#That's kind of the point of crisis core

[altocat]

"Sephiroth and Genesis clearly hated each other even before Crisis Core! They were always rivals and Sephiroth always disliked him!"

Sephiroth: *Waits broodingly outside injured friend's hospital room for hours*

Sephiroth: *Unquestioningly and instantly offers to donate blood to keep his friend alive and pouts like a kicked puppy when denied*

Sephiroth: *Friends gone? Hunger strike lmao*

Sephiroth: *Company orders? Lol Treason time*

Sephiroth: *Two seconds away from quitting lifelong career that literally began with him exiting the womb because he might accidentally get Genesis' outfit dirty 🥺*

Also in all seriousness Square literally went out of its way to change the flashback scene storyboard from Sephiroth intentionally hurting Genesis to it being a stupid accident due to Gen's own arrogance there was a clear intention that Sephiroth never felt genuine malice for Genesis

Also they're in love

#Sephiroth #Genesis rhapsodos #Sephgen #Sephesis #Ffvii #FF7 #Crisis Core #Asks #Final fantasy 7 #I think some people just really hate Genesis so much that they'll justify it by claiming a popular character like Seph hated him too #When like??? It's the opposite?? #Listen you don't have to like Genesis he's a clunkily written irritating brat #But Sephiroth clearly likes him #That's kind of the point of crisis core #It's the literal CRISIS of the CORE

[haunted-xander]

A big part of why Zack's death hits so hard (for me at least) is that Zack is someone who cares so so so much for people and managed to get so many people to care about him in return. Angeal cared for him enough to the point he prefered to die by Zack's hands over anyone else, and entrusted him with a precious family heirloom. Even Sephiroth (prior to the Nibelheim incident) very clearly has somewhat of a soft spot for Zack, being one of the few people he's shown deliberately being nice to.

Even the turks care for him! Cissnei is obvious as she and Zack formed a pretty personal connection throughout crisis core, but even Tseng clearly enjoys his company and often plays along with his jokes and antics.

I'm not gonna dig deep into his relationships with Aerith and Cloud (that's for another post if I ever feel like it), but they are also so so so important to him.

And, personally, what makes this all even worse, is that Zack probably knew he'd die by Shinra's hands eventually. By this point, he already laments the situation he's in, being stuck working for a company he KNOWS is massively corrupt and doesn't care for anything but their own agenda, and being unable to do anything about it. Acting out and rebelling against them doesn't work (as proven by Genesis and Angeal) and he can't just leave and be done with it (Zack knows too much for Shinra to just let him go, and even if he COULD leave, it wouldn't change anything)

But, at the very least, his death wasn't meaningless. Zack managed to save one of the people he loved the most, and that person then went on to do what Zack couldn't. It's all because of Zack that Cloud is not only alive, but also has the strength necessary to move forward.

Zack, man.

#like. i need you all to understand that zacks ability to connect and bond with all kinds of people #is a HUGE part of what makes him such a good yet tragic hero #and its also VERY IMPORTANT TO ME #that you all understand that zack very likely had accepted his death a long time ago #zack isnt shocked or fearful when he dies #hes at peace #because he knew this would happen eventually #and because he managed to at the very least save cloud first #also uh. i havent really revisited crisis core in a WHILE so some of the details might be off but. YOU GET THE POINT #god i love zack so much #i want him to live but also. narratively speaking him dying is. pretty damn important #ueueueueeueue #zack fair #final fantasy #final fantasy vii #ff7 #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #crisis core #final fantasy 7 crisis core #final fantasy vii crisis core #ff7cc #ffviicc #xander rambles

[whentherewerebicycles]

a bunch of people have already registered for my mentoring workshop! unfortunately this means i have to plan and host a workshop aaaaaa

#i want to think aloud through it on here at some point #but i think i am going to structure it around the theme of cultivating student autonomy #because i think one of the primary goals of mentorship is to prepare students to be self-directed learners who can set realistic goals + #evaluate their own progress + reflect on what they've learned and what they still don't know #+ take initiative without sitting around waiting for someone to tell them what to do next #so i think we will do some thinking around like #when we have a student we think of as really capable or driven what qualities and behaviors do we observe in that student #and maybe ill also share some of the research on intrinsic motivation + self-direction + locus of control #which i think is all really interesting esp in light of the contemporary College Mental Health Crisis concerns #and then we will look at a range of tools + structures + strategies that i think are useful for fostering student autonomy over time #and maybe leave them with some core principles/guiding values that i think are useful when you are trying to like #avoid jumping in and doing stuff for kids #or solving their problems for them #idk i need to think through specifics a bit more #but i feel like on this campus #people do a lot of 'workshops' that are really not interactive at all #it's just someone talking from slides #and i kind of want to show off my ability to structure more engaging workshops #but idk. gotta think about how to do it well #and how to build in lots of opportunities for like crowdsourcing strategies too

[fifthmoonofgunsmoke]

recently gotten into ff7 (done remake, crisis core, general knowledge of og) and like. u know how when the finale of trimax came out there were jokes about how the twins are rlly one winged angels a la sephiroth. ff7 and trigun are both literally futuristic environmentalist portrayals of a world that depends on (for lack of a better word) aliens to fuel their city/cities. sephiroth and knives both literally decide to destroy everything because they believe humanity is a corrupting force that should be wiped out to preserve Their Family. jenova and tesla. the one winged angel comparison goes deep

#hei hello there #recently figured out that one of my favorite types of villain is 'driven over the edge by grief' #knives. geto suguru. sephiroth Kind Of (its complicated and i need to. maybe rewatch the flashback in og ff7) #also like. in remake. jenova having the tube in her belly. points at the Plants. ive seen that before #i will have. more opinions once i finish crisis core. which i will do by today. #edit i finished crisis core AUGHHHHHHH yeah #tfw when. when your boy best friend fucking dies

[noxtivagus]

i'm so happy i'll cry so bad when i finally open it 😭😭

#tag later #AAAA IM ACTUALLY SO HAPPY #IM LIKE. RLLY CHILL RN BUT IM SO SO HAPPY #i'll play nier first ofc but oh my god zack. crisis core. i'll cry so bad #im so happy im rlly so happy it's so funny i'm so chill rn but #earlier when i saw data blitz w the poster i jumped n ran to it pointing at it n #I WAS SMILING SM WHEN THEY HAD IT IN STOCK N ALL UWAHH #fun day w my friend hehe we rlly just shopped ngl 🥹 #her. 'friend' ehem (read; basically bf) was low on social bat it seems but it was cool meeting them irl BUT I WAS TOO SHY TO TALK.. #they're usually more extroverted tho n then #i'm sorry i accidentally peeked at my friend's messages n her friend mentioned that like. if another friend of ours (who apollo n i are #closer with) then it wld've been more chill or wtvr I CANT REMEMBER #i miss hanging out w my friends :< I MISS THEM SO MUCH FUCK #I'm so tired from walking tho help i'm sitting down rn finally #torn between really excited for ccr n stressed for the future n really happy from today n #torn too between feeling excited or. idk lonely rn thinking abt all my different kinds of relationships #that flew by too fast.. i wna spend more time w my friends :< #despite how fun it was n everything i can't shake off this certain. emptiness that i can't make sense of #BUT RN I'M DOING FINE DW #technically i'm friends too w the friend of my longtime friend bcs we met (save for me w my longtime friend ofc #like way back early this year. turns out another guy from the other school went bowling w their friends in the same mall #n OH YEAH in this same mall iirc the friend apollo n i are closer w from the guys went to a con here yesterday? #i just realized hi small weird thumb reveal it seems #i just realized if you're filo n know your malls n know a con yesterday then it's very obvious where i was today uh #WAH THAT SAID THOUGH omg i'm rambling but i'm. god i've been feeling rather empty lots lately But i know that i'm happy from today #omg oh yh bcs of all the ppl i mentioned earlier me n longtime friend n apollo joked abt like. reunion of that grp earlier this year hehe #the idea is rlly lovely.. ngl i rlly do have a level of social anxiety even w close friends yeah but that doesn't mean i'm antisocial no #i rlly want to socialize n make friends :< so the idea of it is. rlly wonderful indeed but it seems so far out of my reach #i'll fix tags later i have sm to talk abt oh my god but it's comforting knowing my friend. felt the same way i do abt that earlier hehe #I RLLY WANT A BUCKET HAT N COOL SHADES TO GO W IT HFKSJFKSJFS

[oveliagirlhaditright]

.

#i miss zack fair's old voice. even though i hate saying that because i don't want to be THAT person. because i know the poor new voice #actor must be hearing that comment everywhere and he's not doing a bad job at all. quite the contrary! sadly there was just no beating #rick gomez and the dev's were silly to try it. i get WHY they did. because they recast all the ffvii remake actors (except genesis maybe? #weirdly?) but with that recasting zack was always going to be a losing battle for them #but i do kind of agree with superbutterbuns (and maybe worry with her too) that some new fans to crisis core with crisis core reunion #might not connect to zack as much as us old fans did without the amazing voice work of rick gomez bringing him to life this time #especially since as some people have pointed out... parts of crisis core are silly (i say that with love). and one of the great things #about zack is that he's the reason in a silly anime plot pointing out that 'this is weird!' and. i mean. the new actor has that going for #him too as that's how zack's written. but i wonder if part of what sold zack's character was also the amazing voice acting and i wonder if #now that that's lost a tiny bit if new fans will connect to zack AS strongly as all of us did years ago

[chomesuke]

can't remember rn but is there any evidence that hojo knew cloud was the one to kill sephiroth? he most likely knew that sephiroth was killed ofc but there was no body, what with cloud throwing him into the mako.

there might have been cameras he checks later, which seems like a something he'd set up for his big jenovaroth experiment but there's no proof he did I think, so..

#in crisis core hojo cackles over cloud and calls him interesting and says he'll make a fine test subject #i wonder if he knew at that point that sephiroth was sort of dead. mostly dead. kind of. #i didn't start taking notes until this crisis core replay so sadly i can't check my notes

[himitsusentaiblog]

I could write so much about the differences between Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus one as different sides of a political story.

Shin was a political satire at points about the ineffectiveness of Japanese Beauracracy in the face of immediate crisis and how a solution can only be found once the government is pared back to a leaner, more agile and less bound by red tape core of problem solvers. I talks about competence and creativity and radical ideas in the face of insurmountable odds once freed from constraint. The protagonists are young, scrappy and ambitious and the idea that you can make a difference, can step up and save everyone if only you were free to do so.

Minus One is about humans struggling to deal with a crisis in the face of a LACK of government, with almost no military after the trauma of a war they were forced into by their government and then lost badly. It's about picking up the pieces and then having those pieces kicked over again because of the actions of others and possibly, the inaction of one of the protagonists in the past. It's about regret and shame and heartbreak and the feeling you are not worthy of happiness so denying it when it presents itself to you.

And while Shin deals with the constraints placed on Japan by the treaty that ended World War II and whether or not they can deploy their self-defense forces to try and stop Godzilla before it is too late, Minus one deals with the lack of support from the US Occupying Forces who seem to not care if Japan gets absolutely destroyed again. You can almost feel a kind of callous disdain in the non-presence of the Americans as if they are ok with Japan being destroyed as long as it doesn't lead to conflict with the USSR. Or maybe they are just using that as an excuse to further humiliate a defeated enemy that once threatened them.

#Godzilla #Shin Godzilla #Godzilla Minus One #Toho Kaiju

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Coprophagic AI crisis

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TORONTO on Mar 22, then with LAURA POITRAS in NYC on Mar 24, then Anaheim, and more!

A key requirement for being a science fiction writer without losing your mind is the ability to distinguish between science fiction (futuristic thought experiments) and predictions. SF writers who lack this trait come to fancy themselves fortune-tellers who SEE! THE! FUTURE!

The thing is, sf writers cheat. We palm cards in order to set up pulp adventure stories that let us indulge our thought experiments. These palmed cards – say, faster-than-light drives or time-machines – are narrative devices, not scientifically grounded proposals.

Historically, the fact that some people – both writers and readers – couldn't tell the difference wasn't all that important, because people who fell prey to the sf-as-prophecy delusion didn't have the power to re-orient our society around their mistaken beliefs. But with the rise and rise of sf-obsessed tech billionaires who keep trying to invent the torment nexus, sf writers are starting to be more vocal about distinguishing between our made-up funny stories and predictions (AKA "cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion"):

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html

In that spirit, I'd like to point to how one of sf's most frequently palmed cards has become a commonplace of the AI crowd. That sleight of hand is: "add enough compute and the computer will wake up." This is a shopworn cliche of sf, the idea that once a computer matches the human brain for "complexity" or "power" (or some other simple-seeming but profoundly nebulous metric), the computer will become conscious. Think of "Mike" in Heinlein's *The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress#Plot

For people inflating the current AI hype bubble, this idea that making the AI "more powerful" will correct its defects is key. Whenever an AI "hallucinates" in a way that seems to disqualify it from the high-value applications that justify the torrent of investment in the field, boosters say, "Sure, the AI isn't good enough…yet. But once we shovel an order of magnitude more training data into the hopper, we'll solve that, because (as everyone knows) making the computer 'more powerful' solves the AI problem":

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

As the lawyers say, this "cites facts not in evidence." But let's stipulate that it's true for a moment. If all we need to make the AI better is more training data, is that something we can count on? Consider the problem of "botshit," Andre Spicer and co's very useful coinage describing "inaccurate or fabricated content" shat out at scale by AIs:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4678265

"Botshit" was coined last December, but the internet is already drowning in it. Desperate people, confronted with an economy modeled on a high-speed game of musical chairs in which the opportunities for a decent livelihood grow ever scarcer, are being scammed into generating mountains of botshit in the hopes of securing the elusive "passive income":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Botshit can be produced at a scale and velocity that beggars the imagination. Consider that Amazon has had to cap the number of self-published "books" an author can submit to a mere three books per day:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/20/amazon-restricts-authors-from-self-publishing-more-than-three-books-a-day-after-ai-concerns

As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated "content" in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels. Even sources considered to be nominally high-quality, from Cnet articles to legal briefs, are contaminated with botshit:

https://theconversation.com/ai-is-creating-fake-legal-cases-and-making-its-way-into-real-courtrooms-with-disastrous-results-225080

Ironically, AI companies are setting themselves up for this problem. Google and Microsoft's full-court press for "AI powered search" imagines a future for the web in which search-engines stop returning links to web-pages, and instead summarize their content. The question is, why the fuck would anyone write the web if the only "person" who can find what they write is an AI's crawler, which ingests the writing for its own training, but has no interest in steering readers to see what you've written? If AI search ever becomes a thing, the open web will become an AI CAFO and search crawlers will increasingly end up imbibing the contents of its manure lagoon.

This problem has been a long time coming. Just over a year ago, Jathan Sadowski coined the term "Habsburg AI" to describe a model trained on the output of another model:

https://twitter.com/jathansadowski/status/1625245803211272194

There's a certain intuitive case for this being a bad idea, akin to feeding cows a slurry made of the diseased brains of other cows:

https://www.cdc.gov/prions/bse/index.html

But "The Curse of Recursion: Training on Generated Data Makes Models Forget," a recent paper, goes beyond the ick factor of AI that is fed on botshit and delves into the mathematical consequences of AI coprophagia:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.17493

Co-author Ross Anderson summarizes the finding neatly: "using model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects":

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2023/06/06/will-gpt-models-choke-on-their-own-exhaust/

Which is all to say: even if you accept the mystical proposition that more training data "solves" the AI problems that constitute total unsuitability for high-value applications that justify the trillions in valuation analysts are touting, that training data is going to be ever-more elusive.

What's more, while the proposition that "more training data will linearly improve the quality of AI predictions" is a mere article of faith, "training an AI on the output of another AI makes it exponentially worse" is a matter of fact.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/14/inhuman-centipede#enshittibottification

Image: Plamenart (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Double_Mobius_Strip.JPG

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #ai #generative ai #André Spicer #botshit #habsburg ai #jathan sadowski #ross anderson #inhuman centipede #science fiction #mysticism

[ash-says]

Things to be aware of as a Hopeless Romantic:

We all have been there daydreaming about the perfect man, the perfect life, the perfect whatever,etc. Still life is not full of roses and thorns are inevitable.

So here are some aspects to look out for according to me so that you won't fall in the delulu is the only solulu trap.

Remember if you follow me, we don't do regrets here. We accept, take accountability and move on. We don't soak ourselves in problems. We solve them effectively.

1) Drop those rose-colored glasses. Crush them under your feet and now look at the world again. Learn to accept reality. It is what it is. Not what you make it out to be. Learn to become an observer of your life from time to time. It will give you the real picture.

2) Potential is useless if you are not leveraging it. It's a trap both for yourself and others. You see potential in him of changing and being a good guy?? Girl, he *IS* not a good guy. It's not your job to raise a man. It's embarrassing. Stop babysitting grown men.

3) Standards are important but ensure they are not rooted in fantasy. Let's be honest finding a man who is rich, dark, tall, sexy and talks in the way you read in your romance novels is difficult. I am not saying it's impossible but don't be too rigid. All I will say is make sure you are also on the level where if you come across such a man he should be ready to date you.

4) Men view sex differently than us women. I know many of you will get triggered after reading this but the majority of men really view women as sex dolls. Blame the porn industry maybe. Good men exist but not every other man who talks sweetly is good.

5) A person in your life treats you nicely. Always talk sweetly, tells you that you matter to them but their actions don't match it. Chances are you are being breadcrumbed. Plans being cancelled? Messages being unseen? But when confronted all you get is,"Sorry love, I was busy. I was going to do it. You matter a lot,etc etc." Breadcrumbing. Be smart it can happen even in friendships too. I understand people get busier with time and things do happen. Use your discernment to see who really is busy and who is faking to be busy.

6) That uncle was so kind to me. He talked to me sweetly and always tried to help me out. Now, that's really sweet of him. Next he calls you home to help out with the household chores and he is alone at home because his wife is out of town for some work. Would you go and help? Yes. Will you go alone? No. That's unsafe.

No matter how much a gentleman a man appears to be you are not allowed to be in a situation where he could potentially take advantage of you. You always bring along a friend or deny it. I know it's wrong to not help someone but at your own risk. No. Never. It's common knowledge in our society.

7) Dreaming of a Prince Charming to whisk you away from all your troubles??? Dream on. The idea that a soulmate or one person will magically solve all our issues is dumb. We as human beings add to each other's happiness rather than becoming the core of it.

8) One of the biggest mistakes I have seen girls around me make is of being fully invested in a relationship to the point one small fight makes them depressed. That's codependency. It's unhealthy.

9) Never make your relationship your identity. You should always have a separate identity out of it. Stop curating yourself for your partners. Morphing yourself according to their likes and dislikes. That's one way ticket to an identity crisis after breakup. Compromises are essential but changing your core self??? Crazy shit.

10) Your relationship should not be the reason for your downfall. It happens especially with my intense girlies we invest so much of ourselves in the relationship to the point it becomes our focal point and when it faces upheavals we are devastated. The mental distress starts flowing in other areas of your life and suddenly your grades are falling, your career seems unstable, etc. Develop the emotional strength to compartmentalize your emotions and not allow them to overflow in other areas and affect them.

Imagination is fertile but being delusional is being stuck in a swamp.

That's all for today's show on ash-says. Stay tuned for more illegal tricks and explosive opinions.

#gaslight gatekeep girlboss #girlblogging #glow up #it girl #self care #that girl #dark feminine energy #self love #becoming that girl #becoming her #that girl aesthetic #it girl aesthetic #dream girl aesthetic #dream girl #pink pilates girl #pink pilates princess #coquette #ash-says #motivation #feminine energy #femme fatale vibes #femme fatale #thewizardliz #wonyoungism #wellness #healing #self development #self help #self reflection #level up journey

[lygma-nygma]

Knowing the original reason(s) that Dick became Nightwing and then reading comics like Nightwing: Year One is just so annoying. Like what is the deal with more modern rewrites making everything surrounding Dick and Bruce super edgy and angsty when the original version of the story was perfectly fine?? It’s like DC Comics is on a mission to assassinate both of their characters to make Dick into a ‘sad boy’, it’s infuriating.

Original Pre-Crisis Nightwing Lore: Yeah I'm just kind of getting too old to be Robin. Like it or not Robin is forever and always going to be known as Batman's sidekick and I just don't feel like that fits me anymore. I'm the leader of the Teen Titans and I spend most of my time doing that and solo missions now anyway. I think I'm going to drop the mantle, take a step back, and find a new identity. Original Post-Crisis Nightwing Lore: I got shot and fell off a building during a mission and almost died right in front of Bruce. It shook him up and made him super afraid of me dying so he told me he wasn't going to run with a Robin anymore because he didn't want my death to be his fault. I was annoyed about him treating me like a kid and that he was throwing all the years we worked together away over one incident but he said it wasn't like that, he just hoped I was old enough to understand where he was coming from. I told him that there was no way I wasn't going to continue being a hero and he fully supported me saying that he would always be there to help if I needed it. I was still hurt by it all, especially when Jason showed up, but ultimately I came to understand why it happened and got over it. Edgy Retcon Nightwing Lore: I went out of my way to SAVE him and then I got PUNISHED because I didn't do it right and wasn't prioritizing Gotham enough despite my THIRTEEN THOUSAND JOBS but I'm not surprised because he's always been unreasonable and HATES ME so now I'm not Robin anymore because Batman is an awful person and emotionally abuses me. And just to be clear it's not like Dick and Bruce didn't fight before the retcon, frequently being at each other's throats is literally a core aspect of their relationship, but I'm just so tired of them retconning every interaction they have into some overdramatic spat. Way to completely strip Dick of all his agency as a character and turn Bruce into an empty cardboard cut out of himself. Hope the angst points are worth it.

EDIT: I also want to add that fights between Bruce and Dick used to have a lot more nuance than they do now. The B&D fights used to be caused by a breakdown in communication on BOTH sides, not just Bruce's. The 'Jason becoming Robin' fight comes to mind. In Batman #416 neither Dick's complaints nor Bruce's excuses made complete sense but that was the point. Bruce should have been better at reaching out but Dick was also expecting Bruce to be a mind reader and know how he was feeling without telling him. Dick left home without saying goodbye well Bruce was on a mission, Bruce assumed that meant Dick didn't want to see him and so avoided reaching out leading to the two of them not talking for a long time. Dick accepts that Bruce doesn't want him as Robin anymore in stride (he even smiles and shit about it) so Bruce doesn't realize that losing Robin actually hurt him, ex. It's that kind of fighting, the "I want to slam both your heads together" fighting, that I miss so much.

#dick grayson #bruce wayne #batman #nightwing #just me complaining about things again #I blame frank miller for this #Frank miller and Tom king when I GET YOU #For those of you wondering the comics referenced here are #The New Teen Titans (39) #Batman (408) #Nightwing (101) #I can't put number signs in the tags so those are all issue numbers lol

[stealingyourbones]

Here's a cursed ship:

Danny Fenton, out of his parent's grasp, now as an adult, goes to explore rumours of some rotten ectoplasm somewhere in some place called Nanda Parbat.

There he meets the one person that came the closest ever to killing him. Her sword was already in his very human chest before he transformed on instinct, barely avoiding a very painful injury that could've threatened his core.

Naturally, what is a guy to do? Fall head over heels, and gift her with a newly purified pool of ectoplasm that can help heal injuries without the Rage and Madness. Maybe gift her a throne of starlight after he deals with her manipulative old bastard father.

Oh, she has a kid from a prior relationship? Well, if she's ok with it, he'll do his best to help her raise him.

The League shift from indiscriminate murder to more Assassin's Creed-like "maintaining Balance" ideals.

Naturally, this confuses the Bats. They come to investigate.

No one was expecting to see Talia al Ghul sitting on a very comfy-looking throne, with an unknown but clearly powerful guy sparring against a small Damian, while the kid looks like he's having the time of his life.

Of course, as soon as their presence is noted, he's at Talias side, holding the tiny kid in his arms as she delivers her speech.

Oh, he's King of the Infinite Realms? Yeah, but this is the Living Realm, so he's going to defer to his Queen.

Talia initially tried plotting to take the Crown from Danny, but Ember and Kitty (who I headcanon both having dated Danny at different points of his life) laugh as if she told them a joke, and Grandpa Clocky takes his new Granddaughter-in-law aside to show her how her betrayal and manipulation would bring about Dan, stopping that plan in it's tracks then and there.

Ellie floats into the room in the middle of their discussion, and to add further confusion for poor Brucie, scoops up Damian and loudly announces she's taking her half-brother out for ice cream (female clone, from a boy's DNA? Yeah, Talia's DNA was exactly what was needed to stabilise her permanently).

Bruce is in a crisis.

Jason is laughing his ass off, now that Danny took the rotten ectoplasm out and put in fresh ecto in it's place, and he can properly appreciate the situation, especially how Danny looks like he could be related to Bruce, so naturally Talia also has a type.

Tim is three seconds away from asking for his spleen back.

Cass is dangling from Danny's shoulders after, in classic Ghost customs, she tried to attack him as an introduction. She's fine being carried like a sac of flour, Jason does that with her, too.

Dick, Duke, Steph and Babs stayed behind to protect Gotham, but Babs is always watching and/or listening, and she's a horrible gossip.

It's also Jason that comes to the horrifying realization that, the reason why Danny is still with Talia, is because Ghost culture is weird enough to be normal for the League, he's a similar type of dumbass as Bruce, without the elaborate revenge plot, AND he's a simp for women who could kill him.

Essentially: Danny is the cute lovable dumbass, who's Into That when his Love Interest has the capacity to easily kill him or snap him in half, if it weren't for the Ghost thing. And Ghost instincts are the kind of feral that Damian vibes with, so Damian likes this random guy Talia found on their doorstep, who's so stupid and yet competent he comes back around to being attractive, and is Commited to his new family.

I have yet to hear a friendly stepdad(?) Danny prompt before and I am loving it

#dpxdc #bones replies

[esamastation]

Shizuroth, part sixteen

Previous parts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen

-

Though Shen Yuan had played Final Fantasy VII and Crisis Core way back when, mostly because emulation was easily available and everyone praised them a lot, he'd never really gotten that into it. He'd sort of missed the hype train, and all the hot takes had already been taken, and Advent Children was kinda weird and overall it just didn't grab him.

But he has to admit that Midgar is a really cool setting.

It's dumb, of course, like, on every logistical level. Oh, look, there's thousands of kilometres of free real estate in every direction to build on, but you know what we should do? A massive fuck off blast plate of million billion tons of metal fifty metres of the ground, that's what we'll do, and we'll build a city in top of it too!

Like, why?! In what realm even remotely attached to sanity does that make sense?! Is there something wrong with the ground, is there an issue of sudden mega floods, or something? No, it's just. A thing they did! 

Logic and sanity aside, though, it's cool, as a videogame setting, it's very cool. With the rule of cool there's no reason for, you know, reason. It's iconic. 

And it's the closest thing to a modern city he's seen in - in a while! And, damn, but the scale of everything in real life is so much bigger than any of the games conveyed.

It's a real city! With real city traffic and bustle and dystopian advertisements everywhere! There's also an ever present haze of pollution that gives all the neon signs a dreamy glow. It's almost pretty.

And it's only powered by the lifeblood of the planet, too. Technically the souls of the dead! Wonderful.

"Please stop gaping at everything like a damned tourist and get in. People are starting to stare."

Sephiroth looks down to the car that had just stopped in front him on the sidewalk. Genesis had told him to get to the front, that he'd meet him there, but…

Genesis has a car. It shouldn't be a surprise, the guy is rich and the city is big, but it is. It's a really nice car too. A fucking oldtimey wine red convertible. It matches Genesis' outfit. How extra can you get?

"... Do I have a car?" Sephiroth asks slowly, rather than point out how ridiculous and in character it is.

"You have a motorcycle you never use," Genesis says, sounding tired. "Get in."

Sephiroth has a motorcycle. Of course he does.

He opens the convertible's side door and is immediately smacked in the face with a mix of nostalgia and incredulity at the old familiar feeling of something so simple as a car door mechanism at his fingertips. The seat is too much in the front for Sephiroth's long legs, but the seat goes back, and that's a familiar feeling too. Kind of.

He always had to pull his seat forward, rather than back.

Swallowing the sudden, long suppressed homesickness for a world he's two transmigrations away from, Sephiroth looks for a seatbelt. There isn't one. Hooray for corporate dystopia.

Genesis joins the four lane traffic in front of the Shinra building with the reckless expertise of a man who drives a lot in the city, and hates it almost as much as he loves his car.

"How far is it?" Sephiroth asks, trying to figure out where to put his hands. It's a really nice car, and it looks polished, inside and out.

He can't believe he's in a car. He can't believe he's in a world with cars again. He also can't believe how badly the games conveyed the scale of Midgar.

"Sector six," Genesis says and glances at him. "You're looking a little green there, are you feeling alright? Don't throw up in my car."

"I'm fine," he's really starting to get sick of saying it. "Stop fussing."

"Who's fussing! I just don't want you to make a mess," Genesis scoffs. "Also you aren't fine. You have amnesia."

Sephiroth snorts and leans his arm on the door, looking away and at the Shinra building.

It's huge, and weird. It sorta bulges out, this lumpy mass of a building with enormous pipes running up to it with a big barrel shape in the middle. It's the biggest building in the city, though - it's the only real skyscraper, towering over all the smaller buildings around it.

After all the metal in the Shinra building, it's weird to see brick and mortar again. Why brick and mortar? What did they run out of steel and concrete building the plate? None of the other buildings go higher than eight levels, too.

"We've covered one thing you remember perfectly. Anything else? You recognized Angeal and me, but how about anything else?" Genesis prods at him. "Hey, are you listening to me?"

Oh, he hates this. At least in Cang Qiong Mountain people were too polite to really pick on him or point out how badly he acted as Shen Qingqiu. They were nice enough to take his bullshit at face value and let it slide. Plus there was propriety to think about - none of his disciples had the standing to really call him out.

Genesis doesn't give a shit about his thin face and actually smacks him on the shoulder, "Hey!"

"What's there to say?" Sephiroth answers, because he has no answers to give. "I wouldn't know what I don't know, would I?"

Genesis sighs, irritated and stalls at the traffic lights. "And I can't tell you what to look up if you don't tell me. You must've figured out something by now."

"I figured I really could've used the day to myself," Sephiroth mutters and watches as a delivery truck advertising pastries runs a red light. "I don't know what you want me to say. I don't know, Genesis."

"Shit," the other SOLDIER says, running a hand through his hair while steering one-handed. 

There's a break in the discussion as they go through a checkpoint, where the guards in infantry uniforms just wave Genesis through. The people on the sidewalk stare at Genesis' convertible, and whisper.

Sephiroth looks away, and then blinks at the dump truck not far away from them, also going through the checkpoint.

Weird - somehow he didn't expect Midgar to have public services. Where do they go to empty them? Do they just dump their trash down the plate?"

"So you remember… nothing?" Genesis asks as they leave the checkpoint behind

"I know - some things," Sephiroth says defensively. "But - the details escape me."

"Things like what?"

"I don't know. You, Angeal. This city. The war. Don't ask me for the president's name, but I know there is one," he sighs and leans back, watching an enormous advertisement for LOVELESS pass them by. 

He also knows that sometime soon Genesis will get hurt and the wound will never heal, kick-starting the plot of Crisis Core. He has no idea when, though. He isn't even sure how to figure it out - the timeline in these games wasn't exactly clear.

"Does Angeal have a student?" he asks.

"What, like a personal student? Not that I know of," Genesis says and glances at him. "Why?"

"Ah, nothing, never mind. Must've been someone else," Sephiroth says smoothly.

So, Zack Fair, the protagonist of Crisis Core, hasn't appeared yet? Or Angeal hasn't met him. Hopefully that means there's still some time.

Genesis is quiet for a moment and then sighs. "I'll get you some intel. Personnel files for people you should know, reports from missions you've been on. The information packages handed to Thirds should help at least a little too. But Sephiroth, there's a lot about your past you've never shared, if someone asks about it…"

"I'll just say I don't want to talk about it," Sephiroth says, watching another neon lit advertisement fly by. "Thanks, Genesis."

"I expect to be compensated in full for my efforts," Genesis says firmly.

Sephiroth leans his cheek on his knuckles and wonders what Cultivation might do for the deterioration Genesis - and Angeal too - have ahead of them. "I'll do my utmost to pay back my debts."

"You better," Genesis says and turns the car from the main highway to a side road, full of expensive looking store fronts and equally expensive looking cars.   "That's it over there. Let me find a place to park and then we can get you a coat that fits."

"Much obliged, Genesis."

#Fanfiction #ffvii #ff7 #svsss #shen qingqiu #shen yuan #sephiroth #genesis rhapsodos

[artbyblastweave]

So one thing that irks me about discussions of the NCR is the idea that "they're flawed because they're trying to be America again. And Being Too Much America is what caused the War" without differentiating between the vast buildup of Nuclear Weapons and Geopolitical tensions, versus, like, being a republic and having a large-scale central state.

What's your thoughts?

I think the NCR circa New Vegas is textually intended to be repeating the USA's downward spiral. They're in the process of recreating the core dynamics of pre-war America- overconsumption of resources driving imperialist expansion, capture of the government by moneyed interests, and a prolonged conflict with a peer power that's suffering under similar expand-or-die pressures- but they're constrained from a one-to-one recreation mainly by the fact that they're working with a post-apocalyptic resource base, with the scraps left over from the last people who went down this path. Peanuts compared to the Sino-American war, but likely as close to that situation as the post-war-world is logistically capable of producing.

You see bits of this from the NCR perspective all throughout the game. There Stands the Grass is propelled by projections of incipient famine in the NCR due to rapid population growth, and you see the beginnings of this in Flags of Our Foul-Ups- O'Hanaran was sent to the Army by his family to lessen their food burden. Chief Hanlon's very first line is about how the NCR is overtaxing most sources of freshwater within the core territory, and he recounts how tiny groups of settlers backed by NCR logistics were able to take and hold a well in Baja against scores of locals; IIRC there's a cut event at Camp Golf itself where you'd see NCR rangers doing the same thing to Mojave locals encroaching on their water supply. The White Wash demonstrates that the NCR's sharecropping setup in outer Vegas operates at the expense of the locals, who can only get the water they need to support their own crops via subterfuge. If you assume that Heck Gunderson's underhanded Brahmin-farming empire in Beyond the Beef is supposed to parallel the real-world problems with the sustainability of beef farming, you start to get a sense of where all of that water is going and what structural problems (Heck Gunderson) might be in the way of allocating those resources more sustainably. There are likely more examples of this storm on the horizon that I'm forgetting.

As a result of all this, there's a level on which I think introducing the Tunnelers in Lonesome Road as a dangling White-Walker style Looming Apocalyptic Reset Option hanging over the west coast was gratuitous, not because it's Avallone grinding his axe with the idea of society rebuilding, but because it's simply redundant with the political situation already depicted in the base game- If you want the NCR to have collapsed by a future installment, just establish that they weren't able to put the brakes on in time and devolved into a completely dysfunctional oligarchy that collapsed under its own weight!

(Now, as a final note, one thing preventing me from fully committing to this take is that we honestly don't have a fantastic sense of what day-to-day life looks like for the average citizen in the NCR heartland, which I feel is kind of important. Because if the textual situation is supposed to be that the resource crisis is due to misallocation due to interests capturing the government, I like that a lot better than if the situation is genuinely intended to be that there are Just Too Many Goddarn People, because that's like. Lazy and Malthusian and leads to the usual ugly conclusions pretty quickly. More and more it's looking like the upcoming Fallout TV show is leaning into the recent decline of the NCR as a plot point, so, uh, fingers crossed they stick the landing when it comes to fleshing that out?)

#fallout #fallout new vegas #NCR #new california republic #ask #asks #thoughts #meta #sorry for the delay in responding- getting back into a fallout mood due to the show #fnv

[bestworstcase]

thoughts cooking.

mountain glenn, grimm overwhelmed the city and the people took shelter in caves, building an entire underground city after the destruction above. an explosion later opens a breach into a grimm nest, grimm flood the city again, and vale seals off the tunnels, implicitly without attempting rescue or evacuation, sacrificing the people to protect the core city.

<- same choice ironwood made.

“i see lives that could have been saved,” and all. vale created the world’s largest tomb.

fast forward a few decades. a single transport ship approaches vacuo with the news that salem came to vale and “there’s nothing left.” the huntsmen aboard “led the civilian retreat, brought as many people as we could…”

that turn of phrase—‘led the civilian retreat’—doesn’t evoke a panicked, disorganized scramble to get away from vale. it calls to mind the orderly evacuation procedures we saw during the battle for beacon, where people were loaded efficiently into transports to move them from beacon into a safe zone established in vale. port and oobleck were in charge of that retreat too. (and it demonstrated generally that emergency evacuation is something vale has on a lock—the assault on beacon blindsided everyone but the kingdom’s crisis response plan sprang into action like a well-oiled machine.)

only one ship, though.

when cinder attacked beacon, they retreated to a safe zone in vale. when salem hit vale, the immediately obvious place to establish a safe zone is patch—it’s close by but separated by a body of water, and it’s relatively defensible (an island). unlike vale, patch probably doesn’t have the room or resources to support a large urban population indefinitely, but you can use it as a relatively secure staging area for a subsequent evacuation to somewhere else. what you probably can’t do is squeeze anything like the majority of vale’s population onto patch island. (i mean, you could if it’s as huge as it appears to be on the map, but the map is NOT to scale and i get the impression that patch is supposed to be quite small.)

mountain glenn. “i see lives that could have been saved.” vale’s greatest failure, standing abandoned as a dark reminder. and “if you can’t learn from [history], you’re destined to repeat it.” did vale learn from its failure in abandoning mountain glenn to die?

in this fractal spiral of a story. ironwood didn’t get his way, but what if he had? “we are saving who we can” -> “brought as many people with us as we could,” with the history teacher whose chosen purpose is to prevent another mountain glenn from happening hunched over, haunted, in the background. is this a fucking counterfactual.

also if there were people left behind in vale, the mountain glenn undercity is the obvious place for them to flee. it’s not safe, but you can get there from vale through the tunnels (less exposed than driving or flying above ground) and if you can barricade the points of ingress to the cavern, it’s at least a more defensible place to set up an encampment than anywhere out in the open.

and i mean it might be that salem massacred the city and let one ship escape to maximize the damage to morale and provoke as much outrage as possible for the sake of getting the sword out of that vault. but mountain glenn is such a crucial narrative cornerstone, and vale has a history of making the kind of sacrifices ironwood tried to make with mantle, and the specific phrasing used here is interesting (“nothing left” vs “no one left,” “civilian retreat” implying an orderly process a la the evacuation from beacon).

i think it’s also the more narratively interesting and dynamic choice for there to have been a judgment call to leave a large number of people behind—it’s a counterfactual vehicle for unpacking team rwby’s conflicted feelings about their decision-making in atlas through comparison to what vale’s leadership did in the same situation, and there being some ambiguity as to whether anyone else survived allows for a thin ray of hope (maybe there are some people still alive) to galvanize the coalition into a counteroffensive (if there’s even the smallest possibility of survivors, we need to help them. we have to try.) and you draw the tension in salem’s character between her extremism and her effort to chart what she believes is the minimally destructive course to the surface by putting a survivor’s encampment within her immediate reach.

#the army of revolt too maybe. #much to think about!

[altocat]

i'm still following first soldier's plot just from these posts but how is young sephiroth portrayed? is he evil or like he was in crisis core or what

Young Sephiroth is depicted as being confused, insecure, and kind of brainwashed from years of conditioning under Shinra. First Soldier provided some interesting aspects and moments for his character, which I'll bullet for you here real quick.

Sephiroth has never been on a real mission before this one. Most of his "accomplishments" so far have been fabricated lies under Shinra for propaganda purposes. Despite him simultaneously being freakishly strong and overpowered thanks to the Jenova cells.

Sephiroth is also apparently incredibly sheltered as he comes across as very socially awkward and kind of shy when he isn't sticking to Shinra's script. It's implied he's barely ever interacted with actual people outside of a controlled setting.

Sephiroth carries a locket of his mother Lucrecia (who he refers to as Jenova) and at this point still believes her to be alive and is looking for her. He apparently asks everyone he meets to see if they know anything about her. He loses this locket offscreen btw and it's bullshit.

Sephiroth is a brainwashed child soldier and often spouts fucked up logic/Shinra propaganda in order to justify his more violent actions. He conveys an extremely paranoid world view that if he doesn't fight, he'll be killed or hurt. This obv speaks to the conditions Shinra put him under during training.

That said, Sephiroth actively dislikes his status as a "hero" and just wants to find his mom and live a normal life. He breaks down crying after killing a bunch of child soldiers his own age and says that he never wanted to be what he is.

Sephiroth occasionally has moments where he acts like an actual little kid, giggling over Glenn's jokes, wanting the group's approval, and often coming off as being kind of timid and overly respectful. He has two modes--hardass leader sticking to a schedule and a literal child trying to push himself too hard because that's all he was ever taught.

Most of the time he's pretty supportive and courteous, if not overly polite. He clearly really wants to impress his team and often apologizes whenever he makes a mistake. He's leader, but he's figuring things out.

Lastly, and strangely most importantly, the stupid Halloween Event of all things confirmed that Hojo has been abusing/torturing Sephiroth for most of his life and is likely the reason why Sephiroth pushes himself so hard.

Currently, Sephiroth's story is still unfinished. The game makes it clear that he's grown very attached to his new team and feels responsible for protecting them from danger. He and main character Glenn have formed a brotherly bond of sorts and Sephiroth willingly goes against Shinra's orders in order to follow his team to rescue another boy his age from danger (Rosen). Rosen and Sephiroth are expected to have an encounter next chapter and it's very strongly implied that Sephiroth will end up killing Rosen as a means of trying to protect his group/some other reason. It's gonna be fucked up and emotional either way.

#asks #ff7 #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #sephcanons #sephiroth #first soldier #ever crisis #glenn lodbrok #ffvii ever crisis #ffvii first soldier #young sephiroth