself does do these things#but I don't wanna content-lock anybody out of my bad garbage#also also if the wordcount didn't clue you in:#long post#posting this right now immediately listening
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So far...
Since there were no asks answered yesterday we thought we’d compile a list of all teasers and other information that we have released up until now!
If you’re new here...
Wolvden is an upcoming sister game to the existing game, Lioden, which will be a fun wolf-based role playing breeding sim experience (we honestly don’t know how to categorise this game any more). You look after a pack of wolves, care for them, breed them, explore a vast range of biomes, fight big and scary enemies, and hunt a variety of prey.
Beta Testing will be free to join, but will be by application process only, we will hand select those who will join us for testing.
Early Access will be paid, but we have yet to release any further details on this.
Wolvden will be free to play after Early Access.
Wolvden has official accounts on Facebook (/wolvden), Twitter (@WolvdenGame), Tumblr (here) and Instagram (WolvdenOfficial) - our landing page can be found at https://www.wolvden.com!
Information From Teasers
This is purely information that has been released on social media officially by us in the form of teasers.
Biomes - Deciduous Forest, Grasslands, Mountains and Desert have been confirmed
Seasons - All 4 seasons will feature in the game.
Weather - Sunny, Fog, Rain, Heatwave have been confirmed.
Dusk/Twilight has been hinted at, there will also be dawn.
You can have one lead wolf, and one breeding male - they can be the same or separate. You can have a male or female lead wolf.
Scouting - a new feature which will tie into exploration and discovery of new biomes.
Lethal mutations will be in the start of the game - the starting mutations are Conjoined Twins, Polycephaly (Separated Two Heads), Polymelia (Extra Limbs) and Brachycephaly.
Hunting Part 1 and Part 2 explain the hunting system!
Fancy new breeding page allows you to compare wolf visuals directly.
Crossroads will feature Location Tokens rather than a full map allowing us to easily add new places in the future!
Information From Asks
We won’t link to the ~100 asks here, sorry :P you’re free to check back through our Monday Answers section! These are listed in the order we answered them, so apologise if you get a bit of whiplash when reading.
There will be 1 breeding male, rather than free-for-all breeding.
Battling will be similar to Lioden, Hunting has been revamped.
There will be custom decors on Wolvden.
We do plan to add events, though they may not be available for launch.
We will have rollover just like on Lioden, except it will occur at midnight server time instead of 2:05am.
The art and development teams are the same for Wolvden as they are on Lioden.
Wolvden will have Gold and Silver Beetles.
There are a couple of mutations planned for launch.
There is visually no sex difference in the wolf art, allowing decors and custom decors to be more universal.
You will be the leader of a single pack.
We are trying to balance gameplay for both casual and hardcore members.
We hope to incorporate storylines on Wolvden as well as some more on Lioden.
Combo bases will exist on Wolvden.
We welcome suggestions!
We have no plans for a specific Wolvden app but we are working hard to ensure a good mobile experience using the website.
We would like to continue the charity donations that we do on Lioden with Wolvden.
There will be a way to change your Pack Name.
Wolvden will be a 16+ game.
We will try to have a wiki available for launch, or shortly after.
There will not be any seasonal differences in wolf coats.
Pup Stages will exist, either on launch or shortly after.
Exploring will be a thing on Wolvden.
The aging system will be the same as on Lioden. Please see Corrections.
Pack names are alphanumeric, can contain special characters and emojis, and can contain up to 25 letters. It will automatically have “Pack” suffixed to the end. Please see Corrections.
Claiming will be similar to Lioden. You can claim male wolves too!
Some mutations will be the same as Lioden has, as they exist on wolves too.
There will be personalities.
Your lead wolf can be male or female.
We do not have an official launch date yet.
There will be a role similar to Broodmother.
We will keep litter sizes the same as on Lioden. Please see Corrections.
There will be a custom decor uploader similar to Lioden’s.
There will be leaderboards.
There will be something similar to battle beetles, but not at launch.
Poses will be available for both sexes as there are no visual lineart differences between the sexes.
You will be able to live in different biomes.
We have breeding items planned.
Pack members will have personalities.
You will be able tell which method a wolf likes when claiming.
There will be a breeding request system.
Wolvden will be based in modern times but events may transport you to different eras.
We will give announcements in advance of releasing beta testing and early access information.
Something similar to the Giving Tree will be available on Wolvden, but perhaps not at launch.
Pregnant wolves will require nesting.
Pregnant wolf art is definitely on the list but may not be available at launch.
We are figuring out elderly wolf appearances.
The site’s layout will be different, but you’ll still be able to code your dens.
There will only be one lead wolf, you don’t control a pair, but we have options to allow you to role play a pair of lead wolves.
You can switch out your breeding male early but you can only have one breeding male at a time.
Official premade Wolvden avatars/tags will exist!
Coat tiers will exist.
There will be different titles you can set instead of “Lead Wolf”.
Impression will not exist in Wolvden.
Males can hunt.
You will be able to move biomes.
There are 76 starter bases prepared for launch.
We hope to release Wolvden in 2019.
We have mini games planned for Wolvden.
We will not have an Alpha/Beta system built into the game as it has been disproved multiple times. However, we have left the room for roleplaying this if you wish to do so.
Seasons will not affect breeding cycles.
There will be a page similar to the Oasis on Wolvden, but renamed to fit with the setting.
Different biomes will have difficulties which make them harder to scout, explore, and live in.
We have had Wolvden on our minds since 2013 which is when we registered the domain name.
You can fully customise an existing wolf, or create a new one, with the Wolf Customiser.
Studding will be similar to Lioden.
Creating your first wolf will be a stripped down version of the customiser, allowing you to hand-select the base, markings, etc. rather than rolling pre-set wolves.
You can explore any fully scouted biome regardless of where your pack lives.
Mutations will apply to both sexes as long as they’re not mechanically dependent on sex (e.g. double uterus).
You will be able to communicate with all members of the game, not just those in your current biome.
We welcome any Youtube channels (or other content creators) who wish to release content about Wolvden to approach us through [email protected] with the email subject “Wolvden Content”.
Wolvden will be treated as a separate game to Lioden - you will not be able to claim your Lioden ID on Wolvden, or have any other account crossover feature.
We have plans to make scouting more useful than to only scout new biomes.
Scrying will be a feature on Wolvden!
We will look into a name randomiser for Wolvden.
We haven’t yet released any information about beta testing or early access.
Scrying will have a SB cost.
Some unique Wolvden features may potentially make their way over to Lioden depending on user feedback.
We will be announcing EVERYWHERE when we release information about beta testing and early access.
Corrections
The aging system on Wolvden will last the same amount of time in real life, but in game wolves will live to 7.5-8 years of age.
Pack names will no longer have “Pack” automatically suffixed, and can be up to 30 characters in length.
Litter sizes will be 1-6 puppies with 1 and 6 being the rarest, the average being 3-4.
Announced Upcoming Teasers
Genetics System
Registration Customiser Demo
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Homespork Act 3: Insane Mindscrew Haymakers (Part 2)
CHEL: Rose finds a transportaliser platform in the centre of the lab.
FAILURE ARTIST: The sylladex misadventures come to something this time. Jasper’s corpse lands on the pad.
CHEL: The dead cat vanishes; Rose assumes it was vapourised but we know better, though we don’t see where it went. She finds an unlocked hub and plugs in, noticing another ominous countdown on the wall, with only three minutes left till the lab will be “UNESTABLISHED”.
Years in the future again, PM beheads the worm creature, which turns out to be a robot. The bunker landed on its side so PM stands on a pile of mailboxes to press the button, which causes more robot worms to emerge from beneath the bunker, pushing it upright, and a propeller to emerge from the top and carry it away.
Dave’s strife with Bro continues, getting more and more ridiculous and animesque, until Dave ends up plummeting down the stairwell. In a realistic work, this could quite easily break his neck, but here we just get some comical flailing and a SBaHJ IT KEEPS HAPPENING macro. Again, Dave looks more angry than afraid.
ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 8
FAILURE ARTIST: I think Hussie said the Bro slicing the Abscond box is symbolic of the trap of child abuse and shows this guardian fight isn’t like the others but it is still an animesque fight that ends with a fucking meme.
CHEL: Yeah, he seems to be expecting us to pick up on these details which don’t mean anything until he actually explains them, which would be fine and in fact clever if they didn’t conflict so strongly with what’s actually noticeably shown. If he wanted us to take it seriously, he’d have done better not to put the Abscond button there at all.
Rose finds, in the lab, a console showing SBurb sessions in the northeastern US where her home is located, monitoring the time to impact of their respective meteors. There is a large cluster of already-landed ones around her house, with a much, much bigger one centred directly on the lab, with an even bigger one centred on the house. She zooms out, and finds the second-biggest upcoming impact in the world is heading for Texas, while one bigger by an order of magnitude will later land in the middle of the Pacific. "Oh look, up in the sky/ It's a hole about the size of Texas..."
"Circus Contraption - Hot Potato" (Watch on YouTube)
Checking on John’s house, Rose finds it overrun by imps, the building shaking violently. Investigating this, she finds the ogre fight; John is at least getting a few blows in now, but they’re still not doing much good. Nannasprite is able to provide support with eye beams, but the ogres are still standing, and Rose’s attempt to drop a fridge on one is useless too. Nannasprite’s teleportation proves more useful, allowing John to take a flying leap out of a hovering oven to strike with greater force and allowing her to drop a full avalanche of household appliances on the ogre. With Rose’s assistance providing him a platform to bounce off again, John strikes the final blow on one ogre, exploding it into grist pieces bigger than himself, and Nannasprite and John occupy the other ogre until Rose drops the alchemiter on it.
FAILURE ARTIST: Seeing a fight like this not long after the Bro and Dave fight makes it hard for me to take the serious one seriously. John should be dead.
CHEL: John has a backup healer and Dave doesn’t, but yeah, cartoon physics prevail here.
Rose checks in, explaining that Dave’s not connected yet, but that she’s determined that activating the cruxtruder does not actually cause the meteor to strike. John levels up to BOY-SKYLARK and collects tons of grist and boondollars, although he still doesn’t know what those actually do.
You can't wait to find out what amazing items this new supply of grist will be just barely insufficient to produce.
Hehehe. We’ve all been there.
John sees that more grist fell down to the platform below, including one huge piece stuck in the hole leading into Dad’s room.
One of those big SOUR GRAPE ELECTRIC HOLOCAUST FRUIT GUSHERS is jammed in the hole in the platform.
CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 9
Yes, because Holocaust references are a perfect way to describe candy flavours. Technically “holocaust” can refer to, I quote from dictionary.com, “a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire”, and I’m guessing it’s a parody of all the flavour names with words like “explosion” in them, but, especially when it’s not obviously uncapitalised, that’s very much not what the immediate association of the term is!
FAILURE ARTIST: John asks Nanna why she doesn’t just throw him up to the gate and she says it’s important he build up himself. Though later we do see a character that just jumps up to the gate.
Then we switch to a mysterious castle all in purple. Dad is fighting some imps with shaving cream. A new yet somehow familiar character wearing harlequin clothes watches with disgust both Dad and John on strange window screens.
We cut away yet again to Peregrine Mendicant. PM is still stuck in the mobile station with a letter addressed to David Brinner. There was a real person who went by the alias Doctor Brinner on his Portland-area radio show where he played a mad scientist. Dr. David Brinner is also a comic Hussie made before Homestuck. I’ve never read it myself. I didn’t even know it existed until I googled David Brinner.
Anyway, PM refuses to open this letter and gives stirring speeches that sound like they come from a movie (Kevin Costner’s Postman?) but I don’t think they do.
BRIGHT: PM believes very strongly in the purpose of mail delivery as the bedrock of civilisation. It comes across as funny, but not as mocking.
FAILURE ARTIST: PM then turns to the terminal. Jade appears on a screen shrouded in green static. PM finds Jade familiar. Unfortunately, before PM can converse with Jade, the terminal explodes.
Cut back again to Rose in the lab. There’s lots of cutesy pink little girl stuff down there that Rose decides to ignore. Why is it down there? Did Mom expect Rose to live there one day?
CHEL: I thought it was supposed to signal that Mom was living down there herself.
FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, Rose also finds a mutant cat.
We cut away again to John contemplating going into his father’s bedroom through a hole in the roof. He decides to do it.
Cut to a fireplace with a portrait of Jade above it. It looks similar to Nanna’s shrine, minus the urn. But Jade isn’t dead, is she? She scampers right into the room the next panel. She arms herself with a huge rifle and tries to sneak across the room. However, her Grandpa appears, shadowed by the huge fire that suddenly lit up in the fireplace. She tries to run away only to fall asleep.
We cut to Dave’s final round - or rather, Jade fighting her Grandpa. Who, in another surprise, is a taxidermed corpse.
She talks to him like he’s alive, though after it, she says he was easier to deal with when he was alive. This disturbing state of affairs is never treated seriously.
CHEL: This, more than anything else, is why we set up the ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY count. Horrible as Bro would be by any realistic standards, at least Dave’s guardian is obviously living and Dave is not merrily talking away to a dead person. We later find out that Jade was the one who taxidermied Grandpa, while she was barely more than a toddler. Not only was she actually able to do this to professional standards, at an age when she shouldn’t have been handling sharp objects at all, but she displays no trauma from it, nor from having had to raise herself. And yet we’re supposed to take Dave’s issues seriously, and to a much lesser extent Rose’s, with no real indication that they’re any different.
TIER: It's one thing when an author's intended depiction of “an abusive household” for the most part flies over people's heads due to the absurdity of the whole situation when it initially got presented, that happens sometimes! Especially when one factors in Bro's total screen time, how he generally ticks the boxes for “absurd but really cool” guy visually, and how late in the game this knowledge was spelled out. It all comes together to make the whole Strider situation kinda come out of left field to judge people for finding the absurd situation funny.
But when it's sitting right next to the arguably worse scenario (stuffed.dead.guardian.) and the latter pretty much never gets brought up while the former gets a big ol’ spotlight shining down on it, yeah that's what the folks call Fucking Weird and in my personal opinion, suspect Ò_Ó.
CHEL: While I can’t really state one way or the other at this point, I do think it’s worth considering a reason that has already been brought up by a non-Homestucker; in the scenarios we’re not supposed to take seriously, the children are girls. I doubt this was even slightly what Hussie intended, but it certainly explains a lot about the fandom’s reactions. The more likely scenario regarding the canon explanation is probably that the ones we’re not supposed to take seriously are not Hussie’s self-insert.
ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 9
BRIGHT: Not to mention, Jade grew up on an island in the middle of the ocean, physically isolated from any other people and with only an animal for company. There are known cases of children who grew up in similar circumstances in real life. Suffice to say, it generally does not end well.
You could argue that Jade is pretending her Grandpa is alive because she’s lonely and needs the company, but this is in no way implied by the text.
At any rate, Jade informs her grandfather that the rifle she has is perfectly adequate for killing things and she doesn’t need his oversized blunderbuss.
CHEL: To be strictly fair, we do later find out she had some contact with other people, but not in a way which I feel would be a substitute for having a living human parent in the “real” world.
FAILURE ARTIST: With Jade out the door, we go again to PM. They are fine except for some cartoon burn marks and a fire on their hood. The metal snake saves their precious mailbox.
BRIGHT: It earns PM’s affection for doing so.
Back at the lab, Rose utterly fails to ignore the four-eyed mutant kitten. She carries it over to a peculiar machine that turns out to be another Appearifier. This one is locked onto her cat, Jaspers, nine years ago. Not only was he alive, but the younger Rose was holding a psychotherapy session with him.
Rose attempts to appearify Jaspers, but since this would cause a time paradox, the machine leaves Jaspers in place and instead produces a ‘Paradox Clone’, which swiftly collapses into green slime. The machine next to the appearifier sucks up the paradox sludge, analyses its genetic sequence, and spits out another cat, rather more mutated than the last, in a process referred to as ‘Ectobiology’.
CHEL: John’s screen name, we remind you, is “ectoBiologist”, so it seems he heard of the concept somewhere, perhaps?
BRIGHT: On the appearifier’s screen, Jaspers reveals a stunning secret to young Rose, and is appearified to an unknown location before he can clarify anything. Two weeks later, his corpse reappeared. Oddly, the appearifier can’t see his whereabouts for the intervening period.
It can, however, see where his body went when it landed on the pad earlier! Rose appearifies the corpse and hightails it out of the lab, using the transportaliser to make her escape before the meteor can hit.
FAILURE ARTIST: If you click on the pink horseshoe that appears at the end of the Rose: Fast Forward To Now flash, there’s a little animation of Rose enjoying Maplehoof. I guess she’s making up for the loss of her precious Jaspers.
BRIGHT: We make a brief detour back to Jade, who’s searching for Becquerel. Two new things about Jade’s mysterious abilities: One, Becquerel is invisible to them. Two, this is unusual enough that it used to disturb her. Becquerel appears briefly in the background, and there’s clearly something strange about him…
CHEL: Additionally, it was clearly his face that was carved on the pumpkin we saw earlier, and he looks canine but it’s hard to make out details at this point...
BRIGHT: But before we can find out more, the comic jumps back to John.
Now in his Dad’s room, John is struck by an unwelcome discovery — there aren’t any clowns. Not on posters, no figurines. His father’s briefcase, rather than being full of the tools of a street performer, holds only boring papers and spreadsheets. In fact, the room is pretty boring...like his Dad is just a normal businessman?
"[S] John: Examine your dad's room." (Watch on YouTube)
FAILURE ARTIST: I wish more had been made of Bing “Douchebag” Crosby in this comic but that’s just me being an old movie nerd.
BRIGHT: While John attempts to recover from the BSOD this causes, his father breaks out of a jail cell armed with a safe. This is watched with displeasure by another black figure in brightly-coloured clothing, whose name is not Spades Slick. (He likes the ring of that, though.) No, he’s Archagent Jack Noir, and he oversees the affairs of a dark kingdom through three fenestrated walls.
CHEL: He usually has a fourth one but it got stolen.
FAILURE ARTIST: Those fingers typing the name Spades Slick are a suspicious color...
BRIGHT: He also despises the jester outfits everyone has been forced to wear, and refuses to don his comical hat until the Queen hijacks his fenestrated wall and orders him to wear it. The wall cuts back to Dad, who has now disarmed an especially burly-looking agent and is punching him in the head.
CHEL: Jack Noir makes mention of his carapace at this point; I don’t remember if his species is also referred to as “carapaces” in the comic but that’s the name the fandom knows them by. Guess we’ll see if they are as we go on.
BRIGHT: Meanwhile, John opens some birthday presents he found in his Dad’s room! He gets some Fruit Gushers, a very dapper suit, and best of all, an Array Fetch Modus, which lets him retrieve an item from any card in his deck! Of course, this would be too straightforward, so he combines it with his other Fetch Modii until he gets something properly inconvenient.
FAILURE ARTIST: How much do Modii cost and does everyone in this universe have one?
CHEL: The implication is tech like this is how Skaianet made its money, but since we never really see anyone who’s not involved somehow with the game, we don’t really get a good sense of the company being part of the world, so we don’t know. If I had to guess, though, I’d think getting the sylladex in the first place costs a big lump sum and then the various fetch modii cost much smaller amounts, sort of like apps on a phone or programs on a computer.
When prompted, John closely examines the Fruit Gushers box, this flavour being “MASSIVE TROPICAL BRAIN HEMORRHAGE”. Tasty…? John thinks so. However, in the corner of the box is a small, easily-missed logo…
THE HEINOUS BATTERWITCH HAS HER GNARLED CLAWS IN EVERYTHING.
After the destruction of his planet, the disappearance of his father, the appearance of his ghost grandma, and fighting numerous monsters, THIS is what finally sends John over the edge into a full-out meltdown, despite the onscreen caption declaring that THIS IS STUPID.
FAILURE ARTIST: I actually have a box of Fruit Gushers signed by Andrew Hussie.
CHEL: Back on the island, Jade, accompanied by dramatic music, attempts to retrieve a blue package from the ruins, but just as she reaches it, Becquerel appears between her and it, and we snap right back into STRIFE!
"[S] Jade: Retrieve package." (Watch on YouTube)
Becquerel, as we can now see clearly, is an enormous white dog, lacking facial features of any kind and emitting crackling green lightning - worthy of the description “devilbeast”, I think. Jade aims her rifle at his head and takes multiple shots, but none hit. The first heats up and melts into nothingness. When the second is fired Becquerel turns into green fire and next frame he and Jade are both riding on the now-enormous bullet which carries them across the lagoon to the other side of the island. Becquerel teleports the third bullet into space and himself and Jade to the top of the frog building, and he teleports himself out of the way of the fourth, the background flashing through several different locations. Finally, Jade shoots a bullet in the opposite direction with the instruction GO FETCH!, which Bec does, giving Jade time to grab the package. She rewards Bec for fetching with the irradiated steak and announces that he is a GOOD DOG, BEST FRIEND. After dancing around in celebration, she very abruptly falls asleep again, and Bec scoops her up on his back, takes her back to bed, and tucks her in.
FAILURE ARTIST: The music in Jade: Retrieve Package
is another replacement. Currently it’s An Unbreakable Union by Robert Blake but originally it was Mutiny by Bill Bolin. The original is very retro science fiction and the replacement is safari.
CHEL: For the record, real dogs are not horses and are not built to carry people like that, even very small children can damage a large dog’s back by riding it, but given Bec’s abilities, I don’t think that applies to him.
Rose comes out the other side of the transportaliser, she and the cat having both kept their atoms unmingled, and discovers she’s back in the house, in the room she thought was her mother’s bedroom. It seems the cutesy pink bed and stuff in the lab was in fact her mother’s bedroom, and this room is a well-stocked bar.
You decide not to be especially melodramatic about this revelation.
Good idea, Rose; there isn’t time, as the lab is promptly unestablished by a meteor, sending flaming debris flying through the window. The booze-filled room is especially endangered by this, so Rose decides to flee.
John punches some more cards and complains that he’s the one doing the work while Rose is just messing around on her computer, while Jade dreams and little red lights on her bedposts glow. A metal cabinet in the corner of her room has similar red lights on top, and it bursts open, revealing a Jade-shaped robot.
Sudden cut to a mysterious copy of Jade’s bedroom, except with pink walls, in which Jade stands, wearing a golden dress. Back in her real room, the DREAMBOT stands in the same position. The gold-clad Jade is, we find, a depiction of Jade in her dream. Dream Jade tries to get into bed, but complains of a heavy weight pressing down on her, as the robot is copying her actions and is now lying on top of the real sleeping Jade. Instead, she decides to fly, which of course she can do since it’s a dream (and the robot has jet propulsion).
The dream room also contains the blue package, addressed to “GG” from “GT”. This isn’t John’s current handle, but she knows it’s from John, and that she must deliver it to somewhere else without opening it.
Flashback to the previous winter. In a shot of John’s window, we see his calendar and the edges of some of his posters. The calendar is marked with smiley faces in party hats in green, red, and purple, marking Jade, Dave, and Rose’s birthdays, but more noticeably, there are creepy faces with jester hats and huge teeth scrawled on the wall and posters. I didn’t notice it until just now, but there are some purple lines on the arm of one of the poster characters which might just be part of a drawn-on clown outfit but from this vantage point look like self-harm scars. Brr. Ominous.
John at this point in time is going by “ghostyTrickster” on Pesterchum, hence the “GT” nametag on the package. He’s chatting to Jade about having sent off everyone’s birthday gifts, and how he hopes Jade’s will “help you solve those problems you’ve been having lately”. John is embarrassed to realise it will take much longer than he thought for the package to reach Jade’s island, but she assures him it will arrive “exactly when it needs to”.
BRIGHT: With the reveal of John’s previous handle, and from the characters in the Trollslum, we also get the theme of the handle initials being the letters of DNA. (GCAT.)
FAILURE ARTIST: Jade complains about “trolls” and we have the first time this beloved and perhaps overshadowing species is named. However, John calls the “trolls” the r-slur so that’s another point.
CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 10
CHEL: Also, the trolls are why he changed his handle, in an attempt to avoid them bothering him.
FAILURE ARTIST: We go back to current day. John is peeved at the graffiti on his posters. He thinks it’s the imps. However, we just saw it was there months before. What is going on, hmmm?
Rose decides to name the cat Vodka Mutini. She then talks with John. Rose wonders where Dave is and John figures that Bro is kicking his ass. Considering that this ass-kicking is later treated as serious abuse, this is a callous thing for a friend to say.
ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 10
CHEL: I’d also say that counts as HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING. There’s not much an internet friend can do about someone’s abusive situation on the other side of the country but they could at least support Dave and tell him to call the police, if it is supposed to be that bad. Or at least, you know, be worried. Then again, Dave might not have told them what the ass-kicking entails, but Rose knows about his brother’s websites, and given that we know Bro made at least one film in which Dave was involved and may or may not have been on camera, and the film certainly would show the state the apartment was in…
HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 4
FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, when John complains about his posters being defaced, Rose says they always looked that way. John naturally freaks out at this creepy revelation.
We cut to WV. They are trying to get down from the mobile station without sacrificing the MAYORAL SASH. While working the Appearifier, they get John’s present with an envelope addressed to “Mister Mayor”. After WV gets more cable, they rappel down the mobile station with the package under their arm.
Meanwhile, a figure in yellow caution tape watches WV through a sniper rifle. This is Aimless Renegade, a wonderful but forgotten character.
We go back to John and Rose. John discusses the mystery of the defaced posters while he futzes around with the Alchemiter. Rose thinks that John had blocked out the memory of defacing the posters and the revelation that his father isn’t who he thought he was unblocked his memory. She thinks maybe his father thought he was interested in clowns because John drew clowns everywhere. Yet John also wrote “LAME KID”? Maybe Dad should have taken John to therapy.
CHEL: “Lame kid” with arrows pointing down at his bed, to be exact, among other insults, and the clown faces don’t look like the product of someone who liked clowns at all!
ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 11
HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 5
Yet Dad Egbert is supposed to be the good parent of the group, so here we go with a new count:
RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1
This one’s primarily for romantic relationships, but other relationship fumbles apply too.
Rose thinks that the drawings are the result of John trying to express something subconscious, possibly a repressed past memory. John changes the subject to the upward building process; Rose complains that chimneys weren’t meant to bear such a weight, and considers switching to walls now they can get grist more easily, but she’s running out of time as the house proper is now on fire. John blames Dave, so I think we can assume that either they don’t know his brother forces him into swordfights or they don’t think it’s a problem. Which one is hard to determine.
FAILURE ARTIST: We cut to Jade playing a bass solo so advanced it doesn’t have a bass line. Another Bolin replacement. We find out Dream Jade is in a castle on a planet that’s a gold copy of the one Jack Noir and co are on. While flying around, she sees an inhabitant that looks familiar.
CHEL: This is what I was referring to when I said Jade did have some contact with people; she is able to contact the carapaces in her dreams. However, the carapaces are, as we’ve seen from WV and company, somewhat childlike in behaviour, living in a society that’s nothing like Earth’s, biologically not the same as humans so they couldn’t easily advise her if she got ill or injured, and they don’t appear to be able or willing to speak, at least not most of the time and/or in a way the humans could understand, not to mention they would have no way to physically assist her in the waking world so she’d still have to raise herself from a very young age. Hence, why I don’t think they’re a substitute for an actual human parent.
#Homespork#homestuck#homestuck review#homestuck meta#homestuck reread#let's read homestuck#literary critique#sporking#Let's read
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Breath of the Wild Daemon!AU
Ok so! I’m working on an actual fic using these concepts and this version of the BotW world, but I thought that maybe some of you might be interested in my ideas so here! I’m putting pretty much everything under a readmore, because this is copypasted from my planning document, which got very long and doesn’t even have anything to do with the plot of what I’m writing ^^’
Enjoy!
Link’s daemon is a Hyrule Field Mouse (lol get it) named Firielore (fih-REE-ehl-ohr), Firi for short. From Fi, Ciela, and Farore. They settled early, when Link first drew the Master Sword. Historically, the Hero most often settles as a wolf, but other forms are not unheard of and he isn’t the first Hero to settle as something more unassuming.
Pre-Calamity, most people, even other knights, thought that Link and Firi’s behavior was odd. Neither of them ever spoke (Link is mute, but Firi can speak and just doesn’t), and Firi was just as stoic and inexpressive as her human. As a mouse daemon, she was always on his person, usually on his left shoulder as was uniform for smaller daemons of knights and soldiers, but was rarely seen out of that position except for when she would turn to increase their field of view or leave him briefly to scout stealthily around corners/over boulders and the like.
Relating to the issues that make him canonically selectively mute, Link’s lack of self preservation re: his Duty translated to Firi as well. Things like stretching their bond too far for too long for the sake of getting the scope of a situation or enemy, but not letting the pain show externally where someone else might be brought to their knees with it. Other things like Firi using herself as a distraction, running from Link’s arm to the Moblin’s to divide its attention and leaving them both exposed to give Link a chance to strike. The monsters don’t know the difference between hitting a daemon vs. its Hylian, and that makes the contact less bad, but not insignificant. There were rumors throughout the castle that Link and Firi had been separated traumatically or that the Master Sword allowed them the distance, but both are untrue- their bond was no different than any other Hylian, they just pushed it further in the name of duty.
Link and Firi’s character development (in the memories) is subtle just like in canon. Through the Yiga attack she is always on Link’s left shoulder, even when they and Zelda are just traveling. On the hill with the Silent Princess is the first time she’s not there- she hops off his shoulder when he crawls forward to look at the flower and she moves closer to it. After Zelda’s failure at the Spring of Power, Firi touches Zelda’s daemon to comfort him, just for a moment.
Firi had and has (Impa gave it to them with the Champion’s Tunic) a small set of custom armor for protection, but rarely wore/wears it; she’s fast enough that any attack that would possibly hit her in battle would probably kill Link as well. On the battlefield she would either deftly scurry around Link and warn him silently about attacks from behind, or slip into a small armored pouch that existed to protect her in one-on-one combat unless an opportunity to assist presented itself. In the present, she doesn’t participate in battle the same way she would 100 years ago (with the aggressive distraction and the like), moreso providing Link extra ears and eyes in a fight.
Post-Calamity, she is considerably more physically active, but she still doesn’t speak out loud- except very occasionally to Link himself. I.e when they first wake up in the Shrine of Resurrection, Link hears Zelda’s voice first and opens his eyes to Firi sitting on his chest, also saying his name. However, she’s still a very quiet daemon, especially considering that Link communicates via signing and it would be considered acceptable for her to talk for him. In Post-Calamity Hyrule she’s more outgoing towards other daemons and will greet them physically if appropriate.
Zelda’s daemon, Hylayrune (hih-LAE-roon), Layrune or Rune for short, is unsettled until the moment she awakens her power, when he settles as a Snowcoat Fox (Real life equivalent: Arctic Fox). His name comes from Hylia (all Zeldas daemons’ names start with ‘Hy’), (La)Nayru, Hyrule, and rune/ruin. Before he settled, he took atypical forms for the sacred princess’ daemon that were more representative of Zelda’s scientific pursuits, such as bugs (usually a bee), frogs, and lizards. Almost always, the Princess settles as a bird of prey (often owl, occasionally eagle or loftwing), or in some cases a small dragon (as the three dragons Dinraal, Farosh, and Naydra are said to be the daemons of the three Goddesses, with Hylia’s being most often depicted as a golden dragon or occasionally a huge, golden Loftwing).
Rune’s late settling, and his preferred forms before settling, were a huge cause of anxiety for him, Zelda, and their father. This is all tied into their self-doubt about awakening their sealing power and being able to fulfill her duty as the sacred princess, but it’s also personal for the King. His daemon is a Mountain Crow, which though known to be clever and resourceful are seen as a bad omen, even a curse, within Hyrule. It puts stress on his regime, and the idea that his daughter prefers frogs and lizards over forms that have become symbolic of the royal family and the sealing power is deeply troubling. Rune takes “appropriate” forms only at official appearances and ceremonies, and even then, usually a more wild hawk over an owl, eagle, or dragon.
Other characters:
The Old Man/King: Mountain Crow (real life equivalent: Raven)
Urbosa: Islander Hawk (with kind of a more desert coloration. real life equivalent: Harris Hawk)
Riju: Unsettled, usually a Sand Seal bc they love them
Impa: Blue-Winged Heron (real life equivalent: Great/Little Blue Heron).
Beedle: Hylian Retriever (A golden one, fight me)
Other random stuff/past Links:
- The Princess traditionally settles when she first unlocks/uses her powers, and the Hero traditionally settles when he draws the Master Sword. There are some exceptions, like the Hero of Twilight being old enough to have already been settled, and the Links in games without the Master Sword settling in other ways.
-Hero of Time and Twilight both had Wolf daemons. Their wolf forms are kind of a combination of them and their daemons’ appearances. Time had a lighter colored wolf and Twilight had a darker colored wolf.
- BUT Hero of Time’s daemon is usually a mouse as a child, when he’s unsettled, alluding to past and future heroes.
- The mouse thing (here and for the Hero of the Wild) comes less from personality and more from the feeling of facing an enormous dungeon boss as Link, like a mouse about to fight a lion.
-Both the Hero of Wind and Four Swords/Minish Cap Link also had mouse daemons.
- For Wind this is because of the mobility he needed re: moving on a ship (also kind of like a ship rat? Disclaimer: I’ve never played WW)
- For Four Swords/Minish this is because he shrinks down and is pretty much the same size as his daemon (she’d have to shrink a little bit too but not as much) and I just think that’d be really cute
-I’m not sure what Skyward Sword!Link’s daemon would be. Not a loftwing because it isn’t possible for anyone but a Goddess or a sacred princess (with Goddess blood) to settle as one, but I’ve never played SS so I can’t really say. It would have to be small enough to ride on a loftwing with him, or a bird of some sort- probably all of the people in Skyloft settled like that, now that I think about it. Maybe a beetle?
-Link from the original games probably has a wolf daemon, as well as LttP/LBW Link.
- Spirit Tracks!Link has a white dove daemon and she rides on his head like the birds in the game and its adorable
-Ganondorf always has a boar daemon in any iteration. When he transforms into Ganon they merge, similar to Wolf Link, but grotesquely instead of dissolving together in Twilight.
-Only the Hylians, Sheikah, and Gerudo have daemons
-The Sheikah have mostly same-sex daemons, with opposite-sex daemons being about as rare as same-sex daemons among the Hylians and Gerudo. No one’s quite sure why.
-The Zora have sort of a connection to their jewelry and weapons, but not necessarily a physical one. More of a literal “put your soul into your craft” type thing, which is why Zora armor is the way it is and most of the Zora have specialized livelihoods like sculpting and smithing.
-The Gorons don’t have a physical Thing, they have a special brotherhood with other Gorons. It’s why you rarely see Gorons traveling too far from Goron City, and almost never alone. They can be alone, like a Zora can be without their craft and affects, but it negatively effects them after a while.
-The Rito have their songs; though not all of them are musically inclined, its a cultural thing and not a physical requirement. Kass would be considered very spiritually aware and expressive, whereas Revali would not, but a non-musician Rito doesn’t suffer for it. There would only be an issue if there were no bards among the entire Rito race, and the songs faded from memory.
#daemon au#daemonverse#botw#breath of the wild#loz#legend of zelda#my post#id like to make one of those daemon au photoset things but#link is the only one with an animal not from the game and it would look wrong without him there :(
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The Potential Death of Pokemon
Alright so that title is very dramatic and by and large won’t actually happen, but, from the announcement by Junichi Masuda that Pokemon that aren’t already in the Galar Pokedex cannot be brought into the Game via Pokemon Home I noticed a design trend that could actually spell the death of Pokemon as a series of games all connected to one another. They would still be able to make Pokemon games, but not as part of a greater whole and legacy that builds upon itself, ever improving and evolving. More on what I mean will be under the cut.
(Warning, it’s very long, don’t ready if you don’t have patience for long stuff.)
So the best way to see this playing out is an analysis of the game mechanics of Pokemon and how they’re carried on throughout the games. Looking at the improvements each generation brings, you see that generation 4 is the cutoff point and the last game to truly make any changes that can’t be thrown away without changing the core game massively. The closest to the this isn generation 6 with the Fairy type. Held items, breeding and genders, weather effects, day and night, abilities, natures, double battles, the physical and special damage split for moves themselves. These changes are truly what make the pokemon games Versions as stated in their titles (Gold Version, Sapphire Version, etc.) since they function like updates and patches to a game, like a Version 4.2 or something along those lines.
However, in generation 5, Black and White, barely many changes were made, some abilities were tweaked, but the biggest changes made in overall mechanics was triple and rotation battles. These were not all that much focused on in the games themselves, but, were still there, and, were barely in generation 6 games, and worse yet, were not available in generation 7 games at all. The mechanic was picked up to play with and then discarded shortly after and eventually forgotten about. Mega Evolution is in a similar place, it was a focus for generation 6, then generation 7 comes along and it’s only there in the postgame from the Battle Tree. In Sword and Shield, it could very well no longer be made available, or in any other game in generation 8 going forward. Z moves will likely suffer the same fate.
Junichi Masuda, the director for the main Pokemon series as a whole, has rather harsh views towards Pokemon’s current audience, primarily children, and finds that modern children have lower attention spans due to the existence of mobile games and general availability of content in the present day. This very clearly is reflected in how GameFreak designs their games; with short attention spans. A mechanic is introduced, played with once, then forgotten about. There is no sense of preservation, improvement, or legacy in games past generation 4. You can no longer experience what generation 5 brought to the series, and the same might apply for the other ones going forwards.
Except for one thing; Pokemon themselves.
They are the legacy of each new game, of each generation, and they’re always in every game, you can always transfer the old over. They even made the Kanto remakes to allow that to happen in generation 3. They have always preserved the legacy of the Pokemon series through the Pokemon themselves. This allows games to connect to each other, and how to compare the old and the new and to see firsthand how changes are made. They allow fans to see the new and old and pick up favourites of their own, which is great for newer fans who might end up liking Pokemon from older generations and feeling a connection to those games and the series as a wider whole. This is the heart of Pokemon, through and through.
And GameFreak can easily rip out that heart, and kill what makes Pokemon truly special for good. It’s easy, and Junichi Masuda’s design philosophies are indeed bleeding into the Pokemon themselves now with the announcement that you can’t bring forward Pokemon that aren’t in the regional Pokedex. What this means is that Pokemon could easily be forgotten about. They don’t have to update any models, any animations, any stats, moves or abilities, they can just take the easy, lazy way out and just leave whatever Pokemon they want behind.
How would you feel if you couldn’t ever use your favourite Pokemon ever again in any future games? How would you feel if the sheer creativity you used in team building for single player runs or multiplayer battles was shackled and constricted permanently? How would you feel if you got attached to a new Pokemon, but now the fear of it not appearing in any other game again was always going to be there? How do would you feel if the Pokemon themselves became disposable? Sure, if your favourite is popular like Pikachu or Charizard, you should be fine. But every Pokemon has a fan.
The Pokemon make the series what it is, they’re a legacy of many things, and they connect people to the games, to each other, and to a wider experience. That can all be severed if the game design that Masuda has been using bleeds into how he treats the Pokemon themselves, and now, this is starting to be a very real possibility. The metagame itself would also be impacted by this, with staples of it potentially being lost, and entire tiers of metagame being potentially obliterated or drastically crippled, with even less variety available. It would be quite the nightmare to keep ahold of, and fans of certain Pokemon would be forced to play in older metagames to be able to do that. The creativity of team building and fighting would be slaughtered. Remember when Se Jun Park won the 2014 world championships with a Pachirisu? Imagine a world where you can’t do that anymore, because Pachirisu, or any other Pokemon, isn’t available in the current generation anymore.
Maybe I’m making something out of nothing, hopefully, this never happens, and we can eventually bring forward any Pokemon we want into the new generations to come. But it’s always important to look things on a broader level, to have foresight, and to look at the game design of a series as beloved as Pokemon going forwards. Because if not, it might just be silently murdered without anyone noticing, and then, it won’t really be Pokemon anymore. Just a shell. And I don’t want that for the series I love. We can only wait and see really, but I hope I’m wrong, I really do. I don’t want to be proven right in some years time, I want this to be a worry that never comes back up again. I can only hope, really.
#Pokemon#not sure if this'll get any attention since no one ever cares what i have to say but#i tried my best to articulate a massive worry about this series that ive had#surrounding the latest developments around sword and shield im worried about it coming true#long post
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Zi-O 29-30: Blade spoilers within (from someone who has NOT watched Blade)
Ha! Black!Woz walks out of the Storytime vault and into 9-to-5.
White!Woz: Haha sweet I get to choose Another Blade
Swartz: Hey, what do you think of being a person who gets used… you know, hypothetically speaking…
White!Woz: ...ah. Well. Shit.
(We continue this super spoiler-iffic liveblog under the cut. It gets long - this one made it to about 3,000 words. My apologies to mobile users. Just... scroll. Scroll like your life depends on it.)
Awww… the café from Blade has photos from back then on the counter, that’s so sweet. And Amane’s actually wearing the recent necklace for Chalice – that’s a really nice touch there, Toei. Product placement, but it’s a really nice tribute.
Another Blade’s design is – that’s terrifying, that’s a lot of knifes. I like how the spade symbol glows red, and it doesn’t have the ‘handle’ part of a spade. It’s a heart, too. But the thing is… this is the second Another Rider to not have the lens-eyes. Everyone up to Another Zi-O had them, and he notably didn’t.
I know people have been saying they’re proud of Sougo for managing to graduate, and I agree. I really do. I’m happy for our book-dumb protagonist. It’s actually kind of nice to see all four of the ‘team’ together. You know, for certain definitions of ‘team’.
Noting here the Tsukuyomi hasn’t told Sougo that his ‘dream’ was. Not actually a dream, so much as a memory. It makes sense that a small 8-year-old reality warper would take the trauma of something like what Swartz did, and assume the first time he saw it was a nightmare, too.
(Seriously, screw that guy.)
Okay, so, I have not watched Decade, but… from the two (2) films I’ve seen with his cast – WxDecade and the first Hero Taisen movie – this seems to be pretty damned in-character for this Daiki guy. “Lol sup hi just saying hello don’t mind me” *proceeds to steal all your transformation trinkets*
Case in point… Sougo and Geiz don’t notice their personal watches are missing until they go to activate the button on the side. Not when they don’t pull anything out – no, when they go to turn them on. Boys. Boys please.
Also, can I just say that I’m starting to see why people pair Tsukasa and Daiki? I mean, the guy came out in a ~magenta~ apron. And they’re both little shits.
Sougo just shoves Woz in front of them. Woz!Kikai is so OP, oh my god. First the mind control thing when it debuted, the satellite dish lasers in Another Zi-O, and now it has extendable robot arms to grab the watches back. Oh my god.
(Kaito, suddenly copied into another existance as Baron: GFDI just let me be a tree spirit already)
(I know it’s a doppelganger, but seriously. So many Barons. So little patience on his end for people constantly trying to revive him as a pawn.)
Sougo: Okay, so, you guys’s past is my future, and since it’s 2019, anything that happens in 2068 is the future now, so aren’t you talking about things that haven’t happened yet?
Woz: My lord, please, verb tenses get complicated enough without you speaking.
OOF. Yeah, uh, there’s gonna be a. A few problems with Blade ‘2019’. Namely that he isn’t supposed to be in, like. Japan. Ever again. Because Bad Things Happen when he is around fellow Undead. (He made an exception for Gorider, because a certain zombie f*er was stealing his gig, and poorly at that.
((Am I saying that he’s an asshole who is also a zombie, or that he would do a zombie? … Both. I’m saying both.))
Sougo: Okay, so, we need one person who can fight on both ends, and really, if a team is going after Geiz’s watch, it ought to include Geiz, and you guys want me to go after the Another Riders, so of course the groups are me with Tusukyomi, and Geiz with Woz! :) It’s only rational! :) And if you happen to work out whatever’s going on between you, well, that’s just a bonus, isn’t it? :)
Geiz: ...if I kill him, it’s your fault, you know.
Tsukuyomi: This is a terrible idea.
Sougo: I know! :)
(gasp) Dark Toei is giving us the forbidden rebel backstory!
Oh goody Woz was the leader of their team! And he said he was going to ‘infiltrate’ Oma Zi-O’s camp! And everyone died because he seems to have switched sides. Delightful.
White!Woz: Excuse me? I see a pair of powerups here, but not the one I specifically requested you get.
Daiki: Lol you mad?
White!Woz: ...fight us irl bitch.
Daiki: Heh.
Huh… So… when White!Woz’s tablet makes someone do something, they’re supposed to hear his ‘narration’… and maybe that’s a recent idea from the team, but. When it seemed that he was compelling Sougo to come after him – I can’t remember when, it was during either Shinobi or Quiz, but Sougo and Black!Woz were talking in 9-to-5, and he summoned Sougo away, that didn’t happen. Hm.
Sougo: Dang, couldn’t even knock the watch out temporarily. Drat.
Hm. Regulus is showing up in the daytime now… and so is the rest of the constellation. That can’t be good.
Oooh, nifty. Another Blade has the inverted heart for Chalice on her torso, but the spade for Blade on her. Well, blade. As well as a circular saw, which is a bit overkill when you consider the literal knives sticking up from her shoulders.
Oh, hey, remember that theory about how the Another Riders are technically the enemy that each rider fought? Like how Another Gaim opened cracks into the Helheim forest, and Another OOO bled Cell Medals like a Greeed?
And remember why Kenzaki can never return to Japan?
Undead are drawn to fight each other.
Okay, I get why a speed versus speed battle, to counter Woz!Shinobi, would wind up with Diend summoning Accel. But why Birth? Date’s version was never particularly fast – he’s more of a Mighty Glacier. And the suit isn’t really intended for speed, since Gotou was only particularly speedy when he used the Cutter Wing ‘attachment’.
And then I am immediately answered. Bike juggling to get Woz into the air, so that ‘Birth’ can shoot him down without mercy. (Was reminding us of the bike form really necessary? Was it? I don’t think it was. I could have done without seeing that in-action again.)
Diend: Wow, that’s cold, even for me, watching your friend get beat up like that.
Geiz: Bold of you to assume we’re friends. He’s a born liar. I mean, he’s using a ninja form right now.
Geiz: Yeah, no, Woz, screw you. I know you wanted a distraction. Asshole.
Diend: Aw, look, they do like each other.
OH THANK COSMOS it’s Chalice Versus Zi-O. ...for now. There’s about minutes left for everything to go terribly, terribly wrong. (Because Blade.)
And then it immediately went terribly, terribly, wrong.
Kenzaki and Hajime haven’t transformed in years, because they can’t. They would feel each other’s power, seek each other out, and be forced to fight. Probably the only time Blade has reappeared was in a slightly-alternate reality. (shakes fist at Gorider). And Kenzaki looks absolutely terrible. How did you get here so fast, sir? That jacket has clearly seen far better days, is the damage recent?
Some excellent ‘teamwork’ on Geiz and Black!Woz’s parts – using Shinobi’s finisher to get the two targets in one spot for Geiz’s finisher. Clever. Pity that the other two watches aren’t here.
And with that, and some brutal slashes exchanged between Blade and Chalice…
we move to episode 30.
The power-up watches get all electro-staticy, and try to start a chain reaction with White!Woz, but it doesn’t hold up. Hm.
Geiz: What’s your issue?!
Diend: Looking for my boyfriend-rival. No big deal.
Oh man, neither of them want to be in this fight, but they don’t have a choice. Zi-O accidentally knocks Another Blade into the line of fire for Actual Blade’s finisher, so naturally Chalice steps in to try and take the hit.
It doesn’t… technically work. She still gets knocked out of her transformation, back to Amane, and he’s still in his armor.
Kenzaki: oh god oh shit what the hell?! Amane?! what’s going on oh shit
Woz’s storytime vault…
Oh… The Day of Oma is apparently meant for Sougo to stop the end of the world… apparently as brought on by the Battle Fight.
… Rider versus Rider, right? A pair of Riders who can’t coexist, but also can’t not coexist. And yet another who is supposedly erasing all Riders from history. Starting with the primary members of each group. So… if Blade goes, the world goes. If Chalice goes, the world goes. If they both go, Oma Zi-O rises.
“An interesting game, Professor. The only way to win is not to play.”
Zi-O II’s shot in the opening has been replaced by Zi-O Trinity.
Geiz can relate pretty hard to Kenzaki’s resignation to having to fight Hajime, but also to his desperately not wanting to do that thing.
Once again, we have the question of “What is the future you are aiming for?” The question of “And then what?”
Geiz wants to see the one that Sougo – that they will create.
<3
Junichiro: Hey, what are your plans for the new era?
Sougo: ...Uncle, you have no idea how loaded that question is with this group.
(or does he?)
Hey, that camera’s a clue in more ways than one, isn’t it? Another Blade was attacking photo studios, because Hajime’s a photographer. But that camera’s awfully similar to Tsukasas. Who asked you to repair, that, I wonder��?
Yeah, Woz, you’re kind of being a hypocrite here. Criticizing a woman for wanting to reconnect with an old friend/mentor, while unable to get over the urge to lord over having been Geiz’s superior. GEIZ has a point in his anger. WOZ is just being an ass. And Sougo hones directly in on this.
Kid’s got a decent Charisma stat, too.
When Amane picks up the photos, through to when Kenzaki calls for Hajime. That! The Background!
I think that’s a piano ballad version of “Zi-O: King of Time”!
OST when?
And, also, can we get another instance of Future Soldier in-show anytime soon?
Okay, okay, sorry, back to the show.
OH NOOOO.
Firstly, White!Woz summons the two into a fight.
Then he forcibly activates the Another Blade watch inside of Amane.
The transformation has a screen with Another Blade’s face appear and move over her, just like the card that appears when Kenzaki transforms.
Ow, my heart.
OH SHIT RIGHT.
These two episodes have made no effort to hide the green blood that both Kenzaki and Hajime have – from the miscolored bruises to actual bloodstains. And Undead can be ‘sealed’ away – that’s where the Rouze cards come from in the first place. Another Blade – no. Amane doesn’t want them to fight – doesn’t want them to have to fight. So she seals their powers. Their emblems move onto the Another Blade… armor, I guess is as good a word as any.
And now their wounds are red.
But she just took the powers of two Jokers, absorbing them into one person. Leaving one person with the Joker designation.
Herself.
Please note that I typed this immediately before restarting, only to watch the Sealing Stone appear.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and nobody feels fine.
Oh, the cinematography of this show. A beam visually separating Sougo and White!Woz from their angles on the stairs – it’s going the opposite direction, making an x with the handrail behind them.
We’re back to the question of “And then what?”.
White!Woz’s future is gone, the potential isn’t there anymore, so he’d rather there not be a future at all. I guess we’ll never see if my ‘a future frozen in an endless moment’ theory was right. Pity. I was wondering if they would go that route for him.
Oooh, an orchestral version of ‘Zi-O: King of Time’!
“You can’t just give up! What’s the use in assuming that it’s over?” Sougo is cheering on even his enemy this boy is not nearly as dark as he assumed in the Ryuki arc, oh my goodness. “You can’t say that any one future is set in stone, so keep trying, keep opposing us! I’ll... No. We’ll keep foiling your plans, but you can’t just give up on the world.”
And the orchestral theme just keeps rising in the background.
Oh… and Sougo said the same thing to Woz. Geiz says that he can’t stand living in the past. And, like I guessed last episode, in like, the fourth section of this liveblog… The past that they’ve lived is, technically, still in the future from where they are now. From Sougo’s perspective, and from the perspective of time itself, none of that has happened yet.
Besides, like Geiz is saying, they came to the past to change history anyway. They’re making a new future, all of them – Sougo, Tsukuyomi, and Geiz… and Woz.
“Do you want in?”
“… That sounds interesting.”
Hm. The Trinity watch – which is somehow successfully created by White!Woz – has all three of the current Belt Voices, doesn’t it? The two that the Ziku Driver uses and the high-pitched one from the BeyonDriver.
“If you use this, I will accept it.”
… accept what? The option to create a new future? The future that Sougo’s aiming for?
Nifty – the light from Regulus and the Day of Oma burns out the clouds from the Sealing Stone.
Pffft - ‘the light is guiding us’ no, no it’s not so much that…
(I love the ‘wtf is going on’ faces from Kenzaki and Hajime)
GEEZ Trinity’s basically a mini-Sentai mech, with all three of them in one place inside.
“Guys, no, I’m sorry, I know none of us know what is going on, but I have to take control for a second, I have to do my speech okay, it’s in my contract. This is not optional.”
I like how the hand on the clock moves to point to whoever’s in control of the body.
I really like how Trinity forms all of their weapons – and how they dissolve when discarded. Nice touch.
And I really like the triumphant section of ‘King of Time’ playing behind this fight.
...Regulus is shining still, brighter than before. With a ‘shine’ of pink, yellow, and green. Their colors.
“Why did you choose to let me stay?”
“Because I think you have more potential.”
White!Woz accepts that ‘his’ world will never exist, and that Sougo will create a better one. He goes out peacefully, and warning Black!Woz – no. Warning Woz that Sir Swartz is planning more than they know.
He goes out with a shimmer of golden motes of light, and the glitching effects that have been a key sign of time re-writing an existence.
Oma Zi-O: You’re almost done… only six more until you’re me.
Sougo: But what I don’t want to?
Daiki yoinked the Future Note. Show off.
Which, of course, creates a slight problem for me and my potential ‘fix it’ of Zi-O, down the line in the Re-United ‘verse. Or, rather, a complication.
See, the draft I’ve got has at minimum one of the Den-O’s and Zeronos ferrying Riders back and forth. THAT is how I plan to deal with the amnesia issue. Not warning them in the present and past, like I had planned. But having the ‘contemporary’ versions of them just. Sorta travel backward, and pretend that they’re the ones that from in the past. Just… ya know, keep their past selves unaware of what’s going on, take the brunt of temporary power removal. Fill in for themselves when Zi-O and Geiz meet them.
And I had everyone scheduling this from Tsukasa having somehow duplicated Black!Woz’s book when he grabbed it during the Ghost arc. I have never seen Decade, and have no idea if that would even be part of his powerset. But, like, Trinity just knocked off his ability to turn Riders into weapons and stuff, so. Ya know.
I’m apparently not that far off, if I can work Daiki into it. … need to watch Den-O and Decade first, but that’s just how it goes.
The complication is my stated ‘not wanting to touch on Zi-O’ aspect. I now admit that I want to handle it somehow, but if they keep airing concepts similar to ones I’ve been working on for months, I’m going to get accused of lying.
Arceus, Cosmos, and Gaim DAMNIT.
Of course, you may have noticed I skipped a scene there during the re-cap.
Because not for the first time, something has been saved by Zi-O taking powers away. I’m still decidedly not here for the amnesia concept, and I am not okay with the fact that certain characters have potentially been un-created – Ankh, Parad, Poppy and the like among them – but here’s the thing.
Both Kenzaki and Hajime remember being Blade and Chalice. They can properly retire – They’re both bleeding red. Hajime was never human to start with – he was using the Spirit card to be human. But he seems to be human now. The Blade and Chalice watches appear to have taken their Joker situation out of the picture.
Like how his intervention by introducing the father to Emu, who clearly went on to point him to Hiiro, saved the son during the Ex-Aid arc.
Like how the girls would have never gone missing during the Fourze and Faiz arc, to say nothing of Takumi and Kusaka being decidedly more alive than usual.
Like how Kaito also appears to be alive again after the Gaim arc.
And how neither the girl or her brother died in the Ghost arc.
How Rentaro can become Shinobi in a newly created potential future.
How Mondo got to meet his father.
… admittedly, his apparently re-creating the events of Ryuki might be a problem. I haven’t had a chance to watch any of the RIDER TIME specials, but I hear that’s what happened? Sorry, Shinji.
But here’s the thing. A not-insignificant number of things have turned out for the better… and as long as the ‘you were never riders’ thing can be… worked around…
Hmn.
((also, just a quick note, if you comment on any of the sections in here, I’d really appreciate it if you specify which statements you’re talking about. These recaps get really long, so... y’know, it’ll make it a little easier for a conversation.))
#kamen rider zi o#kamen rider blade#sailorcressy says#the worldbuilding we need and deserve#riders (re)united#i should probably make a liveblog tag
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Ok, so the previous ask also mentioned the characters on the title screen. I hadnt paid much attention to them before, but you'd think the foretellers would be here right? But no. Instead we've got an assorted group of kids I mostly don't recognize, and would thus write off as representations of the players' keykids (as I've gathered the custom protagonists are called, which is great). Except that, whoops, that's clearly Ventus at the bottom there, especially given bits of kh3's ending credits.
So maybe these are all actual characters? Ive been told that union cross is both a remake and a continuation of the previous kh mobile game, which already covered up to the keyblade war, so if these are actual characters, then maybe they are, or are among, Fox's chosen survivors of the keyblade war?
And Ventus isn't the only familiar face. The top left guy is almost certainly a young marluxia, as there was some implication in kh3 that he had once been a keyblade wielder. Top right guy could honestly be almost anybody under the hood. Middle right character could almost be a young Eraquis? Which, I mean, probably/hopefully not, as that wouldn't make hardly any sense at all. The other two, I have no idea, so I figure they at least are actual new characters.
As for how Ven and Marluxia, at the very least, made it from the distant past to the modern day, well... as of DDD time travel is a thing, and as of KH3's ending you can apparently just summon people from the distant past to the modern day...
*IF* this game even is set in the distant past, which I'm less and less convinced it is. We have characters traveling to (versions of?) Modern day disney worlds, fighting emblem heartless that just straight up shouldn't exist any more than like 5 years before the first kh game, using portals to travel between worlds that shouldnt be portal-separated at this point, and you have the maybe-dream-eater chrithies walking around in the open, implying that all of this could be some digital or dream recreation of the events of the keyblade war, or maybe the kids who got caught up in or survived it were somehow pushed out of the normal timeline into one of kh's many liminal spaces - maybe we're in a dreaming world version of keykid town? - into which modern elements can fall or from which individual characters could be plucked.
I don't know, those are the best theories I've got at the moment. I'm not willing to accept "it's a mobile game and nothing matters or is canon" because thats not how kh has ever operated before, and because kh3 said all this junk is very much canon.
I am however willing to entertain the possibility of "there isn't an explanation that makes sense because the devs havent bothered to think of one yet, but don't worry, they'll pull some super convoluted and deeply unsatisfying retconsplanation out of their butts in some future game" because that very much is how kh operates as a series, and that's half of what I love about these games.
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Hotaru and Ruza cause they have cool names and I want to know more
that is excellentreasoning op
note of transparency: im making up half thisinfo on the spot bc me? developing my ocs??? not likely so im like sweating athow much i dont know about my own characters whoops and all this has the potential to changein the future lmao jflkdsajfldsa but THANK u for asking about my babeys all the same
ANYWAY
(here’s a cut, rip mobile users)
Hotaru
Full Name: HotaruKipling
Gender and Sexuality: female, bi
Pronouns: she/her
Ethnicity/Species: Japanese/English, human
Birthplace and Birthdate: Seattle area? cries um, February 7 (aquarius)
Guilty Pleasures: paying money for mobile game bonuses, rom-coms
Phobias: eelsand natural disasters
What They Would Be Famous For: some kind of gaming record most likely
What They Would Get Arrested For: probably hacking into government records forsomething super trivial
OC You Ship Them With: she’s sable’s gf!
OC Most Likely To Murder Them: matthieu probably bc he’s tired and hotaru isbouncy (except they dont exist in the same universe, most of my ocs dont–but matthieu doesn’t warm up to many people anyway)
Favorite Movie/Book Genre: sci-fi and rom-coms
Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: slice-of-life high school dramas
Talents and/or Powers: she’s good with computers/tech and loving her gf
Why Someone Might Love Them: passionate, authentic, super intelligent butsometimes oblivious, in a cute way, like if she’s hyperfocused on something else
Why Someone Might Hate Them: hyper, impulsive, stubborn
How They Change: learning to think ahead and prioritize, learning to be morepatient
Why You Love Them: lowkey i just made her bc i wanted to draw someone withher hairstyle lol, but she’s earnest and caring and fun and bold like i wanna be tbh
Ruza
Full Name: doesn’t have one??? i mean ruza is it i think but that might change lmao
Gender and Sexuality: male, uhhh i guess pan??? they wouldnt rly label themselves like that in the universe he’s in, but regardless it’s not something he’s rly had experience with??? but he loves isaac and that’s all that rly matters
Pronouns: he/him
Ethnicity/Species: he’s from a fantasy universe i’m working on but he comes from like rogue nomadic clan of werewolves
Birthplace and Birthdate: somewhere in the desert lol, march 11 (maybe just “spring” depending on how i do time in this universe?) (pisces)
Guilty Pleasures: long, long walks–so long he loses track of time (preferably with isaac but he’ll go alone sometimes too)
Phobias: himself and his past tbh, my angsty boy :^(
What They Would Be Famous For: breaking up/exposing the underground werewolf fight ring he’s been a prisoner of and freeing his fellow captives
What They Would Get Arrested For: fighting anyone who would try to hurt isaac
OC You Ship Them With: he and isaac are so in love!!! (op u happened to pick the two ocs who have “canon” partners lol)
OC Most Likely To Murder Them: oh man uhhh i’m gonna say sable oddly but probably only as a means of self-defense if that happened to be the case??? they’re not in the same universe but if they were i could see sable being a hunter of some sort who might have prejudice against werewolves…now im getting ideas…. lol i digress
Favorite Movie/Book Genre: ruza would probably be into like art nouveau lol he’s so deep he’d enjoy the abstract, symbolic stuff and take it all in earnest
Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: he would hate horror/gore stuff it’d be super triggering to him
Talents and/or Powers: him werewolf??? and uhh he can draw/paint i’ve just now decided he’s very artistic
Why Someone Might Love Them: selfless, old-soul, thoughtful and loving in the deepest ways, big big big heart (just never sure how to use it)
Why Someone Might Hate Them: uh prejudice ig being a werewolf, self-sacrificing, over-protective, his disdain for himself can be hard to be patient with sometimes
How They Change: once his fight for survival stops being a physical fight, he has to learn like how to fight the metaphorical demons and live for the right reasons, he’s healing and that changes anyone tbh–isaac helps with a lot of that
Why You Love Them: ruza is such a gold-hearted lost boy, he’s gentle and confused and scared but he’s learning to be brave for the right reasons
#sorry this isnt super detailed???#i tried i rly do love my ocs i just never spend time on them lmao cries#redotter#asks#oc#hotaru#ruza#thank u!!!!#ask game#i would have posted this sooner but we lost power for a bit oof
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Significant Impact of COVID–19 on Media & Entertainment Sector in Information & Communication Technology Industry | Data Bridge Market Research
COVID–19 Impact on Media and Entertainment Sector in Information and Communication Technology Industry
ANALYSIS OF COVID-19 ON MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT SECTOR MARKET
The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the whole planet with its major impacts on the economy and businesses across the globe. The COVID-19 spread worldwide in unprecedented ways due to its high infectious and contagious nature and lack of availability of its vaccine. As a result, the greatest medical challenge in the 21st century is yet to be faced by physicians worldwide. Though the emergence of the virus can be traced back to Asia, many European countries along with the U.S. have been struck massively by the pandemic. The virus has spread across all regions ranging from North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa up to South America. The COVID-19 has been declared as a pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO) due to its increased spread across the globe. After the declaration of the pandemic, various countries announced the complete lockdown such as India, China, and other Asian countries to decrease its spread. According to the situation report of 7th June, 2021 by WHO stated 174 million cases of the corona have been reported globally and 3.7 million patients are dead due to the coronavirus. On a slightly positive note, a total of 157 million people have recovered and total of 1.9 million vaccine doses have been administered as well.
People are spending more time at home, which means there are more entertainment hours to fill, and in times of uncertainty, the public turns to trusted news outlets and their digital services for answers. In contextual to ‘at-home-entertainment' providers and news outlets are engaging users more and reaching new and larger audiences. Gaming is among the category with the largest increase in consumption is also gaining heavy experience with an increase in consumption. Though consumption is up, revenue is down overall as advertising spending on which the media and entertainment industry is heavily reliant is shrinking and entire segments of the industry are coming to a halt.
Both, the small and large businesses associated with media and entertainment sector are cutting marketing budgets. Entire segments of these industries have come to a halt: movie theaters have closed, film producers and distributors are struggling without the prospect of a theatrical release, live music – the music industry's primary source of revenue – has come to a halt, and sports are losing money on all fronts.
For instance,
In April 2020, the Canadian Media Producers Association had put as much as USD 2.5 billion that has drastically lowered due to recent shutdown along with the losses of 172,000 jobs.
Because people were largely confined to their homes and the television set (or the mobile phone screen) was their only point of contact with the outside world, and thus the only source of news and diversion, television channels saw a spike in viewership.
IMPACT ON PRICE
According to the rating agency CRISIL, revenue in India's media and entertainment (M&E) sector is expected to increase by 27 percent to Rs 1.37 lakh crore in fiscal 2022, following a 26 percent decline in FY21. However, the report stated that the time it will take to return to pre-pandemic levels will be relatively shorter for segments such as digital and television (TV), while print, films, outdoor, and radio will take longer.
Advertisement (ad) and subscription revenue contribute nearly equally to the overall M&E sector's topline, but because the former is strongly correlated with economic growth, the pandemic has had a greater impact on it.
The TV segment, which accounts for roughly half of the sector's revenue has fully recovered and is expected to grow at a healthy rate in FY22. While ad revenue initially fell sharply, it recovered thanks to the airing of new content, sports events like the Indian Premier League (IPL), and the festive season. Even at the height of the chaos, TV subscriptions remained strong.
Meanwhile, the print segment, which accounts for a fifth of the M&E sector's revenue, is slowly improving and will be able to recover by the end of the fiscal year. Thus, the COVID-19 has impacted the revenues and price level of media and entertainment sector market significantly.
IMPACT ON DEMAND AND SUPPLY CHAIN
During COVID-19, the content consumption has skyrocketed. Regrettably, this did not translate into an increase in revenue which is amusing. Wage cuts and job losses occurred as a result of the overall economic downturn, reducing consumers' overall purchasing power. As a result, their spending was limited to only the most essential items, implying that at least during the period of the extension, they were able to save money.
In July 2020, as the lockdown was gradually lifted, restrictions were eased, and life began to return to normal, revenue streams began to pick up again – albeit slowly. Furthermore, with the start of the holiday season, general entertainment channels surpassed pre-COVID revenue levels, but most niche channels have yet to do so. However, there has been one notable exception of news channel where the role of news channel have been highly benefitted as most of the viewers were concerned about the latest updates on coronavirus.
Hence, the consumers have started using online platforms for education, shopping, and banking in greater numbers than they have in the past and this has overall enhanced the demand for the media & entertainment.
STEPS TO BE TAKEN BY THE VENDOR TO BOOST SALES
Digital is the way of the future. There will be an enormous increase in the retention of existing digital consumers as well as the addition of new users. Consumption of online gaming and demand for OTT originals will only rise as technological advancements make them more accessible. The best part is that their business model is subscription-based rather than ad-supported. To survive the initial disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, M&E (media and entertainment) companies have made significant job cuts and business changes, but as they transition from response to recovery, they can develop strategies that will position them to be more successful once the pandemic has passed.
The ongoing COVID-19 crisis is causing a lot of uncertainty and change, as well as a lot of questions that have no obvious answers: Which changes are likely to last? What will the new world's appearance be like? What will people and businesses do to adapt? Even as U.S. technology, media, and telecommunications companies focus on the global pandemic and its immediate consequences, they will eventually need to pivot towards recovering from crisis.
Office closures are a result of social distancing policies, forcing more employees to work remotely. This could raise the risk of a cyber-attack. In the aftermath of the crisis, compensation and benefits may not be adequate.
CONCLUSION
Pandemic has taken a toll on every aspect of life, including the global economy. With the significant downfalls in many sectors, a collaborative effort of government, industry players, and consumers can win the fight against COVID-19.
It still continues to inflict the world with appalling economic and social dilemmas, capable enough to leave severe backlash on the economy for the next several years. The first wave had already inflicted severe blows to the population as well as the economy. The currently experiencing second wave is expected to be more disastrous not only to the masses but also to financial markets
Furthermore, the media & entertainment firms will likely become more reliant on technology in order to maximize cost-cutting and revenue-generating opportunities. Profit protection and cash management with greater technology integration will become strategic importance for M&E companies as monetization and revenue in terms of ad-spend continue to struggle. The industry is likely to stay focused on long-term sustainability.
With social distancing policies in place, OTT consumption in Canada may begin to shift from mobile screens to large TV screens, as viewers spend more time at home. In the medium term, this will slow the process of cord cutting/shaving, benefiting broadband internet and fiber-to-the-home providers.
#Media and Entertainment Sector#Media and Entertainment Sector Market#Media and Entertainment Sector Market Analysis#Media and Entertainment Sector Market Analysis in Developed Countries#Media and Entertainment Sector Market by Application#Media and Entertainment Sector Market by Type#Media and Entertainment Sector Market Development#Media and Entertainment Sector Market Forcast#Media and Entertainment Sector Market Future Innovation
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Process and wip images for A House That Holds Long Limbs (Part 8)
Previous process and wip documentation: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Parts 6 and 7
Read the pages here: Part 8 (full complete version will be linked from YYH North Bound master post)
I personally love exploring character dynamics and character interaction! It's definitely what I tend to focus on in comics and stories. Plus you get to draw lots of closeups of people's faces and have a lot of fun with expressions. And that's what Part 8 is full of.
IN THIS EDITION, after the usual script and thumbnails, I'll take a bit of time to talk about expressions and characterization (my thoughts on Raizen and Hokushin specifically, but also some general thoughts on how I approach writing characters and character interactions). More details of some of the panels from part 8 so you can see the faces better!
Script and thumbnails
(If you look closely at the top of pg 2, you can see the page behind was where I started drawing my random dream sequence hahahah)
It’s always kind of funny to look back at the script and see my rushed typing (or texting on my phone, since I’m often doing this on mobile...) - odd typos and dangling/incomplete thoughts like ”my blodd” (lol).
Part 8 was one of the first sequences conceived in the development of this story. As a result, the script and the thumbnails both line up very closely to the final, because I’d already been thinking about it for so long and playing the scene out repeatedly in my head. I had a very concrete sense of how I wanted to direct it, unlike many of the action sequences from previous parts. The main areas I struggled with were historical details (the karaginu was originally labelled “tarp” in the script as a placeholder until I decided what it would be), and the biggest pagination change was probably moving Raizen’s “Maybe you just didn’t take enough off lol!” to the previous page so that Hokushin’s (literal) punchline would be at the beginning of the next.
Expressions
I have a huuuuge soft spot for subtle expressions - the kind where just a bit of extra line or texture around the eyes or the mouth, plus the dialogue or context of the scene, adds nuance to an expression. Especially ones that otherwise can read as relatively neutral. Even a very simple expression that’s just dots for eyes and straight lines for the upper/lower lids and eyebrows can have a lot of variation in how you interpret them, simply based on context and slight adjustments. Here are some examples with Raizen, where his face is super basic:
A: pretending nothing is wrong, calmly answering question
B: pleased with self for being smart - clearly a happer expression than A
C: similar to A, chillaxing and answering question
D: no big smiling mouth so he looks more like he’s focused on intensely sniffing the air
E: same as B basically, but a bigger smile of “everything’s fine!” (when you read the text)
F: extra thickness for his upper lid gives the sense that he’s in the middle of his casual sexy/chivalrous how ya doin’ expression
G: ... which changes in this panel to be more a realization (“oh shit I’m on fire”)
Actually, Raizen and Hokushin are both pretty difficult face types for me, being more “mature” looking male faces with stronger features/jawlines and narrower eyes. Hokushin especially has been challenging because his design has really low eyebrows which result in a default glare. Togashi still manages to make him fairly expressive and not look like he's glowering all the time. With my more limited art skill and lack of confidence, I tend to soften his expressions by really laying on the top line of his eye (this sounds like I'm putting mascara on him or something lmao), and also adjusting the size of his pupils (within reason or it starts to look even less like how I draw him normally, which is a big problem since his shaved head is a defining aspect of his series character design so he already looks pretty different). Here are some comparisons of his face - bearing in mind I had to keep his eyes wide open because of the seals in the story:
A: crying/relief
B: this one here is supposed to be a bit miserable/self-loathing because he really didn’t think Raizen was going to look for him
C: shock, unexpected
D: thinking + “ugh plan B”
E: worried/apologetic and then “OOF/URK”
F and G: a progression to show the differences in rendering the eye. First is a bit angry because he’s realizing where all the blood for the seals came from, then he notices Raizen’s hands, and G is that example of softened expression (more lines on the top eye, larger pupil) to show how bad he feels about Raizen’s injury.
One last thought on expressions. They can easily lose their nuance when inking (the slightest shift to a line can change the expression completely), and especially for someone like me who has unsteady hands it can be a bit of a nightmare. The nice thing about ballpoints is that they can retain a bit of the pencil sketch quality, which helped me freak out less when inking the last page with Hokushin’s glare. Here’s a comparison of the progress:
Though this particular expression isn’t that subtle, you can still see some differences as the drawing gets built up. When the pencil lines are gone and the drawing gets rendered in bw only, a lot of shading is lost. The messy lines can be interpreted more flexibly by your brain since they’re less defined and you haven’t “committed”, so the final version looks and feels less expressive. (This is why a lot of artists prefer their sketches to the finished piece, myself included...)
Characterization
This will get very specific to this comic, obviously, but hopefully my approach (and biases haha) will come through. With something like a fancomic, there are obviously existing expectations around the characters, but the benefit of working with these guys is that they’re not as prominent in the story or the fandom, so I feel more comfortable playing around and filling in the gaps. (This is probably why I like minor characters so much.)
In the case of Raizen and Hokushin, we know these two have a close relationship and history only through assumption and insinuation. We never see them interacting directly in the series at all. Actually, we don't see Raizen interact with anyone except Yusuke in non-flashback sequences (aside from the kudakusushi. In the anime, more scenes were added with his estranged friends, mostly their fond memories of him beating them up lmao). But it's very clear that they're extremely important to each other. Hokushin obviously speaks of his king in an exceedingly respectful fashion. Meanwhile, Hokushin is actually the last name Raizen says before he dies - his second last line, to Yusuke, is "Take care of Hokushin and the others" - or in my Taiwanese edition, "I leave Hokushin and the others to you". (Lol “the others”. Also I need to draw a comic about this at some point.)
Despite this zero actual interaction, it's still extremely easy to imagine it because their characters are so clearly defined. In fact, they're both such consistent archetypes with enough particular quirks that they practically write themselves. So it wasn't difficult to extrapolate and imagine much younger versions of them, and how they may have interacted if they had only just met, which is the foundation of North Bound.
Archetypes and stereotypes walk a fine line together, but they do serve as really useful building blocks for sketching characters quickly. This is why I really enjoy symbolic systems like astrology (or some of the the modern incarnations - personality assessment frameworks) because of all the character sketching it helps you do really quickly. Astrology in particular because, without even caring about birth dates or charts or whether astrology is "real" or not, the basic idea of a sign and its bucket of traits and symbols is simply a great resource when you want fleshed out character archetypes to build off of. I talked a bit about this in my Lenormand post, but I think of zodiac signs as one of the many games humans have developed in our attempts to categorize our world into recognizable patterns, and since we've been at it for thousands of years, there's a wealth of reference material, scenarios, analyses not only of the individual archetypes, but for all sorts of combinations and relationships. Some of it very well-thought out, and some of it just lots of fun to read.
For my purposes, applying this to North Bound, Raizen is basically a Leo. He's dramatic, positive, powerful, passionate, a straight-shooter. Not only does he embody its main traits, he's literally a king (or eventually one in this story, I guess). And he even has a mane, for crying out loud. Meanwhile, Hokushin is a solid depiction of a quintessential Virgo - hardworking, practical, analytical, stoic, kind - and literally the loyal servant that typifies the Virgo paradigm. The Leo/Virgo duo is a classic partnership, and at the point where we meet them in the series, the relationship we can see has stabilized to exactly that. At the same time, there's tons of potential for a hilarious dynamic as well, especially imagining how they got to that point. (If you wanna have a laugh, look up some analyses of Leo and Virgo relationships and you'll see what I mean.) His freakouts next to Raizen's "hahhaa everything's fine!" carry most of the humour (similar to how his freakout at Yusuke's vandalism of the rurimaru stones carried a ton of the humour in that episode lol).
Obviously there are other things that further finetune their characters so that they're more than bland cookie cutter personalities (Raizen's deep thinking about the future of the Demon World, for example, and Hokushin's sense of humour and appreciation/enjoyment of fighting), but in broad brushstrokes, these archetypes work incredibly well, and make it so easy to come up with scenarios and write interaction to the point that I'm now ridiculously behind in actually turning them into comics ahhhhh...
#yu yu hakusho#raizen#hokushin#comics#fanart#process#wip#swearing#profanity#character analysis#character thoughts#expressions#art by Maiji/Mary Huang
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Big Business Takes on Anti-Asian Discrimination Corporate America takes on anti-Asian discrimination Top business leaders and corporate giants are pledging $250 million to a new initiative and an ambitious plan to stem a surge in anti-Asian violence and take on challenges that are often ignored by policymakers, Andrew and Ed Lee report in The Times. Donors are a who’s who of business leaders. Individuals who are collectively contributing $125 million to the newly created Asian American Foundation include Joe Bae of KKR, Sheila Lirio Marcelo of Care.com, Joe Tsai of Alibaba and Jerry Yang of Yahoo. Organizations adding another $125 million to the group include Walmart, Bank of America, the Ford Foundation and the N.B.A. The initiative has echoes of the recent effort by Black executives to round up corporate support to push back against bills that would restrict voting. Anti-Asian hate crimes jumped 169 percent over the past year; in New York City alone, they have risen 223 percent. And Asian-Americans face the challenge of the “model minority” myth, in which they’re often held up as success stories. This shows “a lack of understanding of the disparities that exist,” said Sonal Shah, the president of the newly formed foundation. For example, Asian-Americans comprise 12 percent of the U.S. work force, but just 1.5 percent of Fortune 500 corporate officers. The group’s mission is broad. It is aiming to reshape the American public’s understanding of the Asian-American experience by developing new school curriculums and collecting data to help influence public policy. But its political lobbying efforts may be challenged by the enormous political diversity among Asian-Americans, Andrew and Ed note. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING India’s Covid-19 crisis deepens. The country recorded nearly 402,000 cases on Saturday, a global record, and another 392,000 on Sunday. A business trade group is calling for a new national lockdown, despite the economic cost of such a move. The C.E.O. of India’s biggest vaccine manufacturer warned that the country’s shortage of doses would last until at least July. Credit Suisse didn’t earn much for its Archegos troubles. The Swiss bank collected just $17.5 million in fees last year from the investment fund, despite losing $5.4 billion from the firm’s meltdown in March, according to The Financial Times. Verizon sold AOL and Yahoo. The telecom giant divested its internet media business to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion, and will retain a 10 percent stake. It’s a sign that Verizon is giving up on its digital advertising ambitions and focusing on its mobile business. A third of Basecamp employees quit after a ban on talking politics. At least 20 resigned after the software maker’s C.E.O., Jason Fried, announced a new policy preventing political discussions in the workplace. The company isn’t budging: “We’ve committed to a deeply controversial stance,” said David Hansson, Basecamp’s chief technology officer. Manchester United fans are still mad about the failed Super League. Supporters of the English soccer club stormed the field yesterday, forcing the postponement of its highly anticipated match against Liverpool. They called for the ouster of the Glazer family, United’s American owners, over their support for the new competition meant mostly for European soccer’s richest teams. Succession hints and other highlights from Berkshire’s meeting At the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway on Saturday, Warren Bufett and Charlie Munger spoke out on a typically broad range of topics, from investing regrets to politics to crypto. (They also picked fights with Robinhood and E.S.G. proponents, for good measure.) Buffett watchers also got their clearest hint yet as to who will succeed the Oracle of Omaha as Berkshire’s C.E.O. when the 90-year-old billionaire finally steps down. It’s Greg Abel. CNBC confirmed with Buffett that Abel, the 59-year-old who oversees Berkshire’s non-investing operations, would take over as C.E.O. “If something were to happen to me tonight it would be Greg who’d take over tomorrow morning,” Buffett said. Charlie Munger, Buffett’s top lieutenant, dropped a hint on Saturday, saying, “Greg will keep the culture.” Buffett took on Robinhood. The Berkshire chief said the trading app conditioned retail investors to treat stock trading like gambling. “There’s nothing illegal about it, there’s nothing immoral, but I don’t think you’d build a society around people doing it,” Buffett said. Robinhood pushed back. “There is an old guard that doesn’t want average Americans to have a seat at the Wall Street table so they will resort to insults,” tweeted Jacqueline Ortiz Ramsay, the company’s head of public policy communications. And Buffett got blowback on E.S.G. Berkshire shareholders followed his lead and rejected two shareholder proposals that would have forced the company to disclose more about climate change and work force diversity. But each proposal got support from a quarter of Berkshire shareholders, a relatively high percentage. And big investors spoke publicly about their backing for the initiatives: BlackRock, which owns a 5 percent stake in Berkshire, said the company hadn’t done enough on either front. Other highlights from the Berkshire meeting: Munger let loose on crypto. “Of course I hate the Bitcoin success and I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists,” he said. “I think the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.” Ajit Jain, who oversees Berkshire’s insurance operations, and Buffett traded quips about whether the company would insure Elon Musk’s trip to Mars. “This is an easy one: No, thank you, I’ll pass,” Jain said. Buffett said it would depend on the premium and added, “I would probably have a somewhat different rate if Elon was on board or not on board.” “We will not be anywhere near as focused on buybacks going forward as we have in the past.” — Intel C.E.O. Pat Gelsinger told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that in the future the semiconductor giant would focus less on buying its own shares and more on expanding production capacity to alleviate severe chip shortages. Ted Cruz rejects ‘woke’ corporate money Ted Cruz has sworn off corporate donations, and he used an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal to tell executives about it. The Republican senator from Texas criticized company chiefs for what he said were ill-informed criticisms of Georgia’s new voting laws. “For too long, woke C.E.O.s have been fair-weather friends to the Republican Party: They like us until the left’s digital pitchforks come out,” Cruz wrote. These companies “need to be called out, singled out and cut off,” he added. Cruz’s rejection may not make a big difference. After the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, many corporations pledged to withhold donations from lawmakers who voted against certifying the election results, at least for a period of time. Cruz, who is viewed as a key player in the efforts to reverse the vote, could be shut out for longer than others. But he’s not strapped for cash: He brought in more than $3 million in campaign funds in the three months after the riot, largely from individual donors. It highlights a new schism between Republicans and corporate America. Those ties were already fraying under President Trump’s unpredictable administration. President Biden’s proposed tax hikes and regulatory push would have typically driven companies into the arms of Republican allies, but Cruz, for his part, said he’s no longer interested in what the corporate donors and lobbyists have to say. “This time,” he wrote, “we won’t look the other way on Coca-Cola’s $12 billion in back taxes owed. This time, when Major League Baseball lobbies to preserve its multibillion-dollar antitrust exception, we’ll say no thank you. This time, when Boeing asks for billions in corporate welfare, we’ll simply let the Export-Import Bank expire.” An epic antitrust case begins Today, Apple and Epic Games meet in court for a trial that could have implications for the future of the App Store and the antitrust fight against Big Tech. DealBook spoke with Jack Nicas, a technology reporter for The Times, about what’s at stake. Why is Epic suing Apple? Many companies, including Spotify and Match Group, have complained loudly and publicly about the control that Apple has over the App Store, and the 30 percent commission it charges. Epic basically set some bait for Apple: It began using its own payment system in Fortnite, a very popular game, which meant Apple couldn’t collect its commission. It knew how Apple would react: Apple kicked Fortnite out of the App Store. Then Epic immediately sued Apple in federal court, and simultaneously launched a sophisticated PR campaign to paint Apple in a bad light. [Epic is suing Google for the same reason.] Why do businesses that aren’t Epic or Apple care about this case? If you’re a company that sells any digital goods or services, whether a game, music or a dating platform, you likely pay a large share of your revenues to Apple. If Epic wins here, that could eventually put an end to Apple’s commissions, or at least cause Apple to loosen its control over the App Store. So it really would upend the economics of the app industry. And beyond that, an Epic win would boost the push for antitrust charges against some of the biggest tech companies, including Apple. Now on the other side, if Apple wins, it’s really only going to bolster its already strong position. Who is expected to win? It’s certainly unclear at this point, but there is a thinking among legal experts that Apple has the upper hand, and that’s in large part because in antitrust fights, courts are more sympathetic to the defendants. But some legal experts think that Epic’s case could be strong. What will you be watching for? The C.E.O.s of both companies, Tim Sweeney and Tim Cook, will be testifying at the trial. Sweeney will likely have to explain why Epic is suing Apple and Google, but not Microsoft and Sony and Samsung and Nintendo, which charge very similar commissions and have similar rules. And Cook will have to answer some very pointed questions about how Apple does business, and how it potentially creates rules in its App Store to hurt rivals. I think there’s an opportunity for the lawyers on Epic’s side to elicit some interesting answers from him. Read the full report about the case from Jack and Erin Griffith. THE SPEED READ Deals Legendary Studios, the producer of movies like “Godzilla vs. Kong,” has reportedly held talks to either merge with a SPAC or buy another studio. (Bloomberg) Politics and policy Why investors have largely shrugged off President Biden’s proposal to raise capital gains taxes. (NYT) As the head of the nonprofit Venture for America, Andrew Yang pledged to create 100,000 jobs nationwide. The group created about 150. (NYT) Tech An internal Amazon report warned management that its sales team had gained unauthorized access to third-party seller data, which may have been used to help its own products. (Politico) Tesla is reportedly stepping up its engagement with Beijing officials as it faces greater pressure from the Chinese government. (Reuters) Best of the rest “Has Online Retail’s Biggest Bully Returned?” (NYT) How remote work is decimating Manhattan’s retail stores, in pictures. (NYT) Eli Broad, the billionaire businessman and art collector who reshaped Los Angeles, died on Friday. He was 87. (NYT) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Source link Orbem News #antiAsian #Big #Business #discrimination #Takes
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Cubism After the War, Part One
During the disruptive years of the Great War, Picasso and Matisse continued their work, enjoying an uninterrupted stretch of creative development.
Both Picasso and Matisse moved beyond Cubism and Fauvism, running ahead of the artists who were away at war. When the War was over, their former colleagues had to return to their artistic practices and put their lives back together, and they did so in the shadows of Picasso and Matisse, now major artists, stars who now outranked them and had moved on to new ideas. For the returning Cubist artists, modern art was Cubism and they carried on as they had before the War. Their stance may have seemed regressive, but their post-war Cubism continued with what was now a historical style.
Their efforts to revive Cubism were, in effect, a “return to order.” To return to order, post-war Cubism had to become more “classical” or more conservative to appeal to new patrons and, indeed, it is generally conceded that even before the War, Picasso and Braque were leaving experimentation behind in favor of a version of Cubism that was more “decorative.” The last few months of their partnership was marked by a series of paintings that were delightfully dotted and frankly charming, in a rococo fashion, and the real future of the second stage of Cubism would be the realization of its decorative potentials, which would be played out in Art Deco.
When the prominent Cubist artist, Georges Braque, returned to the Parisian art scene, it was after serving on the front, being gravely wounded. Braque spent a long time being temporarily blind, but after a long recovery he began painting again. The partnership with Picasso was broken, simply because the two men could no longer share their experiences. Their lives had diverged. In his biography on Braque, Alex Danchev discussed how the Great War divided the two men. Picasso remained concerned about Braque’s safety during the War, especially after he was wounded in 1915, saying to Gertrude Stein, “Will it not be awful when Braque and Derain and all the rest of them put their wooden legs up on a chair and tell us about their fighting.” This statement was made well before Picasso had exited the relationship with Braque and left Cubism behind, and during his transition to his next act in art, Braque spent the next year in the hospital. Unlike the other Cubist artists, as a Lieutenant, Braque had carried an officer’s responsibilities, and he suffered as he waited for his full recovery. “It wasn’t so much the wound that I suffered, but the possibility of painting for those long months. It was more the mental than the physical wounding..” he said. In his book, Georges Braque: A Life, Alex Danchev quoted Braque who was not above critiquing the conduct of the War: “Our soldiers, in 1914, charged in red trousers! They came back from the war with pigs’ snouts (gas masks).” He also remained bitter towards Robert Delaunay, who waited out the War in Spain, Duchamp who fled to New York, and criticized Albert Gleizes and Francis Picabia who served briefly and then moved on–Gleizes thanks to his “convenient” medical condition and Picabia who had a well connected father-in-law. As Léger said, “That bastard Gleizes.”
In fact Gleizes himself found it difficult to reenter the post-war art world of Paris. As Daniel Robbins, the chief biographer of Albert Gleizes, explained, By 1919 the unity of the Cubist movement, the pre-war sense of common effort, had been totally shattered. Paris was dominated by a strong reaction against those dreams of revoltionary construction and common effort which Gleizes continued to cherish, while the avant-garde was characterized by the anarchic and, to him, destructive spirit of Dada. 26 Neither alternative held any appeal for him and, with the Salons once again dominated by conservative painters, his old hostility to the city was constantly nourished. Although supported by Archipenko and Braque, an attempt to revive the spirit of the Section d’Or failed. Similarly, an effort to organize an artists’ cooperative received the support of Delaunay, but of no other major painters. Gleizes, although he had enjoyed considerable prestige both as a man and a painter, gradually became alienated from the Paris art world. Like the ideal protagonists in a Henry James novel, he and Madame Gleizes had enough independent income to pursue their goals without bowing to material considerations, remaining unfettered by the realities that made such heavy demands on many other artists. The Gleizes spent more and more time in the country, at Serrieres, Madame Gleizes’ family home, or at Cavalaire, then an even quieter spot on the Riviera.”
The Cubism of Picasso and Braque no longer existed. Picasso turned to the classical and conservative in the 1920s, while Braque settled on a variation of Cubist collage, painting the various elements instead of pasting paper on a support. Unlike Picasso who followed the latest art styles, such as Surrealism at the end of the decade, Braque did not flirt with the latest trends. Instead, he spent the rest of his life painting still live arrangements laid out on the top of a gueridon. The simplicity of objects and fruits sitting peacefully on a three-legged table seemed to symbolize the security of life after the trauma of the Great War. There was a second life for Cubism after the Great War. It was the Salon Cubists who inherited pre-war Cubism and carried it on to its new destiny in the years between the Wars.
This lingering phase of Cubism, a further development of an important art style, was carried on by the so-called “Salon Cubistes,” who, although they had been away at War, were still famous to the art public, due to their participation in public salons. Before the War, in the Salon d’Automne, they were scandalous dissidents and horrifying innovators; in the Salon des Indépendants, they were heroes, braving the scorn of critics. After the War, when they returned to Paris, one by one, these Cubist artists learned that the dominant painters were now Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, both of whom had remained in the city during the war, developing independent styles. Although Pablo Picasso had taken off in his own many new directions, these former Salon Cubists sought to extend Cubism, now a historical and hence, lucrative art movement into its new afterlife. For the Cubist artists, the art scene in Paris had changed and, in the wake of the war, the Salon exhibitions were not the only game in town. The artist-dealer system, used so successfully by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso to extricate themselves from an antiquated and dysfunctional system, began to become a major factor in exhibition and sales. But the players were new. The pre-war dealers had been interested in gambling on risky emerging artists who wanted to stay outside the system. The post-war art dealers were more concerned with courting a new collector base that wanted either established “name” artists and signature styles or conservative young artists. These newcomers on the late Cubist scene had the good fortune to walk into an open field with pre-war dealers aging out or simply absent.
When War was declared, German national and Cubist dealer to Braque and Picasso, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, was in Switzerland and was unable to return to France. Now that Kahnweiler was an enemy alien, his goods, his paintings, his property—Cubism itself—were sequestered by the French government, and his artists were left without financial and emotional support. Léonce Rosenberg, who collected modern art because it gave him pleasure and because he believed in what he called “l’effort moderne,” took Kahnweiler’s place as the supporter of Cubism. With the exception of Picasso and Braque, Rosenberg signed the German dealer’s artists and continued the exhibition and promotion of Cubism during and after the war.
Rosenberg had a new vision of Cubism, seeing it not as a unique style developed by a group of artists influenced by Paul Cézanne, but as part of a new and modern way of thinking that was manifested well beyond the fine arts. This modern world based upon the machine was revealed in a world view that appeared in posters and in advertising, popular culture and fine art, becoming the visual language of its time. Under the stewardship of Rosenberg, Cubism changed, disentangling itself from complex ideas of mobile perspective and becoming more flat and colorful, a strong design that could be moved from painting to advertising even to fashion and architecture and product design.
The poet Jean Cocteau may have argued that “rappel à l’ordre,” referred to a return to a traditional classicism and an end to disorderly experimentation, but the so-called Salon Cubists rejected classicism and embraced a conservative version of pre-war Cubism. This tamed Cubism was the “house style” of Léonce Rosenberg’s gallery, “L’Effort modern,” and the focus of his publication, Bulletin de l’Effort Moderne. Picasso waited until 1918, four years to join Paul Rosenberg, the brother of Léonce. Just as Léonce had been a dealer in antiquities, Paul Rosenberg had been a dealer of Impressionism and recognized the coming respectability of Cubism as a collector’s item. Although Paul handled other Cubist artists, he was the main support for Picasso, and the artist lived next door to his dealer whose gallery was at 21 rue de la Boétie. With the Rosenberg brothers becoming the dealers for Cubism, the task, which they both seemed to have realized, was now to make of Cubism something historical and valuable.
As with Futurism in Italy, Cubism was now experiencing a second life, but Cubism flourished discretely, flowering as a commodity in a consumerist-driven art market. Caught up in the post-war political scene in Italy, Futurism slid into an enthusiastic Fascism. Historically or, to be more specific, inthe eyes of art historians, these post-war phases of the two major pre-war avant-gardes have been traditionally by passed over in favor of an emphasis upon Dada and Surrealism. Art history was willing to examine the Russian Avant-Garde, a left-wing artistic production, but not Futurism which became decidedly right-wing. And art historical research on post-war Cubism is still in its early stages. And yet this overlooked phase of Cubism deserves to be examined in its own terms.
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App Development: A Creative Frontier For The New-Age Kids
App Development refers to the process of creating a set of programs that perform a particular task. Apps can be of a wide variety, such as- games, social media, business assistants, and many more.
You can use programming languages like Python or JavaScript to program an app.
Building apps is a very potent and growing market at the moment. Given the ever-increasing degree of digitization that is happening to the world, this upward momentum for app development is here to stay. Mobile apps are expected to generate a revenue of approximately $935 billion by 2023.
Even though one might think of app development as an “advanced skill” exclusively for adults, that is actually not the case. With the advent of coding classes for kids, the younger generations are actually more and more well equipped to come up with some awesome apps. Take Gitanjali Rao for instance, the Time Kid of the Year. Gitanjali, at only 15 created an app named ‘Kindly’ that uses artificial intelligence to detect cyberbullying at an early stage. And, it’s important to understand than Gitanjali, even though exceptional in her vision and achievements, is not an anomaly. With the right tech education, millions of other kids can create awesome, world-changing applications. As Gitanjali herself says- “If I can do it, anyone can do it!”
There are also many benefits for kids in learning to build apps. One, it offers a creative outlet for bringing ideas to life. In a way, making apps is like any other art form, where you conceptualize an idea, and through a process you bring that idea to outer existence, where it can be shared with others. Second, the process of making apps (which happens through programming) also helps exercise- logical thinking, problem-solving and computational skills. Thirdly, app development by definition enhances the tech literacy of the developer. With technology becoming a more and more pervasive part of human living, tech knowledge is essential for future sustenance. Therefore, app development helps to make kids future-ready. And, last but not the least, app development turns kids into confident super-achievers. The act of building something from inception to realization is a great confidence-booster as the child learns to develop faith in their own abilities and gets the practice for overcoming hurdles and succeeding – If you can learn it, you can churn it.
BeSingular is an international tech learning platform that offers online iOS app development classes for kids. Apart from the teacher-led training classes, students also get a chance to work on real-life projects, which helps them to crystallize their learning. These projects are based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and give the students the chance to create solutions that can solve global challenges. For example, the students could design an app that uses Artificial Intelligence to detect crop diseases for farmers, or they could build a gaming app where you can “fight” corona, as well as receive tips on how to do the same in real life.
Apart from app development, BeSingular also provides courses in other exponential technologies, including- Programming, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Game Design, Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, Robotics, and Augmented & Virtual Reality (AR/VR).
Check out our website to learn more: https://www.besingular.com
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