#its kinda hard to not compare myself to others because. well. its the human nature after all but i rly shouldnt | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

Text

Humans are Space Orcs, “Workout.”

Forgive me for being short today, But I have a Russian test in less than an hour, and it is on numbers which is the most excruciating part of this language lol.

Hope you all have a good day :)

The human pulled to a stop huffing and puffing, hands on his knees as he took in great big breaths. Krill could see ribs through his skin as the great bellows expanded and then contracted. Sweat slicked the skin as the body desperately tried to cool itself.

“Heart rate 165.”

The human straightened himself out coughing once or twice to clear his throat, reaching out and wiping his face with a towel.

He threw the towel over one shoulder and stretched the large muscle groups in his chest, stomach and back pulling tight.

Sunny leaned against the wall just to their right both sets of arms crossed over her chest, “So, what is this supposed to be fore. Is this like a dominance thing or something.”

The human wiped his face again and raised an eyebrow, “IT’s exercises, Sunny. You know so I can be fit enough to pass the UNSC PT exam, or perhaps so that I can do my job better, or maybe because I look better whenI’m more fit.

Sunny turned her head to look at him, her eyes scrunching down a little as Krill went to take notes on a clipboard.

“You mean…. You didn’t just grow to being that size?’

The human glanced down at Krill incredulous, “IS she serious? Do the Drev like, not have to work out?”

Krill shook his head, “Drev do not have subcutaneous fat deposits like humans do. Any acquired deposits are stored below the carapace between the connective tissue, padding them down and giving them more protection.”

Sunny looked between them in confusion, “Wait, hold on…. I’m confused.”

The human towelled off his hair, “I have to work out to look like this sunny. IF i don’t use it, I lose it.”

She turned to look at Krill.

He tucked the holo-pad under one arm, “You see, Sunny. Humans are meant to adapt. They can adapt mentally, and they can adapt physically. The body changes to match the requirements of its environment. Sometimes this takes years to do, for instance if you take a light skinned population of humans and put them somewhere with a lot of sun, and keep that population in complete isolation, after a few generations, the skin will darken to compensate for the increased UV light. However these things happen on a smaller level. The body fluctuates to adapt to the amount of physical work which is required.”

The human nodded, “Exactly. Running strengthens the heart, and it increases the hemoglobin in my blood, so that I can run for a longer time with more oxygen. If I were to stop running, I would loose all of that and have to work back up.”

Sunny stared at him incredulous, “So, you have to force your body to be able to perform correctly. Like, It can’t just DO what it needs to do, but you have to convince it over years of training to be able to do what you want.”

The man shrugged, “Well anything sucks when you phrase it like that.” He turned and motioned them to follow, “Historically, humanity was evolved in an environment with little food. We ate a diet heavy in proteins, fiber, and natural carbs from fruit. Fat is an essential part of a human’s diet, but it is relatively difficult to find in nature because of this, the body adapted to make humans love and crave fatty and sugary foods for energy. Well since well into the twentieth eighteenth century, fatty foods were becoming commonplace, and easy to get our hands on, but the body wasn’t aware of that, so it continued to treat these new fatty foods the way our bodies would have treated them back when we were hunter/gatherers storing every last bit up for use later.”

Sunny followed after in fascination, “I see, so now you have…. Too much of a food that your body craves.”

The human looked over his shoulder, “You got it, and the body doesn’t know when to stop storing fat. It’ll just keep going. So if I were to sit on my ass all day eating chips, I would lose the muscle and I would get bigger as fat deposits were stored up for energy.”

Sunny shrugged, “What is the problem with that?”

The human tapped his chin lightly, “A few things, I guess. For me, at least, if I were to just stop working out, I wouldn’t be able to do my job as well, I wouldn't be able to run as far, or to jump as high, or to lift as much. And lifting myself up in a pullup would be impossible, and considering the amount of times we have all almost fallen off a cliff or had to haul ourselves up rope, you would think that would be a bad idea. Not to mention that the larger you are the harder your heart has to work as the blood supply is forced to expand, and since you aren't working out your heart it gets weaker but has to do more work, which --in turn-- increased the risk of heart issues. Compounding all that I wouldn't be able to sit in a cockpit or pilot a jet properly.”

Sunny shook her head, “That seems like a very… annoying model. You can never just relax. You always have to work to keep your body where it should be. And the amount of self control you have to have….”

The human laughed, “You have no idea how much self control I need when a box of doughnuts gets in my way.” He sighed, “Keeping my abs as been a real struggle, but the UNSC drilled some self discipline into me when I was still young.”

“So you weren't always this big.”

The human snorted, “no not in the slightest. In fact, I was so skinny, you could see my heart beating through my rib cage.

Sunny grimaced.

“Yeah I know, kinda gross. Those are your two directions. If you don’t work out your either super scary skinny, or you get a bit big. If you’re working out right you get muscles.” He turned around flexing proudly for them to outline the lines of his biceps, chest and stomach.

Sunny would have rolled her eyes back into her head, but she supposed, now that she knew he had to work for it, she was at least somewhat proud of him.

“Ok, I have a question then.”

“Shoot.”

“Can you get bigger?”

More laughter, “Oh yeah, totally, but I’m not THAT dedicated.”

They were just coming around a corner when the commander skidded to a halt eye to chest with an absolutely massive human.

Even sunny stepped back in surprise.

This human was large enough to look sunny in the eye, with shoulders about as wide as her, and a chest that looked like it could have benched a small car.

It was almost comical, a moment ago Sunny had assumed that the commander was a large human.

“Wow there big mean. I’’d rather not get steamrolled today, thanks.”

The large human glanced down at the commander.

“Sir.” He grunted before stepping around and walking up the hall.

Sunny watched him go, “What do you have to do to get that big!”

“You practically have to live at the gym.”

They turned the corner walking into a large room, with strange machines of unknown use.

ANd in here there were humans of all sizes and shapes, but most of them absolutely massive. Those who lacked height, did not lack muscle.

Male humans, female humans, all of the above.

A tiny female human stood at one of these machines carrying a bar on her shoulders with enough weight that sunny assumed it might crush her. Instead she squatted down to the floor and stood back up.

The captain blinked, “Holy shit.” He motioned towards her, “She squats more than me by the way. You see these guys are insane. I work out to maintain, these guys do it because its their hobby.”

Krill floated upwards to whisper in sunny’s ear, “For the muscle to enlarge, the fibers must tear open, and then the body comes back and repairs the tear to withstand the pressures that tore it in the first place.

Sunny stared at Krill incredulously, “So you're telling me, they just…. Tear themselves apart to get like that.”

The Commander left them standing in place walking over to the wall and jumping upwards, catching his hands around a black bar welded to the wall, the muscles in his back, just below the shoulder blades flexed as he pulled himself upwards, the muscles in his shoulder blades rolling under the skin.

They continued to watch as the commander did his set, a little bit of everything for demonstration purposes. Getting off one of the leg machines, one of these large female humans walked past sitting where he had just sat reaching out pulling out the peg and and bringing the weight almost to the bottom of the plates.

The commander leaned in, “See her, she could probably crush your skull using just her legs.” He sighed, “Man, I only WISH I could be that badass.” He looked up at sunny, “Sometimes I come here just to knock myself down a peg.”

Across the room, one of these massive humans was hauling a huge bar lined with weight on either side up over his head like it was nothing.

“You see that, that would probably invert my spine if I tried to do it.” “Must you be so graphic?” Krill wondered

“Yeah, because that’s how much of a wuss I am.”

Looking around, Sunny wasn’t convinced entirely of his status as a wuss. He had all the requisite muscle groups of, even the largest humans, and more than some. There were great swatches of the human population who,even here, were missing some things.

A few of the humans had large arms, ut small legs, small legs, but large arms, no chest, or chest and no abdominal muscles.

Yes sure, he may have been smaller than their largest, but he WAS well rounded arms, chest, stomach, legs, back and shoulders.

She found herself surprised at the smug satisfaction in comparing her human to the other humans.

Sure her human couldn’t bench THAT much, but he also had better legs, so there.

“You ok, Sunny?”

She turned her head to look at him.

“Just thinking.” She said

He shrugged at her and returned to his work.

It’s hard to be a human.

They have to work for everything they have, especially when it comes to their body.

483 notes · View notes

protagonistheavy · 3 years

Text

It's cool that Three Houses went out of its way to voice basically every single line of dialogue in the game, but beyond the novelty of it... what a waste of resources lol. It does not benefit the game in the long term, and in fact kinda detracts from the experience imo. Maybe this will vary with other people, I know some folks sort of "need" there to be voice acting for a game with this much text, but by and large I find myself CONSTANTLY thinking I'm watching a well-performed middle school play.

I compare this to Awakening and Fates, where instead of having voiced lines of dialogue for everything, they usually just rely on a handful of voice clips for every character to signify the tone of the their dialogue. And I think this is the BEST system, because it allows you, the reader, to organically construct the voice in your own head -- to your liking. You get just enough from the voice clip to infer how the character is speaking, which lets you assume their pitch, pace, etc.

Whereas in Three Houses, everything is voiced, so you HAVE to deal with however the actor decided to read a line of dialogue. And let's be real. The dialogue in this game is fucking clumsy. You have anime-style situations that might work well in a Japanese dialect but simply doesn't translate well to western audiences; characters go through over-the-top self-reflections, speaking in a way that no human naturally does; mentions of warfare attempt to be serious and deep, but stumble because the characters are made to be quirky and cute; on top of everything, some characters are just plain-out annoying to listen, especially those with repetitive traits or vocal gimmicks.

And those wouldn't be so bad on paper if you weren't having to hear a real human make their best attempt at vocalizing an awkward script out loud. The writing is just so... weird at times. If I could at least take control of the speech in my head, it wouldn't be SO bad... though, even then, there are just some parts of the writing that are genuinely so awkward -- I can't even tell what's going on sometimes. Because so many cutscenes are as low budget as just characters walking around a 2D background... there's so much that the voicework HAS to do in order to make a scene make sense lmao.

And there's no middle ground option for me, not really. I could just mute the dialogue I suppose, and purely read the text myself -- let me grab my microscope first so I can read this fucking ant text -- but then I miss out on hearing the tone of the character, which helps smooth out how I should be reading a line of text. That was the big advantage Awakening and Fates had, those voice clips. Guhh.

What I find myself doing a lot is just reading the text myself faster than the character speaks, and then cutting to the next text box whenever they hit an appropriate break in their speech................... maybe, maybe I'm just particular about voiced text lol.

And don't even get me started on Byleth.................. What were they thinking. They're a silent protagonist, but not specifically mute-- but kind of mute, it's canon that they don't ever say much... except they DO talk, and even have a bit of a personality that the player cant avoid expressing... but while even these dialogue choices are unvoiced, Byleth isn't COMPLETELY voiceless, because they turn into a lil chatterbox once they start being violent. It is SOOO fucking jarring to suddenly hear Byleth speak so chipper and calm... after fucking ANNIHILATING a human being with a lightning sword. Just a dumb direction imo to have designed Byleth, they shouldve gone hard one way or the other, either make Byleth a true silent protagonist with only Link-styled grunts at most, or make them a normal character that isn't pointlessly mute lol.

0 notes

buzzykrueger · 3 years

Note

hello! I been thinking lately, reading lot's of theories and fanfics of possible outcomes if Gon and Killua got to fight Pitou together. If Gon hadn't treated Killua like he did, would he have managed to convince him to fight Pitou alone? I'm not trying to justify anything, although Gon's reaction was very human and realistic (I had thought of the words he said to Killua, before he said them because it's a natural reaction) but I can't help but wonder if Gon was able to predict what would happen. if he and Killua fought together. We know that Gon has a very, very strong animal instinct and it is likely that he unconsciously realized that:

-Pitou was lying when he said he could heal Kite

-Killua could try to calm him down when Gon finally accepted the fact that Kite is dead, resulting in Gon not making the pact with his nen

-They would not be able to beat Pitou with their normal abilities.

Yes, Gon was willing to fight and give his life to save Kite the first time they found Pitou, but I'm sure Gon was not willing to fight with Killua this time (at least i think he knew, subconsciously) because Killua is the most important person to him. He can be a big distraction. this made me so worried! what would have happen if Killua voiced his concerns about their friendship while Gon was talking with Pitou? Pitou could've easily taken that chance to harm any of them, Gon WOULD be distracted because he cares about Killua.

I can't think of a better outcome, I think their personalities and their decisions allowed them to stay alive, and that means they can be together for longer! they only need a break to realize that. I'm so sorry for the long ask! i write a lot

I agree that Gon was willing to fight alone this time, for real. That's why he directly said that way they've met puppet Kite for the first time: "Killua... I'll take that bastard myself". He's perceptive and caring, he knows that, under normal circumstances, it has to be Killua to fight by his side - but not this time. But I don't know for sure how much of the whole encounter with Pitou sequence had a worrying about Killua's safety

Not that I disagree, not at all! But Pitou was 100% sure a trigger for Gon to snap, that's why he almost killed Morel just by imagining Pitou is there. He really got off his track, like he was bottling and antecipating this SO MUCH that seeing/imagining Pitou was enough to mess with his mind badly. He really wanted to redeem himself and prove he's capable of dealing with "his mess". If he weavers or get logical like Killua, he would lose all of that menacing aura and as well might look weak (in his mind). Things that are the core of Gon's trauma and most negative traits.

That said, I can't say Killua could have stopped Gon's vow! It was his ultimate snap, its hard to measure how capable Gon was of his surroundings at that moment.

But I'm pretty sure Killua wanted to go and feels guilty that he's "failed his job" (when he shouldn't be the one responsible for Gon's views on his own safety and control). Killua is the one who thinks he's a nuisance, and bottled his feelings because he thinks they are less important than Gon's and doesn't want them to distract him with such "unworthy matters".

And yes, Gon probably thought about everything like not letting anyone get hurt until the moment he started to lose his mind, I like how Togashi showed this with Gon both worried about Palm and worried about Killua before he meets Meleoron for the first time, so we get to compare his different states of mind and be sure that he would've ease Killua's insecurities if he knew. And losing Killua would be the only thing that could really shatter his body, soul and resolve, but he never stopped Killua from risking himself 'cause he believes in him as much Killua believes in Gon - thats why they were the only one for each other. After he wakes, he acknowledges how out of mind he had to be to shut Killua out that way, so I guess he would still fight alone but maybe would've expressed a lot better if he wasn't dealing with so much pain and grief (which was compared to a brain injury, so we know he didnt mean that way!!!)

OKAY ILL GET TO THE POINT sorry, so yes, I think he would've convinced Killua because Killua was already decided to respect and believe in Gon, like always, even if he was kinda pushing Gon forward out of fear of being rejected but then got scared of losing Gon when seeing him from the back. Confused, but pushing and pulling back, like a Yo-Yo.

I know i've rambled a lot and was late on your point but I hope I understood it right and answered properly!! I'm glad Killua found how useful and meaningful he was to everyone 'cause he was the goat at the Palace Invasion, the only person he couldn't save was the one he cared the most - because both he and Gon built walls around themselvs in order to keep focused and to protect each other from their feelings, 'cause they were confused and hurt about'em as well and didnt know how to cope.

ps: interesting the thing you said about Pitou lying, bc I didnt see that way! I've interpreted like Pitou so desperate to heal Komugi that they promised that but didn't know who Kite was or how bad they got him (they couldnt remember just by his names 'cause names werent a big deal for the ants). I think Pitou realized they couldnt heal Kite the moment they got there.

#ask

9 notes · View notes

incarnateirony · 4 years

Note

You didn't ship Destiel until S13!? That really took me by surprise! In that case, thank you for defending the ship even if you didn't ship it, that's really nice and your meta made it easier to deal with the antis. And welcome to the Destiel side of the force! :)

Yeah, several people -- @dotthings off the top of my head, I really don’t remember who else -- literally witnessed the screaming fall into the dumpster.

Again, I really don’t know if I still consider what I do ~shipping.~ I have no specific demands for how their relationship continues from here, I just acknowledge it within the work. The difference that hit in S13 was welcoming that content instead of guarding myself against it because we got slammed with several consecutive bookends that completed an entire romantic arc and punctuated it with a far more impacting mirror of an endgame that didn’t even have said romantic arc to begin with, in Swan Song, so like??? what am I supposed to do? Just ignore it? Act like I can’t understand what just happened in front of me?

To put some perspective, I’ve been running SPN games for... a while. My most recent one was on a discord server that’s niche, but my prior one was on a giant multifandom server. I covered for Cas to keep his power levels in check to the story balance without like, making the humans irrelevant. My Dean at the time was hardcore shipping trash. His name was Chris, he was a bisexual dude in Chile, psychologist, good dude. But like??? it deadass annoyed me? How up Cas’ ass his writing was? The shippers that came in actually kinda annoyed me with trying to matchmaker them in game??? Like. I saw it, but I guess it’s the old “That’s not what the show is about” (which unlike how fandom whips it around, doesn’t mean it can’t exist at all, it’s the obsessive tunnel visioned focus that pissed me off because it kept railroading scenes)

But despite that, during and before it, I was yeah, defending it. Just because I wasn’t an active ~shipper~ didn’t mean I was cool with people stomping on people for very reasonably seeing the stuff my last post mentioned. I just kinda kept myself from investing because I know this old media song and dance too well and didn’t expect it to break, say, S10 levels. And then 11 happened. And then 12. And then--

Because no matter what this fandom says, Castiel’s alien mystified staring at Dean, while great chemistry in old seasons, does not actually compare to things like frequent lunch dates, need and love yous, mixtapes, Eileen being Sam’s Cas in 15.09 and so on. In the actual, not-head-up-ass-about-old-rewritten-content-meta’ed-15-times-over often fused to really bad hot takes on what people call queer coding. But I could respect that, say, the ramifications of swapping Cas and Anna roles to keep Misha around while Julie was bouncing out and getting uncomfortable naturally landed Cas in the hero’s journey goddess role, ala princess Leia if you will, the distressing warrior nondamsel rebelling against the empire and whatnot. But that doesn’t start or end at star wars, that’s thousands of years of human writing.

So while yes, the show heavily stripped the actual content that would have traditionally structured it romantic, people like seeing that x their chemistry early on-- not crazy.

And I defended it for years /to my wife/ despite my server vexations. On this giant dozens-of-thousands-of-users multifandom server not connected to any core fandom spaces and hosting innumerable fandoms and walks of life, I was the oddball out -- me. As a nonshipper annoyed by the crowd, often having 20-30 people logged into my channel at a time playing everything from early Cain to Benny to TFW to Wayward to *throws dart at board* whatever, of the hundreds of names that drifted through the game in sum (including player rotations, OCs and audience that just came to watch/read like a fic), you know how many antis we had?

Three.

One was my wife. so removing her, two.

Do you know how many shippers there were?

Yeah neither do I, just, “pretty much all of them.” a few hung in “see it, don’t care, moderately annoyed” like I did. But this idea that the GA is a bunch of het-guzzling bozos that can’t do the same basic math all of you fucking did before you got here, just because some other dead-ass irrelevant ship composed entirely on leftfield interpretations to validate niche fandom ships -- that shit’s so far fucking divorced from goddamn reality.

As for my wife, yes. She was an anti. In fact long before I wandered into fandom social media (I think I actually jumped in around S12 bc I saw Dabb taking over and Bobo getting promoted and was interested in Yockey-- Yockey was the first person I tweeted at), I was on these servers, running these games, having these ARGUMENTS with my wife to be quite honest, because like, look, I get it, Destiel fandom can be weird and needy and over the top but they’re not crazy for what they see out of it. By Carver era it was classic subtext.

But she had followed Winbros for years not realizing it’s literally run by the real world becky and her BFFs that have tasteful POVs like “Misha Collins is cancer” “Dabb is a disease” and whatever else on their personals that proxy through their posts and motivations. She attended it on Facebook, which is THE goddamn conservative magafarm asshole platform and yeah, read a lot of shitty arguments. Yes, she picked up sayings like “it ruins the show”. Yes, she hated it. No, that didn’t mean I felt anyone deserved more than mild frustration for their behaviors at the time just because they were stuck in fanfic-shipping-fiction-over-romanticised-land and not canon-divergent-show-genre-complex-interpersonal-relationships fiction.

She, too, cracked about the same time I did. I was more receptive sure, I saw it more sure, but after a mix of addressing some personal problems, making an OC that completely changed how her perception filtered Dean and Castiel working together, whatever-- and yes, 12.19->13.5. The night of 13.5, the final shot, as the screen went dark, she stared over her phone and, with tonal distaste, said “Oh. So they’re going there.”

Yes, it’s that fucking obvious. No, she didn’t admit that’s what did her in. Not until the end of the season, when she admitted she had been bullshitting arguments since early season 13 because, literally, and I quote, “otherwise Min wins.” -- which, if that comes by way of my own wife, I can only stare into the fandom camera at other people that have turned this show into a decade long money sink and have been divorced from the actual canon path for like minimum 3 years, maybe 6, yelling about it being wrong all the time, etc. Because on the internet, people convince themselves they have ownership and power, that their opinion of what the piece should be overrides even the creators, et cetera. Yeah. There’s a lot of disingenuous horse shit.

TLDR my wife fell into the dumpster and, as the flag of the end of our weird spats, and a birthday present, I made her this, since she IDs as Dean (OLD vid, has hiccup issues newer ones don’t)

youtube

So, yup, dat me.

To this day I still don’t read fanfics or browse fanart or any of that. I’ve never cared about that face of the fandom. I’ve never cared about making up rando ships, I’ve never cared about exactly how any given relationship plays itself out, I just enjoy the ride and address it as it does indeed play out. Most shipping culture still pisses me the fuck off with its dialogue, as I’ve made very clear. But because I’m acknowledging the text instead of denying what keeps happening more centrally and critically every year on screen, I’d be called a shipper. Because I’m tired of watching people spew logic even most children could pick apart in an endless roundabout of negativity, because I have no tolerance for absolute horse shit and fandom whining so I just lay out counters to bad talking points, I’d be called a shipper.

But 13.5ish is when I finally let myself start emotionally receiving the content rather than barring it off in a distant wall of exhausted old gay that knows their media too well. Why? Because it already completed and went above and beyond every element of the original way they painted the original goddamn endgame and I guess because I won’t set unfair bars against queer relationships and set them at Extra Hard Difficulty, I’m a shipper. IDK. This fandom fucking exhausts me. Fandom culture in general exhausts me.

24 notes · View notes

toho-literature · 4 years

Text

Curiosities of Lotus Asia - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Ultra-Violet Light

Gensokyo is separated from the human world by a barrier. However, amongst the youkai there are those who can cross this barrier. On the border between the inside and outside, Rinnosuke, who was in need of fuel for his heater, was dealing with such a youkai, but... lured by a white box, his thoughts transcend the border!

Ultra-Violet Light

There was an ear-shattering clamor like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

Even though it was almost winter, the air was unpleasantly warm.

Even with my eyes closed, a flood of light pushed through.

Horrified, I couldn’t open my eyes.

The rich, colorful outdoor scenery was being blown away along with the falling red leaves, and the winter colors were gradually setting in...

The tree leaves, now red, that symbolize life are little by little becoming warped, but as far as human comprehension goes, it only means they are turning red. For most of these leaves, they won’t be able to endure their own transformation and will fall to the ground, but there are some that will become completely warped. Those leaves will transcend red, into a color that the human eyes can’t see. The inhabitants of Gensokyo call this color after the leaves have fallen “the winter color”. Humans then say that the scenery has lost its colors, but it’s possible that amongst the youkai there are some that can see these winter colors.

The interior of the shop is also painted in the colors of winter, but it’s not so bad compared to the outside. And that is thanks to human ingenuity.

I had readied one such product of human ingenuity, namely, a “heater.” However...

Knock, knock.

“Damn, it’s freezin’ outside! It’s so cold ya can’t even hibernate! ...Hey, s’cold in here, too. What happened to that heater ya always have?”

“Ah, Marisa? Well, I ran out of fuel for the heater.”

“Huh? Fuel?”

The heater I use was a discovery from the outside world, and its fuel is also of the outside world. That means that once I run out of fuel, it’s rather difficult to obtain more. I’ve always used the fuel that was in it when I found it, the fuel from other items I’ve gathered, or some other, similar liquid.

“Don’t matter how cold it is, what happened to properly greetin’ visitors?”

“I always greet customers, no matter how cold it is.”

“Ahh, if I’dda known your shop’d be like this, I wudda brought the Mini-Hakkero. Anyway, what’cha gonna do about the fuel?”

Marisa is weak against cold. The intense winter cold reduces her “sharpness” to one third its usual level.

“For some reason, almost no heaters appeared this year. That’s why I couldn’t get any fuel.”

“Maybe tha outside world’s winter isn’t cold anymore. Lucky devils!”

“I doubt there is any way their winters would be warm.”

“So what, then? Do ya plan to just freeze to death like this?”

“I think ‘hibernation’ would be more appropriate. But I don’t plan on doing either. However, it seems I’ve no other choice. I will find some way to obtain fuel before I truly become frozen.”

It’s not like there aren’t other ways to get fuel. Like going to the outside world, or getting it from some youkai. Realistically, it would be the second choice, but... that involves dealing with youkai...

“Want me to clue you in on somethin’, Kourin? There’s someone besides you with a whole bunch of stuff from the outside world. And I just so happen to be an acquaintance o’ hers. Just the other day, she was saying ‘One can speak with someone from far away if they are using this item.’ while using it to talk to her own shikigami... I was kinda suspicious about it being for real though. But I bet someone like her would at least have some fuel.”

“Is she a youkai?”

“Of course, she’s a youkai.”

Knock, knock, knock.

“Aaah, so cold, so cold! It seems it got all cold all of a sudden.”

“Ah, Reimu? Welcome.”

About now, people everywhere are making preparations for the winter season. Reimu too has certainly come to pick up some winter clothes. That’s why I’m treating her as a customer today.

“Hey, it’s cold in here too! What happened to that over-heating heater you always had?”

“Looks like it went for a long summer vacation to me.”

“Huh? You’re here too, Marisa?”

“Yeah, right in front o’ ya.”

Marisa explained to Reimu for me about me running out of fuel and how I could obtain some. Looks like Marisa really is weak against cold.

“This youkai you’re talking about... It’s Yukari, right?”

“Yup, she’s closest to the outside world. I bet that you’d know where to find her.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t even know where she lives. She just comes to the shrine when I don’t want her to, and of course, sometimes she doesn’t come when I don’t want her to.”

“...So, you never want her to come.”

“Anyway, Yukari won’t be showing up for a while.”

“Taking a wild guess?”

“It’s not like drawing ‘Great Fortune’ from the omikuji. Yukari never shows up in the winter.”

The verbal duel between Reimu and Marisa—which I could never know if it was for real or not—continued. Of course, I never actually said I was going to ask anything of this youkai. It’s just that, if I were to stay without the fuel like this, I’d really be in trouble.

“Come to think of it, if you scatter some fried tofu, she will certainly come visit. Yukari’s servant, that is.”

The next day, I tried putting some fried tofu on the storefront. I didn’t have any particular expectation; I just did it as a sort of charm.

The temperature has naturally dropped some more today. Seems it really is becoming winter. It’s very inconvenient not being able to use my heater as I always have, but it cannot be helped. Maybe I’ll have to think of another way of warming myself up.

I got this heater a few years ago. At first, I was considering putting it up for sale, but I changed my mind after trying to use it. I couldn’t possibly sell a tool so convenient. I mean, hard to use.

It could warm up every nook and cranny of the room, and it wouldn’t even feel like it was winter. And I didn’t have to bother with firewood or dirty chimneys, nor did I need a big installation like a fireplace. I even ended up not getting enough exercise because I didn’t have to move around that much. I soon started to think that it would be a shame to sell this item, or rather, like I couldn’t sell it.

However, it has been a long time since I really felt the winter. It’s cold. Have Gensokyo’s winters really been so cold...? Should I try digging up the magical heating furnace I made long ago...? Wait, I gave that to Marisa.

A knocking sound came from the shop’s entrance. Did it trap someone already?

It hasn’t been more than one or two hours since I put the fried tofu there. It must be someone that really likes fried tofu, to get caught so quickly.

...But there was no one inside.

“Ah, do you have a moment? I have some business for your master...”

I opened the door, but no one was there. And my fried tofu was gone without a trace too. Someone had certainly been there, but I didn’t think it would be someone so quick to disappear like that. Could it have been the work of a fox...?

It seems I was wrong to think I could get what I wanted without making an effort myself. Just preparing some fried tofu and putting it out is about the same amount of effort as doing nothing.

“Well, this way is a little cold... But if I do it like this, there’s no way my prey can escape the trap.”

“...So, how long have ya been standing in front of yer shop holding fried tofu? That’s not the kind of effort y’have to make.”

“Ah, Marisa. You were there?”

“Yup, right in front of you.”

“Oh, would you help me by luring in the youkai in my place?”

“And why’d anyone have to do something so stupid?”

“I’m not an expert in luring youkai, you see. I just don’t know how to do it...”

Marisa said, “Fine, fine... let’s just go inside for now.” and entered the shop.

Since I had the fried tofu in hand anyway, I left it by the entrance and went in after Marisa.

“Not even a dumb fox youkai would fall for that kinda trap.”

“Even so, a while ago it looked like it caught something.”

“Whatever. If you can’t use your heater, how can I come hang out at your place? I’ll go and search for Yukari.”

“Do you really think you can find her?”

“Even though Reimu said what she did yesterday, I’ve seen Yukari at the shrine sometimes. She’s gotta live around there, I’m sure.”

Marisa went out to search for Yukari in my place.

Do I... really want to meet this youkai? Even without the heater, I can find another way to warm up. After all, everyone else in Gensokyo is able to survive the weather without this useful device. And besides, even if I meet this youkai, there’s no guarantee that she can supply me with the fuel.

Didn’t I just want to know more about the outside world? By using an item connected to the outside world and by being interested in a youkai connected to it, couldn’t it be that I just want to get some more information?

I do deal with a lot of mysterious merchandise. And, being surrounded by all these items, I am always wondering about the outside world.

For instance, there’s this box, much smaller than a music box, and made of a white, inorganic material. My ability tells me that this box is an item that can store and play a lot of music. However, until now, it has never played any music for me. Just how do they use it in the outside world, and what kind of sounds does it play...?

I took the small, white metallic box, put it to my ear and closed my eyes. Maybe I could hear some sounds from the outside.

I got the impression that there was a conversation coming from outside. Maybe Marisa had already came back, or else a youkai had come by, lured by the fried tofu... No, I don’t think that’s it.

There was an ear-shattering clamor like nothing I’d ever heard before. I couldn’t believe such a painful sound could be made by any living creature.

I felt an unpleasant warm air all over my skin. It was as if the ambient temperature had changed all of a sudden. In a winter like this, I don’t think I would need heating.

Even with my eyes closed, a flood of light pushed through. What could be shining so brightly to do that? It’s a cold brightness, unlike sunlight or magic light.

Then I had a flash of intuition. Right now... I must be in the outside world. Riding on the outside items surrounding me, my thoughts had flown across the barrier.

But... I didn’t open my eyes. What if, after seeing the outside world, I couldn’t return to Gensokyo anymore? Humans that are spirited away almost never have a chance to come back again. On the other hand, if I open my eyes believing this to be only a visual and auditory illusion, my thoughts wouldn’t cross the border and would be back to Gensokyo, but I could miss my chance to see the outside world. Which choice would I prefer?

That’s right, wasn’t my goal to obtain fuel? I did have a clear objective. I didn’t want to get lost in the outside world, only to visit it to complete my task. I had to leave my thoughts at Kourindou—no, at Gensokyo—and let only my body cross over there. Yes, that’s a feat humans couldn’t pull off... but I’m sure I could.

For the sake of getting fuel for making my shop warm again, I slowly opened my eyes.

Hakurei Shrine. The shrine at the very edge of Gensokyo.

Marisa went there to look for Yukari. When leaving Kourindou, she noticed the fried tofu still in front of the shop and decided to take it with her, so it could be put to a more effective use.

“Heeey! Are ya here?”

“Hmm? I am, right in front of you.”

“Not you, Reimu. I mean Yukari.”

“What happened? And why are you holding that fried tofu?”

“You were the one who said she’d show up for fried tofu.”

“Well, her shikigami is a fox.”

“Exactly, and since Kourin obviously has no idea how to catch a youkai, I had no choice but to come here so you could catch one for me.”

“Oh, I see... Rather selfish of you, isn’t it? Anyway, how about we have tea while we talk?”

Marisa and Reimu drank tea while they argued about how to catch Yukari.

“Hm, Yukari... Maybe she’s already hibernating?”

“When ya say ‘hibernate’, that just means she never shows up anywhere, right? And we don’t have a clue where she lives. What if she’s actually gone vacationin’ in the southern islands?”

“That may be. By the way... Where are those southern islands?”

“We don’t hafta go that far. But there really isn’t any way to call her?”

“I guess there’s only one other way. But if I do that, she’ll get angry...”

“So there is a way?”

“Well, there is... But if I do it, she’ll show up only to tell me that it’s dangerous and I should stop.”

“But she’ll show up, and that’s all that matters, right?”

To these girls, words like “dangerous” are hardly a deterrent.

“But it means weakening Gensokyo’s border. What if the ones who are close to the outside world get sucked into it?”

There was a flood of light. It was a very bright, cold light. It was so bright I could hardly see. And there were some voices speaking in what didn’t seem to be Japanese. The hot, foul air was making my head hurt. So this is the outside world... I had seen it in things like books that drifted in, but I never imagined it would be so noisy and unpleasant.

I had to calm down and look for some fuel, and then I should calmly look for a way to go back to Gensokyo.

...My eyes were becoming accustomed to the light. This archway here was something I recognized... Is this a shrine? And there are a great number of people here too...

“Oh, this will not do! You ended up all the way here... You shouldn’t come here, because you are not human, you see?”

“!?”

The cacophony suddenly stopped. The light also went away, and I had the white box in my hand again. The surroundings were gloomy, but somehow I could see... it was the usual interior of Kourindou.

It looked like I had just fallen asleep for a little while. Since it was so dim, I lit a small lamp and put the white box back on the shelf.

If I just keep falling asleep like this, there was no way I could achieve my goal. I was curious if the fried tofu in front of the store had lured any youkai, so I opened the front door. Unfortunately, all that had happened was that the fried tofu had been taken.

“Then it was a fox’s doing, after all?”

I could see the shapes of Marisa and Reimu in the distance. And of yet another girl, who seemed to be lecturing them as they walked. Quite an unusual scene.

“Why, nice to meet you. Please call me Yukari Yakumo. Are you the person who wanted to meet me?”

The youkai in front of me, wearing gaudy clothes and carrying a gaudy parasol, had the sharp eyes characteristic of someone who isn’t human. And she had an ominous smile.

“Ahh, greetings. I was just wanting to meet you for a bit of a business proposal…”

I guided Yukari inside the shop and explained the circumstances that had led to me calling her, like the fuel for the heater.

“Is it electric? Or kerosene? Or maybe even nitroglycerin? Well, whatever the case, it’s a simple request. I have an unending supply of any of those... and we should help each other in times of need, after all.”

She wore a wide smile. I knew it was definitely ominous.

“As expected from a youkai.”

“As expected from me.”

Having said that, Yukari started to walk around the store, her long skirt fluttering silently.

“This shop of yours... It only has articles that are quite out of fashion. The latest trend, you see, is in portable objects. Portable things to speak with people far away, or portable devices that display the records of other people on a small screen...”

“We don’t particularly care about fashion here. I just deal with items that I like.”

“Ah, this white box... This is a fashionable item.”

“Oh, that... That is supposed to carry a lot of music, but I have yet to understand how to use it.”

I have the ability to know the name and the use of an unknown item just by looking at something. However, this ability doesn’t tell me how to use it.

“If you put this to your ear, you will have odd visions like the ones you had earlier. That’s because you are not a human.”

Again, the wide, ominous smile.

“Hey, turn that heater on already! It’s freezing.”

“Aren’t you a little impatient, Marisa? I have barely begun to speak to the lady.”

“Oh, I already turned it on. See, it’s full of fuel, is it not?”

Indeed, it was now completely filled.

“When did... But I was here the whole time. How in the world did you do that?”

“We should help each other in times of need.”

With that, Yukari stuffed the white box she was holding into her clothes. I was quickly regretting having met this youkai girl.

#touhou cola #curiosities of lotus asia #touhou #touhou project #project shrine maiden

2 notes · View notes

fallstreakfeathers · 4 years

Text

Don’t Look Down, Chapter 2, Rating: T ~4100 words Warnings: none https://archiveofourown.org/works/23956846/chapters/60761470

If Kita thought the brightness of the moon was overbearing inside the extravagant building, it was nothing compared to being in its direct path. She squinted against the pale beams as she stepped out of the doorway after the white haired demon. His pace was fast, as if he was trying to lose her, and she had to take two or three steps for his every one. She could hear him grumbling lowly about something, but couldn’t be bothered to listen closer. In fact, she wished he’d just close his stupid, too-loud mouth. The soft calls of some kind of animal hidden in the treeline caught her attention and she slowed herself to peer through the ever looming darkness, not that it was overly difficult with the moon hanging in the sky like some kind of sentinel. The green leaves swayed lightly in the breeze. The wind sent small ripples through the field of grass. It was only then that she noticed the scent of living plantlife. A group of small creatures fluttered from the branches, startled by the couple trespassing below them. She blinked slowly. Birds? There was not a trace of sulfur, fire, or death on the air. She stepped over a group of small blue flowers she couldn’t identify. The spotted leaves were jagged, with some sort of liquid oozing from the stems. “Hey, human! What’re ya staring at? Ya never seen flowers before? Pick up the pace!”

Kita said nothing as she placed her footsteps a bit faster. She kept her head down, abandoning her plan to run as light from the lamps that lined the streets glowed bright against the wet pavement. “Can’t believe those jerks left me to babysit you alone.” There’s no way she’d get out of here without knowing where she was going. Did she really expect things to be that easy? Of course not, only an idiot would think that. I’m an idiot. She felt like a prisoner being escorted to her own execution, and the feeling was only made stronger as she caught the curious and hungry eyes of various demons on the streets. Those in the lights of the street appeared human, or mostly so, but a few hid in the shadows and their forms shifted and flittered as they stared. One of these feral creatures approached the group, prowling like some kind of cat, only to scamper away when Mammon growled a guttural, throaty sound. Kita cringed. The short display almost reminded her of those silly groups of kids in her school years who pretended to be dogs or sometimes horses. Of course, she was the local velociraptor in those days, and occasionally a Tyrannosaur. The only difference was the very real threat behind the noise bubbling from the demon’s chest. “You were full of piss n’ vinegar earlier, what’s with the silence?” She released a heavy breath as she continued to pretend he didn’t exist. Earlier she was terrified, now she was just exhausted. If she stayed quiet and kept her head down, if she didn’t make eye contact, then everything would be fine. He’d eventually leave her alone. That’s how it always was. She sneered at the demon that glanced at her ever-so-often and the not-so-quite grumbling that traveled back to her on the wind as they stopped in front of a swooping steel gate with a dry “we’re here.” Kita squinted at the towering building behind it. The mansion almost appeared to have multiple shacks stacked on top of it, along with castle-like spires. Beside it stood a tall, black tree with branches that reached towards the moon. The whole area looked like something out of an old vampire movie. So… demons really like over-the-top crap? Mammon placed his hands on the gate, pushing it open. It swung wide with a creak. “I don’t believe this,” he muttered, “of all the rotten, unfair luck.” She rolled her eyes while he continued to complain with his hands on his hips. “Why do I have to look after some stupid human? It’s insulting! And just so we’re clear, it’s not like I can’t say no to Lucifer, alright!?” Kita sighed, remembering once more that she not only had to survive the year in an entirely different world, but also was going to have to deal with 7 demon lords who, if they were consistent, were all over-dramatic assholes. What did she do to anger God enough that he’d allow this sort of misfortune? “I only agreed to babysit you because…” he babbled “... well. Um, you know...uh…” “I don’t care,” she whispered wearily.

“What?” the demon shouted, “oh! Now you’re really in for it you stupid… although I’m sorta surprised you’ve got the guts to talk to me like that. You should be scared.” What about her behavior implied that she wasn’t? Did she really come off as if she were delighted to be in his presence? “I mean, I’m a demon. Even a human would get that, right?”

She pushed past him onto the stone path that led to the doorsteps of the mansion What makes you any more dangerous than literally anything I could be killed by in my own world? “You’re seriously weird,” he shook his head as he pushed the door open, “whatever, come on then.” Kita glanced around the heavily decorated hallway as the door clicked shut behind her. The high walls were patterned with purple and silver paper. A long plush carpet led from the front entrance and under a wooden archway into another room. A cheery fireplace could be seen at the far end of the room, glinting off the polished wood floors and filling the area with a sweet, smoky scent. Two dragon-like gargoyles stood guard at the front of the hall, with a marble staircase winding behind them both, up into another hall. All in all, the two rooms alone looked like they cost more than she’d ever make in her lifetime. Kita felt even more out of place than she had on the Devildom streets. “This is the House of Lamentation,” Mammon said. He waved vaguely at the space around them, “it’s one of the dorms here at R.A.D.” Yes. It wasn’t like the prince hadn’t clarified that at least four times. “Well, not just one of the dorms. It’s the dorm reserved for student council members.” Kita simply nodded. The sooner he finished talking, the sooner she’d be taken to her room and then (hopefully) left alone. “The others take every opportunity to insult me,” he prattled, as he led her through the hall “callin’ me scum and money-grubber and shit like that… But I’m an officer on the student council too! The elite of the elite. Top of the social pyramid.” He turned to her. “In other words, I’m a big shot! A real big shot! Even regular big shots are impressed by what a big shot I am!” Big ego is more like it. “By the way, Diavolo is even more of a big shot. He’s so important he’s got his own castle.” “I figured he would...you all call him ‘prince’.” If I have to hear the words ‘big shot’ one more time, I’m finding a thesaurus and throwing it at his stupid face. “Right… anyway, the long and short of it is that us seven brothers live here together and-...hey, what's with that expression? If you’ve got somethin’ to say, you’d best do it now.” Kita blinked. Was she making weird looks? “Sorry,” she muttered, “you all call each other ‘brothers’ but you look nothing like each other.”

“That’s really what you’re wonderin’ about? We aren’t brothers in the human sense,” he shrugged, “it’s more like we share a title, we’ve fought together, live together, yadda yadda, ya get it?” “Sure.” “Seriously, you got a personality thing or somethin’?”

Does he ever shut up?

“Doesn’t matter, “ he continued, “I’m gonna give you a piece of advice, and you’d better listen up 'cause I won’t repeat myself.”

She spotted movement from the corner of her eye as the demon spoke, and she glanced to the staircase where another demon stalked down the marble steps. His eyes burned an angry yellow-orange that peeked out from under the light purple fringes of his hair. He was clearly taller than her. Of course he was. Were demons just naturally this tall? “If you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re about to be attacked by a demon, you need to either run or just die.” What? Kita gawked at him in disbelief. The yellow-eyed demon reached the bottom step, glaring as he continued to move behind Mammon. “Are you serious?!” “Yes.” Kita frowned and then snorted. “So just die, then?” “Actually, I vote for you to die, Mammon!”

“Ah! Levi!” the demon yelped, “didn’t see ya there. I...Uhh...L-Listen up here, human! This here is Leviathan, Avatar of Envy. He’s the third oldest of us brothers.” The demon grinned brightly as he spoke, “his name’s sorta hard to say, so you can just call him Levi!” “Uh...no thanks,” Kita deadpanned. Nicknames were reserved for friends. Nicknames meant something. They were special, and not to be given to people who didn’t want to be around her in the first place. She refused to call anyone who wasn’t at least a friend anything short of their name. Besides, ‘Leviathan’ really wasn’t that difficult to pronounce. “Suit yourself.” “Mammon, give me back my money,” Leviathan growled, “then go crawl in a hole and die!” Woah. That was...unnecessary. Kita’s eyebrows scrunched as he flung insults at the white haired demon. “I’ll get it to you, I already told ya. I just need more time,” Mammon shrugged. “More time?! You’ve been telling me you need ‘more time’ for the last two hundred years!” She nearly choked on her spit. Two hundred years? These people were at least two hundred years old? “Hey, no! It’s been two hundred and sixty,” Mammon corrected, “get it right.” This got a small, amused laugh out of her and she quickly covered her mouth as the two demons turned their attention to her. For creatures supposedly hundreds of years old, they sure acted like children. Leviathan shook his head as he grumbled. “Seriously, Mammon, you’re-” “I’m what?” he snapped, “scum? Is that what you’re gonna say?” “You’re a lowlife and a waste of space,” the Avatar of Envy finished with a snarl. Alright, now I just feel kinda bad for him. Kita winced. Nobody should have to deal with being spoken to like that, especially by their own family… brother-in-arms? Sharer of titles? Whatever. “I couldn’t pay you back anyway, I don’t have the money.” “So you’re saying you refuse to pay me back?” “You lookin’ for a fight? Is that it?!” Oh my God. I’m gonna have to listen to this for an entire year. Mammon suddenly turned to Kita again. “Hey, human. Ya know how I told you what to do when a demon attacks? You’re about to witness that for real so…” he paused for a moment, “time for you to die, ‘cause if it’s gonna be you or me, it ain’t gonna be me!” “Wait,” Leviathan said, “ I thought you said-” Mammon smirked at her, and almost as fast as she could blink, he disappeared up the stairs. “-that asshole! He ran off!” Leviathan shook his head in disappointment. “You get what happened, right? He used you as a sacrifice.” “Somehow, that does not surprise me,” Kita snorted. “I’ll admit that Mammon is one of the scummiest scumbags you’ll ever meet,” the demon said, “a total lowlife, but that was still pretty dumb of you for letting him use you like that, I mean this is exactly why humans are-” For the love of all that is holy...unholy...do they all talk this much? “Wait!” he exclaimed, “ you’re human! That gives me an idea.” Why did she feel like this was a bad thing? “Can it wait until tomorrow?” she asked gingerly. “Nope. You’re coming with me!” Kita yelped as his hand suddenly gripped her sleeve and he began dragging her up the stairs with him. “Let go,” she barked, pushing her heels into the floor in an attempt to force him to stop. “Quiet!” he hissed as he halted in front of a door. He glanced around nervously before tugging her inside and closing the door. She twisted around, preparing a few choice words regarding her treatment before stopping with her mouth open like a fish out of water. The room she’d been so unceremoniously dragged into was like something out of her wildest dreams. Light shined through what looked like it might be a pool in the ceiling, sending rippled reflections across the tiled floor. Luminescent jellyfish hung vertically, leading down to a porcelain tub with what appeared to be a body pillow laying in it. An enormous aquarium had been slotted into the wall. Coral and various plants poked out of the sandy bottom, and it seemed silly that the only occupant of a tank with such magnitude was a small goldfish.

That was to say nothing of the enormous amount of manga and various figurines placed around the room. In the corner sat what had to be the most computers she’d ever seen in a single house. It... It was pretty badass, she had to admit.

“This is your bedroom?” she asked incredulously. “Uh.. Yeah.” “It’s beautiful.” Leviathan nodded once. “You want to know why I looked around to see if anyone was looking before I closed the door?” “Not particularly but I can take a few guesses.” “Well why do you think I did it? Not that it isn’t totally obvious. Imagine what would happen if someone saw me invite you into my room!” he rambled, “a human who doesn’t even look like an otaku! A normie! Do you know what people would say?” Oh no, he’s one of those kinds. “I don’t honestly care, sorry.” “You should! It’d be insane!” Kita murmured a snide comment to herself as she wandered over to the tall bookshelf by the door. She peered curiously at the unfamiliar, often ridiculously long titles before a thick book with black leather and silver trim caught her attention. “What, human? What are you looking at?” Kita pointed at the book, making sure she didn’t touch it. “Oh, that's The Tale of the Seven Lords! Are you a fan of that too?” He sounded almost...excited? “Not at the moment. I don’t know that we even have it in the human world,” she apologized. “What’s it about?” She must’ve asked something right if the way the demon’s eyes lit up were any indication. “You don’t know TSL? And you call yourself a human?!” “Actually, I call myself ‘Kita’,” she snarked, “you lot seem to be the ones set on the ‘human’ bit.” “Listen, just the fact that you don’t know TSL alone is proof that you’ve been wasting your life!” “Do enlighten me on what I’ve missed,” she snorted. There was something about this one that made him slightly easier to talk to than the others she’d met so far- not that she could put a finger on what it was.

“The Tale of the Seven Lords, TSL, is a series of fantasy novels written by Cristopher Peugeot. It’s a heroic spanning 138 volumes, and the most widely read fantasy series in the world,” he began.

On, and on, and on some more the demon rambled about the book. Books. 138 of them? That was crazy. Do all demons talk this much? Honestly, that’d be true Hell, right there. Skip the burning and rending, just keep talking. Kita listened, not out of any particular interest so much as the excitement in the Avatars voice. She knew what it was like to try to talk to someone about something she liked, only to be ignored or shoved off. She wouldn’t be that person, even to a stranger who’d literally dragged her sorry ass up a flight of stairs. Besides, his energy was somewhat contagious, even if he’d been speaking for at least twenty minutes. “There’s that one really awesome moment where the two of them realize they both like and respect each other, and they high-five! I just love that part,” he jabbered, “I wish I could have a moment like that.” “I’m sure you will,” Kita said. “Wait, you’re still listening to me?” Leviathan gawked. Kita nodded. “Most people’s eyes would’ve glazed over by now…” he said, “uh...oh! Check it out,” he pointed to the aquarium. “See that goldfish there? His name’s Henry. I love TSL so much that I couldn’t help naming him after the main character. I can’t high-five a goldfish though.” “Well you can’t with that attitude,” Kita snickered.

Leviathan frowned, suddenly sullen. “You humans are so lucky,” he said, “you’ve got subscription services that let you watch any anime you want to, you can go to Akihabara whenever you want…” Aki-what? Ah, who cares. “Why do only you guys get to experience the good stuff? I mean humans’ whole concept of pleasure originally came from us demons, you know,” he whined,” so why can’t we take a little of that back now? I want to go to a Japanese maid cafe too, y’know? I want to cosplay as Henry, or go stand in the center of Akihabara, or maybe under that one building in Tokyo that’s shaped like upside-down triangles. Once I’m there, I want to perform Henry’s super powerful signature finishing move for all to see and say the incantation that goes with it!” Is he...Is he breathing? How is he saying all that in one breath?!

“Actually, you know what? I want to be Henry,” he finished.

“Screw normies,” Kita yawned, suddenly aware yet again that she’d been kept up far later than she thought was humane. Of course, these guys were demons. What was she expecting? “Yeah! Screw ‘em!”

The demon frowned again as he spoke. “Alright, enough. This is starting to depress me. I didn’t bring you here to tell you about TSL.” “I was wondering when that would be addressed,” Kita muttered quietly. “I don’t think there’s any harm in coming out and saying what you already know is true: Mammon is a complete, and utter scumbag.” “Got it.” Really, it didn't seem like demons had much of a vocabulary. Not that she had a great one either, but still. “It’s very important that you understand this, so I’ll say it one more time.” “No need, I assure you I understand perfectly. Just… get to the point,” she grumbled, “why am I in here?” “I lent that scumbag money and now I want it back, but being the scumbag that he is, he won’t do it.” “What do you expect me to do about it?” Kita asked, quickly losing patience. She was hungry, she was tired, she was stressed, and a hundred other things already. She wasn’t fond of the idea of spending another hour in the room. “You should probably know how Mammon and I first became enemies.” “I… No. Just get to the point, please,” she sighed. “Fine. As third born, I don’t have a chance to get my money back on my own,” he explained, “but if, say, a human made a pact with Mamon and bound him to their service…” he gave her a pointed look.

“No.” “What? Why not? He’d have to do whatever you told him!” “Not interested.”

“Is it the whole ‘selling your soul’ bit? That’s not always necessary, you know!” Leviathan argued, “it depends on what’s in the pact.” “Not. Interested.” “No, no, just listen, I’ll tell you how to negotiate with Mammon!” Oh, for the love of...

“It’d be useful for you to have him as your servant,” he assured, “despite how awful he is, he’s still very powerful! You’re probably worried being down here in the Devildom, so it’s not like it’s a bad deal for you. Don’t you agree?” “What makes you think I’d even be able to control him? I’m sure pacts aren’t as cut-and-dry as you’re trying to make them sound,” she disagreed. “You’ll do fine.” Sure I would, Kita snorted. She had the authoritative presence of a sea snail. If she couldn’t get other humans to listen to her, what hope did she have of commanding a demon? Much less a demon lord? She wasn’t sure she wanted that sort of power over another being anyway, no matter how obnoxious they were. “Listen,” Kita drawled as she rubbed her eyes, “I’ve had a very long, exhausting, somewhat upsetting day. If you could be so kind as to show me to wherever I’ll be holed up while I’m stuck here, I’ll give you an answer tomorrow when I’ve had time to think and maybe do a little research on what exactly a pact entails because there’s no way in Heaven or Hell that I’ll be doing anything like that until I know precisely how it all works.” Oh dear lord, was Leviathan’s rambling rubbing off on her? Did she take a breath?

“It’s only 3pm,” the demon stated.

“It’s dark.” “We don’t have a sunrise here,” Leviathan explained. What’s shining off the moon, then? Kita wanted to ask.

She shook her head. It didn’t really matter. “Whatever. I’m still going to bed,” she said,” you can show me to my room or I'll just use the tub.” With a groan and something muttered about “normies”, Leviathan opened the door, motioning her to follow him down the hall. They stopped at the very last door, closest to the window that hung at the end of the corridor. “There’s your room,” Leviathan muttered before walking past her. He disappeared around the corner. Kita exhaled wearily, slowly opening the creaky door. Her shoulders went slack. By the head and foot of the bed stood two trees that stretched themselves against the roof of the room. Lichen hung off the gnarled bark. Some kind of viney plant that looked suspiciously like ivy creeped its way across the stone walls and behind the twirling, curled wooden bedframe. Colorful lanterns hung from the branches, providing light for the room. A smooth table had been placed just behind one of the trees and a group of intricate chairs sat underneath it. Beyond the table, a dresser, as ornate as everything else, held a variety of items on top. A brass skull lay next to a teapot. Hot tea does sound nice right about now. Maybe peppermint...or lavender. Beside the teapot, a group of various books had been stacked along with a small, empty picture frame. Next stood a cabinet that appeared to have been made from a coffin. More books lined one of the shelves, and the top shelf had a small red and gold container. Beside it stood a small horse figurine that reared angrily, and a potted plant rested next to it. In the very center of the room hung a twisted rust-colored chandelier. Open flamed candles burned off the twigs branching from the frame. Is that safe with all the wood here? Two decorated rugs crossed each other over the old and worn flooring. Aside from the color of the pillows and sheets, various shades of light pinks, the room was right up her alley. Kita ran a hand over the silky coverings on the bed, wanting nothing more than to fall face-first into the cloudlike softness of the pillows lined against the headboard. But that’s where they’d expect to find her. That’s where these strangers would expect to find her, defenseless, vulnerable as she rested. Kita mumbled to herself as she searched for somewhere else in the room to sleep. Under the table was a no-go. She wouldn’t fit under the bed, and between the mattress wouldn’t work either. She ruffled through the plant at the edge of the bed, frowning at the lack of space between its branches and the wall. It left a small, cramped crawl space that she might’ve been able to fit into if she bothered to break a few of the twigs. She’d keep it in mind. Kita glanced around the room anxiously. A large air vent protruded out near the top of the wall. There was no way she’d be able to get to that. Finally, her sight landed on the large tree by the headboard of the bed. She curled her hand into the bark, pulling to test its durability. When it held, she began hoisting herself up the ivy and lichen, grunting with the effort as she reached the first branches. She continued climbing into the leaves until they covered her completely, settling flat on a large limb and clutching the main body of the tree with an exhausted sigh. I hope this thing doesn’t have spiders or something.

Shaking her head, she closed her eyes and waited for sleep to take her.

#obey me #obey me fanfic #dont look down #Don't Look Down #arkwrites #obey me leviathan #obey me mammon #obey me kita

10 notes · View notes

kuriboo · 4 years

Text

so here we are, y’all. i’ve finally reached the end of the zexal anime, and, uh, it sure was a ride. a ride from start to finish. i’m gonna write out some final thoughts, if i end up forgetting something i might make another post of this, but, don’t count on it. but, before anything, i do intend to read the zexal manga at some point as well, and when i do, you might see me post some funny or interesting screenshots in this tag too? probably not a lot, i don’t know, i’ve never read the zexal manga either. just be aware that the zexal liveblog might not actually be over.

i know people like to talk in terms of zexal i and zexal ii, but hulu doesn’t split up zexal like that, it’s actually in three seasons? i think i generally know what people are referring to with zexal i and zexal ii(?), but i’m genuinely not sure and the terms feel super weird to me anyway, but just to be safe, i’ll refer to things as the first half and the second half. the first half ends with the duel against dr faker and yuma vs kite, part 2 picks up with...whatever the hell happened after the yuma vs kite duel, which certainly wasn’t a continuation of kite’s character arc, but we won’t worry about that.

with that, uh, let’s go high-five the sky

before starting zexal: i’d pretty much watched all the other yugioh series, and was keeping up with vrains as much as i could as it aired. i saw one episode once, before i started watching the whole thing, that aired on some channel we normally don’t get but got a like free preview weekend of it or something. the episode i saw was the episode where yuma meets the guy who makes the statues, i think. whatever it was, the impression i got from what i saw was: this yugioh protagonist is really bad at card games, whines a lot, and his voice kinda grates on me, and also this protagonist is younger than i was at the time, which tended to lead to more annoying behavior. this kid didn’t want to shut up, man. couldn’t sit through the whole thing

so, this was how i rated zexal against the other yugioh series, keeping in mind that this is a rating of series, and not yugioh protagonists, and noting that the members of the A tier are not in any sort of order and all members have equal ratings:

(sevens is unrated because it’s just barely started.)

(there’s not really much of anything that could top gx, tbh, because gx got me through the hardest time, the hardest year, of my life, and i don’t know where i’d be without it. gx helped save 17 year old me from myself)

now, i’ve finished zexal. i’ve watched every single episode of zexal. it’s important to note that i watched the dub of duel monsters, the dubs of gx and 5ds along with the sub of their non-dubbed final seasons, the dub of zexal, the sub of arc v alongside a stretch of dubbed episodes towards the end, and the sub of vrains along with the dub of the first 20 episodes. i’m aware zexal’s sub was better than the dub, but i generally prefer dubs when possible and also i’m largely comparing it against every other yugioh dub. it’s not an unfair comparison.

so, here is how i now rate zexal against the other yugioh series, keeping in mind the members of the A tier aren’t in any sort of order:

you may have noticed this is the same as the previous rating. that’s correct. zexal was my least favorite yugioh series before i began watching it, and now that i’ve finished, it’s still my least favorite yugioh series. i know for a lot of people, zexal was their favorite yugioh series, but i simply can’t vibe with that. i’m sorry. i’m also aware the dub of zexal is a lot worse than the original. that doesn’t change the fact that i’m mostly rating dubs against each other here (haven’t seen enough of the arc v dub to account for that, but every other series i’m strongly thinking about the dubs). also, i’ll still give zexal credit for that. i’ll excuse some of its bad points as bad dub writing. some.

this chart, though, doesn’t paint a complete picture of how my opinion of zexal has changed. because it has. i like zexal a lot more now than i did before i started really watching it.

we’ll address good points first, so if anyone wants to bail for the bad points to avoid any sort of hurt feelings or anything like that, they can while still reading good stuff. again, i know a lot of yugioh fans’ favorite yugioh series is zexal, and my opinions are directly opposed to that, and again, i’m sorry.

there was some pretty cool new cards in this one, particularly in the numbers side of things. shark drake was cool. i liked all of the arclights’ numbers; honestly, how could i not love dyson sphere or number 69? i’ve forgotten a lot of it by now but there was some cool stuff especially in the first part.

the two best characters in this series, in terms of both writing and personality, were easily astral and shark. astral’s probably my number one, shark’s probably my number two.

astral was definitely great. his observations he kept making about humanity based on yuma was definitely one of the funnier things in the series, and the last duel of the series ending with astral’s last observation was poetic. he talked smack about yuma a lot, and a lot of the time it was pretty well deserved, and that was very cathartic and very good humor. his whole arc where he learns to trust yuma in part 1 and they truly become partners, then yuma meets vector who convinces yuma to keep pretty big secrets from astral, then astral realizes yuma’s been keeping these big secrets from him which is something astral never thought would happen by that point, and astral almost loses himself in that darkness of feeling betrayed and angry and sad, that was all really really good. yuma and astral not not immediately going back to loyal trusting partners and needing time before astral could truly trust yuma again also felt natural and real and i enjoyed it a lot. i like astral’s hairstyle, i like his dub censored ass, i like his whole ghost-like vibe. i don’t appreciate that astral is a nudist, even among the other residents of astral world who all wear actual clothes. i kind of wish astral would wear clothes but i would still want his ass to be censored because it’s hilarious. there is a lot i like about astral. i also just think he’s neat. my easy favorite. cannot go wrong with snarky glowy alien boy.

shark surprised me. i didn’t like him for a fair amount of part 1. he hurt yuma’s feelings a lot and i hated that. but when he started accepting yuma’s repeated attempts at friendship and turned around, i liked him a lot. he’s got purple hair, he plays a guitar (i think electric guitar? might’ve been electric bass), and his development was super interesting. i figured he had some kind of shitty home life that yuma would help him cope with using the power of friendship, but it was quite a bit more than that. he got disqualified from a tournament he desperately wanted to win because of a trick his opponent pulled, eventually evened out and became a pretty cool chill dude, and then it turned out he was like the head emperor of an alien planet that astral had set out to destroy?? he was the leader of a group of people and then blamed himself for their destruction?? he felt torn between his guilt/duty to his people and the new friendships he’d made with yuma and astral?? and he ended up deciding to go back to his alien emperor ways even though it pitted him against his friends which was hard but he had to make it up for the people he’d lost before?? but then he learned don thousand had been manipulating for a long long time and then faced against don thousand at yuma’s side een though he chose to turn his back on that friendship?? he didn’t let some fanfic choose his life for him??? he had shark drake??? there’s a lot of cool shit about shark and he’s got a lot of interesting shit going for him. i love a character that gets me to analyze what’s going on in their mind as they do certain things or make certain choices. i also love me a character who ends up getting/remembering magical powers. sorry shark astral’s in first but i still think shark’s neat too.

byron arclight!!! byron arclight! he’s not on the same level as astral and shark, but mAN i love byron arclight. he was constantly roasting everyone when he appeared and had some of the funniest dialogue in the entire series. anyone he looked at he’d be like “look aliens made me physically look like a child, my sons are taller and look older than me now, i couldn’t possibly give a shit about whatever your deal is.” he got super strong magic powers and used them to kidnap a small child. he became evil and told his sons to be evil with him because he was mad at dr faker, but they all kinda sucked at being evil and decided to be good guys instead by part 2. it’s honestly a shame the arclights didn’t appear in the series, especially part 2 (and especially byron, i’m p sure he appeared the least of the arclights) because i like them all actually. that episode where trey erased yuma’s like most important memories... dyson sphere... quattro telling off shark for dueling poorly while shark was sufferering the effects of POISON... what absolute legends. also byron had number 69.

yuma’s pretty cool, ended up being a more compelling character than i thought he would be. he’s a sweet kid, he’s annoyed initially by astral’s presence but he still helps astral with his quest to gather all the numbers anyway and he likes astral the more they hang out. that episode where yuma loses his memories because of trey really showed yuma’s pre-series development pretty well. yuma talks a lot and shouts the same few catchphrases a lot and it can get annoying, but there’s a lot more to yuma then that. at his core, he’s actually a pretty scared and lonely kid who doesn’t believe in himself, he looks at his current situation and goes “there’s no way i can win this duel there’s no point i might as well quit”. he’s not inherently upbeat and positive and self-confident like he usually appears. “feel the flow” is his source of strength, it’s what gets him going, gets him to believe in himself and inspires bravery in him. he’s actually one of the strongest people in the show for it, to be honest. his friends are so important to him, he cares about them so much and would do anything for them, even when his friends aren’t acting so friendly to him. even when his friends want conflicting things he tries his best to appease both sides. he becomes a voice of reason a lot in part 2, honestly. he kept voicing my thoughts and things i said throughout the season, which at times was really cathartic honestly. he kept challenging the status quo. why do we HAVE to do this, why can’t we find a compromise for THAT. he’s a good kid. i’m adopting him.

kite in part 1 is a cool Strong Opposition To The Number Hunt guy. he needs a glasses prescription but refuses to do anything about it and dies on the moon for it apparently, which i think is pretty funny of him. since he’s not astral he has to number hunt differently and the way he does it hurts people, but he’s only doing it because if he has all the numbers, then there might be a way to help his little brother who is suffering some big shit. his life literally revolves around his little brother who wants kite to just live his life for himself and be happy and have fun, to which kite replies “i don’t know how to do any of that”. relatable. eventually he realizes his dad is a dick. and beats him up until his dad says okay i’ll be good now. i won’t throw trash at astral world anymore i promise. kite’s hear to kick ass and take names and he runs out of names before he runs out of ass. but he gets new names by the time he runs out of ass so it’s okay. kite does some pretty fun stuff in part 1 and actually gives astral a run for his money which doesn’t happen often in part 1 so that’s pretty fun. also. his name is kite and his brother’s name is heart. dr faker is the worst at names but i’d expect that from someone who’s name is faker. it’s pretty funny, honestly

dumon is great. he’s a nice guy who is always trying to help out his friends. him first meeting shark and them pretty much despising each other and then realizing hmm maybe that other guy isn’t as obnoxious as i thought all before shark even realizes he’s nasch and nasch and dumon are like best friends? top-tier, def funny. after like that first meeting though dumon always came off as a nice guy. i like dumon. also, his dub voice actor voices dub yusaku and i was assigned yusaku by the government so i really appreciate that. he does a good job as yusaku. and honestly a good job at dumon, too. dumon is one of the best voices in the whole show. he’s great. i just think he’s neat

rio!!!! once rio wakes up, she’s great. you can tell like within an episode that she and shark are the kind of siblings that constantly snark at each other but would do literall anything for each other. shark tried to do anything he could to help her before she woke up, and rio stuck by his side no matter what in the barians vs astral conflict. the foreshadowing in that episode where she pretended she was knocked out like the rest of yuma’s friends but she really wasn’t!! within like a week of waking up she reveals shark can’t sleep in the dark and i think that he hates onions. she’s the picture of confidence, and it seems to come more naturally to her than yuma’s forced and learned confidence. she believes in herself for sure, she’s a great duelist and she knows it, she’s got that ice aesthetic that i love, she’s cute... i’m gonna go adopt shark and rio right now. she’s also fiercely protective of her friends. but she’s not afraid to tease them either! and she will do it! she’s unrepentantly herself and i love it.

vector is funny. vector had some great lines in part 2. “ray shadows” was always predictably not what he seemed at first glance but that’s not a bad thing. just because i knew “ray shadows” was bad didn’t make the reveal of him being vector any less satisfying, honestly. that whole sequence of what happened when vector revealed himself was one of my favorite parts of the second half. vector constantly leading yuma into “the ray way” (usually a poor way), then after reealing himself talking about doing things the ray way, absolutely poetic. that reveal causing a huge shift in yuma and astral’s relationship, beautiful. did you just say the b word??? he also had funny lines. most major villains in zexal (byron and vector) were pretty funny honestly. neither of them were the ultimate antagonist which is fine, but probably the best humor in the series to me came from the major villains. it made them less intimidating, maybe, but it made them a lot more enjoyable to watch.

number 96 looked like a dark version of astral, which is essentially what he was, but like, he literally looked like astral. but you know what? while astral’s ass was censored, number 96′s wasn’t censored in the slightest. to this day i don’t understand why but this is so funny to me. 4k media really said astral wasn’t valid but number 96 was.

there’s a lot of good stuff in zexal. and i enjoyed it! at the end of the day, that’s what i care about the most. doesn’t matter as much if something’s good or bad as much as if i’m enjoying it. and i enjoyed quite a bit of zexal.

i did say it was my least favorite yugioh anime currently, however. which means there must be parts of this anime i didn’t like. so let’s get into the aspects of zexal i didn’t like. feel free to bail now if you’re not interested in that. i’m not interested in hurting any feelings or tarnishing anyone’s love for zexal.

yikes

for what it’s worth, i like the first half a lot more than the second half. most of the problems i have with the first half are also present within the second half, but the second half has a lot of unique things i don’t like.

i know i said something doesn’t have to be good to be enjoyable. anyone can enjoy bad things. i enjoy plenty of bad things! look, i watch sword art online!! i’m no stranger to the concept. but a lot of things i didn’t like about zexal were just...too glaring for me to enjoy anway.

let’s start with cards.

i think xyz summoning should’ve been pronounced as x-y-z and not x-eez. i hated it from episode one and i am still holding to that.

i don’t like tori’s whole fairy cheerleader archetype. i don’t like the way they all look. these things were in arc v, too, and given to a slightly better character but i didn’t like these things in arc v and i don’t like these now. arc v gave me something to look forward to when i needed it most, i don’t say many bad things about it. but i hate these things in both series they were featured in. i think that says a lot. it’s the combo of the hair and the eyes. their hair is way too big. their eyes tend to look bad. it’s just not a great look.

the series started off with a very simple set of rules for number cards: number cards come from astral, and there are 100 of them (and only number cards can only destroy other number cards, which is less important here). the first half of zexal stuck to that prett well. the second half of zexal just laughed at the idea of rules and said i’mma break them. characters are suddenly given number cards that go over the number 100. all these characters are barians. and these cards didn’t come from astral. what the heck! you’re breaking rules left and right! and then don thousand comes out with his stupid imaginary number, and then two duels later yuma comes out with his own new number, future number zero. you’re breaking all the rules. you’re breaking all my trust in everything. you’ve stopped pretending there’s any sense of rules entirely and you’ve started making things up as you go. i don’t like that!! especially imaginary number and future number zero had basically no explanation as to where these things come from, how do these characters have these cards? it’s one thing when yuma comes out with a new gagaga card or something, that’s acceptable and makes plenty of sense, but the new number cards don’t. also, don thousand, yuma doesn’t know enough math to know what an imaginary number even is.

astral’s whole deck angers me. astral is one of the most important characters of the series, and you couldn’t bother to give him any non-xyz monsters. his whole deck is spells and traps. you gave tori, who only duels once and isn’t very good at it, her own whole archetype, but you couldn’t bother to think of a single monster to give astral. and even then, the only xyz monsters astral uses are utopia forms, (not including shark drake and galaxy-eyes, who were only brought out to serve as material for a utopia monster. this is the laziest deck in the whole series, and you gave it to a major protagonist. like, the second most important protagonist in the whole series. i get he only duels without yuma once, but dude. i hate this.

i also really don’t like that the only number yuma and astral use most of the time is utopia. i know utopia was the first one they had together and it’s popular and shit. but there are other numbers! other numbers yuma gains! that i would like to see him use! but instead the show just...keeps giving him new forms for utopia? for some reason? at least on one occasion one of yuma’s new forms has like the same exact ability as another number yuma has at the time. it’s infuriating. to me, at least. plenty of other characters only really use one number most of the time the duel, but most other characters only really have that one number and maybe another form of it or maybe two other forms. yuma doesn’t have that excuse. i’m not saying i never want him to use utopia ever. i just like variety. if you’re introducing the idea of collecting a lot of things, i wanna see those things used.

i hate don thousand’s dueling gimmicks most of all. he gets access to the numeron code and uses it to cheat in his duels, even though kite has it and zexal really gave the impression before this point that you needed to obtain the numeron code to use it, but don thousand’s just like, i fused earth and barian world and somehow i can use the numeron code now. ??????? no fucking sense. on top of that, his cards are super unbalanced. i could not stand watching this duel.

i don’t like the literally no excuse given of other characters besides yuma, the arclights maybe, and the barians maybe, the literally no excuse given for other characters suddenly being able to see astral. being able to see astral required either special powers or special circumstances but then at the end of part 1 going in to part 2 characters were just like “i can see astral now!!!” and that was the end of this and this was the stupidest laziest thing ever. dunno if this was a dub-only thing, maybe the sub explained it, but it really bothered me and still does.

i don’t think chaos was explained very well, at least in the dub, and i looked it up later on and know pretty much what it is now but when you introduce new concepts and ideas, please explain them to me or else i feel like there’s literally no rules to the universe and characters are just making things up as they go.

a lot of the time in the second half, astral is written really weirdly and, not as good. especially post-vector reveal. i’m not talking about any stubbornness on astral’s part because that’s who he is. part 2 starts going in and after a while of it already going, astral just comes in and explains things to yuma that astral definitely didn’t know before. i know astral starts out with almost no memories and regains them all throughout the series but i don’t think any of this like came right after astral regained some memory. the numeron code seems to come out of nowhere, and oh, by the way, this thing can rewrite the entire rules of the universe. it’s a race to see who gets the numeron code first! except, uh, kite ends up winning it i think but that ends up literally not mattering because don thousand and astral both finds ways to use it without even having it. so there wasn’t much of a point of a lot of the duels before the don thousand duel, huh. that’s a lot of time wasted. and apparently astral can use the numeron code after regaining all 100 numbers, but. i don’t remember when astral first introduced that fact and when he got all 100 numbers. but it only is relevant after the duel against nasch and astral only makes any attempt to use the numeron code then. i don’t even know how he got the numeron code after that duel anyway. kite had it and he died on the moon. don thousand could use it without actually having it but then he was defeated. was astral always able to use it without actually having it like don thousand? why didn’t he does this before, then? everything related to the numeron code is vague and explained poorly and every time the numeron code comes up someone makes up some new bullshit thing related to the numeron code and i hate it. i hate the stupid numeron code.

back on track with astral. there’s other stuff besides the numeron code he seemed to know about without any real explanation. i do not remember a lot of them. besides the numeron code. i think i repressed the rest of out of annoyance. i think the worst astral was written was right before his duel with yuma. i get that astral intended to use the duel to help yuma and not hurt him. but he could’ve accomplished this without being an entire jackass. yuma’s mourning the loss of friends that he’s also blaming himself for. and then astral decides to resolve that by telling yuma that astral’s gonna go kill a bunch more people and yuma can’t stop him? that’s uh, not helping anything astral. you had other options to get yuma to duel (while yuma was in a state of not wanting to duel ever again) rather than telling yuma more people are about to die. the point of the whole duel was to remind yuma how to have fun in duels. but uh. when you put a bunch of lives at risk like that after a bunch of people just died, that’s not a great way to introduce fun. yuma promised astral to duel against him before astral left earlier on in the series! you had other options! astral acts like he doesn’t have other options but he literally does! there’s stupid stuff like this astral does earlier in the second half but i have forgotten the details. i get astral’s an alien who’s pretty socially awkward and doesn’t get earth people super well, but b the end of the series he certainly should understand them a little better, or at least, he should understand yuma pretty well, after hanging out with yuma literally all the time. it’s stupid! astral’s better than all this! there’s no way this is the fault of dub writing! unless 4k media made entirely new animation for multiple episodes. like. of the entire episode.

there were multiple times in the second half i didn’t understand character motivations in certain events at all and had to really come up with my own weird headcanons to make sense of it. this is probably largely a result of dub writing.

i wish the arclights were more relevant in the second half. most of all they did was watch things happen. they’re cool and powerful give them something to do.

kite felt extremely pointless in the second half of zexal. he was given a clear character direction to go after the first half and basically abandoned it the second the second half started. he had this pointless rivalry with mizar that only ever felt relevant when they dueled each other on the moon to get the numeron code. kite realizes he needs glasses. he wins the duel. and then he fucking dies somehow. and everyone else gets access to the numeron code. it’s all really stupid and makes no sense. i wouldn’t care about him not being as narratively important as yuma, shark and astral. kite’s not from astral world, kite’s not from barian world, and he doesn’t have any partnership with anyone from either world. at most, he thinks astral’s neat now. but they keep dragging along this stupid rivalry between mizar and kite that literally amounted to “my galaxy-eyes dragon is better than your galaxy-eyes dragon”, these two idiots dueled about it multiple times, and it was just pointless. it ate up too much time. i could feel myself aging. the second half of zexal had enough filler episodes that made me want to tear my hair out without this stuff.

i hate mizar so much. he’s probably my second least favorite character in the series. all mizar EVER does is duel kite over who has a cooler galaxy-eyes dragon, which isn’t even a question because kite’s is cooler and he had it long before mizar ever showed up which at most makes mizar a copier idiot. the most relevant thing mizar does is duel kite on the moon for the numeron code, but i’ve been over that. you could take mizar out without changing much. he’s by far the least interesting barian emperor. mizar is more annoying than kite ever was, and is more annoying than the other barian emperors ever were. and yet mizar lives longer than pretty much every barian emperor except nasch. he got the honor of being written out of existence by don thousand himself. radical. cool. get him out of my sight. i can’t stand him.

there’s a point where there’s a number shown on baby vector. i really wanted to know what was up with that and how it was relevant. this was never explained at all. i’m gonna assume this was don thousand altering vector’s memories or something and move on and never address it again because this show just did and said so many things without explaining any of it whatsoever. this stuff needs established rules and explanations. otherwise it just feels like everythings made up on the fly, it’s all completely random shit with not much planning behind it, that the writers don’t care...it feels insulting. i had this same issue with the infinity stones in the marvel cinematic universe. this is not something i just don’t like because it happened in zexal. i like knowing things.

so if mizar’s my second least favorite, who’s my least favorite character overall? i’ll tell you who

tori fucking meadows.

tori. geez. has there ever been a worse character? yes, mineta from my hero academia exists. but what exactly is tori’s crime? what has she done to make me dislike her so much. well, nothing. ‘nothing?’ yes. she didn’t do anything. but at the same time, she didn’t do anything. my problem with her is she literally does nothing, she barely has any sort of relevance to anything, and she’s annoying. i’m very serious. there’s only two things she’s ever done: she got possessed by a barian emperor to duel against yuma once, and there was that time she challenged yuma to a fashion contest, which was a little entertaining. those are the only things she’s ever done. and yet, somehow, she finds her way into every single episode. it is rare for an episode to go by without her. well, if she’s in so many episodes, surely she must be doing something of importance? nah. her only purpose is to cheer yuma on when he’s discouraged and to get distressed when yuma looks like he’s in a bad spot. this is not a joke. this is not an exaggeration. there are entire episodes where her only dialogue is “(sad voice) Yuma...! Astral...!” i constantly forget she’s there and then the show reminds me she’s there and i get mad because she doesn’t do anything. it’s either be sad about duel going well for yuma, or tori going “yuma you can do it” and yuma going “YEAH YOU’RE RIGHT THANKS TORI”. yeah, she doesn’t even give good motivational speeches, she just says the laziest most generic thing possible, and yuma just cheers himself up anyway because that’s usually what he does anyway. there’s not point to her being there. oh, and she got to be the damsel of distress once to convince yuma to duel. that’s great. lovely. that’s definitely not shady/shifty as hell. all girls are only good for fueling boys’ pain and suffering, right.

but lemme ask this. let’s replace tori with a very pretty lamp for the entire series. how much of the show would change? and honestly? it’d mostly be just like, bits and pieces of three episodes. she’s literally just taking up space. she doesn’t need to duel to be relevant and do meaningful things. maybe she could do more to help yuma convince astral that blowing up barian world is a bad idea, maybe she’s able to come up with the right words where yuma isn’t. maybe she catches on that something’s wrong with shark before shark switches sides, she doesn’t have to convince him not to and i’d rather she didn’t but she can be an uninvolved person to listen and tell shark it’s not an easy choice for sure but she supports him whatever he does and she’s sure whatever he chooses will be the right choice for him. maybe she could get astral some fashionable clothes. i don’t know! she could actually do something! i’m not asking much here i just want her to be something besides a generic love interest (gross) or a generic supporter with generic advice (annoying).

a lot of yuma’s friend group have similar similar issues, but at least they have parts to play. bronk’s probably the best written of the bunch in part 1 before he dissolves into randomly in love with rio taking over his entire life (gross). cathy honestly is better than average too. rio is exempt from this paragraph because she doesn’t spend too much time in the friend group before bailing to her past life which is valid. yuma starts out with only bronk and tori for friends but he gains a lot of friends during the number hunt. most of these friends were possessed by numbers and yuma befriended them afterwards because ultimately his goal is to have fun and make friends by dueling. but they all stick around and don’t not hang out with him and don’t do much after yuma helps them. yuma has way too many friends that he drags around with him everywhere, and then some combination of the arclights, shark, kite, vector, and rio is often there as well. It’s way too many people and no wonder most of them never do anything because often all the things that could be done are taken. Most of these kids need to stop following Yuma everywhere. For the most part, they’re all annoying, too. I really only care for Bronk and Cathy.

i get it. the protagonist always has friends that are ride or die and help them out no matter what. i get it. but there was never this many constantly around, often times they’d switch around each other if anything, and they always all were either relevant to the plot or played good important roles in helping the protagonist, and they always had development. i think the most development any of yuma’s friend group (ignoring brinks negative development) had was cathy’s hatred of dogs getting a bit less intense. flip’s literally a shitty dude who cheats and yuma told him “hey maybe be less shitty next time” a couple of times and flip said “sure” each time but then never put any effort into being better and just kept being shitty towards other people. caswell just...reiterates what’s happening half the time ans starts literally every sentence with “in the end”. all they’re good for is filler and zexal has really bad filler. they’re not good for anything. they should’ve showed up less at least after the heartland tournament arc if not sooner. i get that the whole thing is to show that yuma wants to make friends through duels but this is unnecesasary and eats up time that could be better spent on other characters who actually do things and who actually are relevant and develop and stuff. the protagonist’s friend group was never this annoying before zexal and it never was after zexal either. when they all got sent to barian world and stopped showing up for like ten episodes i almost finally new peace if those ten episodes weren’t like some of the worst content zexal had to offer.

there’s a lot of pointless boring uneventful unnecessary hetero shit all over the show, too. obviously, the whole deal with yuma and tori, while yuma really has no interest in romance at all and tori can’t take a fucking hint and then somehow the last episode decides to make them start dating for some reason. bronk falls for rio (understandable) and then in a filler episode asks for shark’s permission to date her (gross), shark misunderstands what bronk’s asking and is like “if you wanna deal with me or rio you gotta beat yuma in a duel first”, bronk gets it in his head that means yuma likes rio and duels yuma over rio (gross) and this is all supposed to be a funny whole series of events but it’s not funny and it’s kinda gross actually. orbital and lillybot!! yikes!! i don’t like orbital anyway. lillybot is amazing and great. the show decides to assign lillybot female (tori just says lillybot’s a girl and we’re supposed to take tori’s word for it i guess) so obviously the assigned male robot and the assigned female robot have to date, right! they MUST like each other because he was a boy robot, she was a girl robot, can i make it any more obvious. it’s annoying and stupid. they have kids!!! they have kids for some reason!!! why do they have kids!!!!! zexal never interact with me about romance again.

the girls in this show really get the shit end of the stick, huh. i feel really bad for them. obviously we have tori. who was there the whole time but really didn’t do anything except be generically sad or generically positive. cathy’s a little better than that. she has a bit more personality going for her. she likes cats, she makes cat puns, she duels a dog, she did get possessed by a number... she’s got a few things going for her, but she doesn’t do much either. she doesn’t do anything worth noting in the tournament in heartland, she barely does anything of note related to the barian emperors or don thousand. so that’s not much better. rio probably got the best treatment of any of the girls in zexal. she is a major player in the second half of zexal, being one of the barian emperors. she’s got a very strong personality and did plenty of important things. she helped her and her brother deal with the barian emperors before realizing she was one herself, she reclaimed her title of barian emperor and tried to kick vector’s ass. rio and shark brought a lot of life to each other. she revealed her brother’s need to sleep with a nightlight and she was allowed to be good at dueling! but also, she spend the entire first half of the show in a coma. she wasn’t allowed to have any part in the show before astral and the barian emperors did their thing. so in a way, rio also got the worst treatment, too. discounting rio, though, i think the girl who got the worst of it was actually kari.

i know, i know. kari’s an investigator, a journalist! she’s always after a scoop, she’s always looking after yuma, and she deals with old friends/enemies. she’s not just some generic friend like tori, she’s not in a coma like rio! kari’s great! and i love her! but this isn’t just about girls not getting to do things that matter or girls not getting to have personalities. this goes in a bit different direction than that. she wanted to go out and explore with her dad, just like yuma did, but her parents always brushed her aside and made her do more “girly” things because “girls can’t do what yuma and your dad are doing”! she didn’t get a wole lot of agency in her own life. her parents all but told her that yuma was more important than her, that he had this big destiny related to dueling and that all she was good for was watching out for yuma and making sure he was okay because she’s his older sister. and then both her parents disappeared! and she was just left with that! she grew to hate dueling, to push yuma away from it because their parents basically told her yuma would be in danger because of dueling. which is a totally understandable reaction to your parents telling you that out of seemingly nowhere! except the show doesn’t treat it that way. the show puts her in the wrong for not liking dueling! because everyone has to like dueling kari!! how dare you not like card games. how dare you have any interest in anything else. i’m surprised she’s not more bitter towards her parents for this whole fiasco. she just gets slammed into a caretaker role because girls can only be love interests or caretakers! (tori, cathy, and rio were all set up as love interests at least one time or another, while yuma would rather eat another hot dog than deal with that) but honestly, she does her best to do what her parents told her: take care of yuma during his big dangerous dueling destiny. she watches out for him, she tries to steer him clear of the thing that’s supposed to be dangerous for him. and as a journalist she has to be constantly up to date on current events and happenings, so if something happens that might endanger yuma with his big dangerous dueling destiny, kari’ll probably be on of the first people to know about it in all of heartland. that’s not to say that’s not the only reason she took up the profession. she definitely seems passionate about what she does, she takes it seriously, i’m sure she does actually like being a journalist, but it does help with yuma, too. her parents basically forced her life to go exactly one way. and that’s not shown in a bad light against her parents! if anything, the show basically acts like it’s kari’s fault for not being happy about it every second. all this while yuma gets to be whoever he wants to be and do what he wants to do their whole childhood, he gets a lot more freedom than kari for sure. yuma got the childhood kari wanted and she’s not allowed to grieve what she could’ve had. because it’s not just “kari’s parents forced her into a very specific role for her life and gave her no choice in any of it”. that can actually be a really cool thing to explore. i love chazz princeton! kari has plenty in common with chazz! but i don’t like this setup like this. chazz got to be right about being bitter about what his brothers did to him, about breaking away from them and living life the way he wanted to. but making kari’s parents the right ones in this whole situation is just kinda gross and disgusting. if you’re gonna frame it like that don’t bother. cannot stand the “your parents are always right” sort of shit.

speaking of? goddamn i hate kazuma. i hate yuma and kari’s dad. i would say he’s the worst dad in all of yugioh, but he didn’t start an interdimensional war, so we’ll say he’s the second worst dad in all of yugioh. ...if i tie dr kogami with leo, but either way, leo, dr kogami, and kazuma are the top 3.

how can kazuma be in the top 3?? with leo and dr kogami?? leo and dr kogami are evil villains!! kazuma’s not a bad guy! he helped give yuma more self-confidence! he wanted peace between astral world and barian world!

first of all, if you skipped the paragraph related to kari, go back and read it. it’s required reading for the “why kazuma sucks” portion of our program tonight. okay good, you read it. here’s more reasons why kazuma’s a pretty sucky dad.

this here is a bullshit man.

kazuma had good intentions, i think. he wanted to be a good dad but intentions don’t really mean a damn thing when you look at the results.

pre-zexal, kazuma tsukumo knew about yuma’s destiny and told kari about it. how did he know this? how did he figure this out? that’s a good question. i have no idea why he knows about yuma’s destiny, or how he knows about it. the wiki just says he “showed great intelligence and foresight”, whatever that means. my best guess is that honestly? once kazuma saw what was happening in astral world, he created yuma’s destiny himself. he gave the key to yuma, and then he fucked with astral’s shit so that astral would meet yuma. yeah, kazuma looked at everything going on and was like “i’ll put it on my 12 year old son to save three worlds at the same time! what could go wrong”, and told kari about it beforehand and was like “lol kari can’t do it she’s a girl so i’ll just decide her entire life for her a different way”

uh, clearly yuma was not emotionally capable of dealing with the shit kazuma pulled him into. yuma was ready to never duel again because dueling killed his friends. and then kazuma talks to astral about the whole thing and is weirdly smug about the whole thing related to yuma’s lost friends and lost love for dueling. so like...was that part of your plan or not? do you give a shit about your son’s feelings regarding your whole plan for his life or not?

after yuma falls into a portal in the hell dimension he ends up being a prisoner on astral world. which was definitely not explained well in the dub. but he and his wife just hang out freely and openly in remote parts of astral world so he sure as shit doesn’t look like a prisoner. and while he’s there he certainly looks like there’s no place he’d rather be. wait, his wife? how did she get in astral world? that’s a good fucking question and i sure would love to know. i guess she’s not allowed to exist outside her relationship with kazuma.

after kazuma is stuck in astral world, everyone thinks he’s dead for a while, but then when everyone finds out he was alive, he’s treated as this all-knowing projection/recorded hologram who is always right about everything. he always has all the answers and if we don’t know what to do about something then kazuma definitely knows! and after he appears to die he can sometimes appear to people somehow, how he can do that is never explained well at least in the dub, and there are arbitrary conditions to it also never explained in the dub. he can appear in the emperor’s key. he only really seems to do this once to have a weird conversation with astral, and then he also...was able to help vetrix make a barrier during yuma and nasch’s duel, somehow? i mean, i get tron’s whole thing, but kazuma, not so much? if he can appear to astral and vetrix why does he never try to connect with yuma? i’m guessing he probably can’t appear to yuma directly but he never tries to leave a message with astral either. he has these arbitrary weird abilities never explained well (in the dub, at least) and it feels like he’s playing calvinball to make himself seem like a hero or something.

honestly, everthing about yuma’s dad being seemingl dead but still alive, creating his son’s destiny and being this vague benevolent being who is always right and is never allowed to be seen in a bad light related to the consequences to his kids for his meddling, it all seems familiar....

that’s right! it all comes back to sonic!! once again i am literally unable to talk about anything without bringing up sonic, i always bring everything back to sonic!!!

i explained this all a lot better a year ago so i will let myself speak i guess

obviously kazuma isn’t as bad of a person as locke the echidna, not nearly as bad, but there’s parallels, anyway.

so if you agree that yuma is the old comics knuckles of yugioh, if you look at the bad dads section of this article (in case you think i wrote it for some reason, which i didn’t, thankskenpenders did) you can understand why locke is a horrible dad, and looking at the similarties pointed out between locke and kazuma (again, locke is a much worse father than kazuma) you can understand more why i hate kazuma.

so, yeah. i can go on and on about all the things i don’t like zexal. the writing is sometimes sexist and lazy, there’s way too many characters hanging out with the protagonist and most of them have nothing to offer. sometimes things just don’t get explained, or are barely explained. it’s a big ol’ game of calvinball sometimes. and i am aware and accept that some of this is the fault of the dub writers. but there’s also a lot of good things i like about zexal! astral, shark, and yuma were all written really well! there were some really cool monsters in this show! there were some moments of good jokes! the show had good messages and a lot of characters had complex motivations you can sympathize with even if you don’t agree with what they’re doing. this show was very good at being yugioh. and it’s a pretty good show in my book. i enjoyed watching it! it just doesn’t happen to be my favorite yugioh. or like. anything but my least faorite yugioh. but that’s okay. really, the most important thing with watching a show isn’t how well it’s written, how good the visuals are, or anything like that, the most important thing is whether you enjoyed it. and i enjoyed it!

i enjoyed watching yugioh zexal.

if you followed me through my journey watching the anime, thank you. i appreciate it.

this isn’t the end of my journey through zexal. i intend to read the manga too, so when i do get to that, if i end up wanting to post any screenshots or anthing i’ll be using the same tag. that’s sure to be an interesting journey as well.

but anyway. if you read this entire post, thank you. this is over 8,000 words long, damn.

#zexal liveblog #long post 235

7 notes · View notes

thereluctantinquisitor · 4 years

Note

mentor/mentee bonding or long, tight reunion hugs after a long separation if you're taking some of those prompts from the list!

Mentor/Mentee bonding it is! Featuring Delver and Sylda from my original work…

As far as inn rooms go, it wasn’t the worst they’d ever stumbled into. A quick assessment of the floor and ceiling revealed no obviously damp spots. The beds, while threadbare, seemed clean enough. Even a candle, thick and melted at the base, burned with quiet determination on the windowsill. Coupled with the fading daylight, it shed just enough brightness to provide comfort without revealing the more unseemly details of the room. Delver was perfectly content with that. Ignorance could be bliss when you were tired enough.

“You know, if you want a hand with that, all you need to do is ask.”

The stool creaked beneath him as Delver fired Sylda a sharp look from the corner of his eye. The only think keeping him from firing back a reply was the tie held between his pursed lips, the coarse fabric nearing its final breaking point. He’d probably get another few days out of it, if he was careful. And a little lucky.

Not that luck had been on his side, lately. Something told him he’d used it all up back in Yelen.

Huffing, Delver’s nose crinkled as he tried to card his hair back away from his face. Yes, it was knotted and miserable and road-worn, but gods above he wished he’d just left it how it was. Some ancient and habitual part of his brain had apparently decided that retying his hair went hand-in-hand with removing his boots, so now there he was, bare-foot and simmering in his own stupidity. Divider’s sake, he was a cipher, owner of one of humanity’s most complex and unexplainable minds! Yet, somehow, it managed to forget his entire right hand had recently been used as a rakhund’s chew toy and was about as useless as any other slab of meat.

Soon, his frustrated grunts morphed into a growled curse as he tried to wrestle his hair out of his face. Over the other side of the small room, Sylda had taken up position leaning against the wall, cross-legged, observing him from atop her bed like a bored courtier waiting for the entertainment to begin. Ignoring her was almost as hard as maneuvering his bandaged hand.

“… You still sure you’re fine?” she asked after a particularly frustrated grunt. “At this rate, you’ll be at it all night. No offense, but you need your beauty sleep a lot more than I do.”

“I’m sure,” Delver snapped, then jolted as the tie fell from his mouth. Pure instinct took over once more as he tried to grab it. The movement was as sudden as it was stupid, and in a split-second it was like someone had stabbed a knife straight through his palm. Delver cursed in some language or another - he didn’t really care - and grabbed his wrist. It was as though he hoped pressure could somehow stop the fire from shooting down his arm. Fuck, it had been days since that damn animal had decided it wanted a piece of him - when was it going to stop feeling like a fresh wound?

As usual, Sylda’s knack for moving around without making a whisper of sound nearly shocked Delver into an early grave. He jolted as she plopped down in front of him, crouching for lack of a second stool. Only this time there was something different in her brown eyes. Something not entirely stubborn.

“Would you just say ‘yes’ already and put us both out of our misery?” She nodded pointedly at his hand. The bandage was starting to turn. “You’re hurt and I don’t mind, so why not just let me do it?”

“I don’t need—”

“—Just give me the damn tie, Delver.”

Suddenly, there it was. The thing that was different. It wasn’t a new emotion, but rather the absence of an old one. Her usual teasing was… gone. Not sure what to make of that, Delver actually relented, his curiosity momentarily outweighing his pride. For as long as he’d known her, Sylda had hidden everything behind tactless and ill-timed humour; practically driven him mad with it. In fact, the only time he had seen it utterly absent was when she’d been hanging from the gallows in Yelen. This hardly seemed a comparative scenario.

She snatched the tie with a look that screamed thank you in the most exasperate way possible, then moved behind him. Delver turned, trying to follow her with his eyes, but the next thing he knew her hands were in his hair, tugging his head forward sharper than was strictly necessary.

“Still don’t trust me, huh?”

Delver closed his eyes. Damn it. “It’s not that.”

“I dunno. Kinda feels like it is.”

“If you wanted to slit my throat, I assume you would have done it by now. We’ve been on the road long enough.”

Sylda’s fingers paused their journey along his scalp as she considered the proposal. “True,” she conceded after a moment. Her hands resumed, catching the dull copper locks of Delver’s hair, scooping them back. Divider, it was a mercy to have it off his face again; like he could breathe easy. “Why so tense, then?” she continued. “You’d think I was torturing you, but here I am, gentle as a spring-born lamb.”

“Hm. Unnatural for you.”

“Oh, deeply. So I’d appreciate a little more relaxing on your part, if you wouldn’t mind.”

A chuckle broke past Delver’s exhausted defenses. “I’ll try. But I make no promises.”

“Does it hurt?” Her question came so suddenly that it caught Delver by surprise. It was also what gave him the impression that she had been sitting with it for a while, trying to decide the best time to ask it. Naturally, she missed the mark by a good mile or so. Glancing down, he released he was still gripping his wrist tight enough to cut the circulation to his hand.

“It’ll heal, in time.” Stiffly, he uncurled his fingers, wincing at the red marks he had left on his own skin. While he was no stranger to injury, he had to admit, this was the first time he’d been mauled by… well, anything.

He hoped he tasted as shitty as he felt.

“That’s not what I asked.” Her hands move again at the back of his head; a new pattern this time. “But I guess it was probably a stupid question, so…”

As she trailed off, all Delver could muster was a hum of agreement that ebbed away just as quickly into the waiting silence. The candle flickered madly, caught in a gentle breeze, and suddenly all Delver wanted was a meal, a drink, and a long night’s rest. Divider, he wanted it so badly he could feel it like a pressure in his chest. It was almost irrational. Painful. Childish, even.

“Why’d you do it?”

Sylda, having completed her task while Delver momentarily recessed into childhood, was now in front of him again, fixing him with that expectant, matronly look she got when she wasn’t in the mood to argue. At first, Delver wasn’t sure what she was talking about, until her eyes flicked pointedly to his hand again. As soon as she did, he sighed.

“Leave it be, Sylda.”

“No.”

“Just… go downstairs and grab whatever’s left from supper. Before the innkeep tosses it to the pigs.”

“Sure. Once you answer me.” She folded her arms, and there it was. That stubbornness again. It hardened her gaze to stone. It was the reason she drove him halfway mad. It was the reason he knew she would do great things, some day. If he did his part properly, that is.

It always seemed to come back to that.

Delver heaved a sigh that carried the weight of generations. “The fucking thing was about to pounce on you, Sylda. Was I just meant to let it?”

“You could have.”

“Really? Well go ahead and add it to the long list of things that make be an idiot, then.” It was hard to look at her, all of a sudden. “Listen, I’m the one dragging you across the damn continent. Just let me play the hero for once and stop badgering me about it.”

“Hero? More like the fool.” The words themselves were harsh, but the way she spoke them somehow… wasn’t. They almost seemed to sigh out of her, and she slumped down on the edge of the bed. “Just don’t do it again, okay? I can take care of myself.”

Delver snorted, shaking his head. “Fine.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know. What I don’t understand is why you think you need to tell me.” He finally looked up and met her startled gaze. “Sylda, listen… I have no idea what you’re capable of, and frankly neither do you. But sometimes you just get hit by a bout of bad luck and skill has nothing to do with it. I’m not interested in letting some rakhund rip your throat out because you just happened to be looking in the wrong direction.” He paused, fighting the urge to clench his fist, then added, “And judging by the way you gutted the damn thing with that pocket-knife of yours, you feel the same way. So let’s just call it what it is.”

“Fuck you, it’s not a pocket knife.” While she spoke, she folded her arms. Wary. Guarded. “And what are we calling it, exactly?”

“Responsibility.” Grimacing, Delver hauled himself off the stool, rolling his shoulders. Funny, how the stiffness of spending too many days walking only ever seemed to catch up to him once he stopped. “When you travel with someone, you watch their backs. It doesn’t matter who takes the hit, and no one owes anyone anything. That’s just how it is. So enough with the coddling and questions.” He huffed, shaking his head as he rifled through his pack. “Divider willing, you’ll be folding my bloody socks before long.”

“Yeah, over my dead body.” It was almost a relief, to see her grin and hop off the bed with almost twice the energy than what she’d shown before. “Alright, fine. Have it your way. Can’t say I’m against the idea of not owing you anything.”

“Yes. I thought you mightn’t be.” As much as Delver fought to maintain a believable level of exasperation, it was hard to keep the smirk off his face. “Now go and get that food before we both pass out for the night. Should be a few coins left over.”

“Alright, alright. Keep your hair on.”

Maybe it was the way she said it. Maybe it was some other instinct entirely. But as Sylda snatched the coin pouch off the bed and headed for the door, Delver finally took a moment to reach towards the back of his head.

“Sylda?”

“Hmm?”

“Is that a fucking braid?”

#frenchy-and-the-sea #i think i rewrote this like 4 times and i give up lol #it is what it is #stonebreaker #delver #sylda #reluctant writes #reluctant replies #isnt it so annoying when you have a scene in your head and then it just comes out like garbage?#ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #i tried #thank you for the prompt <3

11 notes · View notes

miikiiiiiiiiii · 4 years

Text

Review: Log Horizon

I recently got interested in checking out Log Horizon, after it being out for quite a long period of time. (I know I’m pretty late to the party, being almost 6 years since the first season) I wasn’t interested in it when it first came out because I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of isekai back then, and to be honest even now.

Well to my surprise, I enjoyed this show more than I had expected going in, and even craved for more episodes to watch. (Season 3 is coming out this year!)

If a person like me can love this show, you might also get sucked into the world of Log Horizon. You never know before you try it, amirite?

Perspectives and Moods

So I strongly believe that a person’s perspective and the state on mind highly affects the enjoyment of a certain show. I’m sure that there are many viewers like me that were turned off initially by this gem of a show because we all thought it was a copy of a more popular anime at that time, Sword Art Online. Or maybe you were intimidated by all the unknown game logic and lingo mentioned in the anime.

Thanks to one of my friends who was an avid player of MMORPGs getting me interested in the game genre and the mechanics and basics of an MMORPG, I greatly enjoyed this show and understood most of what the show was trying to portray with getting stuck in an MMOPRG and making use of the loopholes in the rules of the game.

Overall, this show hit all the right notes at the right time for me and ended up being a pretty cracky watch. I was actually quite sad to know that I would have to wait just a bit longer for Season 3 to come. (Oh well, what can we do about that?)

Stuff I liked

1. The ever-growing Log Horizon ensemble cast.

I loved how the show takes its time introducing us to the characters that are central and important to the story going forward. There is the main male lead, Shiroe, the guy awkward at social interactions but is also a brilliant strategist, Naotsugu, the enthusiastic and happy-go-lucky guy, as well as Akatsuki, the stoic and silent assassin but having a pretty cute personality. There are more, but will only list them in the spoilery parts of this review. These three characters are the first few characters to be introduced in the show and immediately you see how they work well with each other. On paper, their personalities are so different that you would expect conflicts left and right, but the show makes it clear from the start that they would form a bond so strong that nothing can ever break it.

SPOILER WARNING

As early as the second episode, you can see how Naotsugu and Akatsuki, despite only meeting for the first time recently, have fallen into this friendly banter, despite it being quite lewd with Naotsugu being a pervert and Akatsuki being very peeved about it. Somehow this banter doesn’t feel forced like in other shows I’ve watched and comes quite naturally. I also like how Shiroe, who was introduced as the socially awkward one, being the one to become the bridge that starts this friendship.

END OF SPOILER

There are so many characters worth mentioning, but if I do list them all with what I loved about them, this review will be crazy long. The characters all have chemistry and none of them feel like a caricature, despite being characters in an anime. I have to say, nicely done.

2. Shiroe

Shiroe is introduced at the start of the story being socially awkward, kinda like a lone wolf. He doesn’t want any association to any guild and the one time he was associated to a group, it wasn’t even a guild. Right from the start the anime shows you how strong he is, being level 90 and having friends that are ALSO level 90, such as Naotsugu, Akatsuki, Marielle, Henrietta (I think? I might be remembering this wrongly) The anime also implies that he is quite well known in the MMORPG world of Elder Tale.

He also starts to make connections and learn more about the world of Elder Tale that he might not have known before and makes use of the knowledge he has learnt to make this new world that they are trapped in liveable.

More that that though, as the anime progresses, you get to see his growth and deepen his friendships with his friends. There is nothing too devastating that happens in Log Horizon, but the setbacks that the main cast do face alongside Shiroe does make him mature and come out the other side a better person.

SPOILER WARNING

One of the events that stuck out to me is how he realised that inventing new magic in the world of Elder Tale is possible by observing how Nyanta is able to cook food that tastes good. He then proceeds to use that knowledge to his advantage and invents new magic that only he could perform at that point in time, contracts. I felt that this shows how smart Shiroe is in making connections that others may not have made, and how he gathers his information by observation.

I also liked the dorky side of Shiroe, especially his love for curry. He may seem like the stoic one in his friendship with Naotsugu, but deep down both of them are equally dorky and thus causes both of them to connect so well.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching his growth as well, from a guy who was a lone wolf and wanted nothing to do with guilds, to becoming a guy who STARTS his own guild. I also liked how even though he was slowly opening up to his friends that he doesn’t immediately become like an open book. He is still quite guarded, as shown by how he didn’t want to let them know his plan when he left Akihabara with Naotsugu to get the finances needed for the maintenance of the town. It is only after losing the raid and realising that he needs to learn to open up and trust in his friends more that he finally opens up and informs them about his motives. This growth feel quite organic and believable, making Shiroe seem more human. I hafta say, I really liked this aspect of the show.

END OF SPOILER

3. Akatsuki

At the start, Akatsuki was quite bland. I thought she was going to be the stereotypical loli girl that is exceptionally good at what she does and becomes peeved when people mistake them for being a young child. To my surprise as the show went on, she quickly rose the ranks of my favourite characters in Log Horizon and stayed at second place until the end of Season 2. (Number 1 is Shiroe, so being number 2 is a pretty good feat!)

Her character got more focus and development in Season 2 compared to Season 1, and although I wish she could have more development in Season 1, I’m actually happy with where she ended up and how she grew and matured until the end of Season 2.

SPOILER WARNING

Right from the first episode, you learn that her avatar in Elder Tale was a tall and lean muscular man. Even though it is a minor detail, I liked how it was subtle foreshadowing for the insecurities she had in real life about her appearance. The constant gags of people calling her ‘shrimp’ were played for comedy but also foreshadowed the insecurity she has about her stature.

In Season 2, we learn that she has low self esteem and felt like she needed to be good at what she does to remain by Shiroe’s side. Because of this insecurity, she also didn’t make any effort to make connections with the other members of the guild and withdrew deeper into her shell.

It is only when she dies and fights the serial killer that she realises that the reason why Shiroe didn’t take her along for the raid was not because she was a burden, but that Shiroe relied on her to take care of the princess. She also regains her confidence and also comes to a realisation that her short stature isn’t a disadvantage, but a unique trait that she has. She starts to open up about her insecurities to the other members and made their bond even stronger.

Although many shows and anime do discuss the theme of self confidence and self love, I like how it never became preachy and instead showed a natural growth in Akatsuki to demonstrate this point. This not only made Akatsuki seem more relatable, but also makes this message more memorable for viewers.

END OF SPOILER

What can I say, I love characters that feel human and relatable.

4. Character moments

I can’t list all of them, or else this post will become WAY too long. So I’m going to list some of my favourites. Of course, SPOILERS INCOMING.

The overall bromance between Naotsugu and Shiroe. A good bromance is always a nice breath of fresh air, in my opinion.

When the mini training camp squad realises that Rundelhaus is actually a Person from the Land and will not revive when he died like the rest of them. I cried so hard there were no more tears to be cried.

The blossoming romance between Marielle and Naotsugu, with their daily 9pm telepathic talks when Naotsugu went on the raid.

The friendship that is coming to be between Krusty and Raynessia. You have no idea how sad I was when Krusty disappeared!

The way how Isuzu held Rundelhaus’s hand when he was going to sign the contract to become an adventurer because he was too weak to do so by himself. Also the fact that he is laying in her lap… I was crying because he was dying but also excited simultaneously because they are so cute! Okay, my fangirling may have gone too far.

When Rundelhaus was so happy to become an adventurer simply because he wants to help others in need, and not for glory or the immortality. He’s such a cutie pie.

Demikas starting out as a pretty shitty guy, bullying the NPCs to becoming a valuable player in the raid. Also his wife, who’s a Person from the Land, being able to subdue him and calm him down.

Also Nyanta. Is there more to be said? He’s so cool~

Moving on!

5. Game mechanics and the mystery elements

I admit, I’m a noob when it comes to MMOPRGs. I do know the basics, but nothing more than that. I’m more of a singleplayer RPG, visual novel kinda person.

The show explains the game mechanics in very simple terms and even a non MMOPRG player like myself could understand the logic. Shiroe alsomanages to find the loopholes and slowly become stronger because of that. Unlike some protagonists that are strong simply because.

The mystery element of the show and how the players got stuck into the world of Elder Tale is also very compelling. The players slowly learn more about this new reality that they are stuck in and learns that the world may be more different than when they were playing the game. This makes the question of ‘how did they get stuck in the game’ and ‘who caused them to get stuck in the game’ become a mystery that needs solving, and not just a plot device used.

Log Horizon is quite clever, much more than I had expected going into the anime.

Stuff I didn’t like

Honestly, I had to REALLY nitpick at this section. There were so many things to love about this show. SPOILER WARNING!

The anime starts off quite abruptly. Without any context whatsoever, you see Shiroe waking up in the world inside a game. He ponders his situation for a bit before realising he can contact Naotsugu. He meets up with Naotsugu and talks to him familiarly.

Even though you know there is backstory regarding them both, you can’t help but feel as if you were missing certain pieces to the puzzle. It’s almost like someone asking you how a puzzle looks like without even you having the pieces to the said puzzle. The pieces do come as the story progresses, however, so this feeling of abruptness doesn’t last long.

The final verdict

Full of action, and lots of nice character moments. Game mechanics are explained simply for noobs to MMOPRG player and can be enjoyed by anyone. Highly reccomended!

13 notes · View notes

exhalenow612 · 4 years

Text

“clementine” - Halsey

Each day we are faced with new choices, new decisions, and new paths. We have the choice to take an easy path, or the hard path. We have the choice to fight or suffer in silence. I like to think that I grew and learned choose my battles as well as when to give my opinion. I have recently been facing a new path that I have been looking into but I am so scared if it. My husband and I have been exploring the world of Polyamory. The world sounds so nice, free, and loving. My brain in the other hand loves the light it brings, but my brain sees everything as also a dark and scary forest. A forest growling the uncertainty at me.

Each time I think about it I feel thrilled, but I also get this sinking feeling in my stomach. A feeling that pulls at my very core, the thought if my husband holding another man like he holds me, confessing attachment or feelings. Will I be pushed out the picture? Will I even find someone(s) to connect with? Will everyone figure out how boring I am? Why am I feeling jealous? They say these feelings come from somewhere, some other root cause to them. What if you know where they come from but you just can't get them to stop? Was I always this broken? Am I the only one who feels this way or has felt this way?

There is no clear answers and I know this, I know the answers are with in me, and sometimes the experiences of others can help. We have heard and met couples that it has actually worked for. A Primary relationship, and then Secondary relationships. Guidelines(rules/laws make it seem like there is no room fir mistakes) to follow, communication, and being sure that your focus stay on your marriage while communicating but also connecting with others. Imagine, being able to come home to your lover and them listening with love while you tell them about as connection you made or some fun you have been having with someone that cares and respects you? Sounds so amazing, sounds so thrilling, and free. Free to love, free for fun, and free to let your lover have their own life outside of you. Being your own person, and have individuality to be your best self. While still loving the same man, who is your biggest fan. Where is my hang up? Has it been so beat into me about monogamy and just one true love?

Why is it only one true love? If you marry someone and the love changes or even leaves, does that mean you never fall in love again? We see it everyday that someone who has lost their love, finds a new love and becomes happy again. If I love my husband so deeply, why should I wait for him to leave (divorce or death) to make other connections and share love with others? I am a firm believer that you never know who you will fall for (which is why I believe everyone is a bit pansexual) but also how many people you can fall fir at one time. I don't find open relationships, swingers, poly, fetish, etc to be icky. So again where is my hang ups?

My husband recently made a friend. For the first time I feel so anxious about this man, and my husband tells me he is not interested in him outside of friends (maybe with benefits). There is just something about this man that legit makes me so uneasy. He has NEVER done anything to me as well as I have now even hung out with him and he is super nice and so laid back. My husband is handsome and sexy, and it scares me to think that this other handsome man could possibly get to enjoy my husband as well. He is tall, dark, cultured, well built, and financially stable. Which scares me because when I look at me I think “short, kinda tan, fat, dumpy, a financial, and mental mess”. I know my husband loves me and tells me how attractive I am, and I know its genuine and I can feel but, I still cannot find my hang up. Am I slightly jealous someone like this new guy has spoken to me? I feel like when I log into Grindr its always so quiet but my husband's phone is going off ALL DAY which leads me to think poly won't work because I am unattractive.I know it won't work because I cannot get through these feelings or stop comparing myself to others.

At this point in time I feel like such a burden, emotionally stunted, even like a child. New things are scaring me, frozen like a deer in headlights. Am I holding my husband back? After dealing with all my anxiety and mental issues will he just get fed up? Will he walk away? Will I walk away if we try it? What if it eats me alive? Why the hell am I like this? What in the actual FUCK is wrong with me? I have researched, I have listened to podcasts, read books, and I was even shown by my husband's friend an episode of Explore which had the topic of monogamy reviewed. It honestly is not a natural human thing, its something we have learned and forced to make natural. I will continue to work through my emotions and my growth and hopefully I will have made my decision on which path to choose. Once my anxiety is in check, I can stop making my own “what ifs”, learn to work through jealousy, and learn some self worth.

I chose the song “clementine” by Halsey because its deep and I think can help someone understand the softer side of me and the uncertainty I feel each day.

“ I don't need anyone, I just need everyone and then some” <3

#gay #life #pain #hurt #husband #love #poly #dating #anxiety #selfesteem #questions #selfworth #monogamy #natural #whatifs #fat #ugly #hot #handsom #loss

6 notes · View notes

ettadunham · 4 years

Text

A Buffy rewatch 7x18 Dirty Girls

aka gotta have faith

We did it, guys! We made it to the last season! Also, hello if you’re new, and stumbled upon this without context. As usual, these impromptu text posts are the product of my fevered mind as I rant about the episode I just watched for an hour (okay, sometimes perhaps two). Anything goes!

And in today’s episode, our secondary villain is finally revealed made of pure misogyny, and Faith is here to make everything better.

So... Dirty Girls. We really are in the finish line of the season now.

This episode opens with two scenes that I’m not sure were intended to have the connection I made, but let’s do it anyway. In the first, we’re introduced to Caleb, a priest with extremely misogynistic views of women, who is revealed to be an agent of the First. And one who’s been pulling a lot of its strings in our world at that, like blowing up the council, or organizing the Bringers.

I guess Caleb hates humanity as a whole - he is aligning himself with the First after all -, but he directs pretty much all of that hatred onto women. He calls the Potential he picks up with his truck a ‘whore’ and ‘dirty’, and from his fantasies of his past, you get the idea that he specifically targeted young women using his authority, seduced them, and then turned it around and punished them for it.

Misogyny as a theme happens a lot on the show of course, Buffy fights the patriarchy after all. But when it comes to overt depictions of it, it’s often a bit… well, overt. You want to cheer Buffy for punching the douchebag in the face, but you’re also aware of how it’s an exaggeration of reality, made to get that fistbump reaction out of you.

And actually, that’s something that I think is worth re-examining too. A few years back, when the Supergirl TV show was about to premiere, there were a lot of discussions around this type of overt feminism. When I watched the pilot, I experienced some of these cringe moments myself. But, despite some of the many actual problems of the show and its feminism at the time, it also got me thinking.

Why? Why do I actually feel cringey about this?

And the answer that I found was that I was imagining watching the show from a perspective other than my own. Kind of like watching the 1992 Buffy movie back in the 90s with my brother made me hyperaware of its many faults, instead of giving me a chance to enjoy its culty ridiculousness.

So, while considering other perspectives can be essential in forming critical thought of your media, there’s a difference in trying to understand a minority perspective for instance, and feeling the need to put yourself in the shoes of the dominant culture, and base your opinions with that in mind.

But that’s a tangent inside a tangent.

Disregarding all that, imo the show’s most successful and impactful depictions of misogyny arguably come from characters who don’t always act like monsters. I actually like the bad guy from Reptile Boy for instance. He acts charming and nice to lure Buffy in, and only reveals his true nature, once he holds all the power.

Caleb in that sense then, is the show’s best and most horrifying example of that type of misogynistic evil.

(And yes, we could also talk about the Trio here, but trying to fold them in would be yet another tangent, and it’s time to talk about the actual episode at this point.)

Caleb says to the First that he doesn’t lie... but that’s a lie. He does lie. By wearing the symbol of authority, of someone you can confide in, he tells you that he can be trusted. And yes, there is very much a commentary here about the evil of religion and Catholicism, but the point being is that for someone in that community, Caleb’s appearance signals no threat. And Caleb uses that assumption to his advantage.

He only gradually reveals his true nature to Shannon at the beginning. First by calling her a whore. Because hat that point, he knows that he holds the power in their interaction and that he doesn’t need to pretend to be anything but the monster he is in order to lure her in. Shannon’s guard is down, and he knows that she can’t escape.

Caleb’s misogyny is disturbing because it’s still believable in all of its overtness. He does what he does because he knows that he can. He has the power, and that power reveals all of his deepest darkest thoughts with nothing to keep him in check.

And right after this scene, you get Xander’s dream. Where he dreams about two Potentials coming onto him in a threesome situation (and specifically with the two women also getting it on with each other in front of him, because I guess fetishizing lesbians is still a thing that Xander hasn’t internalized despite his best friend being one), while the rest of the girls are having some sexy pillow-fight in the other room.

So… I guess we’re pairing up scary misogyny with “”fun”” misogyny?

Of course, since this is a dream, we can argue that Xander can’t really be held responsible for it. We don’t have power over our dreams after all. It’s where our subconscious works through stuff, and that doesn’t reflect our persona wholly.

Except then the question still remains – why is this scene here? Why would someone write this scene in, especially in an episode full of these themes? When Xander wakes up, he’s immediately faced with the reality, where his role is to fix the toilets. It’s supposed to be funny. Look how powerless he actually is, compared to the girls.

But then he also gets the big speech moment in the very same episode, supporting Buffy, and then loses an eye to Caleb. How are these things connected? And if they’re not… why is that scene at the beginning there?

I mean, you could interpret Caleb removing one of Xander’s eyes as a punishment for Xander having these ‘urges’… Except Caleb’s comment before doing that doesn’t reference that. It references Xander’s speech from Potential, where he’s telling Dawn that he sees a lot by being underappreciated.

So, that’s probably not what they were going for. And it’s a stretch of an interpretation. In the end, there’s little to no reason for that scene to be there, and therefore I’m left with the impression, that the writers weren’t even aware of the misogynistic angle of Xander fetishizing all these young women in his dream. They just thought it was funny.

God, I wrote 1k workds already, and I haven’t even got to Buffy’s storyline in this.

This episode is setting up the pre-finale twist of everyone turning against Buffy, which I kinda hate. And that bleeds into my thoughts of Dirty Girls, unfortunately.

Like, I get it. Everyone kept telling Buffy that this was a trap, that it was a bad idea to bring the Potentials to confront Caleb without knowing more, and she ignored them. And that got a whole lot of them injured. At least two of them dead. It was a bad call.

On the other hand, didn’t Giles keep telling her in the last episode that she needed to make these hard decisions? That she needed to think big picture, and accept that there would be losses? And now, when he advises her against action, and she makes the damn ‘hard choice’ and ‘acts like a general’ I guess it’s still her fault, huh.

I swear, nothing Buffy ever does is good for these people. And maybe that’s the point we’re making, that leadership is lonely and hard and whatever the fuck, but I’m tired and I kinda hate it.

Buffy fucked up, yes. Okay. But instead of dealing with that, instead of having an honest conversation where we can explore these things, we just vaguely hint at how this is driving a wedge between her and the rest of the group.

Thanks, I hate it.

But hey, at least Faith’s here! The way Eliza Dushku delivers this line in particular is an absolute highlight:

SPIKE: “Not all that tension was about you. Giles was a part of a plan to kill me. For Buffy's own good.” FAITH: “Well, that makes me feel better about me… worse about Giles...kinda shaky about you.”

The show also addresses the fact that no one told Faith about what the fuck was going on. Which… is a bit of a problem, and paints each and every character on Buffy in a pretty bad light? Willow’s whole explanation about how, well, Faith was in prison and they thought she was safe there falls pretty flat (especially since Faith was in fact attacked in prison due to this), and the characters know it. More than anything, it just feels like they all forgot about Faith, and how this whole plan of the First to murder the Slayer line affects her.

And yet, to be honest, I couldn’t help but feel like it was the writers that actually forgot? Or at the very least, thought that it was inconvenient to share this information with Faith, before both shows came to a point where they could integrate her character into the story again?

Anyway, whoever you blame this on, it’s kinda bad.

Overall, Dirty Girls is still chilling and effective, and Faith is a breath of fresh air in this final stretch of the season. I’m just not a big fan of where we’re taking Buffy’s arc here before the big finale, and that shows.

Next up: Wine mom and vodka aunt fight over the kids’ love.

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

8 notes · View notes

mamthew · 4 years

Text

I finished Persona 5 Royal, after 135 hours. My feelings on the new content are mostly very positive, though do I have a few issues with it. Here's a suuuuuper long write-up first about Persona 5 and then about Royal. This is gonna have full spoilers for both versions of the game, so keep that in mind if spoilers for either game bother you. Persona 5 is my favorite game of all time for several reasons. The first is how masterfully it's written. Not necessarily line-to-line (and certainly not in the English localization, which could've used a few more weeks of edits to make the sentences sound more natural), but in its structure, thematic unity, and use of allusions to achieve that unity. The first two-thirds of the game are presented through a complex and well-orchestrated frame device that's honestly just a treat to experience. It presents the player with a glance at each upcoming story beat without the context to understand it, then lets them piece together the context as they go, giving the whole game a sense of mystery even as the player inhabits the characters at the center of the mystery. It also uses concepts from Jungian psychology to tell its story, most notably character archetypes, which means players can use knowledge of the archetypes to better understand aspects of the characters and their stories. It's beautiful, and it means that I often fall down rabbit-holes researching the allusions made and finding the connections they have to the story. The other reason Persona 5 is my favorite game is much more personal, but it actually played a major role in my radicalization (or if you're uncomfortable with such terminology, political reawakening). The game released in early April of 2017, only a few months after Trump took office, and partway through my first semester back at school after my five year...break. The game is about fighting back against societal injustice. It starts out small, with a high school teacher who abuses his students, but moves up to people with increasingly greater power exploiting increasingly larger swaths of the population: a famous artist using his clout to steal his students' livelihoods, a mafia boss stealing money from the people of his neighborhood, a CEO overworking and underpaying his employees while jockeying for a political position, a government prosecutor who fabricates evidence to maintain her perfect record, and finally a member of the Diet running for Prime Minister who uses populist rhetoric but only cares about gaining personal power. As in previous games, each protagonist gains their powers by awakening to their Persona (essentially publicly performing as their true, unfiltered selves), but in this game, the process is physically painful, bordering on body horror. The act of tearing off the masks so tightly glued to the characters' faces is cast in a similar light to putting on the glasses in "They Live:" doing so is painful and frightening, but allows each character to see the world for what it is, without the filter of the justifying ideological framework. In the last dungeon of the game, the characters invade the physical manifestation of the justifying framework, which takes the form of a prison in which the prisoners beg to be left inside, as the idea of freedom from the prison terrifies them. A vein running from each of their cells sucks out their life force, vampirically, and directs that life force into the manifestation of the concept of hierarchical structures itself, portrayed as the holy grail - a reference to Marx's Capital. This holy grail - which to Marx was wealth - is revealed to be a false god created by the masses because they wanted a god. However, it grew so powerful that now the masses serve it, rather than the other way around. It created its own artificial collective unconscious, barring its subjects from participating in a true collective unconscious free of its influence. At the very beginning of the game, a voice directly tells the player they may only play Persona after agreeing that the events of the game are entirely fictional, and any similarities to the real world are entirely coincidental. The game will not start until the player indicates that they agree to those terms. That voice is revealed to be the holy grail itself, implying that to refuse to compare fictional works to the real world or "get political" about these stories is to submit yourself to the justifying ideology. That's some powerful stuff, and grounding it in real-life examples of exploitation while following characters suffering from that exploitation made it hard to ignore, especially in the wake of the 2015-2016 rise of Fascism and at a time when I was back to studying literary analysis. The game seems specifically crafted to induce a radicalization in its players. It has a scene in which the characters attain class consciousness. For a chunk of the story, the characters try to fight against manufactured consent, as they are framed by the media and authority figures as dangerous villains just for taking a nonviolent stand against rapists, billionaires killing their employees, and corrupt officials. The citizenry believes it almost unquestioningly. The protagonists are often visibly enraged at the exploitation they see - much of which is based on specific real-world events - and the internal logic of the story suggests that this rage is the only moral response. Every aspect of the game bolsters these themes of hierarchy, exploitation, and rebellion, giving the game a thematic unity unlike any I've ever seen before. Even the smallest NPCs have full storylines running in the background that highlight the ways even these nameless characters are exploited, and the ways they've been socialized to accept this exploitation. Every book, every song lyric, every reference to a food item, every damn fictional allusion in a game ABOUT FICTIONAL ALLUSIONS ties back in some way to that larger theming. The thematic unity of this game sings, and playing it was unlike anything I'd experienced before. This game, for me, defined Leftism. I didn't put down the controller a full-blown Communist, but it gave me the tools I needed to ask the necessary questions to discard Liberalism. I probably would have gotten there eventually, and the game probably wouldn't have had quite as powerful an effect if I weren't a literary/media analysis kind of guy living in the time I was in, but even now, three years later, the game reads to me like a damn revolutionary text. So I was honestly terrified of Persona 5: The Royal, which came out at the beginning of this month. It's a rerelease of the game with added story content, including a new dungeon, a new party member, the return of a deceased party member, and a new ending. That's a lot to add onto a really fun game with unprecedented thematic unity that also helped me to redefine myself and my positions on...literally everything. If they messed with this unity for the sake of adding unnecessary content, it would heavily alter the game's effect, and my own personal understanding of the game, forever. That's not to say that the game couldn't be improved. The localization was kinda shoddy, it occasionally drifts into male gaze shit (glaringly so in the 2D animated cutscenes, which makes me wonder if the animation studio had different ideas about the project than the devs did), there are two scenes which are virulently homophobic, and the devs had originally planned for another party member who they had to scrap for time. The two homophobic scenes especially have made it difficult to recommend the game, as I've always had to add the caveat of "...but it completely undermines its own central thesis twice for cheap laughs and it's disgusting." I wasn't sure, however, that a rerelease would fix any of these issues, and I was really worried that adding ~25 hours of gameplay after the dungeon about the justifying ideology and the holy grail would undermine too much of what made the game so revolutionary to me. There is no larger threat to humanity than the ideological framework justifying capitalism, so I worried that moving away from that for the length of a whole-ass Kingdom Hearts game would make the game less effective. From a storytelling perspective, the party member they advertised they would bring back to life is an unambiguous villain, and I worried that bringing him back would both undermine the sacrifice from his death scene and rehabilitate the character, neither of which I wanted. The new party member was not the character they had planned for and cut, and her story as it was advertised did not involve her being exploited by people in power in any way. Rather, she's a star athlete and honors student whose success was attributed to her sense of personal responsibility, which runs pretty counter to the game's themes. I also worried that adding a new dungeon worth of gameplay would mean getting rid of the part at the end of the game where the protagonist willingly turns himself in and spends several months imprisoned, so that he can testify against one of the villains of the game. The thought of losing that bittersweet ending definitely didn't sit right with me. As I said at the beginning, my feelings on the new content are mostly positive. Before getting into pure spoiler territory, I'll say there's no going back to the original now that this version exists. They redesigned every dungeon and boss fight, retooled the battle system, added a LOT more voice acting to scenes where there hadn't been any, added a ton of new scenes further fleshing out characters and the setting, retranslated the worse lines from the localization (it's still not perfect but it's much improved), added new gameplay mechanics and personas, added a bunch of great new music, expanded on Tokyo, and FIXED THE FUCK OUT OF THE HOMOPHOBIC SCENES. I now actually really like the two nameless characters who were in the original just straight up predators, as they've been rewritten into overenthusiastic drag queens who get excited at the thought of introducing nervous kids interested in drag to the scene. They improved on dungeon crawling, too: the newly added grapple hook mechanic introduces a fun verticality to the dungeon designs, stealth is more challenging and rewarding, and each dungeon has new optional collectibles. They reimagined the procedurally generated dungeon you explore over the course of the game, too, giving it more room types, more music, a currency unique to the dungeon, a merchant, and ways to level up money, experience, and item rewards from the enemies in the dungeon. As for the new story content, the extra 25 hours of gameplay is not...counter to the themes of the game. Instead, it's set up as a story about Revolution vs. Reform. The question it poses to the people of its now-too-content Tokyo is "would you join the Phantom Thieves?" which translates more to something on the order of "if these exploitative systems still existed, but didn't really hurt you or anyone you know, would you still care enough to fight against them?" The new villain co-opts the place formerly held by the Holy Grail and uses it to rewrite reality to one in which everything is basically the same, but almost everyone in the city has everything they want (with the notable and noticeable exceptions of homeless people and service workers). The central conflict, especially to the characters who have regained lost loved ones, is whether they should still fight for a better world if most people are fairly happy. Tokyo never ends up agreeing that they would join the Phantom Thieves, but the crew still end up determining that they must restore the real world, because a world in which people are still critical of the justifying ideology has a path to a better world, while one in which people are uncritical will never find that path. It's a complex and interesting take from the beginning, and even moreso when the game uses imagery from the mythologies of the garden of Eden and Prometheus. The other dungeons correspond to deadly sins, but this one instead corresponds to "sorrow." The villain is so afraid of his own grief and the grief of others that he refuses to allow anyone to take risks, even if success would improve the world. The three new confidant arcs are well thought-out and engaging, too, especially the arc with the villainous party member, whose actor absolutely chews the scenery in this game. In the new story, he's so angry about being forced into a reality on someone else's terms that he fights tooth and nail to return to the old reality, where he was at least able to die on his own terms. It's...not as emotional as the game wants it to be, but it's a really fun time. Each party member also gets a mini arc in which they come to terms with what they would lose by returning to the old reality, and acknowledges how much personal growth they would lose by staying. These culminate a new ending in which each party member finds a way to work to regain some of what they had lost by restoring reality, going their separate ways in the process. The new content has a bit of a Persona 4 vibe, in that it's much more personal and contemplative, and the characters find strength by maturing and uncovering avenues to personal growth. As Atlus has pretty consistently existed both in the shadow of Persona 4's popularity and with the pressing need to make up for Persona 4's failings, it's not a bad angle. I do have some minor issues with the new story. It still means that there is no downtime after the original final boss, so newcomers won't really have much opportunity to consider the implications of that dungeon and boss before being thrust into another conflict. Its ending is not quite as clear-cut as the original ending, either. The protagonist still turns himself in, but the story basically...switches back to that reality a week before his release, meaning it's not nearly as much of a sacrifice and it's a decision this version of the protagonist technically didn't make for himself. The situation is probably also clearer to people who've played the original game than to newcomers. The old ending is kind of "required reading" for fans; it's still the canon ending for Scramble where the new one is not, and the new one is more impactful to players who've already experienced the original ending. This creates a major predicament when recommending this game to new players. Do I tell them to purposely not fulfil the requirements to get the new ending, then replay a 130+ hour game a second time? Should they keep a save at around the 85 hour mark, so they can reload their save and retread the 20 or so hours of game they've already experienced to get to the new stuff? There's no good answer, which is irritating. At least the original ending is included in this version, so those are options, but it's frustrating that I can't just recommend one or the other without caveats that are also huge time sinks. I dunno how to end this, and it's much longer than it probably should be, so I'll say that this game is extremely important to me, and I'm impressed that Royal is not less important to me. I sure hope we get a release date for the worldwide release of Scramble soon.

#persona 5 #persona 5 royal

5 notes · View notes