#honestly this is why i think fanbases can be Great Sometimes. for all the issues and hypothetical drama it can bring its also just like | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sleepysnk · 3 years

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i fell in LOVE with the ideas you gave me about streamer!eren so here we go! thank you again and i hope you enjoy <3

Jaegerbomb is Streaming

Pairings: Streamer!Eren Jaeger x Fem!Reader

Warnings: None

Jaegerbomb is now streaming

Eren adjusted his mic as the stream began, it was a Friday night and he was doing his usual nightly stream. He talked about it on Twitter so he expected a lot of people to be tuning in tonight, as well as it was a Friday night and not many people had school the next day.

"What's up guys?" Eren said as he watched the views begin to go up and the viewers tuned in.

He watched people type in the chat sending the usual 'hi eren!' or the 'hey eren!' he was used to the these messages, a smile forming onto his face.

"Good to see you guys here again! I honestly have no idea what I'm gonna play tonight but we'll go with it," he said, looking at the different chats.

He began to read the different messages that were being sent, some people complimented him or asked how his day was to which he responded with 'thank you' or 'my night has been great'.

Eren was a popular streamer.

He gained popularity within a few months after he streamed with some pretty well known streamers, his raging and yelling is what got him noticed by people, as well as his appearance. People got a kick out of him all the time and he was definitely going places.

Eren was cute, he had emerald-like eyes, brown hair, a sly sexy smile, and he always looked amazing no matter what. It attracted female attention as well as some males, Eren didn't mind it though, he loved interacting with fans on a daily basis; he also had a pretty big fanbase with 400k followers on Twitter and 90k Instagram followers. They were all amazing people and Eren couldn't ask for better.

His rage was something people found to be hilarious, there were compilations of him yelling at Call of Duty or screaming when playing the popular horror games. There was also this one time Eren's mom walked in and yelled at him when he was being too loud, and people found it to be hilarious.

He called his fans the 'Jaegerists', his fanbase was very sweet and there was rarely any toxicity in it. Which in Eren's opinion, was very relieving.

When Eren got popular he was very nervous of the issues that came with it, sometimes people would recognize him on the street or people in his classes would bring up his streams. It was something Eren enjoyed, but he tended to keep his streaming life out of his personal life. It was also a request by Carla, his mother. She told Eren to be careful and always be wary of the internet.

He did exactly that and here he was now, sitting with 7k people watching him.

"What should I play tonight? I was thinking we could do Cold War or Minecraft, but being honest Cold War is a bit boring right now; so let me know guys!" Eren said, scrolling through his chat.

Within seconds people began replying saying either Cold War or Minecraft.

Suddenly, a few notifications started popping in from a few of his viewers.

jaegerbombfan10 donated 30 coins!

iloveeren_ donated 10 coins!

erenjaeger21 donated 5 coins!

Eren smiled as he got the donations, it was common for his viewers to donate to him and he was very thankful for it. He never begged his fans for donations or any of that and that's what people liked about Eren, he never asked for anything other than love and kindness.

"Thank you to those who donated! You're all amazing!" he said with a smile.

The usual kudos came into chat and people sent in hearts to the chat which made Eren feel 10x more happier, he enjoyed what his fans were doing for him and he was so thankful.

"Alright I think Minecraft won.. so today we're gonna do that," Eren added, narrowing his eyes a bit at the different chats which suggested the game.

Eren skimmed through his computer and began to load the game, it took a few moments but the main screen popped up and Eren put on his headset.

His eyes averted to the chat's people were sending in.

jaegerbombswife: eren u look so good

ereniloveyou_: minecraft is so cool eren

jaegerbombsbiggestfan: omg eren u look so cute right now ❤

jaegerist21: ooo minecraft? sounds fun eren!

"I feel like a mess right now but thank you guys, really. What music should I play tonight? Let me know in the chat," he said before turning back to the screen and entering his world.

It was pretty common for Eren to stream during the night, he doesn't really have the time during the day to stream since he has school and other important personal things to deal with.

He scrolled through the chats with different artists and songs, "You guys want Pop Smoke? I played him last time.. how about some The Kid Laroi? He has some good songs," he said, clicking through to find his spotify.

Eren clicked on a random song and went back to Minecraft, he started by running around and organizing his items because a few people in the chat were complaining about his inventory.

"Oh shush! Not everyone is perfect! My house is dope okay?" Eren said before chuckling a bit.

Suddenly, a few notifications came through which caught Eren's attention.

y/nloveseren donated 500 coins!

y/nloveseren donated 1000 coins!

y/nloveseren donated 800 coins!

That was surprising.. not many people donate three times in a row, and with that many coins either.

Eren watched as the user moved from the bottom of the donation list to the very top, whoever it was, they were donating a lot of coins to him.

"Yo! Y/nloveseren! Thank you for your donations!" he said, smiling to himself.

A few chats suddenly bubbled in.

jaegerist45: damn whoever that is they donated a lot.

jaegerbombsbiggestfan407: omg fr!

iloveueren77: eren i can donate later!

y/nloveseren: of course! ♡ you're one of my favorite streamers <3

Eren smiled at the message, "Nah thank YOU for donating! It's appreciated," he replied.

As Eren continued playing Minecraft throughout the night y/nloveseren continued to donate to him, they ended up donating about five or six times after and it was surprising for him. He hadn't ever seen this person in his streams before, he tends to remember usernames, but theirs didn't ring much of a bell. They must have been a silent viewer.

"You guys can ask some questions by the way! It's only midnight and I really wanna hear from you guys," he said, taking a sip of his water bottle.

Questions began to fill into the chat.

jaegerbombbbb21: eren will you ever play outlast?

erensimp34: how tall are you eren?

jaegerist0123: does ur mom know about u streaming?

erensbiggestfan31: are u single?

Eren skimmed through the different questions, some were the usual and some were odd. "Well to answer, I will play Outlast at some point. I am 6'1, my mom does know I stream, and yes I am single." he replied.

Many reactions came from the chat, people saying how sexy his height was or talking about how he was single.

y/nloveseren: ur single!? holy shit

Eren chuckled a bit, "Yeah I am single.. it's mainly 'cause I never really found anyone who was going to stick around you know?" he said.

y/nloveseren: can i place my minecraft bed next to yours then? ;)

Eren's eyes widened a bit from the message, his cheeks growing a light shade of pink; nobody has ever flirted with him on a stream before. Yeah people have called him sexy or said he was hot, but a flirt was never thrown.

"Y/nloveseren you definitely caught my attention with that.. but sure! I'll let you," he smirked.

The chat suddenly went wild with people sending in messages about what he said, others pointed out his blush or the way he was smirking right now.

jaegerist45: eren a simp? ooop

iloveyoueren_: what? :/ eren what about me 🙄?

erensimp34: SIMPPPP

erenishot386: did u guys see him blush? I GOT IT ON CAMERA

jaegerist219: omg he blushed? y/nloveseren keep talking!!

Eren smiled to himself, "Alright settle down guys! What they said was nice, okay? Nothing serious."

y/nloveseren: aw :( i was serious tho! you are quite the cutie <3 i deadass can't believe you noticed that message 😭!

y/nloveseren donated 400 coins!

"Thank you y/nloveseren! Seriously, you are kicking ass tonight," he said. "I'm definitely not the cutest but thank you, really!"

Within the next few hours, Eren and a few other viewers chatted about new games and a few embarrassing stories Eren told them. The one person who stood out to him though, was y/nloveseren. They donated a lot that night and Eren even chatted with them.

"Alright guys! I'll see you all soon! Goodnight," Eren said, waving at the camera.

jaegerist45: night eren!

iloveeren716: goodnight Eren! ♡

y/nloveseren: night Eren! sleep well <3

Eren stopped the stream and leaned back in his chair, who was y/nloveseren? And why couldn't he stop thinking about them?

The next few weeks of streaming were exciting for Eren, a few new games were released and he started playing them for his fans. He gained more popularity from the games as well and he was happy to see new people trickling in.

Though, Eren had another thing to look forward to when streaming.

(Y/N).

He actually ended up finding out her name, yes she was a girl.

During one of his streams he asked a few questions about her, of course she was happy to respond to Eren and he always looked forward to seeing her in his streams. She was his top donater and he was always excited to see her pop in, it was odd; Eren never felt this way before.

She was a fan, someone who looked up to him, yet Eren felt... excited to see her? He would get nervous if he didn't see her join a stream or he'd be disappointed if she left early, it was odd. He wasn't sure why he felt this way.

His fans pointed it out as well, they noticed Eren would smile a lot whenever he spoke to her or he would laugh at her jokes.

Eren never did that, not even with a fan.

He was sitting in his chair, the stream had just started and people began to fill in, he was going to play a bit of Call of Duty and then he would chill.

"What's up guys? How are we doing today?" Eren asked, looking at the screen.

erenfan21: hey Eren! i'm good

jaegerist45: yoo hey!

iloveeren1827: hi eren! how are you?

y/nloveseren: hi eren!! <3

Eren smiled seeing her pop into the chat, "I'm good guys, hi (Y/N). Good to see you," he replied.

As Eren played the game he couldn't help but look over to see if (Y/N) ever talked, he didn't want to miss a message from her. Sometimes he got so distracted he would end up dying or losing a round, a lot of people took notice.

"Bro Call of Duty makes me so mad," Eren said, his brows pinching together as he focused on the screen. "Maybe I should uh.." he trailed off as he looked at the chat.

Suddenly, his controller vibrated and it showed his character dying.

"Fuck!" Eren yelled, rolling his eyes. He then turned off the game and leaned back in his chair, he was clearly mad; his rage was something that entertained people and this was no different.

erensbiggestfan31: damn Eren you're mad again?

jaegerist187: shit guys he might rage

jaegerbomb1782: ah shit, u good eren?

y/nloveseren: eren? are you okay?

His eyes flickered towards the chat, "Yeah I'm good guys! That shit pissed me off, but I'll head back in." he said, pressing a few buttons to head into the game again.

y/nloveseren: yay!! 🥰 happy Eren is the best Eren!

y/nloveseren donated 700 coins!

He smiled to himself again. She always made him smile.. it was something she did to him, she had this effect no other fan could put on him.

"Say (Y/N).. you donate a lot and I always see you here.. yet, I don't think you've ever followed me before," he said, looking at the screen.

The chat began to blow up.

jaegerist45: OOOOO 👀

iloveeren167: oh shit? eren?

y/nloveseren: i'm just shy 😭 plus i doubt you respond to dms

He ran his fingers through his brunette locks, twirling one of the strands in his fingers. "I do actually respond to dms, but you're shy? That's cute lowkey.. I actually have an idea," he smirked.

y/nloveseren: and that is? 👀

erensimp34: A CHALLENGE? y/n omg

jaegerist45: oh shit.. IM INTERESTED

jaegerbombfan20: SHE GETTING BOLD 😩

"If I win this next round of COD you gotta give me your Instagram," he said, leaning back on his chair.

The chat began to blow up with messages of people hyping (Y/N) up, a grin formed onto Eren's face seeing what people were saying. He hoped that she wasn't uncomfortable with what he said, that's the last thing Eren would ever want.

y/nloveseren: bet, deal.

His eyes widened a bit, "Shit for real? Just know I'm not forcing you, but I'm curious about you."

y/nloveseren: nah! you're fine ;) let's see if you win though

Eren smirked when his eyes scanned over the message, "Alright.. say less," he said.

He entered the game and started playing the round, he made sure to keep extra focused so he wouldn't lose. That was the last thing he wanted, he was interested in what (Y/N) was like; she was definitely intriguing.

Eren pressed his thumbs and fingers into the controller, his grip tight enough that his knuckles were white; his fans even noticed and told him it wasn't that serious, but Eren didn't care. He wanted to win and losing is something Eren hated.

Suddenly the screen flashed the victory and Eren put his hands in the air. "Hell yeah! You guys see that? Jaegerbomb is the winner!" he yelled with a smile on his face.

His chat was going crazy.

jaegerist45: YO GOOD JOB EREN

erensimp13: omg nice job eren!

jaegerbombfan20: dude u did so good!!

Eren's smile widened looking at the chat, he always enjoyed his fans telling him he was doing great.

y/nloveseren: you actually won, damn. i didn't think you would have 😭, but since you did.. you want my instagram?

Eren leaned back in his chair, "Hell yeah! Hand it over," he replied.

y/nloveseren: it's y/n.l/n!

He grabbed his phone and went to Instagram, the chat was blowing up yet again when people saw her actually put her Instagram in. They hyped her up and even told Eren that he was a lucky guy for that.

Eren found her profile instantly, he scrolled through her photos and his eyes went wide; she was gorgeous. Eren was used to pretty girls talking or messaging with him, but she.. she was different and he felt it; he couldn't help but stare at the different photos of her in the mirror or the selfies she had with a pretty smile.

He looked at the chat and moved his headset to the side, "Yo.. guys.." he said, staring at the screen.

Instantly people began asking questions. "Guys.. she is fucking gorgeous, (Y/N) you're so cute holy shit," he said, smiling to himself.

jaegerist45: YOOO EREN IS A SIMP

iloveeren3827: awe 🥺

erensimp13: SHOW USSSS

jaegerbombfan20: is she pretty? y/n omg ur so lucky

erensbiggestfan928: simpppp

jaegerist2827: DID YOU GUYS SEE HIS SMILE?

His smile turned into a frown when he saw that (Y/N) wasn't talking in the chat anymore. Did he make her uncomfortable? He didn't force her into sending it, maybe she was uncomfortable and she just didn't want to say anything.

"Yo.. (Y/N) are you there? Shit did I make you uncomfortable? I'm sorry," Eren said, putting his phone on his desk.

He shook his leg watching the different people responding to what was going on, a few people apologized to her; they said that they didn't mean to make her feel weird or force her into telling Eren her Instagram.

His eyes flickered when he saw her name.

y/nloveseren: omg no! you didn't make me uncomfortable at all :) thank you for your comments tho! 💗 you made me smile

Eren felt relief wash over him, "Ugh thank god! I thought I made you feel grossed out! But it's my pleasure.. you are beautiful," he said.

People started to leave messages like 'awe <3' or 'omg guys Eren is so simping right now'. All in all, he found (Y/N) extremely attractive and he decided to follow her, he silently prayed that maybe just maybe.. they would talk outside of the stream.

Eren noticed how late it was, it was currently 2:31 A.M. and he usually went to sleep earlier on Sunday's because of his classes.

"Alright guys! I'm gonna end it here, it is really late where I live so I'm probably gonna head to sleep. Goodnight everyone! Thank you for tuning in!" he said while waving at the camera.

Everyone wished Eren a good night and he ended the stream. He rubbed his tired eyes and went to shut off the light in his room, all he wanted was to relax and get a good night's rest.

He placed his phone onto the nightstand and rolled over to the other side of his bed, his body relaxing into the sheets and comfort of his mattress.

A sudden ping woke him up.

It was odd, nobody usually texted Eren this late except for maybe Armin who reminded him to keep quiet while he studied but Armin was out that night with Annie.

Reaching for his phone, the screen lit up; he had a notification from Instagram. More specifically, a direct message.

He unlocked his phone and noticed he had a dm from (Y/N), she actually texted him; a smile grew onto his face as he opened it up.

(Y/N): hey! i doubt you're awake, but i wanted to message you and say hey <3!

He instantly began typing back.

Eren: hey! i was about to go to bed but i wanted to respond to your message, so you're y/nloveseren right?

Within seconds she viewed the message and began typing again.

(Y/N): haha, yeah that's me! i've been watching you stream for a really long time, but i was a silent fan. i got a job recently and i decided to donate since you have always put a smile on my face lol.

Eren: wow really? that's sick! it's so cool to meet you, i always look forward to seeing your name in my streams 😭. how old are you btw?

(Y/N): it's cool speaking with you too! i'm 19 btw!

Eren was surprised, she was around his age? Some of his fans were under 18 or around 20+, but he was surprised to see someone the same age as him around. Most of the girls around his age weren't interested in streamers or gaming in general.

Eren: say uh.. do you mind maybe, getting to know one another? only if you're cool with it of course

He chewed his bottom lip waiting for a reply back, he wasn't sure what she would say. He didn't want to come off as the creepy streamer who talks to fans and does weird shit with them.

(Y/N): really? sure! i'm down :)!!

He smiled seeing the message, maybe this girl was worth losing sleep over.

Eren spent the last few days talking to (Y/N), he would stay up past 3 A.M. texting with her about life and getting to know her deeper.

The two connected instantly that night, (Y/N) was an university student studying psychology and she had a job at a local cafe near her apartment outside campus. She was interested in gaming and she told Eren that she had been watching his streams for a few months, she found him to be entertaining and he was one of the few streamers that weren't weird.

They shared a lot of the same experiences on a lot of things. Eren told her about the many relationships he had and how the girls instantly thought he was weird or boring for wanting to stream instead of having a career. (Y/N) had just gotten out of a really bad relationship and she told him that her ex found it weird that she watched him.

As much as Eren really liked the vibes he got from (Y/N), he was scared to get close with her. Armin warned him many times about how some 'fans' aren't actually fans, they con people and gain their trust to expose them later. Eren didn't want to be used for money or any of that, that would be the end of him.

Still though, Eren wanted to talk to her more. He hadn't ever gotten like this with a fan before, but maybe.. this could be different?

Eren was laying in bed that night, he decided not to stream because he was tired and he just felt really lazy. He was doing the usual, texting (Y/N) and listening to music.

(Y/N): what are you up to?

Eren: i'm just laying down, listening to music. wbu?

(Y/N): i was wondering if you maybe wanted to.. facetime? of course we don't have to but i feel like it could be cool?

Eren looked up for a second, maybe a facetime would be good; it could help him get to know her more and maybe he could find out if she was looking to fuck around with him.

Eren: sure! here's my number

He sent her his number and sat up, he wanted to look decent for her anyway. He fixed his messy hair and tied it back into a bun, then he zipped up his sweater.

His heart began to race, why was he feeling this way? It was just a fan nothing he couldn't handle, he silently hoped that she wouldn't think he was weird or anything.

His phone suddenly began to ring, he rushed over to his bed and grabbed his phone. It was an unsaved number so he assumed it was (Y/N). He fixed his hair and clicked the green answer button.

"Hey!" Eren said, his smile showing as he saw (Y/N) behind the screen.

She giggled, "Oh my God hi! You're so much cuter behind the screen," she replied.

Eren chuckled, "Thank you.. you're very beautiful yourself."

Her cheeks grew hot, "You're sweet but.. what's up? How are you doing tonight?" she asked with a smile on her face.

Eren leaned back in his chair, "I'm doing good, what about you? Do you work tonight?" he asked.

"No I don't actually.. that's why I decided to call you since I had some free time. Are you streaming today?" she asked.

He shook his head, "Nah.. I uh.. I decided not to since I was tired and I honestly was too lazy to get on," he chuckled.

"Oh Jaegerbomb is lazy huh? That's odd, you usually have so much energy." she giggled.

Eren smiled at her words, "Yeah I'm pretty lazy sometimes.. but y/nloveseren just insisted we facetime," he said in a dramatic tone.

She rolled her eyes playfully. "Oh shush! I was being sweet and plus I was bored, so be thankful I asked." she said, giggling a bit.

He ran his fingers through his hair. "Oh I see.. but I am thankful! You're a pretty sweet girl (Y/N), I love talking to you."

She felt bashful around him, Eren had this impact on her and she always had butterflies whenever his name popped up into her phone. He was sweet, attractive, exciting, and most of all he was an amazing listener; something (Y/N) never had.

"Thank you, Eren. You're a really sweet guy yourself," she replied, nodding her head to the side.

He propped his phone up on his bed, he adjusted himself so he was a bit comfortable. "Of course! You deserve it (Y/N)," he smiled.

The two talked for hours that night about so many things. They told each other different stories from their childhood, they talked about weird experiences they had, and they even got a bit personal with one another. Eren felt like that was a huge plus, he could never get this personal with anyone.

He loved the vibes he got from (Y/N), she was easy to talk to, funny, sweet, she matched his vibe and the two got along so well.

Eren had his mind made up.

She was worth losing sleep over.

A month or two had gone by since (Y/N) and Eren started talking. They were still very close and they talked pretty much all day everyday, that was something that rarely ever happened with a fan. Most of the time Eren wouldn't speak to fans long.

He considered her a friend, but he knew inside he wanted to be more than friends with her.

He was currently streaming at the moment, he was a bored; not much was going on and he was playing some Minecraft to pass the time. (Y/N) told him earlier in the day that she wouldn't be joining the stream till later because she was working late. It slightly disappointed him, but he knew that her personal life was important.

He sighed, "What do you guys wanna talk about? Ask me anything," he said, looking towards the chat.

A few questions bubbled into his chat, some were questions that he's answered before. But one question actually caught his eye..

jaegerist3452: what do you think about y/n?

He furrowed his brows for a second, why would they be asking about her? Sure, he told people that he was speaking to her and they talked outside of the streams, but nobody really asked.

"What do I think about (Y/N)? Oh, she's dope as hell. I love talking to her, there's a lot more I can say but I dunno.. she might not like it," he replied, leaning back in his chair.

His eyes scanned back over to the chat where everyone was spamming telling him to say it and that she probably wouldn't judge him.

"You guys really want to know?" he asked, sitting up a bit.

erensimp43: yes!! i wanna know!

jaegerist45: i'm down to listen

erensbiggestfan2928: tell us!

iloveeren1010: i wanna hear!

Eren let out air through his nose. "Well (Y/N) is a really really sweet girl, she's so nice and easy to talk to. Not to mention how great of a listener she is, her personality is something I value the most about her; she always makes me laugh and talking to her is my favorite part of the day. Most of all, she's beautiful. She's such a pretty girl and.. damn, I'd love to make her mine."

The chat began to blow up with messages.

jaegerist45: that's so cute man

jaegerbombfan20: awe 🥺

iloveeren_: that's adorable holy shit

erensbiggestfan1083: simppppp but that's so nice

He smiled at the thought of her. "Yeah call me a simp but... she's really amazing," he said.

y/nloveseren: wow 🥺..

His eyes bulged out of his head when he saw her name in the chat, a blush crept onto his cheeks feeling embarrassment washing over him.

"O-Oh shit.."

Everyone began to flood messages about how Eren just got caught, he felt embarrassed and really bashful. She most likely heard everything he just said, what if she was uncomfortable?

"Shit I'm sorry (Y/N).. I shouldn't have said that shit.. we barely know one another and you're probably really upset," Eren said, rubbing his temples.

y/nloveseren: no Eren ur fine! what u said was actually really sweet 🥺💗.. thank you <3

He sat up, "Really? Wait.. so you're not mad?"

y/nloveseren: no not at all! :) i can say the same about you.. you've definitely been really sweet and i really like you

His jaw dropped and a smile formed onto his features. "Wow.. I have no words. Can we text? Please?" he asked, raising his brows.

y/nloveseren: of course <3!

Eren reached for his phone and saw her typing in their dms, his eyes flickered upwards at the chat which was now going crazy over what they both said to each other.

jaegerist45: dude that's so cute

jaegerbombfan20: I'M GONNA CRY OMG

The vibration of his phone broke him out of his thoughts, he went to Instagram to view the message from her.

(Y/N): hey :), i heard what you said and it really made my day. i was having a shitty day at work and hearing what you said made me so happy, so thank you for that. i like you, eren. i know you may not feel the same but talking to you has been so amazing and i would love to talk to you more ♡.

He smiled before sending a reply.

Eren: i would love to! talking to you has made me so much happier and i'm glad we met. everything i said was true and i want to keep talking, you're amazing.

(Y/N): sounds like a plan ❤.

Eren smiled and looked up to see his chat spamming his name, many people took the hint that he was talking to her.

"I got her guys.." he said with a smile.

#anime #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #aot x y/n #aot x reader #aot imagines #aot fanfiction #snk x y/n #snk x reader #snk imagines #snk fanfiction #shingeki no kyoujin fanfiction #eren jaeger #eren jaeger x reader #eren x reader #attack on titan fanfiction #anime fanfic #this was cute

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rantrambles · 3 years

Text

Ever get so upset you make a Tumblr account to vent?

I haven’t even listened to The Penumbra Podcast yet but it’s on my list because it’s insanely popular and the cosplays I’ve seen are hot as hell (A+ to all the cosplayers I’ve seen you’ve done great work). Now, with the recent news surrounding the podcast, I’ll wait till it’s done if I ever do get into it. I’m Asian and part of the LGBT community but I’m not nonbinary so I can’t say much about the trans represention in the art but I wanted to add my two cents on the matter as a person of color and someone examining the situation from the outside. Also, before I get deeply into it, I’m not the only person of color with opinions on this matter so if people have their own frustrations and criticism with the racism in The Penumbra Podcast and/or the new artist they hired, definitely listen to them too. These are my own personal opinions, and I’m sure other people will disagree and that’s fine. We’re all going to have different views on this so bear that in mind. Also, feel free to correct me or add anything if I’ve missed some information. Here’s a great breakdown of the whole situation for those that don’t know what happened. Finally, I was very hesitant to post this, but I felt it was important because I make a statement at the end on how race should be presented in a podcast format so if you are interested in making a podcast and want to have a diverse range of characters, please skip to the end to read those thoughts.

I’ll start off by saying, I’m not even that upset with the new artist that The Penumbra Podcast hired. I know that statement alone is controversial but I don't personally know them, and I’m not going to judge who they are as a person by a few pieces of art they’ve made. They are the least of the problems that I have here. Since the announcement and the backlash, I’ve been scrolling through the artist’s Instagram account and I can tell why people find the designs offensive, but I’m also comparing the designs to the artist’s other work, and I honestly believe that’s just their style. They’ve exaggerated the features of just about every character they’ve made, regardless of race or gender. From what I’ve seen the sharp angles and overly round curves in the anatomy that make some of the character’s features more jarring are how they prefer to draw. I’m sure they’re capable of drawing more realistic proportions but for the most part they’re art aims to call attention, be bold, and create distinguished features. Not inherently a bad thing on its own.

And yeah I’d understand the issue if this were a scenario where the artist heard how these characters acted in the podcast and thought “hey, obviously this character is a black woman because they are super strong and therefore must have big muscles, no other woman could look like that” or “hey, this character has to be Asian because they act super seductive sometimes better draw them as such.” But from my understanding the race was already decided by previous official artists and a general description of the characters were already generated by the audience, similar to how The Magnus Archives leaned towards drawing scrawny Jon with black, greying hair and dark skin. The new artists couldn’t really change those features even if those features aren’t described in canon because a depiction that strayed too far from popular fandom interpretation would make the character’s unrecognizable to the fanbase.

I think the reason this became such a big issue for most people is because the new Penumbra artist used their exaggerated art style when making these characters and people of color and nonbinary folks already see themselves drawn as these exaggerated caricatures all the time (with those images being used to further discriminate against them). I’m sure the artist didn’t mean for their art to be offensive, but that of course doesn’t change how it was received.

According to some, the poses and expressions the artists chose did not fully represent the characters entirely and only served to further perpetuate harmful stereotypes, and I’ll have to take their word for it because I still haven’t listened to the podcast so I have no idea how the characters act. But again much of the criticism is based on the one line-up and doing a deeper dive into the artist’s work I managed to find artwork that was much less offensive. Here some art where Vespa is depicted in a non-violent pose and one where Vespa is in a threatening pose but not an overly violent one. Here is Peter drawn in a non-seductive pose. Hopefully, the artist truly does keep the criticisms in mind as they work on the new official art. I’m just not the type of person that wants to get the pitchforks out and cause this particular person to lose a job they seemed really excited about over their old character line-up, especially when that person is also part of a marginalized group.

Again, that’s just my opinion on that particular artist. Those who are offended by their art are still valid in how they feel, and the artist should absolutely take their criticism to heart to better how they represent the characters.

What I’m more upset about is that I think The Penumbra Podcast should never have released official art for their characters in the first place and that’s their mistake that they refuse to own up about. They have made it clear that the story was never meant to portray characters of colors, a fact emphasized by the fact they hired mostly white actors from the start. They only started releasing art of the characters to get a profit. And the thing is they know what they did was wrong. All I had to do was search Penumbra Podcast racism and there is a note on their website saying that they archived some old official art.

“We have discontinued all Penumbra merchandise that uses the original character designs, and in the meantime, any profits on the sales of that merchandise will go to the For The Gworls project. We also realize that the depiction of these characters as POC, while not appropriate for us to use in our marketing and merchandise, has nonetheless become personally meaningful to many POC listeners. For that reason, and because we do not wish to distance ourselves from our mistake, we are keeping these images on our website for archival purposes. Though we do want to make it clear that many of the main/featured voice actors are white and that we did not write the characters to represent any specific POC experience, you are, as always, free to imagine these characters in any way that you like.”

I went to their shop and they still sell posters and pins with the character’s faces on them, but they are donating it to a good cause so hopefully that stays the same. However, I still find it a little uncomfortable that they are still selling character merch and have plans to continue selling character merch. They have no right to dissuade the fans that already found representation in the characters, but they also have no right to profit off the representation that was built, regardless if they made the story.

Let’s compare this to another piece of popular media. I love Avatar the Last Airbender and, I liked the ATLA voice actors just fine but there should have been more people of color doing voice acting behind the screen too. The voice actors for that show were mainly white too, however, the creators knew that they would be making poc characters. That’s what makes the difference. Did they still choose to go with mostly white voice actors? Yes. Could they have done better and pay more people of color? Also yes. But I’m not as furious at them because they did their research on the cultures they were basing the ATLA world off of and intentionally gave us a show where Asians could see characters that looked like them represented on the screen. The Penumbra Podcast did not do any of that. Again, they openly admitted that it was never their intention to make the character’s people of color when they made the podcast so that goes to show no research was made to properly represent specific cultures. The color of the character’s skin in their official designs therefore became more of aesthetic choice rather than representation, and it wasn’t even their aesthetic choice to begin with!

Race isn’t a color you can just throw onto the character because you feel like it. So I want this to be a lesson to anyone that wants to make a podcast: if you want to include poc characters please do some research into the cultures you plan to represent the way you would with any other form of media. Just because the audience can’t see the characters and just because it’s harder to smoothly introduce the character’s appearance doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be lazy on how you present the characters. Do research before you start writing the first episode and take the time to hire poc actors. Hiring poc actors is actually the least that can be done to show representation. Also, since the audience cannot visually see the race of the characters on a podcast and it can’t typically be described the way you would in a book, you’ll have to be creative. It’s not my job to say how, but my suggestions would be, before the fans come up with their own image of the character, you need to establish race in the first few episodes or release character profiles on a website so that the fans know you canonically intended the characters to be of a certain race even if you aren’t able to mention it in the actual podcast. If you are unwilling to do any of these then the best route is to avoid stating race at all and allow the audience to build their own representation into your form of media. However, once this happens, you are not allowed to profit off popular fan interpretations. You lose all rights to create official art or images of the characters. You cannot use “we have a diverse cast of characters” when you market your story. It doesn’t matter whether you created the content or not, you did not create the representation for those minority groups.

It’s one thing for fans to build their own inclusivity into a form of art like a podcast, but it’s another thing for the creators who never worked to make the representation happen to take advantage of the representation that the listeners built for themselves. Thank you for attending my TedTalk.

#the penumbra podcast #podcast #race #the magnus archives #diversity in podcasts #diversity #tpp #tpp fanart

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nienna-talks-asscreed · 3 years

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Assassin's Creed: Rogue is so much better than it has any right to be

I honestly haven’t been in the Assassin’s Creed fandom all that long. It was something I finally got into because of the pandemic (and maybe a touch of “I just graduated from college oh god what do I do with my life?”), but it’s something I fell in love with almost instantly. Looking into the fanbase and its opinions has definitely been an experience -- one that I confidently can say I would not recommend to everyone -- but, unsurprisingly, it’s made me incredibly amused by my own opinions.

Because, well, Rogue is far and away my personal favorite game of this franchise. You know, the game that Ubisoft itself seems to forget even exists. And which people online seem to deem either insanely underrated or aggressively mediocre. As for me? I fall more closely on the “underrated” side of that argument, though that’s not to say the game is without flaws.

Of course it’s not. It has its own issues and such that I can -- and will -- talk about, but it’s also got its highs that mean a whole lot to me.

That said, I won’t be talking about every aspect of the game in-depth. I’d rather use my words in areas where I actually have detailed opinions and thoughts. Though I will do a quick summary of those things here at the top.

General mechanics: great. Stealth feels fantastic, movement feels fluid and on-par with the rest of the Kenway saga. Naval gameplay is spectacular. I actually played Rogue before Black Flag and honestly find it more fitting to my personal playstyle, so I love it. If you want a more detailed look at technical stuff about things like freerunning and combat and the like, I’d check out other people’s thoughts; I just don’t feel super qualified to speak on this, given that my personal repertoire of games I’ve played isn’t super wide.

Setting: beautiful. This is an Assassin’s Creed game -- they’re gonna get this part right. I regularly go back to the North Atlantic just to sail around because it’s so damn pretty. More of the Seven Years War might’ve been nice, but it’s not a time period I personally know much about, so it just didn’t bother me that it wasn’t a huge thing.

Side content: varies. Assassin interceptions were actually pretty cool and I liked the story at the end. The rest is pretty forgettable. The optional outfits look real good in this game, but, as everyone has already said, there are too many collectibles. Although, isn’t that just a staple of Assassin’s Creed games up through Syndicate?

Mission structure: felt good to me. Only one tailing mission, which is always nice. Other than that, it just felt like good ol’ Assassin’s Creed gameplay without ever feeling too repetitive for me. Again, if this is something you want to know more about, you’re probably better off looking somewhere else for information. Sorry? Just not exactly my cup of tea.

The Versailles Sequence/Unity tie-in: look, I can scream about this for ages, and that probably doesn’t belong here. I’ll mention this a bit a the end, but that full rant will be saved for another day.

I think that about covers it. So let’s get going. Oh, and spoilers ahead. Obviously.

*****

The Modern Day

Let’s just jump in with this whole topic by saying that, personally, I think the modern day is fine. Nothing to write home about, but nothing that’s egregious or anything. I’m still not a fan of getting pulled out of the historical part of the game, but I never really have been in any of these games. But it does what it’s supposed to do, and it’s built on, what I consider to be, at least an interesting idea. Because this is the Templar game, you’re playing as an Abstergo employee who, presumably, joins the Templars sometime shortly post-game, and ending the modern day story with that offer is kind of interesting. It’s the kind of story that only really makes sense in the context of Rogue, so I understand why this is what they chose to do, and the story does feel like it moves toward that ending. Not high praise, sure, but it just works for me. Plus, I’m not really bothered by this first person player, because I never feel like I have to be all too attached to their story. I never feel like I’m missing something because I’m not connecting with a full-on character like Desmond or Layla. I’m allowed to go “oh, okay, so things are just happening but I don’t need to devote that much time into this, cool, thanks.” (Honestly, this is something that I might talk about elsewhere, so I’ll leave it at that for now).

You also don’t need to do any of the side content that comes with the modern day to actually understand what’s happening, but doing so does give you some interesting lore, if that’s what you want. Which is, honestly, how I think side content should be handled in these games. You can learn about other Pieces of Eden, history regarding the Animus, or just stuff about Berg (who ends up becoming a weirdly prominent character in the franchise despite coming from this game, of all places). It’s really cool deposition, but completely off to the side of the main story, and I appreciate it being there.

So, yeah, overall, I just don’t really have major beef with the modern day. It’s unobtrusive, which, sometimes, is all you can ask for these days.

*****

The Historical Storyline

Alright, time to have a bit more fun, now.

You follow the story of Shay Cormac, an ex-Assassin who grew disillusioned with the Brotherhood and joined the Templars. And the game introduces you into that world in a pretty enjoyable fashion -- swooping through the North Atlantic and following the eagle as Shay monologues in the background is really dramatic, and it’s the kind of drama that I play these games for. (Plus, having that opening monologue completely parallel the ending one -- flying in toward Shay as he recites the Assassin’s Creed at the start, vs. flying away from him as he recites the tenants of the Templar Order -- is just a really cool narrative device that I personally find rather clever). And then that first prompt of “Kill the Assassin” is such an interesting way to just dump you right into the middle of things, before you realize that, no, you’re actually starting a few years before all of that. Overall, it’s a pretty strong start, and a unique one, at that. I’m a fan!

The rest of the story follows Shay’s personal journey and his turn away from the Assassins, which, I think, is fairly well executed. In the first couple of sequences leading up to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake (which, yes, is a real thing, and is caused by Piece of Eden macguffins in this universe, because, honestly, we shouldn’t expect anything else), they do sow seeds of doubt about the Assassins. Shay’s questioning as to whether killing Lawrence Washington is really the right thing to do in 1-4 (Sequence 1, Memory 4); the Assassins’ support of the French, who actively promote slavery in the Caribbean (which is made doubly confusing if you’ve played Freedom Cry, but that’s neither here nor there); their blind, neverending search for Pieces of Eden; and even the general sentiment passed around of always just trusting in your superiors, which is mostly said by Chevalier (but also kind of implied by Achilles) and, in my opinion, isn’t talked about enough. Point being: there are problems that Shay already sees from the get-go, and Lisbon is just the cherry on top of that.

Which, speaking of Lisbon, I think that sequence is great. Seeing the city crumble around you -- it’s an absolutely insane setpiece, and a really impressive one, at that. The shot of the city burning at the end is, honestly, a really great use of Assassin’s Creed’s already impressive ability to craft beautiful cities and settings in general -- the only thing I would’ve added is dropping the title card there, rather than at the end of 1-1. Sure, it doesn’t fit with where Ubisoft usually put their title cards in these games, but I really think that would’ve made a statement.

Also, on Lisbon, I do want to address another thing that I’ve seen crop up on occasion. So, slight sidebar, but I do think it’s relevant to the game overall. I know I’ve seen complaints that, while Lisbon is great as a setpiece, the game doesn’t do enough to get you attached to the city. And I understand that, but only to a degree. Where I disagree is the how of getting you attached, because the idea of having Shay lose someone close to him during the earthquake -- like a romantic interest -- isn’t something I can get behind. To me, part of what makes Rogue work is actually the lack of romantic plotlines overall. This is an entire other subject on its own, but it suffices to say that, personally, I’m usually pretty harsh on romantic subplots, and, to me, if they don’t actively add something good, then I’m happier without them. Now, given how short Rogue already is, I can’t imagine that a romantic subplot would be explored deeply enough to really be worthwhile. So to have Shay’s entire motivation be centered around a probably-underdeveloped character and nothing else would sort of remove any room that he has to struggle with the conflict around him.

I do get the idea of wanting more connection with Lisbon as a location, but I just don’t think romantic subplots would necessarily be the way of doing it. Watching the city burn and fall just did enough for me. And, at least as I see it, leaving it that way sort of fits the game’s MO. Shay’s motivations are pretty rarely centered around particular people, which would include any love interests. I mean, that’s the whole point of the game; Shay is willing to act against people he cares about because they’re doing the wrong thing. His motivation throughout the whole game is connected to the more abstract ideal of defending innocent people. Wanting justice for the death of thousands of innocents -- rather than one special person -- is very in line with how Shay operates.

But, alright, back to the actual review, and it’s time to talk Shay’s defection. Because you can’t discuss this game without talking about 2-5. So here’s my two cents: I like it. I think it works. When you boil things down, yes, it’s all a problem of miscommunication. Had everyone just talked, then the plot of Rogue probably wouldn’t have happened. But I don’t blame Shay for that, which is why I still feel like this scene doesn’t ruin the entire central conflict. For one, there are already problems within the Assassins (which is an entire topic on its own), so solving this argument wouldn’t end well down the line anyway. But more than that, between Shay and Achilles -- I’m sorry, but I don’t expect Shay to be the one who has to accommodate Achilles here? Shay just watched a whole city fall, feels personally responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, and then probably had to bottle all of that up during the months-long trip back to the Colonies from Portugal. None of that is explicitly stated, but I mean, we can read between the lines. I wouldn’t expect anyone to be mentally sound and ready to have a perfectly level-headed conversation after that. Achilles, though? Achilles is Mentor, and the teacher of a bunch of people who make their living in murder -- he should be better equipped to deal with people being Clearly Not Okay. Because Shay is Clearly Not Okay, but then he just gets thrown out of the house, and no one thinks to check in and ask him if he’s fine or what even happened? Even though something clearly happened? Look, I understand the other argument -- that Achilles truly didn’t know what would happen and Shay just burst in yelling -- but I can’t find a way to really believe that Shay is the one to blame here? Just saying.

Here’s my point: I like the way Shay’s defection is written -- his emotional response is completely valid -- and it does justify the rest of the plot. That narrative just works, for me. As for how that narrative is paced, well, that’s an interesting question. On the whole, I do think it’s fine. Rogue is really trimmed down, especially compared to a lot of the other games. It doesn’t feel like there’s a whole lot of fluff, and most of the missions do feel like they do something to advance either the actual plot, or give you something about Shay’s character (the latter of which is my bread and butter, but again, we’ll get there, don’t you worry). It feels dense enough that I don’t get bored, or just forget about massive portions of story, which is a problem which some of the other games have. The fact that the structure is not as redundant also really helps. It doesn’t follow that structure of introducing a new target per sequence, then killing them at the end, which was an absolute godsend to me. Seriously, this is a topic for another analysis, but Rogue’s decision to not follow that structure and just follow the plot as it naturally progressed was one of the best things it could’ve done. Because I actually remember what happens, which is, you know, a good thing for a piece of media. It’s a story, not a hitlist.

That said, the pacing does still feel...odd at times? The first two sequences just aren’t that memorable -- they do the thing where it’s like “here’s your target that you’ve never heard of, now go do a murder” which just doesn’t excite me anymore? And the beginning just feels strangely long? I mean, 1-1 does end up introducing you to freerunning and assassination mechanics, as well as the basics of naval warfare. 1-2 as an additional training sequence just feels like overkill, and is really only good for bringing in Adewale, and for the conversation he has with Achilles (which is actually an optional thing to listen to -- one of the most glaring errors in this game, by the way. That’s a huge plot point and it’s so easy to miss? I don’t get that choice.) Same with 1-3; it brings in Le Chasseur, but really it’s just there to introduce ship boarding, which, again, could’ve technically been done in 1-1 when you first get the Morrigan? It just doesn’t feel incredibly necessary, and that time could’ve gone to things like the Lisbon earthquake. Or maybe even into events that take place from sequence 3 to the end?

That said, I generally like the pacing while Shay is with the Templars. With few exceptions, the events in the back half of the game all feel important, and there’s enough momentum to keep me invested all the way through to the end. You know who all of your targets are going to be, and you actually don’t even hit them in this super measured type of manner. They just happen whenever they happen, with three of them happening in the last four memories of the game. To me, having these assassinations come at varying times actually works really well, and it makes the game’s pacing feel organic. Everything is based around the story, and not imposed by some outside force (the writers). Having so many assassinations near the end gives me the feeling that things are accelerating into the ending, not the other way around. Plus, keeping everything dense is, once again, to its advantage -- I don’t feel bored at any point, or like the things I’m doing are completely inconsequential.

*****

The Side Cast

I’ll be honest, I can recognize some of the flaws that did come out of having such a compact game, and the side characters are definitely one of those flaws, or at least, something that could’ve been better. At the end of the day, a lot of the side cast just doesn’t have that much screentime, even though screentime was something they probably needed. Liam gets a decent amount of deposition and character, and Hope gets a bit, but most of the Assassins just don’t get filled out that much. Kesegowaase largely just exists, as does Le Chasseur, and Chevalier is mostly just a piece of scum, but you don’t really know much about them, even though, given the plot of this game, it would’ve been really nice. Having a deeper emotional connection with each of them would’ve made their subsequent deaths hit us, as players, a little bit harder. It would’ve made this idea of an ex-Assassin hunting down his brothers become really tragic, no matter how you wanted to look at it. And, I don’t know about you, but I would’ve been completely on board with this game absolutely sucker-punching me in the feels. I mean, come on, make me cry, I dare you.

Well, anyway, I also just want to mention that it’s not just the Assassins who could’ve done with more screentime. Most of the Templars work perfectly fine as they are -- they have enough personality that I can 100% enjoy the storyline and their part in it. Would it have been nice to get more from them? Sure, but I’m not incredibly bothered by it. The Finnegans are actually the characters I wanted to bring up, though. Because, while their part in the story is completely fine, and I do like the part they play in Shay’s story, I really think it would’ve been cool to have more of them. To clarify, this is purely speculative, and doesn’t actually take away from the game that’s in front of us, but they’re characters who, I think, could’ve formed a really close bond with Shay and potentially been a big part of his journey into joining the Templars. Just a bit of an emotional pull that could’ve been nice to see play out, had they been able to come back a couple more times through the back half of the story.

I don’t know, it just seems like a nice idea to me, even if not expressly necessary.

*****

Protagonist Time

So, I wouldn’t be surprised if you reached this point and wondered, “hey, so you said that this is your favorite game, but parts of this review have been really lukewarm. Why is it your favorite?” And if that’s your question, then congratulations! You’re about to get your answer. Because the thing that really makes this game work, and, for me, makes it stand out above many of the other, more technically sound, games of this franchise, is its protagonist.

Shay is nothing less than fascinating to me, while also being a character I can absolutely adore. He just feels insanely genuine and real and fully-realized in a way that I’m constantly impressed by. And he’s a big part of why this game works as well as it does, especially for someone like me, who is really heavily drawn into a story by the strength of its characters.

More than many of the other protagonists, Shay just feels like a real person. Not like a collection of related traits that were chosen to facilitate a particular story arc. He’s actually fairly reserved and introverted, but he’s never cold or aloof or distant (which seems like an easy way to write introverts, and something Ubisoft has sort of done for its other characters). He always comes off as warm and has this endearingly dorky sense of humor. We see him moved to anger or joking around with the people he’s close with (the Assassins at first, but Gist and crew later), because, surprise, that’s how people work. Introverts aren’t always quiet in every situation, and it’s not “surprising” that we have emotions, or something like that. Shay just being characterized like this -- and the story never making some sort of deal out of it -- honestly makes him feel incredibly familiar.

What really makes him work, though, is that he’s an incredibly expressive character, and I need to give Steven Piovesan -- Shay’s voice actor -- all of the credit in the world for that. At every point in the story, you can watch and listen to Shay and understand exactly what he’s feeling in that particular moment. You can actually see the pain or the confusion in his eyes when he learns that Hope is leading the gangs (and when he has to kill her) or when he’s told that Monro is dead. You can hear his hesitation when he first meets Monro, his guilt when he mentions Lisbon to Haytham, or just how genuinely thankful he is to the Finnegans and Monro for saving his life. When he’s chasing Liam through the cave in the last memory, the way he screams “I’m sorry!” and “I had to!” just gutted me. You’re never left at a loss for what he’s feeling, and it makes it so easy to empathize with him. (Personally, with how often he feels noticeably guilty, I just want to give him a hug, which is how I know that someone, somewhere, has done something right in my book).

And all of that together is what carries the story. I care about this plot because I care about Shay. I care about what’s happening because he does, and I want to know how he responds, and I want him to come out of it all okay. It’s all really character-driven, which is the most effective way to get me, personally, invested in any story. And it also actually, weirdly, fills some of the above-mentioned writing gaps, especially where the side cast is involved -- namely, the Assassins. We, as the audience, know very little about the other Assassins at this point in time; it’s something I don’t want to fault the team for too much, because the game is just so short that getting us attached to those characters would be a challenge. Everything is so lean already, and the last thing I’d want is for random bloating of the plot. But they kind of work around that? We don’t know these characters well, but Shay does. And so while I don’t care that much about, say, Hope when she dies, Shay visibly and audibly does. And his emotions in that scene feel real enough that I care a lot about how distraught he is over the situation. It manages to keep me emotionally invested in everything going on, even though there wasn’t enough time for me to grow attached to each of those side characters individually.

It honestly feels like a strange writing hack, but one that seems effective and appropriate for how this game was put together.

But, anyway, let’s switch gears just a little here, because I’d be remiss not to talk at all about Shay’s morality, since, again, it makes him sort of unique among the protagonists. And, no, not just because he’s a Templar -- things aren’t that black and white.

If you condense down what Shay really fights for, it’s basically “protecting innocents and doing right by everyday people”. Which isn’t bad or complicated -- it’s incredibly pure -- but is strangely out of place in this particular universe. At least to my reading, Shay doesn’t really, fully align with either Templars or Assassins, and so he can really easily be at odds with one or both sides. Add into that the very positive view of loyalty as a trait -- in the Assassin’s Creed universe, in other pieces of media, and in real life -- and it places Shay in an interesting spot. He’s the kind of character who will do the wrong thing in order to do the right thing, someone who will become the villain in someone else’s story if it means protecting others. Although this isn’t “villain” in the traditional sense. It has more to do with the fact that he’s willing to forego positive-aligned ideals like loyalty -- usually something a protagonist already has in spades or learns as part of their arc. Also, the fact that he doesn’t condone what he’s doing, and would even call himself a monster (seriously, that scene with Adewale? Fantastic). It makes him feel really understandably conflicted -- someone who wants to do the right thing, but is stuck between a rock and ten hard places -- and selfless, in this somewhat strange way. He’s willing to hate himself in service to something much larger. Which, again, makes him feel really sympathetic (so maybe this mention of Shay’s philosophy wasn’t as much of a tangent as it seemed).

It comes down to this: Shay resonates with me a lot, and ticks a lot of boxes for what I like in characters. And that plays really heavily into how I personally judge a game.

*****

A Really Bizare Production

At the end of the day, I just think this is a really fun game, and one that happens to appeal really effectively to my personal interests. But it’s also a game that you can’t fully separate from the circumstances of its production. The more I’ve heard about this game, the more I’m impressed it has a functioning story at all. The production seemed ridiculous and insanely fast, with motion-capture/recording and writing apparently kind of happening at the same time (I’d recommend Loomer’s podcasts with Steven Piovesan (x) and Richard Farrese (x) -- Shay’s VA and Rogue’s lead writer, respectively -- if you want to hear some of this stuff), and so I have to assume it led to some of the more bizarre inconsistencies I can see in this game.

I’m mostly talking about the Versailles sequence here. Because, sometimes, I feel like the only person who isn’t a huge fan of it.

I mean, obviously, the Unity connection is really interesting, and it absolutely makes me want a crossover story for not only Arno and Shay, but also Connor (three protagonists running around at the same time? Come on Ubisoft, how have you not written this story?). But it’s part of this larger problem, which is that this sequence feels really out of step with the rest of the game. This is something that I absolutely could go into, but won’t, just for brevity’s sake. (Believe me, it’ll be its own analysis). So it’ll suffice to say that Shay’s personality and philosophy just aren’t the same as what we saw in the rest of the game. It feels like a different character. And while that could be explained away with sixteen years of missing context (an explanation I don’t accept, because we’ve never been offered that context anywhere else), I honestly think that it’s a leftover bit of planning. This feels like a bookend that the writers decided on at the start as a way to guide their plot. But then, because there were so many changes happening, and so much plot was getting rewritten, all while filming was happening, Shay’s character and motivations just naturally shifted. (I can’t guess why -- maybe it was just an idea a writer had, maybe the acting of the character pushed it in a different direction -- but it did seem to shift). That shift does seem to have been embraced -- the main game itself is very cohesive and consistent -- but they either had to or wanted to keep the bookend pieces. Maybe for the Unity tie-in, or maybe because the promotional materials were already put together (the marketing feels a lot like it was written from either the ending, or from early concepts of the game). I don’t know game production; I’m just guessing.

But what you end up with is this strange leap or gap that isn’t easily explained, but that just exists and leaves me wanting answers.

I don’t know. Personally? I wish the scene on the Morrigan had been the last one. That one would��ve made for an interesting ending, I think.

*****

Alright, let’s close this out real simply. I love this game. Is it perfect? No. Is it the only game I’ve 100%-ed and fully replayed? Yes. Rogue is just my weird little comfort game, and good luck trying to take that away from me.

#ac rogue #assassins creed rogue #assassins creed #review

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somanyerikas · 3 years

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Nostalgia sells - or does it? About BBC’s rehiring of a previous showrunner for Doctor Who as a marketing strategy

All, right, this is the one where I deal with my issues about RTD’s rehiring from the standpoint of BBC’s business strategy . Brace for passive agression, swearwords, brief history of british television and numbers. So, so many numbers.

Allright, so I already wrote a post about my problem with RTD’s (re)hire from the creative standpoint (it’s here in case you’re interested), but hey, I can bitch about it all I want, but we all know what caused the BBC to make this decision, right? You’ve heard about it for sure. The Dropping Ratings. You’ve read about it on so many posts, lots of them probably oh-so-gladly conflating this fact with their own opinion about the deteriorating quality of the show. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.) So Obviously the execs at the Big BBC Quarters needed to do something about it, and what better way to go than rehire a guy who’s run at Doctor Who is a warm childhood memory for so many in it’s fanbase? After all, it’s what we’re seeing nowadays: from Star Wars return to wave of 80′s nostalgia to every old blockbuster star doing a comeback, there is but a single conclusion - nostalgia sells.

Or does it?

Part One: Moving with the change; or very much refusing to.

Let’s start this off with some facts about the ratings for Doctor Who. (Well, I warned you there’s gonna be numbers, didn’t I. Stick with me, I’m going somewhere with this I promise.) In it’s beginnings, in the sixties and seventies , the series flown high, averaging a viewership from 8 up to 10 million viewers per season. Collin Baker’s series 17 brought in a record of 11.21 milion viewer asses in front of a good ol’ TV screen, real champagne opener here. But, as it happens, things were downhill from here. During the eighties, the rating started dropping steadily, reaching an all-time low of 4.15 milion couch-warming bottoms in 1989, the last season of the classic era.

Years passed, 16 of those years to be exact, and here comes our saviour RTD. Under his wings, the revived series premiered, bringing in over 10 milion viewers to the premiere episode of season 1, Rose. A viewership this high did not last for long, but still, RTD’s seasons averaged between 7 and 8 milion viewers per season, which seemed pretty respectable. But then, as the story likes to repeat itself, not unlike the bbc execs just did, along came the decline again. Ever since 2010, the ratings began steadily dropping again, from 7.95 in 2010 to 5.46 in 2017. Then DW experienced an unexpected peak in 2018 with the premiere of Jodie Whittaker’s first season, which averaged 7.96 viewing asses, but then continued the dropping trend on the next season, averaging 5.40 viewing butts.

So what went wrong?

You see, part of the reason that Doctor Who was bringing in such great viewership numbers in the 60′s and 70′s, was that, to put it simply, BBC did not have much competition. Or, to be exact, only had one competitor. ITV was literally founded in order to break BBC’s monopoly over British television. But in the 80′s, with the launch of Channel 4 and Sky, the british viewers had more and more options to choose from. So logically speaking, they no longer had to watch BBC’s programming just because there was nothing else on. There was more and more new programes to boredom-watch. And here’s something y’all need to know about the tv industry: the boredom-watchers, the casuals? That’s the most important demographic. As hard as it might be to swallow, us hardcore fans, forum dwellers and Ao3 gremlins, we’re not as big of a group as we’d like to think. Loving fans are important to the tv execs as providers of word-of-mouth advertisment, but the real numbers come from the casual, everyday viewer who will just put on the next episode cause the other one was kinda fun I guess. Or more fun than the other options, anyway.

And this is why, by the way, when someone is conflating low viewership with the show Dissapointing The Fans, they’re full of shit. I’m sorry, but we’re really not that much of a force here, definitely not enough to make such a big impact on the numbers. Another factor, that some of you probably noticed already, is that the numbers I’m quoting are from british tv only, while the online fandom is very much international, so our opinions matter even less to the british execs, I’m sorry again, hard pill to swallow I know, but true nonetheless.

But I digress. So, to sum up the previous paragraph, Doctor Who’s viewership decline in the 80′s was the effect of the changing landscape of the TV industry, with which the BBC struggled to come to terms with.

Sound familiar?

Let’s move on to the 2010′s, shall we?

2010 was is actually a good marker of a year to choose, because it marks one important thing that begun a big change in the industry. This was the year in which Netflix expanded their services overseas, from being a DVD rental company to providing VOD services. Over the next decade streaming services grew in importance, from being an add-on to your cable TV that you didn’t really want but they were throwing it in for cheap, to very much self-sustainable media services you might very well buy instead of buying the cable. And if you look at the numbers for Doctor Who viewership declining over the last 10 years, that’s precisely what’s been happening. It’s not that people don’t want to watch Doctor Who on tv, they don’t want to watch tv in general. Do you know what was the most popular channel in Britain this year? Can you guess? Fucking Netflix that’s what. It’s just slowly-yet-steadily ceasing to be the way we use home entertainment anymore. Again, not much to do with the audience approval, because for that matter, let’s see about the specific episodes that saw the spikes in viewership.

Rose, which i mentioned at the start of it, was for the longest time the unquestionable queen when it comes to viewership, at 10.81 milion. The next episode, The End of the World, pulled in 7.97 - almost 3 millions worth of lost viewer-butts in one week? Is it because it was so much worse than it’s predecessor? No, it simply did not have the smell of Newness, the Event You Must See, and as such brought forth less of the casual viewers who were simply curious about The New Thing. The next season followed the similar formula, peaking at the premiere, when the marketing was at it’s strongest, going down during the season, sometimes rising slightly for the finale, sometimes not. The most popular episodes are, of course, the specials - yet again, the vibe of The Event To Be Seen worked here, but one more thing working to their advantage is they often aired in spaces between seasons, serving as both a long-waited Crumbs of Content for the fans, and the basically stand-alones for the casuals. Do you know what the single most watched episode of revived DW is? No, it’s not Tennant’s goodbye with the role (yeah I know, I thought it had to be that as well). It was Voyage of the Damned, between seasons 3 and 4. The perfect standalone for the casual watcher. And last but not least, you know one more special feature that brought, maybe not as much, but definitely more than expected? The 1996 movie Doctor Who, with 9.08 million. Again, a perfect standalone.

But the standalones aren’t the only way to grab the viewership. The currently-highest viewing non-special episode of DW? The Woman Who Fell to Earth, Jodie Whittaker’s introduction. In 2018 no less, in the year when the streaming was the ruler supreme, this episode brought a whooping 10.96 million buts to the good ol’ TV again. Let me reiterate: this episode brought in more viewers than Rose did in 2005, while having WAY more competition and way less favorable circumstances of release that RTD’s debiut did. Not only that, it managed to bring on some numbers for the entire season as well, not as good of course as the premiere (because again, the Event vibes faded), but still brought a better average than the last six seasons did. (Again, let me reiterate: more than the last SIX seasons. More viewership than any series since 2010, since the Streaming Wars.) So clearly, this must be the way, right? Catering to this Weird New Trend, that saw directors notice there do in fact exist other actors than white men, that surely brought in some profit, even Marvel does it now, right? Out with the old, in with the new!

Part 2 The Deceitful Charm of Nostalgia

Well, it turns out the whole Doing New Things deal didn’t work out that well after all, now did it? The second season penned by Chibbnal averaged 5.40 milion, that’s 2.5 million drop from the previous one! It must mean it didn’t work, right? Well, yes and no. As much as the refreshment of the formula as simple as Let’s Put A Woman In It absolutely worked for one season, it very visibly did not hold up for longer. An Event-Episode is something that can still happen on TV, Event-Series? That’s pretty much reserved for streaming now, if you think about it, and it’s honestly kind of a miracle that Series 11 did as well as it had. Two consecutive Event-Series on network tv? Flat out impossible.

So how to make those ratings great again? How to get those butts in seats of the Good Ol’? Well, the execs of the BBC have a plan for that. They brought in a devouring beast, and it’s name is: Nostalgia.

Without a doubt, there is a number of people who feel nostalgic about RTD’s era of Doctor Who. It’s a lot of people’s fond childhood memory, or the series they started with, and judging by the numbers, there should be quite a lot of them. So the new plan, as it appears, is to get to those who maybe lost interest in the show and lure them with the promise of the thing That Is Totally Like The Thing You Used To Love, Remember? (This is why I don’t actually think that RTD will be allowed to do anything new and interesting, that’s not what they hired him for. And that’s why I think this is bad from the creative standpoint.) So there are two questions here: One, will the people be lured? And two, for how long?

Nostalgia as a marketing strategy is something that you’re probably sick of seeing already (I know I am). But it has very much been effective on many levels, especially the eighties-baiting, Stranger Things style, can bring a new IP up to relevance. But what about old IP’s that want to have a comeback?

It’s kind of dificult to find another TV show that I could compare to Doctor Who. Most series that have been running for that long are mostly soap operas, that operate on slightly different rules, and are also targeted to a different audience. So as much as the movie series is still not exactly the best comparison, when I think about a big IP, campy sci-fi, family-oriented (at least in theory) on its path back to relevance, I think about Star Wars, obviously. The Force Awakens gambled on that nostalgic feeling and won big, but the next two movies, while still financially successful, were nowhere near the astounding success of the first one. And that’s because - you guessed it - it created the Event You Must See again, The Great Comeback, but merely two years later, the comeback became old news. So what we can gain from that is that nostalgia can create an Event as well as a new trend, if not better. But the question remains: how long will that last?

That is, after all, the main difference between a movie franchise and a TV series in the traditional, network TV sense of the word: movie franchise must bring in the viewership every year or two, and TV series must bring in viewers every week for at least two months. Is RTD’s Nostalgia Vibes enough to provide for that?

I’ll say this: I’m absolutely certain that the 60th anniversary will be very popular. I still don’t think it will break any records because, as I’ve been trying to explain for this whole post, it is not 2007 anymore no matter how much the tv execs would like it to be. But ironically, the almost-certain success of the special is the very thing that could undermine the effect of bringing their precious Nostagia Boi back onboard. Remember, the first Event Episode is The Big Oof. That’s the one that gets asses to the Good Ol’, if anything ever does. After the first big event one, that’s the point when things start going down. They’re wasting their Special Event Boi for something that already would be an event, dear fucking gods, I hate your plan and I would still execute it better. Either have RTD be the Anniversary Guy and then hire someone new, use that hype and keep it going, OR have RTD come in after the anniversary, then at least you get the Event Effect for the premiere of his first return season. Fukin’ amateurs.

But even if they did that, here’s the thing: do you think that the people who departed from the show years ago actually want to watch another three to five seasons of The RTD Show? I mean, I’m sure the thought warmed some hearts, for sure. A number of people will definitely gladly watch the anniversary, probably the first few episodes of the first return to the basics, but after that? In the world when, due to streaming, they have an easy way to revisit the actual thing they’re nostalgic towards? I honestly don’t think so. And you’re not really gonna get many new people by going back, if that nostalgia factor isn’t there. And then there’s casual viewers, the backbone, as we established. And here’s the thing: lots of those people don’t even know who the current showrunner is, cause they’re not Terminally Online like we are, and the second thing? Lots of those people ARE JUST NOT WATCHING NETWORK TV, IM SORRY GARRY. They’re just. They’re just not. I don’t know how to spell it out better. Even my mum has netflix now. Your biggest base is in another castle mate, gotta get moving and gotta get moving quick, cause here’s another thing: all the nostalgia in the world will not do SHIT for you if your target, people who were kids/teens when the RTD era was airing, PROBABLY DON’T EVEN HAVE A FUCKING TV ANYMORE CAUSE THEY MOVED OUT OF THEIR PARENTS FLAT AND LOTS OF YOUNG PEOPLE JUST DON’T BOTHER. Just. I’m sorry but you’re trying to resuscitate a decade-deceased corpse there buddy. It just won’t work. The times have changed and you gotta swim or drown, and it’s just not gonna be 2005 again, no matter how hard you pretend it is. It’s not your content it’s your business model. Just push more marketing for your iplayer or whatever, focus on streaming as your primary not your secondary cause that’s just what it is now, and maybe don’t rely on the viewer-counting systems of the yesteryear to evaluate your business. Or else you’re gonna get stuck sacrificing the creative growth of your show for a marketing strategy that probably won’t even fucking WORK.

There, I got it of my chest. Feel free to reblog, and also: you somehow got to the end of this, congrats! I’ll make numbers nerds out of y’all yet.

#it's like. my sister and I were #watching a movie lately. the one with multiple will smiths and the de-aging tech #(don't recommend it it's real boring)#but when Youngened Will Smith appeared on the screen my sister got my spiting my tea laughing by innocently saying:#"oh i don't know this actor. it's nice that they're giving opportunities to the young actors. great to see a new face in the biz''#and u know what #this rehire is the same fucking vibe to me #some cunts from marketing plastering make-up to an old man's face and pretending its 2005 still #anyway #doctor who #i guess.

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crystalnet · 3 years

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Current X-book Mood-Ring Guide

There are an awful lot of X-books on the shelves right now. They are most of my monthly haul. No joke it is at least 12 books at this point. So, in order to cope with that, I’ve organized all the books into one of four different categories, aka “booster-pack” themes. Click through if you want to jump aboard the best X-men run since Morrison before the boat pushes off for the Hellfire Gala this summer! These are the 4 categories:

-Mainline Blue/Gold-style

-Jr. Mutants Academy

-2nd-Wave Krakoa Niche (aka “the good stuff”)

-Cetera

#1. Mainline Blue/Gold-style

Mood-color/vibe: Actually 90s-style Blue/Gold and like bright primary colors (but also muddy-ass colors from X-factor).

Books included: X-men, Excalibur, Marauders, X-force

Typical Pokemon: Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Betsy Braddock, Kate Pride, Beast, Black Tom, Storm, Bishop, Emma Frost, Rogue, Gambit, Jubilee, Kid Omega, Domino, a Pyro, Iceman, Avalanche. Rare drops: Apocalypse, X-23, Synch, Darwin, Kid Cable, Fantomex (in that Giant-Sized!)

These be the books for someone who wants those direct, mainline, core-members-style lineups. On the main book (adjective/word-play-less X-men) Hickman/Yu have worked wonders with their run, but it hasn’t been a stable team, instead focusing on Scott and his adventures dealing with some of the more prominent threats to Krakoa.

So it’s essentially been a revolving door of a book with Cyclops sometimes leading assaults against major problems and sometimes just being a dad to teenagers from the future, and it’s been generally great.

Meanwhile, the teams we find on the other 3 books could basically be a main X-men team if you just throw Jean/Scott/Logan onto them (except for X-force because Logan is usually on that one, actually, and Jean sort of is..)

X-force: Wolverine usually, Kid Omega, Beast, Jean (quitting?/back-up), Domino sorta, Sage, Black Tom Cassidy, Colossus once? Forge sorta. [Lot’s of backup or sometimes-members on this team but kinda centers on Beast, Omega, Wolverine and Jean or Domino]

Excalibur: Betsy Braddock, Rogue, Jubilee, Gambit, Avalanche, baby/dragon Shogo, Apocalypse (honorary, mia)

Marauders: Kate Pride, Storm, Emma Frost, a Pyro, Iceman, Bishop

On X-force, you get a little Morrison-homage energy going on what with Beast being sus, Quentin Quire having a character arc and dating a cuckoo and then all the body-horror. This one hasn’t been amazing and the art sometimes has issues for me but it’s been a solid expansion on Krakoa-Era lore.

On Marauders, you get a book centered on Kate Pride and the Hellfire Club. It’s been aight but I’m not the biggest Kate fan. Definitely has heart and the art has been beautiful.

Excalibur started a little weird for me... I lack the references or attachment to Otherworld or Davis/Moore-era Excalibur so I don’t think I’m even really the target demo, but I will say it recently, post-X of Swords-- which it set up single-handedly basically [along w/ one ish of X-men]-- has gotten more interesting in recent months. The Betsy + Kwannon stuff was great! And Howard did great with Apocalypse before he went off to another dimension. (points off for iffy color-palettes sometimes).

#2. Jr. Mutants Academy

Mood-color/vibe: Pastel

Books: New Mutants, X-factor, Children of the Atom, Cable

Common Pokemon: Magik, Cable, Rachel Summers, Doug, Warlock, Armor, Boom Boom, Scout, Dani, Warpath, Karma, Glob, Beak, Daken, Eye-boy, North Star, Rachael, Prodigy those Children of the Atom kids, Magma, Rahne, and a lot of lil kid mutants runnin’ around in Akademos/the Wild Hunt area of Krakoa whose names I don’t know yet.

This is the junior-crew club. New Mutants would be in the Blue/Gold books practically due to being part of the first wave of post-HoX/DoX books, but its basically been 3 different books/teams over its run and along w/ Children/Cable/X-Factor, it feels like there a whole handful of books offering up junior-crew shenanigans specifically.

So New Mutants has been all over the place, starting with a lineup of OG Claremont era New Muties, then focusing on a team consisting of Glob, Armor and Boom Boom (perpetual...”young adult” I guess?), now settling on a new team under Vita Ayala with Magik and Warpath heading up a squad of young ‘uns (beautiful art on the recent stretch). Hopefully it’s settling into its self now, because I can see longevity for this new squad... maybe.

I still have to read the 2nd issue of Children of the Atom, but am intrigued by it. X-factor meanwhile seems to be focusing on queer representation with people like Prodigy, Daken, North Star and Rachel on the same group together. Polaris started out the lead of that title only to be plucked out by Duggan (or the fanbase) for the main X-team coming up. This honestly makes sense, because even though she isn’t drawn this way, shouldn’t Polaris be considerably older than someone like Rachel? Eh.

Also, in issue #4 of X-factor we had a beautiful homage to the Academy X mutants, with several cameos, so it seems like Marvel is intentionally using these junior-crew books to acknowledge all the various junior-crews, whether it be OG Claremont kids, Generation X people, the kids intro’d under Morrison and Whedon, or even the dang ‘ol Academy X ones, they seem to all be getting at least some representation in some book.

Also Cable owns. Didn’t know I’d like the Kid-Cable guy until this book and his appearances in the main title, but now it’s confirmed. Him dating Esme, Kid Omega dating Phoebe? These crazy telepaths! Anyway, I hope Duggan’s main-team book is more like Cable than Marauders, in terms of pacing and characterization, but they both have beautiful art!

New mutants: Karma, Magik, Mirage, Scout, Warlock, Warpath and Wolfsbane

X-factor: Daken, Eye-boy, Polaris (quit?), North Star, Rachael, Prodigy

#3. 2nd-gen Krakoa Niche aka “the good stuff”

mood-color/vibe: purples, metaphysical/cosmic pallets, tertiary colors

books included: Hellions, S.W.O.R.D., Way of X

common Pokemon: I mean they’re basically all rare drops

This is the good stuff! Who would have thought. And when I think about it, Way of X and S.W.O.R.D., as part of the second wave of Krakoa-era books that started with Cable, both address some of the core issues and ideas that the whole HoX/DoX mini kicked off better than-- or at least more directly-- the other books. So I guess the non X-men, first-wave Krakoa books feel “mainline” in terms of their team lineups, but in terms of content, these newer ones almost feel more relevant by design. S.W.O.R.D. focuses on the cosmic context of the mutants post-Krakoa and Way is Kurt’s first spot-light moment in the era and is expressly concerned with Kurt’s addressing of the deeper moral quandaries that a people who have conquered death will be faced with. I mean, it's expressly about religion and like, spirituality-- a very tall order, but first issue pulled it off super deftly.

Also Hellions is better than it has any business being! Read this if you want savagely dark humor and some very obscure mutants + Havok/Psylocke/Sinister. But if I had to reccomend one, it’d be a tie b/w S.W.O.R.D and Way. First issue of Way was exceptional and got right into things and Kurt’s very well-written and will surely prove a meditative lead for a book like this, whereas S.W.O.R.D is epic in scale while still have sick character moments/dialogue. Manifold had a great issue or two and is now my favorite new mutant, even in the context of a somehow-actually-good King in Black tie-in. Damn! And everything going on b/w Magneto and Fabian Cortez (who was made to argue for why mutants should be allowed to murder “flatscans”/humans to the whole Krakoan council this week whilst naked. It’s fantastic. Hell, even the Snark-War sounds...interesting? What’s happening to me.

S.W.O.R.D.: Fabian Cortez, Magneto, Abigail Brand, Peeper, Manifold, Wiz-Kid, Mentallo, Fenzy

Children of the Atom: Cherub, Marvel Guy, Cyclops-Lass (?), Gimmick, Daycrawler

Hellions: Havok, Psylocke, Empath, Orphan-Maker, Nanny, Wild Child, Sinister, Greycrow

#4. Cetera

Mood-color/vibe: colorless, “normal” element

Books included: Fallen Angels (complete 6-ish mini), All the damn Wolverine books, the uh Sword of X “guidebook” and the new Peach Momoko Demon Days books and whatever X-men Legends is.

These are titles which are either complete or don’t fit in with other things or in Demon Days or the X-men Legends’ books’ case, I think don’t even occur in-universe. And per usual of course there are multiple Wolverine books... the main one seems fine.

Anyway all-in-all, these books are doing weirdly well. Mutants as a concept shouldn't be able to be spread this thin story-telling wise, but the books don’t really feel redundant and most are filling a specific niche or purpose. I may be dropping some of the first-wave Blue/Gold style books (Marauders and X-force I'll probably just check in on from time-to-time), but S.W.O.R.D., Way, the main book under Hickman or Duggan and Hellions all have me verrrrrry satisfied. Even standard stories in the Krakoa era feel special, and that speaks to the power of Hickman’s vision. Hellfire Gala, here we come.

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1990jeevas · 3 years

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I know you posted it days ago but you said something about wanting to rant about either karl or his fanbase and its been itching at my brain. Ive no clue whats happening or what is happening at all cause no one seems to be making clear points?? Or explaining anything?

Obviously you do NOT have to talk about it im sure it might be a sore point to rant because people can get SO needlessly rude to others over it. But if you want to idk explain? Just rant? Im definetly curious what it was over or about.

The "you dont need to talk about this" is amplified by the fact i am DAYS late and you are probably over it by now.

okay hi yes im happy to talk about this but i think i should preface with two things:

1) even tho it may seem like im biased towards him or being very defensive of him im actually a super casual karl viewer and the only reason i am super defensive of him sometimes is bc we act a lot alike irl and that is mainly because of our neurodivegency. when i say a lot i mean we share traits like "annoying" stimming (jumping around, making loud noises, repeating the same phrases until everyone is sick of hearing them), the difficulty reading situations, the very obvious issues with volume control and not just bouncing from subject to subject to subject as we fucking please. basically anything you've seen karl do on stream that is Very Neurodivergent ive done the same in my own way which is why i get defensive when i see people calling him annoying or saying they dont like him, usually for these types of reasons. that being said, when i say im a very casual karl viewer, i fucking mean it. i usually only watch him when he's streaming with other ccs i like or when he's doing chill alt streams bc even with the annoying donos, he's pretty relaxing and comforting when he's just fucking around by himself and he isnt trying to get as hype as he would on a main channel stream. so yeah, it may seem like im biased and sure, i guess i am on some level, but it's not coming from a place of me hyperfixating on him or me even loving him as a cc, it's coming from me being a neurodivergent who likes him just enough to get upset when i see people basically being casually ableist towards him.

2) i dont have all the facts or even a great understanding on what the fuck has been happening recently with his "drama"...mostly bc he talked about it on his priv, which im not on, and people are gatekeeping the tweets, as they always do, and basically making you "dm to see them" (which is already a problem in and of itself bc apparently in these tweets he said he didnt want them being ss and shared, yet they are being shared thru dms over and over and over again like. at that point just stop withholding the information and post the fucking shit, you clearly dont care that he said "dont share"). additionally, most of the threads ive seen on this situation havent actually explained the initial issue, just talked about his apology (a lot of people have said "it's bad" but havent said why and with no screenshots ((i havent asked for someone to dm me them and i still havent seen them posted, which is mildly surprising, but incredibly frustrating at this point)), i only have a few basic details i can actually assess it on) or they talked about the initial issue in very vague details so um. excuse me trying to explain this now, but ill try and make it make sense with how little ive actually pieced together.

(oh, also, here's my first rant about the ableism in this fandom which is way more broad. this is a pretty different rant from that one, but they're both pretty big reasons why i hate this fandoms treatment of karl)

so basically the problems started with mr beast being apart of a charity stream that donated either to autism speaks or to a similar company, im unsure on that part. im also unsure on if the people participating in the stream actually knew of this or not bc, from what i remember, the money was being donated to a separate organization that was like. under the bad company or some shit like that, idk how stuff like that works and also i read about this shit months ago bc this originally happened months ago and just sorta came to a head recently.

anyways, i think karl was supposed to be apart of this stream but pulled out of it right before (that or these were two separate streams and karl was supposed to participate in the first but pulled out while mr beast did both?? idk. regardless karl did not actually participate, just mr beast). from there people started doing the guilt from association bullshit they always do, this was also doubled by the fact that the chris being racist stuff came out sometime around then and basically he got dragged all over twitter for "being ableist" and "supporting racists" and i cant remember if he actually apologized when this originally happened or not. i vaguely remember him apologizing about something back then but i genuinely dont know if it was this or something else.

basically that died down eventually, a good chunk of people unstanned him but him and honktwt didnt end up getting the lovely lil technotwt treatment and they still havent yet, surprisingly. good for them honestly ajsksk

but now we get to the past few weeks and apparently something happened with him "laughing at someone saying the r slur" (it was mizkif, i believe), specifically when it was directed at other people, which is a big yikes, obviously, but when karl was called out for this a lot of people kind of. made this into a situation that it wasnt bc um. basically karl didnt laugh at it, he gave a few nervous giggles, as people often do when in a situation like that (and karl specifically said he does this in the one part of his apology tweet which i did stumble upon, although it wasnt the important part of the apology thread bc why would it be) and people fucking crucified him for it. they quite literally dragged a neurodivergent man for supposedly "laughing at the r slur" when he can literally reclaim it and also he was just nervous laughing.

and this is where the situation just gets really bad because they. basically forced him to admit that he was autistic on his priv to apologize for this. i havent seen the screenshots of him saying this, but i saw people discussing it and i am frankly so fucking pissed about this because sure, it was a bad situation, and i understand people wanting an explanation, but an apology? for a neurodivergent man nervous laughing at a slur he can reclaim? and then forcing the man to admit something he literally said in that tweet he didnt want people to know which is why people were being so gatekeepy about it while also LOUDLY discussing the situation, as if that wouldnt drive MORE PEOPLE to look for screenshots and ways to get ahold of this information? and then people had the audacity to call it a "bad apology" when they had quite literally just violated his privacy by forcing him to admit something that he shouldnt have needed to share in the first place if he didnt want to, which he didnt.

and this is why im so pissed off. karl is already constantly picked at and made fun of and called annoying for his neurodivergent traits, things which he literally cant help, things which are generally harmless, and now he was forced into a situation where he can now be further picked at and made fun of and called annoying bc they forced him to admit something private instead of just understanding and accepting that he had been nervous laughing at someone using a slur he has definetly been called for his neurodivergency.

tldr of my thoughts: yes i think karl needed to address this situation, it definetly looked bad, but twitter stans have this sense of entitlement with their ccs and because of that, they consistently take it way too far and harm the people they claim to care about so dearly. we've seen it happen time and time again with dream, but this is the first time ive seen them basically force someone to out themselves to make their apology "valid" and most of them still seem to not want to accept it anyways, which just makes me feel bad for him bc now that info is out their and people are just disregarding it to continue "holding him accountable".

anyways, i think that's all i can really say on this topic rn tbh, if anyone else knows this situation better please feel free to lmk clarifications and ill add them in since, like i said, i know fuck all thanks to twitter being so goddamn hush hush about the important details while simultaneously being the loudest mfers about how much they hate karl now instead of just fucking unfollowing and moving on.

thanks for the ask and im sorry if this is confusing!! i just think this is one of those weird situations where like. i think karl deserved some criticism for what happened and how he handled it or at least he shouldve been asked to address it but that just. isnt what happened, at all. he was harrassed. karl got harrassed and because of that he handled this situation even more sloppily than he probably wouldve and exposed private info about himself that he didnt feel comfortable doing and it just. fucking sucks tbh.

#shit self #asks #karl jacobs #discourse #fandom critical #mcyt fandom critical #dsmp fandom critical #ask to tag #ableism #only reason im even saying what he said in those tweets is bc this situation literally makes no sense otherwise and basically everyone on #twt already fucking exposed this shit to people in and outside the fandom by bitching #long post #bangerz

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Also, another question (if you dont mind...): do you think there will be also a 02 reboot? Would it be a good ideia or is better to just let it the way it is right now?

I personally don’t want it, especially not if it uses the style of writing the current reboot has right now, in which its priority is far more about plot advancement than it is about characters. Mainly, for a lot of reasons:

I stress a lot that 02 wasn’t a great time for its characters themselves, and that a lot of what everyone striving for was to be happy after said events. Even if it only ends up being a mild rehash, I don’t want to see things like Ken suffering as the Kaiser again (not even in a different universe), because it was so important that everyone find a way to move on. In the case of Adventure, it’s much easier to make a reboot that’s only similar in surface details but is mostly something new because Adventure’s plot was relatively linear, and it’s possible to have the kind of relationship with the original series the current reboot has, but 02 has that kind of hardship as so intrinsically related to it that I’m not sure what you could do with it by taking its surface glosses.

I’ve been pretty blunt about the fact that most of us weren’t really watching 02 for the plot, and the reason the series has so much appeal is because of its character relationships and high thematic value. The bias towards that aspect is way more severe than it was in Adventure (where, again, the plot was mostly kind of linear and there was more emphasis on the “wonder of the Digital World” rather than so much human drama). I don’t want to see these specific characters recasted in a different context, and I also don’t think the series would have any appeal left if you did something completely different with a different style the way it’s being done with Adventure’s reboot.

This is a very personal thing, but one thing I noticed (and one reason I started writing very regularly for this blog) is that, when the reboot started airing, a lot of people would make comparisons with the older characters, but it turned out that people very often misremembered what actually went down in Adventure (ranging from minor misreadings to genuine factual errors). It’s something I don’t necessarily begrudge them for; Adventure is the kind of frustratingly subtle series that you forget a lot of if you haven’t seen it recently, and even more of that was lost in the American English dub, but it nevertheless led to a very frustrating experience where sometimes you’d see people take those reboot characteristics and talk about the original series characters like they’d always been like this or that, when in fact the original characters weren’t like that at all. This problem is bound to be multiple times worse with 02, where the characters are so often accused of being flat and lacking in development (they’re not!!), and 02 also had an even worse subtlety problem and an even more liberty-taking dub, and even the Japanese side of the franchise hasn’t exactly been delicate about handling their characters, and I am terrified that this kind of problem where people think of them inaccurately or badly might potentially get worse, because of a potential reboot take on them that would accidentally validate all of those misconceptions. You have no idea how relieved I was that Kizuna shows the 02 quartet at their best and in a way true to the spirit of the original, because I was really worried about how people would retroactively see them based on their portrayal there. (Also, unfortunately, there are a lot of people who pathologically hate 02 on principle, and even if a potential 02 reboot were the worst anime in the world, those kinds of people would be all too happy to yell “still better than the original!” regardless of anything, and I don’t think I’d have the patience to endure that...)

I honestly would just rather have new material than a reboot of anything. I’m not averse to the concept of a reboot per se, mainly in the sense that I do appreciate the fact that the current reboot isn’t just doing a “worse rehash of Adventure” and is clearly doing its own thing beyond the surface details, but I obviously would have vastly preferred doing something genuinely new. If they want to make a sequel anime to this reboot, why not make up some new characters exclusive to this universe? I think that’d be fun. I know a lot of 02 fans would see this as a dodge or spurn, but this is just my personal, very strong feeling as a 02 fan who thinks that the best thing that can happen with the characters I love so much would conversely be to let them move on. (I was already kind of amused at the fact they already made a few 02 references in the existing series, like Yamato’s bass guitar or Pegasmon.)

I know some people have suggested a reboot to “fix” 02′s plot writing issues, but I love it a lot as it is -- a lot of the things that were “problems” were conversely able to give it a certain flavor you’d never be able to get in a more conventionally written series -- and I think it’s indeed a very flawed series in the sense that there’s no such thing as a perfect Digimon series, nor a perfect piece of media at all, and even if you “fix” one flaw you’re inevitably going to get another. It’s been 20 years and I’ve come to terms with all of the things I didn’t care for as much, so I don’t think it’s all that productive to dwell or fixate on “we should redo this again” instead of appreciating what it did give us 20 years ago and producing newer content instead. I mean, if I want to watch 02 again, I can just rewatch it, and if there’s something I want to explore that canon didn’t give me, I’m happy being a fanfic writer, and this experience of writing this blog has made me realize that it’s incredible how much you can still extract out of this series even 20 years later. I think it’s much more productive to try and cover new territory with things rather than constantly trying to redo the same thing over and over again. I suppose I took the theme of the series a bit too seriously?...

Whether they will actually do a 02 reboot or not, I have no idea. I think they’ve certainly learned their lesson that 02 has a diehard fanbase that hates to see it treated badly (after, ah, recent events), but it just doesn’t carry the same notability and branding that the original series does, and its critically controversial status means that their names and faces don’t do nearly as much by itself. (Reboot merch can sell because people will project the original characters on them, but Miyako and Iori merch especially tends to sell abysmally poorly even now.) I feel like the actual Digimon from 02 sell better than the human characters, to be honest. And it’s a new universe; 02 fans get upset when the juniors aren’t involved in the lives of their seniors when those relationships were a big deal (series about relationships, et cetera), but if those specific relationships don’t exist in the first place, I don’t think most of us really care as much to the point of getting upset because of the omission.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #shiha's ask box #sereyith

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lany-d-flow · 3 years

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Whisper Talk: Going Against Alternate Timeline Theories with a Theory, and Answering Questions Saying Otherwise.

Those who look with clouded eyes see nothing but shadows. -Sephiroth, Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

SPOILER WARNING

Pressing “Keep Reading” will bring you into spoiler territory for, well... Final Fantasy 7 Compilation and Remake, so this is your warning, all right buddy?

Also, this is one person’s interpretation of another work. What I predict may very well turn out to be untrue, and if you disagree with my prediction then that’s totally fine! (If you’d like, we could chat about it).

But honestly, I have spent the last few months thinking about this game in an unhealthy manner. I think having all of these whispers inside of my head with my frustration getting bigger is not going to move anything forward. So it’s time to wake up, get up, get out there and write thoughts about what is actually going on with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, while trying to clear up misconceptions that may be leading people astray. Perhaps the latter is the intention of the developers. If it is? Well, let’s move past the clouds and find the sunlight.

All right, let’s mosey into this nonsense.

It’s been months since the release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. After a long five-year wait for many fans, we got a piece of the story on the Playstation 4 in March and April 2020. It was exciting to see the capital of Final Fantasy 7, Midgar, be brought to life with state-of-the-art graphics. Treading through mako reactors, Sector 7 and Sector 5, the nasty Wall Market, Shinra HQ, hearing conversations of lively NPCs, exploring the subtle easter eggs and symbolism through visual storytelling... Goodness, so much of what this game had to offer was a delight! The developers put their heart and soul into fleshing out a section of Final Fantasy 7 that was, at most, 6 hours long. This level of detail cannot go unnoticed, and I’m sure it’s made everyone excited to see the reimagining of Gaia when we receive future installments!!!!

Oh, but wait... the developers introduced a new monster called Whispers, otherwise known as Arbiters of Fate, and... What purpose do they serve?! Why are these things in Final Fantasy 7 when they never had a role in the original game? Based on everything we saw in the story, they seem to be making sure the story of Final Fantasy 7 runs exactly as it’s supposed to. Without these ghosts, the story will not be 1:1. To make things worse, we have Sephiroth who’s from the future?! No wonder these Whispers are here, Sephiroth’s trying to rewrite history because everything he has tried before failed him!

So based on what we saw in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the developers decided to create a metaphor for the fanbase, and since we defeated ‘destiny,’ we’ve defeated the fanbase’s say in where the story goes, thereby giving the developers permission to change the story the way they want it. Wow, this is pathetic on Square Enix’s part. Final Fantasy 7 is an amazing story with layers and layers of complex themes, why would they try to form it into something else? Now we’re going to have time travel and alternate timelines in the plot and Sephiroth seems unstoppable now. Heck, the developers are probably going to make sure impactful moments in Final Fantasy 7 do not happen, so Zack and Aerith are probably going to survive. And they’re also ditching the Compilation? Can these people be trusted?

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is ruined!!!

Still with me? Well, this is just some of the talk that I’ve heard based on the execution of Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s plot. I won’t try to list every possible thing people are talking about, but I think we get the idea of the impression that our game’s ending put on a lot of players. So I wanted to give my input on what I believe is actually going on with the story, as well as answer many questions popping up about the circumstances of our game’s characters.

So, do I think the developers are changing the story?

Short Answer: No, at least not in the way that many people think. They’re “changing” the story by putting in new elements, moments that tie with the rest of the Compilation, but the main plot points (Overarching plot, the main crisis, the internal plot, the emotional climax, etc.) still need to happen. This series is more than 2 decades old, and with time it has received: a movie, 2 books, a sequel, 2 prequels, and now a remake with existing materials to tie into the game.

Long Answer: All right, if you’re still with me, thank you. I will do my best to explain all of what’s going on. I’ll give my input via understanding how the FF7 Universe works; in other words, what the Whispers are, how the Whispers work, how they’ve actually always been apart of FF7 and are now receiving an expanded role, and how Sephiroth and Aerith showing meta behavior makes sense due to the power that the Planet has given to the Arbiters of Fate (exposure = visions out of context). I will also be answering questions that one may bring up as proof of an alternate timeline/story change and argue what their purpose may actually be.

So, let's Talk about A Whisper

Wait a minute...

So, let's talk about the Whispers.

Let’s start by explaining what the Whispers are, what function they serve to the Planet, and how the Planet creates them in the first place:

Whispers are souls that act as arbiters of fate and have been a part of the Planet for as long as the Planet has existed. They know the fate of the Planet from beginning to end, and their function is to make sure that a specific destiny runs its course. They all unite under the will of the Planet, just like the Sephiroth Clones all act under the will of Sephiroth, which is probably the reason why they were given a cloaky look: the Whispers' function parallels the Sephiroth Clones' function and both act under the authority of something else. They cannot be seen by everyone, and to actually see their physical manifestation, you need to either be 1) deeply connected with the Planet, or 2) receive some form of physical contact from someone who has a strong connection to the Planet. This is established early in Chapter 2 of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Cloud meets Aerith for the first time, and at first glance she seems to be blown away by the wind. After Cloud and Aerith have an exchange and Aerith gives Cloud a flower, immediately after this we are greeted with an illusion of Sephiroth tormenting Cloud and more importantly, Aerith touching Cloud, allowing him to see the Whispers floating around the street. This follows the logic of my two points, as Aerith is a half-Cetra who’s been receiving visions of the past and future for years (her mural of symbolism in her Shinra HQ room was drawn when she received a vision as a child, though she does not understand the full context of what it means), and of course she ended up giving permission for Cloud to see the Planet’s protectors in action.

So how do the Whispers make sure destiny happens as intended?

Well, they do so by constantly observing the actions of the Planet’s people, sometimes in sight, sometimes not. If something happened that is off course, the Whispers immediately act to correct the course of said issue. We see this multiple times in the story. Some examples include: Aerith trying to leave the street where she meets Cloud, then proceeding to leave the street after meeting Cloud, following the Whispers’ intentions; Jessie getting injured in Sector 7 because destiny needs to make sure Cloud goes on the next AVALANCHE mission. If this didn’t happen, then Aerith and Cloud probably wouldn’t have met again; Surrounding the debris on top of Jessie to ensure her death takes place on top of the Sector 7 Tower (I’ll cover the speculation on her “survival” later); stopping Cloud from remembering everything about the Shinra Research Lab; stopping Hojo from revealing the truth of Cloud’s past (no way in Hell are they going to let the internal conflict unfold this early); reviving Barret from the stab wound that the Sephiroth remnant gave him; lastly, pushing Wedge down the Shinra HQ tower to ensure his death happens. Destined events either eventually happened, or they got delayed. This implies that the Whispers are nigh-omnipresent beings, especially given how many they are and how they were able to surround Midgar entirely, and their part of correcting destiny follows the flow of a river. As Red XIII puts it, “The flow of the great river that is the Planet, from inception to oblivion… For it is the will of the Planet itself”.

Cool. So how are the Whispers born? Where do they come from?

It’s actually a pretty straightforward explanation, and Aerith tells us in Chapter 18: Destiny’s Crossroads. Before the Whispers became Whispers, they were “Those born into this world. Who lived and who died. Who returned. They’re howling in pain.” This adds on to what Sephiroth said a moment ago: “All born are bound to her.” All Whispers were once living people, animals, etc. And all that are given life on the Planet are bound by something like a contract: You get made into an image and are given a physical life. In exchange, once that time’s up, you must return to the Lifestream and become a part of the Planet, being one of many who follow her will. You’re born, you live, you die, and you serve another purpose in a collective of spirits who are now tasked with making sure the flow of destiny is as it should be. By following all of this, we can conclude that 1) Everyone who lives on Gaia could eventually become a Whisper, and 2) since Whispers are a part of the Planet, they are formed from the Lifestream, the Planet’s lifeblood. This leads us into the next question...

How do the Whispers know the course of Destiny from start to finish?

Great question! The logical explanation to how they know is quite simple: the properties of the Lifestream. The Whispers are made out of Lifestream, and that gives them knowledge of the Planet’s destiny. I argue it is not farfetched to make this claim, as the Lifestream has shown time and again what it is capable of. Infact, let’s make an analogy of Lifestream manifestations via state of matter.

Lifestream: Its Three States of Matter and their Benefits and Side Effects

Mako is the liquid form of the Lifestream, Materia is a solid form of the Lifestream, while the regular Lifestream itself can be most equivalent to something of a gas/plasma, at least one that can be seen. Throughout Final Fantasy 7 we’ve seen what all of these forms can do. Mako is an extremely powerful energy source that powers all of Midgar through reactors, and is also what SOLDIERs are bathed in to possibly receive superhuman strength; Materia are jewels capable of all kinds of powerful magic; summoning fire, lightning, ice, creating shields, copying abilities of other living beings, healing, elevating other materia abilities, and most notably summon manifestations of powerful beings (Bahamut, Shiva, Ifrit, Odin, Knights of the Round). While the Lifestream itself? That’s all the souls of the planet with a consciousness that follows the Planet’s will. Some can appear as a physical manifestation, but they’re not quite solid, which is how Cloud’s buster sword moves through the Whispers as if he didn’t cut through anything. Use of the Lifestream can also create projections (think Aerith’s Chapter 14 resolution), allow access into someone’s subconscious under certain circumstances, and of course, give people visions of the past and future without any context as to how those events happen(ed).

All three forms of the Lifestream have side effects, too.

Materia can degrade the vitality and strength of the user. Think of it as a trade-off for borrowing the Planet’s lifeblood in the form of a jewel.

Mako can cause extremely intense mental breakdowns and break the psyche of those without strong mental resilience, which is why Cloud was unable to make it into SOLDIER. But he eventually received Mako exposure anyway. What happened? Oh yeah, he went into a comatose state not once, not twice, but THREE times. First during experimentation, second when he arrived at Midgar before Tifa bumped into him, and when he fell into a pool of Mako and washed up on the shore of Mideel.

Meanwhile, Lifestream side effects are non-contextual visions, loss of sanity similar to Mako (think Tifa before she entered Cloud’s subconscious), and if the Lifestream has something in it, infection! That’s how Geostigma came to be: Jenova cells from Sephiroth, Jenova, and the remnants were floating in the Lifestream, and when the latter destroyed Meteor, it also exposed humans to Jenova cells, turning into a severe disease that is deadliest toward hosts with emotional fragility. This is why Cloud has a “Geostigma episode” in Advent Children when he runs into an injured Tifa.

Even with all these side effects, the benefits are far too great to ignore. All this power from the Lifestream is why Sephiroth and Jenova wanted to siphon it for themselves in the first place. By siphoning the Lifestream resisting side effects, one can receive unparalleled powers. Sephiroth himself said it in the original game:

Notice how the last quote aligns with what Sephiroth said in the Edge of Creation about the Nebula?

“Our world will become a part of it… one day.”

We’ll come back to that statement, I promise. But for now, based on everything I’ve told you, here’s what I think is going on in Final Fantasy 7 Remake:

Sephiroth is not from the future. His exposure to the Lifestream for the last 5 years gave him the side effect of non-contextual visions. Among these visions, he probably saw his master plan fail. Eventually he realizes that the reason he has these visions is because of the Whispers and more specifically, the Planet’s Weapon Arbiter. The Whispers are fighting against Sephiroth as he’s gained both a rough understanding of the future and the Lifestream’s powers by siphoning it up. So, his new master plan? Defeat the Arbiters of Fate and THEN continue with his original plan. Sephiroth being omnipresent makes sense given his control over Jenova and her shapeshifting, S cells that allow him to puppetize clones and Cloud, and being in the Lifestream basically giving him more power with one form of that being omnipresence. What’s going to lead to his downfall is ultimately his arrogance: he probably thinks that just stopping the Whispers is enough for him to win. So while the physical manifestation of fate is gone, Sephiroth still needs to meet the same criteria to win: get the Black Materia to summon Meteor, his ticket to siphon up all the Planet’s Lifestream, which means he also needs Cloud to give him the Black Materia, which then means that eventually Aerith will have to summon Holy and eventually become one with the Lifestream to beat Meteor.

See how all of this comes together without time travel theories that go off on insane tangents? It’s established that the Whispers know the course of destiny from past, present and future. But WHERE did it say that they can travel through time? WHERE did it say that Sephiroth can travel through time with the Lifestream? That kind of power would be an enormous retcon to the story and the functions of Gaia, and it would also lead to a really convoluted plot that can deviate from the main themes of the story (trust me, some theories out there are wild). We do know that Whispers are in a singularity and it moves like a river, which as @silver-wield cleverly put in a post about the story of FF7R, translates to:

The arbiters of fate issued a correction to Wedge and made him fall out of the window in the Shinra building. Which means fate cannot be altered, merely delayed, which then leads to a more painful end for not accepting that fate.

...Or perhaps shuffled up with ultimately the same necessary outcome, because the river of destiny was put on a different course but is still heading to the same destination. There are multiple works in the compilation that the writers and developers would like to tie together to the main story. What’s a way for them to execute this? By making a metaphor for the OG storyline and by beating it giving them permission to add new things? From a certain point of view, sure, but the developers never needed permission to do this in the first place. But the side effect of beating the physical manifestation of destiny was likely shuffling parts of the story of Final Fantasy 7, prequels all the way to the chronological sequels. One can make a case for this based on the explosion felt at Midgar when the Arbiter and Sephiroth were defeated in the Singularity. The glitters of light could also reflect this change. From all this I argue freedom came to be, and characters from the Compilation might make an appearance during the main story such as Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo. However, no matter what changes are present, the outcome will be the same. Cloud is not properly himself yet; he still thinks he made it into SOLDIER, he gets slight interferences from Jenova throughout the story (example: Cloud’s hand twitching when against Sephiroth at the Edge of Creation), he has the Buster Sword but still doesn’t remember who its original owner was, so his unreliable narration, downfall and emotional climax still need to happen. Aerith is the only character who can summon Holy and the only character who can call forth the Lifestream, and the only way she can call forth the Lifestream is by becoming one with it. How can she do this? There’s only one way: Death. Sorry guys, but if both Sephiroth and Aerith have prophetic visions of the future, there’s a chance that both know what must be done for themselves to get the upper hand. Sephiroth still wants to siphon up the Lifestream and become an omnipotent God, and the best way for him to do this? Summon Meteor. What does he need for this? The Black Materia. Who does he manipulate into giving him the Black Materia at the Northern Crater? Cloud.

My point from all this is that there are specific beats that need to happen to move the plot forward, no matter what new things they add from the Compilation. Using a different crisis for the overarching plot that isn’t Meteor is a retcon to the story, and why advertise Meteor and have it as the centerpiece of artworks and the title screen if you’re not going to use it in the first place? That’s just… really strange. We can add things in the middle of the plot to flesh out the main themes of a story while staying faithful to the outcomes. Adding something entirely different as a crisis like time travel in a game that has never been about time travel is out of place, unnecessary, and people are placing way too much faith in this being true while not looking at the bigger picture and function of Final Fantasy 7’s power tools. I believe the developers want you to think that the story is changing, that a happier outcome is in store for everyone. This all works with what Final Fantasy 7 did for many players in the first place: subvert expectations by placing us in an illusion with an unreliable narrative. We assumed Cloud made it into SOLDIER until we found out he never made it into SOLDIER and created a facade to conceal the truth that he was afraid to face. We thought Aerith was the love interest when the game kept making us appreciate her perky attitude until she ended up dying and then we discover in the Lifestream Sequence that Cloud’s romantic feelings, his whole reason for fighting, was for Tifa. We thought Shinra was the main antagonist of the game until shortly after going through Midgar, the main antagonist is Sephiroth. We thought we were fighting Sephiroth throughout the game until we find out that the real Sephiroth was encased in a crystal sucking up the Lifestream. We don’t actually fight him until the very end when he merges with Jenova and the Lifestream into Bizarro Sephiroth and Safer Sephiroth.

See where I’m going with all of this? The developers want to continue using red herrings and playing the theme of illusion by using different methods. The old methods will not work anymore, so they have to find a new way to subvert expectations in a way that gets us confused, excited, and uncertain what will happen until we actually play through the next installments. When that time comes, be prepared to get your heartstrings pulled, because reality hits our characters hard, just like it hits us hard. Think Biggs, Zack, Aerith are going to survive, and that Sephiroth is travelling through time to accomplish his devious tasks? Well, think again.

Now that we’ve gotten this far into this Whisper Talk, there are a load of questions I will need to address. So without further ado, Let’s mosey!!!

How is Sephiroth not from the future? His one-winged form from Advent Children Complete was shown in the final boss fight, the boss map looks eerily similar to Edge, and we saw multiple Sephiroths throughout the story. The game is heavily implying that Sephiroth is from the future and he wants to try to achieve victory a second time.

Well, for starters, First Class SOLDIERs having wings has been a thing for a while. Sephiroth was not the only SOLDIER to have a wing. As Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core showed us, Sephiroth’s comrades, Angeal and Genesis, were able to grow wings at will. They had different cells (G cells) which gave them a different ability, make copies of themselves, rather than control others who share their cells, sure, but that is NOT stopping any of them from growing wings at will. It’s something used across the board for all three of these really powerful SOLDIERs and it’s no surprise that this time around, they want to show Sephiroth using more of his abilities throughout the game.

Also, Sephiroth having one wing is nothing new. It’s part of his Safer form and is named on his track, One-Winged Angel. So, as an homage, they wanted the villain of the game to use a wing during his fight in Advent Children.

There’s also another way we can explain this. Sephiroth formed a body of his image in Advent Children thanks to Kadaj. And what purpose does Kadaj serve? He’s a strengthened remnant embodying Sephiroth’s cruelty. In other words, he’s another puppet Sephiroth can manipulate. And he uses Kadaj’s body + Jenova’s head to form his image. A clone and Jenova cells, or just straight up Jenova, allow him to shapeshift as that’s one of Jenova’s trademark abilities. So using this as an implication of time travel doesn’t add up.

When it comes to Sephiroth’s 70 alternative accounts, each of them have a straightforward explanation, including the one that confuses most people. Here we go, according to the FF7R Ultimania:

An illusion only Cloud can see:

Cloud has S cells injected into him. The same S cells are also Jenova cells. Jenova cells allow hosts to read the memories of those nearby, inherit the memories of other hosts, and give Sephiroth shapeshifting and puppeting abilities on those who have S cells. This is how Cloud created his SOLDIER facade thanks to Zack’s injection, similar memories and instinct to hide from the truth. What’s likely going on here is Sephiroth is able to make Cloud hallucinate thanks to said S cells, hence why it’s an illusion ONLY Cloud can see. We saw this during the Nibelheim flashback, meeting Aerith for the first time, after the Sector 7 Plate collapse when he was behind Tifa. This is another way of showing Sephiroth’s omnipresent power.

Also, if we're going to get really specific about the properties of Jenova cells, we can look at a source like FF7 Ultimania Omega:

Jenova's mimic ability Jenova has a mimic ability which allows it to read the memories and feelings of others, then adjust its appearance, speech and behaviour accordingly to imitate what it has seen. Jenova once used this ability to get close to the Ancients and infect them with its virus, which killed many of them.

This ability is not limited solely to Jenova itself, for those who have its cells within them passes it as well, though in an incomplete form. Immediately prior to the start of the game, when Cloud's mind was shattered, he ran into Tifa and seemed to immediately return to "normal"; this was because of the mimic abilities of the Jenova cells inside Cloud read her mind, seeing her memories of him, which were then combined with his own ideal vision of himself, fashioning a new personality for himself.

And there you go. Jenova's signature abilities are shapeshifting and illusion. It's mentioned in her backstory, It's shown in her boss battles, it's shown in Jenova-infected hosts, and it's even shown in her OST! The illusion aspect being something only Cloud can see makes sense, thanks to his Jenova S cells, so the developers are expanding this ability.

Black Robed Man:

Simple. These are Sephiroth Clones, also known as Remnants. Each of these puppets have S Jenova cells injected into them, which is what allows Sephiroth to create illusionary projections of himself via their bodies. They can also create an illusion of Jenova’s Lovecraftian forms. If predictions are correct, there’s a chance that a couple of them could end up becoming the Advent Children (more on that later).

Flashback:

Also simple. This connects to what was mentioned in Cloud’s illusion. Cloud knows events he should not thanks to his Jenova S cells, and flashbacks like, “Within my veins flows the blood of Ancients. This Planet is my birthright!” are events that will be featured later in the game in moments like the Kalm flashback. Moving on!

Unknown:

This is where people get confused. But believe me, the answer is MUCH simpler than most people realize. The Unknown Sephiroth is the last form of Sephiroth that we fought in Final Fantasy 7. Yes, the shirtless one. From here forward I'll call him SOLDIER Sephiroth. For reasons I do not know, they decided not to make him shirtless this time around (too sexy by far?) but believe me when I say that that Sephiroth is the same one we saw at the Edge of Creation. How am I so sure of this? Look back at how Cloud met that Sephiroth in Remake and compare it to what happened in the Crater. They have the same tunnel of light and Cloud’s visiting a persona of Sephiroth that exists in a dimension unaffected by time and space. The Lifestream gives Sephiroth the opportunity to pull Cloud's conscious mind into this dimension. Cloud being in the Singularity during the final battle of FF7R Part 1, and the Singularity containing Lifestream = ability to take Cloud to meet SOLDIER Sephiroth in a pocket dimension, the Edge of Creation. In OG, being exposed/near the Lifestream in the Crater allowed Cloud to visit Shirtless SOLDIER Sephiroth in another dimension and finish him off, with Aerith helping Cloud return his consciousness to the real world.

See?! It actually makes a lot of sense, only this time Sephiroth hasn’t been stripped of his God powers and is currently siphoning the Lifestream. So this time around, Cloud couldn’t beat down Sephiroth. The reason the FF7 Remake Ultimania labels this Sephiroth as unknown is because it’s following a narrative where it assumes you do not know everything yet. Final Fantasy 7 Remake has only covered Midgar, and there’s still many places and moments we have yet to explore. But the Ultimania is not going to cover them until they are published in the next installments, and why would it tell us unrevealed "secrets" of the story? So for now, it has to act as if this is a mystery. This is the same case with Zack being labeled as “Missing in Action” rather than dead in the Ultimania, because we have not reached that moment in the plot yet. But I’ll cover that a bit more on one of the next questions.

As for Sephiroth being prophetic in the Edge of Creation, it’s simply foreshadowing what we’ll eventually have to face. “That which lies ahead… does not yet exist” is telling us that the final battle still has years before it’s ready to be unleashed. As for the Nebula, “Our world will become a part of it… one day,” this is a more vague statement of what I quoted earlier:

“By merging with all the energy of the Planet, I will become a new life form, a new existence. Melding with the Planet… I will cease to exist as I am now. Only to be reborn as a god to rule over every soul.” The Nebula that Sephiroth is staring at is stated in the FF7R Ultimania to represent Sephiroth’s wing(s). This same Nebula also has a similar shape to the original sketch of Safer Sephiroth. So, based on what SOLDIER Sephiroth told Cloud, we can conclude that Safer Sephiroth will one day be born and be the last fight for our team, maybe even taking place in the Edge of Creation. BUT it’s not quite time for that to happen yet, as Safer Sephiroth's physical body is still resting in a crystal at the Northern Crater. So there you have it!

Lastly, conceding the battlefield against Sephiroth, it is an homage to Advent Children and Edge, yes. That does not automatically mean that Sephiroth is from the future. We just fought arbiters of destiny who turned themselves into depictions of the three Advent Children. This is ultimately the developers' way of ending the game with an exciting boss battle and a somewhat familiar scene. It's just a manifestation of one of Gaia's locations while in the Singularity. Also, this whole boss battle was ultimately a fanservice-esque decision by the developers, particularly Co-Director Naoki Yamaguchi. They originally did not plan to have this boss battle in the first place, but they wanted to end this game on some kind of high note with the main antagonist. They could've ended the game with the Arbiter boss battle, and I think doing so would have confused less people, but the reason behind the Sephiroth boss battle has been spoken. We can conclude this: it was a Jenova/Remnant copy of Sephiroth using expanded abilities like his wing and absorbed some of the Whispers' power before this Sephiroth was defeated by the team and the Whispers were released from his grasp. There is no need to overthink this decision (but yes, I don't think it was entirely necessary).

But what about the Arbiters manifesting into images of Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo? Whisper Rubrum, Viridi, Croceo, and Bahamut SHIN are all representations of Advent Children’s antagonists and their bio says they are from a “future timeline.” Isn’t this proof that there’s time travel and alternate timelines going on?

Well, you are right about the enemy intel bio in Final Fantasy 7 Remake stating that these guys are manifestations of figures from a future timeline. BUT that does not imply that multiple timelines are forming. Technically speaking, we all live in one timeline that follows through a singularity. This is the same case for Final Fantasy 7, and the very place we are fighting these Whispers is called the Singularity. The reason the Whispers are forming into these creatures is because of their future knowledge. This is their way of shapeshifting into powerful foes that can defend themselves against the team. They are turning into foes that destiny will one day birth, but in the form of something akin to a Weapon just like the main Arbiter itself, and this is also the developers way of adding a homage and possibly a hint of the foes that will appear in the future. They are NOT the Advent Children themselves, otherwise there would probably show more personality, and they would also… look more like them. So what happened with “time” after defeating these Advent Whispers and the Arbiter Weapon? Well, it sharpened the curves of the river and put destiny on a new course, but to the same destination, hence the “set beginning and end” that the developers mentioned before. In the river’s new course, we’ll get new events that while still having original events that will all be more fleshed out. In part of this new course of destiny maybe there’s a chance that we will see the Advent Children themselves. How can I be sure of this? After speaking to a friend about it, the remnants we encountered give us a hint. Marco, #49, resides in Sector 7. Who was a teenager that resided in Sector 7 before becoming a remnant and then Advent Child? Kadaj, also known as the manifestation of Sephiroth's cruelty. Meanwhile, we have #2 in Sector 5, who shows strong features fitting for someone in SOLDIER. Who fits this category? Loz, also known as the manifestation of Sephiroth's strength. People have theorized that #2 is Zack, but I do not agree and will address that later. The only remnant candidate we have left is Yazoo, the manifestation of Sephiroth's allure. This makes sense as he’s the most silent of the trio, so the developers will keep his remnant in mystery for now. But there you have it. By Nomura stating, "Come back to me a few years later and ask me what remake means," what I believe he means by "remake" is write the original story of Final Fantasy 7 with characters in other parts of the compilation included. Hence, a shuffled story with the same necessary outcomes.

Okay, but didn’t the developers say that Final Fantasy 7 Remake is not canon to the Compilation, thereby making it a different story from the Compilation and proving the developers are ditching the original story in the process?

Let me tell you right now: if those lines were what they actually said in full context, then they were lying. How am I sure? Because throughout FF7R, parts of what happened in the Compilation are included in the story. Zack’s Last Stand was featured in a flashback; Hollow’s lyrics greatly parallel the lyrical version of Price of Freedom; one of Cloud’s old Shinra Military comrades was featured and mentioned Kunsel, from Crisis Core; and of course the big Arbiters being manifestations of the Advent Children.

For saying the Compilation is being ditched and is the bad ending, why include characters and homages specifically from the Compilation? If they really were, they wouldn’t put pieces of it into the story like this. All that was stated by Director Tetsuya Nomura was that FF7 Remake is not canon to the Compilation YET. Keyword YET. The story is incomplete and the developers need to see Remake through from start to finish before they can say it’s truly canon to the Compilation. And what have Scenario Writer Kazushige Nojima and Producer Yoshinori Kitase said about the story?

Does this sound like they’re ditching the Compilation to you? I think this should sum up how they are tying the series of Final Fantasy 7 into one big package, but there are some people saying that the team seeing Advent Children and the Planet 500 years later, followed by Red XIII saying it’s “a glimpse of tomorrow if we fail here today” as proof that what happens in the future is a bad ending. This is not entirely true. It makes sense for humanity to be gone 500 years later with the Planet living on because that was the life that the team was trying to save in the first place. What Red XIII told us was simple: that if Destiny wins, then the river of Destiny will run the same course, and that includes the events of On The Way To a Smile, Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, and of course humanity being gone 500 years later. This is another case of the team receiving future visions without context, as I addressed before. They saw an event where they maybe saw people they knew, but do they know what leads to it? No. So what they assume about the outcome of the future and what’s good and bad may not necessarily be correct. They will find that out as the next parts of Final Fantasy 7 Remake are released.

Okay, but aren’t the characters free to do whatever they want now that they have beaten Destiny? As Aerith said, they have boundless, terrifying freedom.

They have freedom from the Whispers, and like Zack once said, “The price of freedom is steep.” They can begin their journey without the worry of the Whispers acting up if they do something that strays far away from what’s necessary. That doesn’t mean that they are not going to head to all the destinations we needed to reach in the original game. We will still probably have the flashback at Kalm since it’s the nearest town away from Midgar. We still need to pass through the Mythril Mines to get to other destinations. We still need to pass through Corel, Barret’s hometown, to get to the Gold Saucer where we will meet Cait Sith and reach Barret’s character climax. We still need to reach Gongaga and this will likely be a required place to visit because of how much more importance Zack is given in Remake. There’s also no working reactor in Gongaga so there’s a chance that yellow reunion flowers will grow as foliage. We still need to head to Cosmo Canyon, where Bugenhagen will teach us more about the Lifestream and where Red XIII will learn the truth about what happened to his father Seto. We still need to head to Nibelheim where a lot of confusion is going to rise within our team--specifically Cloud and Tifa--and also where we need to release Vincent from the Shinra Mansion. We still need to cross Mt. Nibel (we might get a flashback from Cloud) and head to Rocket Town to meet Cid and drink some goddamn tea. We still need to head to the Temple of the Ancients for the team to find out what needs to be done to save the Planet, and also the place where Sephiroth will manipulate Cloud and the team into giving him the Black Materia. We still need Aerith to head to the Forgotten City as it’s the only place she can use her prayer to activate the White Materia and summon Holy. We still need to head to the Northern Crater as that’s where Cloud will likely have his downfall and submit to Sephiroth….

We could keep going on with this, but I’m sure you see my point. New things will happen but there are important locations that the team needs to reach in order to come closer to their goal of stopping Sephiroth. The simple thing is that, from here on out, the Whispers will not intervene, giving us the illusion that things will change, but we most likely will learn the hard way that the necessary outcomes will still happen. So once again, the river is on a new course to the same destination.

Okay. You’ve talked about Sephiroth not being from the future, but what about Aerith? Her prayer stance in the opening cinematic looks eerily similar to her stance in the ending of Final Fantasy 7. Based on this, is she from the future/did she see the outcome of the Meteor-Lifestream-Holy Conflict?

No. What probably happened was the developers paid homage to that ending screen. What follows immediately after that is Aerith picking up a crushed reunion flower, symbolizing the non-reunion that Aerith and Zack could not receive in life, but eventually receive in the Lifestream. And once again: Aerith has received visions of the future, but without context as to why and how they happened. In a novella it’s mentioned that Aerith received a vision as a child and drew her mural of symbolism in her room as a result. We know she’s been receiving non-contextual visions for awhile, but being forced into a big responsibility by the Planet is something she needs to learn to accept, and that’s part of her character arc we will receive in the next parts of FInal Fantasy 7 Remake. There is no evidence she can time travel, and she doesn’t always know the Whispers’ intentions. When the team asked her what they were doing while surrounding the Shinra HQ Tower, she simply replied, “Who knows?”. She’s not omniscient. She has some meta knowledge and a big responsibility, but does not know how to handle this role yet. And that's where character development comes in for our Maiden of the Planet.

Cool, but why are people like Rufus and Hojo able to see the Whispers in the first place? And maybe Zack, too?

Actually, there’s a pretty straightforward explanation for this. As we know, to be able to see the Whispers, once again you have to either be heavily connected to the Planet or touched by a special person. Aerith spent a portion of her childhood in the Shinra HQ Tower. Who else was there with her? Her biological mother Ifalna. These two are both Cetra, one half and one full-blooded. Hojo likely spent hours upon hours with both of them, especially Ifalna, so receiving contact from them is not farfetched. Also, that gross f***** of a scientist does unfortunately play an important role in the plot and keeping the flow of destiny on course. As for Rufus? This man was a teenager when Aerith and Ifalna were living in Shinra HQ. It’s very possible that he ran into one of the two cetra and maybe received contact from them. If he didn’t? Don’t forget, this man is the president of Shinra throughout almost all of FF7. Even if the team opposes him, they still need him. He is very necessary to destroy the barrier that blocks the team from getting into the Northern Crater. Without his actions, the team cannot make it to Sephiroth. It’s that simple. And even though he can see the Whispers, how much does it matter? It’s only going to matter if the Whispers make a resurgence sometime in the plot. There you have it.

Okay, but why is Zack alive after his Last Stand? And why were the Whispers present during this? Also, what about the Stamp bag? Isn’t this proof of time travel and alternate timelines?

And here’s where the red herring comes in! He did beat the Shinra Army. And yes, the Whispers were present. BUT why were they present? Remember what was mentioned earlier? The Whispers are dead souls returning to the Planet, and if that’s the case they have been part of the Planet for a LONG time. This means that they were ALWAYS present through the course of events in the Planet. The reason we see them during Zack’s Last Stand is likely to throw one off at first, until they connect the dots with how old the Whispers actually are. And they are showing themselves in the Last Stand because this is an extremely important event that has to happen for Cloud’s next journey to begin. We didn’t quite get to see how the Whispers changed up the event, but they likely did form it in a way where the developers wanted to trick us. It's also left ambiguous if he can see the Whispers or not, although they do not seem to alarm him IF he can see them.

Now, about the Last Stand, If you compare Remake’s Last Stand to Crisis Core and Final Fantasy 7 OG, you’ll notice that Remake’s moment has similarities to the OG scene.

Zack walks, drops Cloud in a safe place, and defends himself against the soldiers in all three. So here's where the cutscenes get different:

FF7 OG: Zack fights against Shinra infantrymen. We don't see the troops, but Zack thinks he defeated them. Afterwards he heads to Cloud but immediately gets shot by a group of Shinra troops, and I mean shot. Afterwards, there is no dialogue between Zack and Cloud, Cloud grabs the Buster Sword and starts breaking down in the rain. Thus, his journey--nearly--begins.

FF7 Crisis Core: Zack confronts the Shinra army. He begins his monologue:

Boy oh boy... The price of freedom is steep. Embrace your dreams, and whatever happens... Protect your honor, as a SOLDIER!

We then proceed to battle the Shinra army. Eventually, the screen fades to black and we see Zack mortally wounded. The same group of Shinra troops from OG come over and bullet Zack to death. Eventually, Cloud wakes up in shock, and Zack parts Cloud his sword and last words:

For the both of us... You're gonna... Live. You'll be... My living legacy. My honor, my dreams... They're yours now.

Cloud then proceeds with a breakdown, and afterwards begins his journey, where he'll bump into a certain someone while in Mako comatose. Sheesh I hate watching that scene due to its deadly side effect.

Where does Remake stop?

Right in the area where Zack’s grave is, a cliff with a steep descent to flat land. It’s the same spot where Zack got shot by a Shinra infantryman who pursued Zack throughout his running away from Shinra Mansion; it's the same spot where Cloud placed the Buster Sword to honor his close friend’s wish; and the same spot where Zack declared, “For the both of us… you’re going to live. You’ll be… my living legacy.” The developers intentionally stopped us from seeing the outcome of that moment because it’ll either be the same place where Zack will die, or we’ll see his fate get delayed and placed somewhere else.

I have also seen people argue that #2 is Zack, or if not Zack, then Zack’s corpse.

This is false.

Remember why Zack was placed in a cryosleep tube in the first place? Because, like Cloud, he was considered a failed experiment by Hojo because the S cells could not turn him into a Sephiroth clone. Zack becoming a Sephiroth clone would be a major retcon to the story and how he was able to escape with Cloud in the first place. Zack becoming a clone would mean that he was never a failed experiment. And what would happen if he wasn’t a failed experiment? Cloud wouldn’t be able to escape and FF7 wouldn’t have happened. Could Hojo have picked up Zack’s dead body after his death? Maybe, but is there evidence that his corpse would still become a clone? That’s extremely unlikely in my personal opinion. We would have to assume that Hojo did another clone experiment this time around and the Shinra troops decided to take his body with them when they had no good motive or order to do so anyway. Their orders were likely “shoot to kill” and that’s it. We don’t need Zack’s corpse to be remade into a clone, and we certainly don’t need him to be a clone if Sephiroth wants to do something like create an illusionary projection of Zack. Remember what happened in the Northern Crater? Sephiroth used Jenova to create an illusion of Tifa in order to trick the Black Materia holder into “helping” the team.

Lastly, that bag of Stamp's Champs, Original Flavor.

It’s interesting, isn't it? And Nomura told us to pay close attention to both stamps. This is probably the biggest case of an alternate timeline being real, but after thinking about it for a while, I argue that it's not proving an alternate timeline exists, but rather it's being shown to give focus to two different heroes. And how does this work in the FF7 world? Well, Shinra probably has simple rebranding of Stamp on a Shinra product. It’s not uncommon for corporations to rebrand their products into a different name (just look up Lay’s Potato Chips and you’ll come across Walkers, as shown in my poorly collaged photo). BUT there's another example to talk about, as a friend mentioned. Stamp's Champs are the "original" flavor. This original flavor and Terrier is being used to represent Zack in FF7, as he was once called a "puppy" by his mentors in FF7 Crisis Core. Now, that bag is calling to the original hero, who was Zack (could also be an homage to how Zack's design was originally assigned a "different" role in FF7 OG) up until he passed his dreams on to Cloud. So what this means is both Stamps are used for wither a different flavor or got rebranded after a certain amount of time passed, or the Stamp brand has the same flavor is different depending on the location in Gaia. Now for the second functionality for Stamp: It's being used as a red herring to mislead the players deeper in to the mouse trap. Remember Stamp’s original function in the context of Shinra? It served as a propaganda device for Shinral to promote its use of warfare for wealth to mislead the public into thinking Shinra’s deeds were for progress and beneficial for the Planet. It’s very possible that the developers are using Terrier Stamp as a propaganda device to trick the face-value players into thinking everything’s going to be different for the story until we're shown otherwise. And if it actually is an alternate timeline? It will not affect our team. As established previously, there is no time travel that our team is capable of, and the Whispers act on a fixed flow under the Will of the Planet and are almost omnipresent, so they must correct the course of destiny in the present and as quickly as possible. That alternate timeline would probably just be used to show us that no matter what we do, what’s set in stone needs to be kept in stone. So, don’t get your hopes up that Zack is going to survive, especially since he already passed on the Buster Sword to Cloud in the present "timeline" that we're playing.

But why is there a different Seventh Heaven sign shown during the ending sequence? Isn’t this proof of an alternate timeline?

Careful now. There’s a big possibility that what was shown during that shuffled sequence of events was the original Seventh Heaven bar. That’s right, there was a Seventh Heaven before Tifa’s in Sector 7. How do I know this? It’s a sidequest in Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core. Zack met an unnamed carpenter in the Sector 7 slums and helped name the bar. The canon answer in the narrative is to choose the name Seventh Heaven. So what’s likely happening here is 1) we saw a past event of the first Seventh Heaven bar being worked on, as the folks of the slums are building their homes together; 2) we are seeing the folks rebuild the Sector 7 slums, and perhaps to honor what was once there, the folks are building another bar and making sure to keep the original name Seventh Heaven, or 3) pretty much what I said before and it’s happening in an alternate timeline. Regardless, there’s a good chance that Crisis Core is being referenced here. And if it isn’t and it’s different events happening in an alternate timeline? Once again, our friends can’t go to that alternate timeline because time travel is not a power they have. So, it doesn’t really affect the main beats of our journey. What may happen, though, is our team will visit the Sector 7 slums later down the line, and they’ll have a reunion with a rebuilt home before settling the score with Shinra and Sephiroth. Until we see it, though, that’s just headcanon.

But why is Biggs alive? Aren’t Wedge and Jessie alive, too?

Biggs is shown to be alive, yes, but at what point of time and for how long? Also, even though he is shown to be alive, how is that going to drastically alter the story for our friends? He may stick around and have a minor role later, but he could very well die again depending on where the Destiny River is heading, and there’s likely very little he can do to somehow drastically change the story. Is he going to suddenly appear and sacrifice himself to make sure Aerith survives? Highly doubt it. See what I mean? Even if someone like him is left alive, he’ll either receive the same fate in a different way or just get a role that won’t change much of the main story. So, are Wedge and Jessie alive? Wedge, absolutely not. He was pushed down Shinra HQ Tower and there is no way he was able to survive a fall that high. There is no evidence that he “survived” after that fall as well. As for Jessie, we saw her gloves and headband on a dresser next to Biggs, but that’s it. Why would they place those next to him and not next to Jessie if she’s still alive and being taken care of? She was high atop the Sector 7 tower and it’s very unlikely anyone besides our team was able to run up and grab her on time. She was also in a worse state than Biggs and probably got crushed by the tower collapsing. In other words, she got crushed twice. Once when she set off her bomb and Cloud and Tifa bump into her; the second, when the plate dropped. What the glove and headband are, are likely nothing more than the remains of a friend who couldn’t make it. There may have been time for someone to pick up Biggs and that’s how he ended up in a bed, covered in bandages. As for more proof he’s the only one who survived? Wedge had 3 cats he held. Out of the three, only one named Biggums survived. The other 2 missing, I believe, are symbolism for the fate of the AVALANCHE trio. There you have it, three charming but minor characters who had written character arcs that got fleshed out in Remake, but don’t serve an extremely important purpose to the main plot points of the game (no offense to the trio, I do like Mr. Not-Charlie-Sheen and I wonder what they will do when the inevitable happens).

This is cool and all, but what about Sephiroth's line? "Seven Seconds till the end. Time enough for you, perhaps. But what will you do with it? Let's see." Also, this Sephiroth used more informal phrasing in the Japanese acript, such as "ore." He seems to be aware of what the future holds, too. So what do you make of this?

Ah yes, this moment, also one of the first pieces of script the writers thought of:

Well friend, I actually covered this topic before:

Seven Seconds Before the End: Theory vs. Context

While that post was made to debunk a theory, I believe what I wrote in it can easily be taken into the context of this post. That's one thing people constantly overlook about this line: it already has a given context. What do I mean by that? Check out the story log here:

In the world beyond, Sephiroth shows Cloud a vision of the planet seven seconds before its demise. Having strayed from the course destiny set for them, they strike out on a path toward an unknown future.

This is what Sephiroth was referring to: the end of the Planet. Unfortunately people are taking this line WAY out of context and using it to write theories that stray far away from the line's meaning in the first place. It's part of what Sephiroth is after, and it's part of what Cloud is fighting against. The team fought against the Arbiters of Fate because they believe what they saw was the end of everything for them without seeing the long-term outcome, while Sephiroth lured the team to fight against the Arbiters of Fate because he may have seen his failure, and believes that with the physical manifestation of the Whispers gone, he can continue his plan without any chance of failure. A part of the future, no matter what seems to happen, will involve making a decision seven seconds before the Planet's demise. What will cause the Planet's demise? Meteor. That is the main calamity we are trying to stop after defeating Sephiroth, and we need to defeat Safer Sephiroth and SOLDIER Sephiroth to make sure his will cannot block Holy from being summoned, as well as prevent Aerith from calling forth the Lifestream. So once again, this is from Sephiroth's rough understanding of the future, and it's a meta message for the players of what the ending of Remake might entail. It is NOT Sephiroth from the future suddenly sending his body/consciousness into the past in a really odd moment to give Cloud a warning.

Even with all this, the ending of Final Fantasy 7 Remake stated, "The Unknown Journey will continue." What do you have to say about this?

Yes, there is an unknown journey. This is a journey with new content to tie the rest of the Compilation together, like a possible story shuffle mentioned earlier. There's bound to be new and revised scenes in between the set beginning and end, hence "the unknown journey." I talked about this before, but for the developers to put something like "The same journeys from 2 decades ago will continue" is counter-intuitive to what they just showed us in the ending and would mess with all the anticipation for what's to come next. We have to think about this in a different perspective, and not the perspective of "oh, nothing is going to change." The developers need to keep people excited, and part of keeping that excitement is marketing a tease. It's pretty much how marketing works, too. A marketing scheme that only tells the literal facts without trying to juggle the consumer's emotions isn't going to interest the consumer that much compared to the marketing scheme that teases at the possibilities. As for the reason Yoshinori Kitase will then say that the team is continuing FF7R as FF7 has? He's in a different mindset during interviews like that. The game Final Fantasy 7 Remake is telling us things like a book, ending the events with a To Be Continued cliffhanger. Meanwhile, Kitase can state that FF7R will continue as FF7 because that's technically a vague statement. We know we'll get key locations and scenes, but we don't know how they'll get fleshed out. And we sure as heck don't know about any new scenes and how those are going to be executed in the next installments. In other words, think of a classic sandwich with a hipster rendition. The set beginning and end are the top and bottom buns, the protein is almost the same, maybe a couple spices added in there; and the unknown is all the new toppings added in your hipster-style classic sandwich. I know this is a strange analogy, but hopefully it gets the point across. So don't worry too much; Nojima, Nomura, and Kitase haven't shown us the new condiments yet!

Conclusion

If you're still here after reading through my wall of jargon, thank you! After all that I've written, I hope I was able to accomplish my goal: to ease your worries about the developers' plans with the story. And I hoped to do this by giving an in-universe explanation as to why certain things are happening. There is context to the Whispers' powers, and with the Whisper following a continuous flow of destiny, pieces of the future and past are scattered in that river. Sephiroth's been basking in this river for years now, so he got similar exposure as Aerith did and now has rough knowledge of what's to come. I think people who are clinging to time travel theories are taking the Whispers' powers out of context. We saw vague bits of the future; Aerith did, Sephiroth did, we did, and do you know who else? Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and Red XIII. Heavy exposure to the Whispers gives visions as a side effect. They're not travelling through time from the future to fix things when they've always existed as dead souls who returned to the Planet; they're continuously moving around Gaia and watching folks--especially key players in saving the Planet. The flow of a river doesn't stop, it keeps moving through its closed course. Maybe it can change its course in a slightly different direction, or get shafted into sharper curves to delay the flow, but it will still head to its final destination no matter what. While we are in the current of this new course, we'll stumble upon some untouched terrain before we get to the set ending.

However, even if we know about the inevitable, that isn't going to stop us from feeling intense pain for our heroes.

Thus the journey continues.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go sit my ass down and drink some god-damn tea.

Special Thanks

@otp-oasis-heavenxearth (Also known as @magicalchemist)

For taking the time to read my rough draft and pointing out the goofs, bringing in your theory ideas, as well as helping me solidify my confidence in Final Fantasy 7 Remake's future. Seriously, if you haven't, check out her blog. She's incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to FF7 and looks through every different perspective while sticking to the facts. In other words, straight up awesome!

@silver-wield

For allowing me to cite your post, as well as being the first person that made me faithful the developers are staying true to their word with their direction of FF7R. Seriously, thanks! If you haven't, check out her blog. Her attention to detail is incredible!

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watchinglikeafangirl · 3 years

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Unpopular opinion about IPYTM

IPYTM is the second season of ITSAY and once again deals with Teh not knowing exactly what he wants in life. Now, he is with Oh-aew but feels even more far away from him than before because they live different lives and struggle to accept the change of their relationship. It's now about their college years and not about high school any more, which gives their lives a way more serious touch Billkin and PP act out beautifully. But as we all know, acting isn't everything. Directors have a major impact on the endproduct and sadly, they changed the director here which is very visible in the entire season. It is not necessarily a bad thing to switch directors and it wasn't the worst choice in IPYTM but for me personally, Teh and Oh-aew's story lost its lovelyness. It's not as special any more.

Editing

Like I said, what caught my attention right from the start is the different editing of IPYTM and I don't just mean the editing. I mean the way it looks, sounds and feels like.

ITSAY focused a lot on its color scheme and expressed feelings through coloring. Oh-aew's color is red and Teh's color is blue. The background mostly looked very calm. A stonecolored house or the sea were always part of the scenery. But now, they are in crowded places or in front of something colorful. Q's home looks cozy and symmetrical but has nothing more to it. The furniture is as boring as possible to let the characters stand out. It feels like the characters don't fit into the scenery and yet, they somehow do. But I think, the detailed and planned-out concept got lost here and it was a very important aspect of ITSAY. Yes, the colors red and blue sometimes shine through but are not as dominant any more and I believe it was all very thought through, but I just don't feel it. The only thing expressed through color I can remember is Oh-aew's hair. The red stands for his inner conflict if Teh accepts him and what happened to their relationship. Him dying his hair back to brown showed he was coming down to earth again. He walked the long path of self love to be okay with himself again. His dressing style has changed but his hair color is all the same, showing he still is the same old Oh-aew.

As I metioned a few times before, I don't like the way background music is used so frequently to make the emotions easier to understand. When they are sad, the music is sad. When it's awkward, the music is funny. When they are out of line, the music is stressful. This is not a bad thing but I noticed music explaining the emotions of the scenes is used way more often. ITSAY had music moments as well, of course, but if you listen and watch closely, there's always music in IPYTM. In Ep 5, I started laughing every time it happened. It annoys me a lot because ITSAY used a lot of background noises and presented things in silence which made all those scenes feel extremely realistic because reality is silent. It made things more lovely, more memorable and more saddening because there was nothing to seek comfort it. Just blank silence and a lonely face made all emotions stand out way more and made me feel like I was watching a show building up realism. But IPYTM rarely had any silent scenes and when the music is absent, the show doesn't work that well any more. It is designed to be a lot more basic to please the now-very-much-bigger audience. Music makes it easier for the audience to get the vibe but is also a simple tool to use when the scene doesn't work elsewise.

Now, we get to the whole vibe. ITSAY felt very nostalgic and melodramatic whereas IPYTM feels modern and bitter. It's like ITSAY was a dream and IPYTM is the reality behind the sea. This opposite could be great, but instead it feels like a bitter reality. Their relationship meets problems, they struggle finding friends and dreams meet a dead end. It feels like watching the show through the eyes of an old person reminicing. The light-hearted scenes lack and drama takes over way too soon and for way too long. It feels rushed and average. Not as special any more. The special feeling is gone.

Characters

Let's get to my second problem I have with this sequel and it's the most important one because this show only surrounds around Teh and Oh-aew. They are the ones who changed the most. Change isn't bad, don't get me wrong. I sometimes seek change so badly I'm devastated when I go to bed with the feeling everything is the same again. That the world is the same. That others are the same. That I'm still the same. In IPYTM, change is seen as something bad because we still see the world through Teh's eyes and Teh always was and always will be the sort of character who detestes change and feels like he loses bonds if personalities change as they grow. The same happens here. The fear of changing so much, you can't recognize your most loved one, is extremely realistic at that age and I can't say anything against it because I have the same fear. Still, there are choices I can't agree with.

Like I said, Teh hates change and the moment Oh-aew says he wants to transfer, problems start. Him transfering means Teh feels like he doesn't understand Oh-aew any more. It means having a life very different from Teh's and since ITSAY was about them realizing how much they have in common, IPYTM is more about them discovering they are not the same person. They are individuals who have different personalities and seek happiness in their own way. They don't copy each other. IPYTM is more about self-realization. This also means, they spend some time apart and lose each other a little bit.

All of this is fine, all of this is realistic. But what I don't like about Teh and Oh-aew is them not talking. They accept their fate which causes them to break apart even more. Thing is, Teh was always someone not sharing much very easily, but Oh-aew always shared his thoughts. He made the first step, he was serious and he showed how hurt he was. And now, he feels Teh is drifting away and doesn't address it. He doesn't address how lonely he feels, he doesn't say how much he misses Teh, he doesn't mention he's not fine with himself. It is frustrating to watch them just coexisting without sharing stuff.

And then Teh cheats which was never the missing puzzle piece to their story. I know, Teh is sad. His friends change, his boyfriend changes. But why would he throw something away, he worships so much? He doesn't very much open up about himself but he did to Oh-aew, so why does he lose courage to fight for it, let it stay like it and just kisses someone else who is a playboy? He choses to believe in Jai's actions rather than seeing Oh-aew.

Plot

I'm drifting to the next point. The plot. Well, the plot is just ... stupid (I'm sorry). Yes, it is entertaining at some points but it is average, basic. The love triangle, trust issues and jealousy is something I've seen various times before. I'm extremely disappointed when it comes to the story because the thing I loved about ITSAY as well, was the originality. It wasn't clicheish. It wasn't boring. It wasn't like other shows. It was independant. But IPYTM tried very hard to please the now-big audience and fanbase. It's not what I wanted to see.

Even if you give them a love triangle, then please, not such a flat character as Jai. We had Tarn and Bas in ITSAY. They were breathing human beings with their own personalities, their own goals and their own interests. But Jai ... he's just there. He helps Teh to act properly and Teh spends a lot of time with him, apparently, but his personality is not very clear. When he tells Teh, he was just pretending, I can't tell if he really was or if he steps aside for Oh-aew. I still can't tell and I think it's really weak of such an important character with so much screentime, to lack of a personality. Everybody knew, why Bas stepped aside. But with Jai, I can't tell.

I lost it in Ep 5 when Bas showed up to give Oh-aew a tedtalk. Honestly, I laughed. It was stupid and again provse the writing of IPYTM is not nearly as strong and good as the writing of ITSAY. ITSAY contained an inner conflict as well but they managed to let us know about it without the characters actually telling us. When Teh gave Oh-aew the notebook with vocab, he hid outside. When the piano in the cafe was played, both cried far away from each other. When Teh spend time with Tarn, he realized his feelings and told her down. It's the little things. And IPYTM lacks of those. We actually need Bas to tell Oh-aew what to do and honestly, his message wasn't as deep. I can't count how often I heard those "follow you heart" speeches before. It works with everything. Right here, it seems passionless and rushed. Like they couldn't think of another way to solve the problem and come to an end.

So, the story was filled with cliches and the writing was not as good as ITSAY. Not only did we have a cameo of Bas to give Oh-aew a choice everybody knew he had, no, we also had an antagonist who is easy to blame for all the issues. Jai is the antagonist here, playing with Teh's thoughts or something but this show makes its life way too easy. Teh and Oh-aew had problems before. The result of this fading away, is Teh kissing Jai but Jai is not the reason for it. But then, Jai walks out of Teh's life and everything is fine again? They don't talk about the problems ever because Jai is gone now and so are the relationship problems? I'm sorry but this is just a sad plot for a second season of ITSAY.

Conclusion

I can just say, I'm very disappointed. ITSAY affected me personally very much and has a very special place in my heart, so I was afraid IPYTM would ruin this as soon as the OST premiered. It was so cheesy and average, I knew back then I won't enjoy this as much. I watched nevertheless, but my hopes were dropped at an instant and I lost my motivation to continue watching. I kept it on hold for 3 weeks and didn't even miss it. This is a bad sign.

What more can I say? I didn't feel it, I'm sorry. I still think Billkin and PP are amazing and well, this turned out to be longer than intended.

#i promised you the moon #ipytm #teh x oh aew #billkinpp

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brighthappybird · 4 years

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What if the Angels had Pacts pt. 2

So this has been a thought that I’ve been thinking about. What if the Angels of Obey Me had pacts. What would they be like? So I already answered that question right here - What if the Angels had pacts?

Now let’s look at what if the brothers, as angels, had pacts and what the MCs may have gotten from that. And just for the fun of it, I’m throwing Satan in here.

Like always, if you want your MC, Demon or Angel to be thrown into the mix, don’t be afraid to like throw them my way. I’ll gently catch them and write for their pact, if you wanted!

Let’s start off with what we know what the pacts do. There might be more information that might come out later, but for now, we know that the pacts help the MC control the demon brothers, by either controlling them or by having some form of bond to them. That’s about as much as we know, if anyone else knows more, feel free to add on!

With the brothers, it is a little tricky since you would need to look at what their sins would be the opposite in the Celestial Realm. Additionally, when I talk about their symbolic animals, I’m analyzing them from a totem standpoint since that gave me the most information when analyzing them.

Lucifer, Avatar/Prince/Sin of Pride --> Virtue of Humility

Mammon, Avatar/Prince/Sin of Greed --> Virtue of Generosity

Leviathan, Avatar/Prince/Sin of Envy --> Virtue of Admiration

Satan, Avatar/Prince/Sin of Wrath --> Virtue of Forgiveness

Asmodeus, Avatar/Prince/Sin of Lust --> Virtue of Chasity Love

Beelzebub, Avatar/Prince/Sin of Gluttony --> Virtue of Discipline

Belphegor, Avatar/Prince/Sin of Sloth --> Virtue of Zeal

I hope everyone likes this! I will be posting a Diavolo bonus to this, but I’ll be taking a quick break from this. Also, please send me your MCs/OCs for Obey Me! I would absolutely love to write something like this for them!

Now that we have each of their virtues listed out, we [as the players] know that each of them have shown some form of their former virtues (before they fell) when interacting them. Granted, it is a little warped, but it is still there. The issue is most of their personalities that we know now, are their current demon forms. We don’t know much about how they acted as angels. Though who is to say that isn’t going to be changed in the future!

Lucifer, Virtue of Humility - He was once known as the Morning Star. There are times in the story where multiple characters will say he was the gem of the entire Celestial Realm. The pride and joy of the Celestial Realm. There are instances in the game where Luke has said that he admired Lucifer more than Michael before he fell, which means, he was one that probably had the biggest influence amongst the other angels, even compared to Simeon (from the last post).

Since he is the virtue of humility, we can assume that he was not as prideful as he is now. There was a sense of give and take, where instead of having the burden of the entire world on his shoulders like now, as an angel (even if he had his own fanbase), he would share the burden of what he was thinking. All in all, he was humble or rather, had a much lower view of his own importance.

Lets go a little deeper into this by analyzing his symbolic animal as well. His symbolic animal is a peacock, which we know symbolizes pride, beauty and confidence. Something that he no doubt, he has had follow him through his time of being an angel then his descent in being a demon. The other things that a peacock symbolizes are balance, awareness, leadership and ressurection. In a way, we could say that his rebirth as a demon was foretold in the cards, but let’s skip that. Balance, Awareness and Leadership, what was Lucifer known for in the Celestial Realm? He was someone that the angels would rally around and see him as this great leader. The Morning Star.

If the MC were to make a pact with Lucifer, when he was an angel, one could assume he would be guardian angel++ like Simeon. Though instead of taking more of a passive guardian role, he would take more of a assertive role should the pact holder be in danger. Though getting a pact with him would be much more difficult compared to the other brothers and this is because of how low he views his importance and how his importance is only tied to his title of The Morning Star. So have fun MCs!

Mammon, Virtue of Generosity - Though not much is spoken about Mammon and the others during their time as an angel. All we know is that Mammon was Lucifer’s favorite. That’s about it. Honestly, a part of me likes to think that Demon Mammon and Angel Mammon would have the same issue of being poor. Angel Mammon just giving away every single cent that he has in order to help someone else. Instead of looking for an opportunity to make money, he looks for an opportunity to try and help. Remember that impulsivity that Lucifer has tried to curb with many rules? Well, different realm, same Mammon, just a different reason why he’s out of money.

Since he is the virtue of Generosity, we can assume that he is still actively seeking money, but also seeking opportunities to help others. There is a sense of “give” “give” “give” and it is almost uncontrollable. He is just as soft in his angelic form as he is in his demon form, but he does not actively hide it. If anything, it is one of the reasons why humans and other angels find him more approachable.

Let’s also talk about his symbolic animal. I know, I’m like dissecting each of the attributes that each of the brothers have, but it is just so interesting. So for Mammon, his symbolic animal is a crow which is known for being a bringer of prophecy and good luck. Other attributes denoted to the crow is intelligence, adaptability, insight, and being fearless. Now, Mammon is not that fearless, but he does have his moments where he will disregard Lucifer’s warning and do what he wants, despite the consequences. Though there is something deeper, Mammon shows much more emotional intelligence compared to most of his brothers, he is able to tell how the MC is feeling (despite disregarding it a little) and there are times where he shows high levels of intelligence when it is something he cares about.

If the MC were to make a pact with Mammon, when he was an angel, one could assume that he would be a guardian angel. Not a guardian angel++ like Lucifer or Simeon, but he is the guardian angel that would have quite a few pacts. Instead of being indebted to witches, he would be constantly fretting over the state of his human. With the pact, Mammon would know the state of his human and how they are doing financially or emotionally. He would be the angel to search the ends of the earth to find exactly what they need to make them happy and feel secure. Even if it means, spending some time with him.

Leviathan, Virtue of Admiration - Going to be a little honest, Levi was a little hard thinking of. Since his Envy and his admiration are rather similar. Though the one thing that does change is that he respects himself a little more. He appreciates his own interests instead of putting himself down. He still enjoys consuming media, video games and using netspeak as he usually does. He is still interested in anime/manga/books, but he is a lot more social able.

As the virtue of admiration, he admires other individuals collections and instead of comparing himself to them and putting himself down, he takes an interest in their interests and actively asks them questions. If anything, he feels embarrassed and shuts down when he feels like he has crossed a boundary or forgot the MC’s interests.

As interesting as it is, Leviathan’s symbolic animal is the serpent, which symbolizes fertility, life and healing. They are also the symbols of rebirth, transformation and immortality. There are various aspects of this that almost seem like it opposes Levi as a character as a whole, but he does go through his own form of rebirth. Instead of being a recluse in the game, he ends up opening up more and talking to his brothers as well as the MC more. The healing aspect would be something that he does as well as has his charges do, if he were to have multiple pacts at once. Helping them heal from their social awkwardness, at least bring them to a bearable amount, where they could make friends/allies.

If the MC is able to get a pact with him, they should feed into his admiration aspect. Since keeping him hooked on their interests and keeping him interested. Which is a downfall for him, but I digress. Though he falls into the same category as Mammon, he is a guardian angel. He is able to sense when his human is excited or if someone hurt their feelings regarding their interests or just hurting their feelings in general. That is enough to bring him to their side and comfort them. Just reminding them why they liked what they like. Though if he needs to, like in the game, he is not afraid to snap at those making his human feel bad.

Satan, Virtue of Forgiveness - Now humor me for a little bit, we know it is canon that he was not originally an angel. Just humor me. Though not much of his personality changes. He is still the sensible, quick witted and the voice of reason. Though instead of his voice just being reserved for his brothers, he is used to settle arguments between all angels that may have a spat.

Satan was still born from Lucifer, but instead of blaming Lucifer, as much as it annoys him, he ends up forgiving Lucifer a little more. With how well read he is, he understands that there are certain causes that he can argue for since he would know why the individual acted the way they did. Though unfortunately, this would cause some tension, since even as an angel, there might be some ridged that may come from him going from what the book said or going with a solution he had ended up seeing that worked. The MC would need to actually show him not all problems are cut and dry, but also there are other paths to forgiveness and that sometimes, individuals cannot forgive if someone truly wronged them.

Lets quickly look at his symbolic animal. In the Devildom, his animal is the unicorn. This mythical animal is generally tied to both strength and fierceness. Though delving deeper the unicorn also represents a wisdom that is far beyond their years, reason, innocence. Which is true in a way, there were times in the game where despite having all this knowledge at his fingertips, Satan was caught offguard by something simple and it embarrasses him, but despite that he probably has more information in his brain compared to your average demon. This does not change as an angel, if anything, he is able to use the information that he has stored in his brain to help him better understand problems and work through it.

Since he is a newer angel, it takes a bit of time for him to fully grasp everything. Though that does not mean that he is not a strong angel to have a pact with. Like Lucifer, he needs to be convinced since his entire value is based around whether or not he is well read but also his worry that he is not worth much because of his connection to Lucifer and only being compared to the Morning Star himself. The MC would need to pull him out of his shell a little bit. Though getting a pact with him would be like an guardian angel, not on the same level as some of his other brothers, but he would be the inner voice of the MC. Though there are times where he has talked MC down from doing something rash, or talked through the pros and cons of their actions, but ultimately leaves them to pick what they do.

Asmodeus, Virtue of Chastity Love - You know, this one is a bit tricky considering what the word Chastity means. So I’ll be going with a more broader definition. So, let’s change it to Love. Virtue of Love. Since in the game, I feel like Asmo’s role in the Celestial Realm was not representing Chastity. That is just my opinion. Once known as the Jewel of the Heavens, there is a time where Simeon tells the MC that despite falling, he still views Asmodeus as the beautiful angel that he once was. Since there was one line that always stuck with me, despite being a demon for a millennia (or longer), he still tries to be the angel that he once was. Someone who was loved and adored, which means, he knows the feeling of love and the feeling it gives when one is in love.

As an angel, he would have been an expert when it came to feelings like love, ecstasy, compassion, and sometimes even the more negative emotions like anxiety, anger and jealousy. All of it driving from a single point - passion. Unlike the other brothers, I want to focus on his symbolic animal, which is a scorpion. As stated it symbolizes both passion and dominance, which we see quite a bit, but what if it had a deeper meaning when he was an angel. With a little bit of research, you can find that scorpions also represent transformation, rebirth, defense and a sense of devotion. Which are aspects that one could find in love as well. Where love can bloom as friendship, where it slowly kindles and grows into a strong flame for one another. A requited love.Then if you look at the rebirth aspect, you can think of it as someone going through a broken heart, finding a sense of love and belonging in another, when their time comes, and so on so forth, but there is always a level of devotion between all of those.

Asmodeus as a demon is quite passionate, in our case - as an angel, he was passionate about humans and finding their love or helping them work through their love if they were scorned. If an MC were to enter a pact with him, one could expect him to be a guardian angel++ and some form of a cupid. He is the one that would be there to lend his ear to his human, help them heal through a broken heart, but if the other person in the relationship/friendship truly wronged his human, like Lucifer, there is a chance he might take on a more assertive role versus a more passive role when dealing with it.

Beelzebub, Virtue of Discipline - there are aspects of Beel’s virtue or his former angelic status in him, the more you play through the game. There are often times where he shows restraint (despite the inner battle he keeps fighting) when looking at delicious food or looking at something he wants. He shows quite a bit of discipline compared to his Sin of Gluttony. His discipline shows when he focuses on the sports he plays, his work out routine, but also

Alright, now this is a little bit of a tricky one considering his symbolic animal is a fly. Since it is generally symbolic of illness, disease and war, but what if as an angel, he had a different symbolic animal? Something similar to a fly, but when he fell, it ended up becoming a fly. How about a dragonfly? Since if you look at the symbolism of a dragonfly, it is almost the opposite of what the fly represents. A dragonfly represents joy, adaptability, understanding and self realization. Now, the reason why I’m focusing on these four traits is because these are traits that we have seen Beel exhibiting in the game. There are numerous Devilgram cards that talk about how Beel has a deeper understanding of his and his brothers emotional states and how he holds family above food. Which, for someone who is always assumed that he holds food above everything, having a meal or something, this is a big turn of events. He seems to be the one who tries to adapt compared to the rest of his brothers, tries to understand, and generally, he realizes what he needs before most of his brothers realize what he needs.

The type of angel is wrapped up in how he is even as a demon. I feel like, compared to the other brothers, he hasn’t lost most of his angelic charms compared to them. It hasn’t been warped as much. Though all in all, as an angel and with his pact, you’re going to find yourself well loved. He’s more like a companion angel, ones that you may see walking beside humans in human form or protecting their charge without a second thought. This goes back to his level of love and respect for his family, and while having a pact with him, you’re like family.

Belphegor, Virtue of Zeal - A part of me thinks that zeal really does not match Belphie if you ask me. This is one of the virtues that make me go “hmm...maybe not,” but you know, we’re going to work with it. As a demon, he is a trickster and usually goes after his own goals, no matter the repercussions. This is seen when the MC is interacting with him in the first season. Don’t worry, not doing to spoil anything. Though he does show some form of mellowness and some level of playfulness that is harmless mischief.

Belphie has the cow representing them. These animals generally symbolizes positivity, and fertility. We are ignoring fertility for this, it does not exist. Other aspects that the cow represents are selflessness, generosity, calming, grounding and new beginnings. There are a bunch of things that demon Belphie has here that works for his demon counterpart as the angel counterpart.

If one were to get into a pact with the angel Belphegor, there is a level of harmless mischief that still tags along with him. Though he is a guardian angel in training. Being the youngest when it comes to power, there is sense of playful rebellion, always trying to find a way to have Lucifer to break character. Honestly, not much changes? Though compared to his brothers, he finds this strong sense of need to protect his human that’s holding a pact with him. Though if something deeply troubling happens to his human, he’s there as a comfort. He is there to comfort them and make sure they’re alright, generally taking on a more mellow tone and being the voice of reason - much like Satan.

Like I said, Zeal does not fit Belphie all that much, but trust me - when I say MC will be protected with him.

#obey me #obey-me!#obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me levi #obey me angels #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me asmo #obey me beelzebub #obey me beel #obey me belphegor #obey me belphie #someone should stop my brain #daddydemus help me chro too powerful #the one thing Obey Me taught me was how to spell Beel's name properly #Obey Me also taught me how to spell Belphie's name properly too #Obey Me could be an educational game for names

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gothamcityneedsme · 3 years

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I saw this bouncing around my dash and decided to fill it out myself for fun :) I decided to not double-list any games, and I tried to mix up the companies I used too so that the list would be more unique.

Long post, so I’m doing a readmore for my longwinded part lol.

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Favorite Game: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords - I could talk about this game forever. How it tears apart the Star Wars universe from within, how it creates a compelling story while challenging the usual themes, etc. I could talk for ages about the characters and how their motivations slot in place, and how this game lends itself to interpretation and analysis alongside roleplay. It’s just a wonderful game, one I deeply love and will always love. It’s a game that isn’t afraid to have you talk to other characters for twenty or thirty minutes at a time and honestly I’m always riveted at every line. This game deserves the cult fanbase it has, but I think there’s a lot the fanbase misses in appreciating this game. (Note...gameplay is a little janky and a community made mod restores a lot content that was cut before shipping-the game wasn’t properly finished).

Best Story: Fallout New Vegas - It’s the setting that makes the story here, and all the moving pieces and factions alongside the main conflict really make this game stand out. There’s so many little pieces to find along the way in the world and the way the main quest splits based on who you want in power feels important--and you are choosing a future for this whole region.

Favorite Art Style: The Witness - This game is peacefully wonderful with its visuals. There are wonderful nature scenes and nests of wires and panels spreading in various parts of the island that are fascinating to look at. The environment is half of the gameplay in most areas, so it’s important to look around even though exploration is not really the gameplay. You find puzzles in the world, even in nature, and it’s fascinating. The colors are bright and beautiful. There is even a map in the middle of the island inside of a lake that helps you track your progress if you notice it (it isn’t like a normal ‘map’).

Favorite Soundtrack: Shin Megami Tensei IV - I love video game soundtracks, but SMTIV is something special. The music booms in ways that make you really understand the atmosphere of the world, and there’s a great mix of different kinds of tracks for different places. I love the tracks for the other worlds you enter, and the themes of the different routes are done so well. Some of the music draws from past SMT games, but the remixes done for this game really are stunning to me, and there’s so many fantastic original tracks.

Hardest Game: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - I love this game but I literally never touch it without a walkthrough, which is why it gets to be the hardest game on the list, despite being a point and click adventure game lol. Also just emotionally this game is challenging too, but I definitely mean this more in terms of getting a ‘perfect run’.

Funniest Game: The Stanley Parable - Trying to make this list has taught me that I don’t really play many ‘funny games’. I don’t know if a game where multiple endings demand that you kill yourself should count as a ‘funniest game’, but it is also a game where the narrator tells you to stare at a fern and memorize its features, so....it counts.

Game I Like that is Hated: RWBY Grimm Eclipse - I’ve been playing this game since it was in early access and have loved it the whole time. I find the gameplay soothing and fun, and I like playing the different characters. It’s a game I play to chill out and just enjoy some fun battle mechanics. It’s a fun game and I’ve spent over 100 hours in it, so I hope I like it, lol.

Game I Hate that is Liked: Nier Automata - Neither this game’s gameplay or story impress me, and the fact that you have to replay basically the same stuff from a more boring-to-play-character’s pov in order to SEE all of the plot is a huge damper on the experience. The story, to me, someone who engages with a lot of robot-focused fiction, is far from impressive or new, and it hardly engages with genre specifics at all, let alone in a new or interesting way. I view this game as ‘a story with robots in it’ rather than ‘a story about robots’, which, to me, is a detriment.

Underrated: Nevermind - This game is amazing and very unheard of--and when it is heard of, it has been marketed incorrectly. Nevermind seems like a horror game, and does market itself as one a bit, but it’s much more than that. It’s more about trauma, recovery, therapy, etc. This is a game that is so mindful about the topics it engages in that I am impressed by it every time. It’s heavy with symbolism and character, despite lacking conversations or other similar game mechanics. This is a lovely game that I really wish more people knew about-`p5-all of the patients are so interesting, and the focus on recovery and mental health is impressive.

Overrated: Fire Emblem - I sort of mean this as the series as a whole really. I have enjoyed the entries I have played somewhat, but I overall consider the series much less impressive than I was led to believe by others. The gameplay especially is not impressive to me in any regard, even though I sometimes do find myself enjoying it. The stories are alright, but many of them are weighed down by the gameplay and as a writer and person who likes to analyze writing, it’s very hard to do so when it isn’t able to fully exist under the chains the gameplay forces on it. There are ways to mix gameplay and story well, Fire Emblem has not really done that in any of the entries I’ve played. That being said, I don’t regret playing them, and I will occasionally replay, but I consider them mediocre games at best.

Best Voice Acting: Devil Survivor 2 - I love the voice acting in this game. I feel like all the characters are really suited to their voices, and it’s really easy for me to visualize their voices. They really bring the game to life and make both the dramatic and the funny scenes more enjoyable.

Worst Voice Acting: Jedi Knight Jedi Academy - I love this game, I really do, but some of the voice acting is janky. Some of it is okay too--I think Kyle Katarn’s voice actor does fine, and some of the others I like NOW but hated when I was a kid, but the male protagonist voice in this game is just awful. Which is bad when Jennifer Hale is the female voice actress lol. His performance is passable though unless you’re playing darksided--the darksided ending to the game lacks all punch when you’re playing the male protagonist.

Favorite Male: Battler Ushiromiya from Umineko no Naku Koro Ni - He’s the protagonist for most of the visual novels and I adore him utterly, especially once you move past episode 2. He’s a wonderful character who I care about deeply. I love his drive and how he fights--he’s someone who is easy to cheer for. He matures well throughout the series and his character development is just wonderful.

Favorite Female: Naoto Shirogane from Persona 4 - I really like how Naoto fits so well in the game, especially for being a final recruit--oftentimes the final recruit of Persona games (post 3) have a bit of a more difficult time feeling right with the group. Naoto works really well though, and I love her struggles and story as well. I think the difficulties she has concerning living as a woman in her field hit very deep to a problem that has existed for a very long time.

Favorite Protagonist: Connor of Daventry from King’s Quest 8 Mask of Eternity - I’m like, one of four fans of this character in the world, lol. KQ8 is not a very well liked game and it does have a lot of issues, both with age and with how much of a departure it is from the series prior to it. It’s strange to take a puzzle adventure game and make it a hybrid with what basically is a shooter, and it doesn’t really work. Add to that the fact that you spend most of your time in the game without anyone around to talk to and it leads to this really polarizing and weird experience. For me, Conner goes through what I would consider to be the ‘Ultimate Nightmare Scenario”. Everyone in the world is turned to stone except him (and he survived out of mere chance) and so now it’s up to him, practically alone, to save the entire world. There is no game lonelier than this. I adore him for his bravery in the face of it, and how he just picks up to do what must be done because someone should do it, and if no one else can, then he will. I also really love how he apologizes to people who are encased in stone while he takes money from their houses to help him on his journey. I really do think he went back after the game was over and gave everyone heaps of gold to pay them back with interest lol.

Favorite Village: Oakvale from Fable - The first Fable is the only one I really like, and it was one of the games I played when I was little, so the hometown in the game always meant a lot to me. I like how you grow up there and how your tragic backstory is there--and then how you get to return to the town years later after you’ve come into your own, and you can see it completely rebuilt. I like to spend a lot of my time in this town, just wandering around it and playing the minigames. Even though I have a house in every town, Oakvale is where my hero calls home.

Most Hated Character: Merril from Dragon Age 2 - I don’t really want to lay into how I feel about Merril, but what I will say is that it was suggested to me that I totally ignore her when playing, and I did so. I only met her for her quest, dropped her off in town, and literally never spoke to her or interacted for the rest of the game. I had a much better experience for it, honestly. She appeared after I made my choice in the end of the game, which felt weird since I hadn’t spoken to her in several ingame years, but other than that, the game was totally fine without her. I sort of just wish you could kill characters in DA2 the way you can in DAO, then I’d just do that, tbh. It doesn’t suit very many (or any) of the characters I rp in DA2 to keep her around or support her in any way.

First Game I Played: Mixed up Mother Goose Deluxe - I’m not actually sure if this is the FIRST game I’ve ever played or not, but it’s one of the first I played alone as a kid. I really loved it--this is probably what created my love for point and click adventures, and the game was very silly and fun.

Favorite Company: Bioware - I’ve always been a sucker for Bioware games, ever since Knights of the Old Republic 1 was my favorite childhood game. I love how they do stories and party members, and while I’m not a fan of all of their games, I really love what they’ve made and their style of storytelling and character driven plot. Even though sometimes their stories get cliche, I think the suit video games well and most of my early gaming was within their games.

Hated Company: EA - Bioware truly only started to go to shit after the EA acquisition, so I fucking hate EA. I know Bioware had issues before EA too, but I definitely don’t think EA has helped the situation whatsoever.

Depressing Game: The Beginner’s Guide - I relate to this game as a creator and a writer, and it affects me deeply because of the story it tells and the questions it raises. It makes me reflect on how I think of myself as a creator, and it reminds me of friendships I used to have.

Creepy Game: The Path - God, I love this game. It’s just aimlessly wandering around and finding symbolic scenery and watching your current character comment on it. Then, you go off to find your girl’s wolf, and each one is different and unique to her, and you watch it ‘kill’ her--and facing her wolf is the only way each girl can truly mature. Whenever you get to grandmother’s house, the camera switches to first person, and your eyes keep closing, so you can only see while clicking to move. It forces you to keep moving so that you can see, but since you are moving, you only get to see things somewhat vaguely. It’s got a great atmosphere, and I love the symbolic storytelling.

Happy Game: Eastshade - This game is so sweet. There’s some drama around to with many of the quests, but I like this as an rpg without combat, and I think this would be a really good kids game. There’s a lot to see and explore, and the game was made to be really pretty so that you want to paint several aspects of it. It’s really lovely to just wander around in this game and bike around the area, painting anything that suits your fancy. As long as you don’t finish the main quest, you’re free to wander, and materials do respawn, so you essentially can infinitely paint once you get far enough.

Favorite Ending: Virtue’s Last Reward - I love the questions this game asks and where the ending goes. It thematically ties together--the whole reason the game itself exists is to get the attention of a ‘higher being’--the player, essentially. I love how it plays with that concept, and even though the final game in the series doesn’t entirely pick this idea up where this game left it, standalone this game is stunning in how it comes together.

#shitpost #long post #this was fun to do #i made it so every answer was a different video game and i tried to mix up my companies as well #got 3 atlus games on here but mer #2 obsidon #llol #2 sierra too haha but still #beginner's guide and tsp were made by the same guy too but #STILL I LIMITED MYSELF OK #these answers aren't absolute because i was trying to have a good diverse list lol

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