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candycandy00 · 1 year

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This is the Welcome Post and the Fanfic Masterlist!

Requests for full fanfics are closed indefinitely! Choose Your Own Price Commissions are currently open! See info about commissioning me here.

Requests for Headcanons are currently open!

Headcanons are just my opinions on things, like how I think the characters would react to certain things or how they would behave in certain situations. Examples: “How would Shigaraki react to his girlfriend naming her pet cat after him?” Or “How would the JJK guys behave if you dragged them to a Denny’s at 3am?”

About Me

I’m currently 39 😱 I’m obsessed with the color pink and I’m a country girl (born, raised, and currently live in the Appalachian mountains). I speak with a thick southern accent. I collect figures. I’m a huge nerd in every way. I love comic books (both manga and American comics), video games (mostly JRPG’s, Otome/Dating Sims, and Survival Horror), Star Wars, Kaiju/Tokusatsu, and all things Horror. I read a lot, mostly fantasy and horror. I grew up in a conservative religious household and I’m still trying to unlearn a lot of bullshit, so please bear with me.

I write for two fandoms currently: Boku no Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen. I might write for others at some point and I’ve written tons for other fandoms over the years. I also write original fiction. I would deeply appreciate any support (reblogs/comments/likes) for my original stuff because that’s where my true passion lies. I’m somewhat slow with posting updates to my fics but I promise I’m trying. I tag my x Reader fics with the x reader tag so that people who hate x reader can filter it out easily. I haven’t always done this so I’m in the process of going back and properly tagging everything.

I mostly post my writings here. It’s mostly fanfiction but there are some headcanons and opinionated rants here and there. I’m trying to go back and tag them all. You can look for the tags “Jjk headcanons” and “bnha headcanons” (that’s what I’ll be tagging them). Otherwise I mostly just reblog fanart and gif sets. I reblog fanfiction over on @candycandyreblogs. Consider it a curated library of excellent stories. Feel free to follow it! Every fanfic on there is amazing!

I’m always up for making friends! So feel free to message me and chat!

Boku no Hero Academia:

Shigaraki, Dabi, Mr. Compress, Twice, Spinner, Hawks.

Jujutsu Kaisen:

Sukuna, Gojo, Geto, Toji, Nanami, Choso.

No minors, no animals, no scat/pee/vomit.

I’m fine with dark content/rape/horror/gore/etc. I can do NSFW or SFW. Please specify if it’s not clear in your request.

Please specify the gender of the Reader (any gender is fine, no gender is fine).

That’s it! Anon is always on!

Feel free to ask me questions, give me suggestions, or just chat!

Headers by @kuroov

Just a list of the fics I've written so far so you can easily find what you'd like to read! If I've missed a fic or have a bad link or anything, please let me know!

All fics are arranged newest to oldest! All fics are 18+ and contain smut, as well as have Fem Readers, unless stated otherwise!

Shigaraki x Reader

Shower Duty (Prison AU, Noncon/Dubcon)

Office Life (Gender Neutral Reader, Dub Con, Violent Fantasies)

The Scarecrow Walks at Night (Halloween fic, Shig as a Scarecrow)

Tentacle Tomura (Tentacles, Anal)

The Pirate and the Mermaid (AU) (Three Parts!)

Too Intense For you? (BDSM)

Reader Uses Mind Control Quirk on Shig

Dark Carnival Chapter 1 (Whips, Blood, Death)

Playing a Fighting Game - Loser has to Strip

Shy Reader Giving Shig a Christmas Present

Sitting on Shig's Lap While he Plays Games

Exhibitionism

Shig Corrupts Shy Hero's Sidekick Reader

Size Kink - Shig With Short Reader

Mommy Kink

Breath Play/Choking

Break Time (Reader is a Waitress with a Crush on Shig)

Dabi x Reader

Count Touya (Dabi as a Vampire, Bondage)

Waxwork (Dabi as a Vampire + Werewolf)

The Visitors (Post Ending, Touya in Prison) NO SMUT

Zombie Apocalypse AU (Four Parts!)

Dabi Under a Lust Quirk

Dabi with Innocent Nun Reader

Piercing/Torture

Teasing that Leads to Rape/Non-Con

Trending Topics (Dabi Sees Reader's Pervy Tweets About Him)

Lazy Sex

Breeding Kink

Mr. Compress X Reader

The Experiment (Horror, Gore, Halloween Fic, Compress as a mad scientist)

Dark Carnival Chapter 2 (Blood, Gore, Death)

Mr. Compress x Reader With Bunny Quirk

Twice x Reader

Dark Carnival Chapter 3 (Horror, Blood, Gender Neutral Reader) (Three Parts!)

Non-X Reader

League of Villains Heroes (Set after the end of the manga, the League has split up and are in therapy, but a new threat turns them into reluctant heroes.) Multi-Chapter. NO SMUT. (In Progress!)

Unmerry Christmases (Platonic ShigaDabi) NO SMUT

AFO x All Might Aladdin AU Master/Slave Dub-Con

Sukuna X Reader

The Maiden’s Voyage (AU, Sukuna as a pirate captain, Rape/Noncon, Rough Sex, Violence, Sukuna is a cruel monster) (In Progress!)

Father Sukuna’s Discipline (AU, Sukuna as a priest, spanking, rough sex, reader as a nun)

The Doll House (AU, BDSM, Erotic Torture, Needles, Clamps, etc.) (Four Parts!)

Breaking You (Rape/Noncon, Blood, Torture, Humiliation, Double Penetration)

Serve Me, Save Me (Reader is a Rape Victim who joins Sukuna’s Harem after he inadvertently saves her) (In Progress!)

The Offering (Dark, Dubcon, Blood, Rough) (Five Parts!)

Gojo x Reader

The Doll House (AU, Dubcon, Chubby Reader, Pet Play, Anal, Bullying) (Four Parts!)

In The Library (College AU, Gojo and Geto bully Reader, Rape, Dark)

Promotion (Power Dynamics, Reader wants Gojo to promote her to Grade 1)

Christmas Past (Fluff, Drabble, Gojo x Geto in flashback) NO SMUT

Pick Me Up (Gojo x Reader x Geto, Halloween fic, Serial Killer AU) (Five Parts!)

Human (Rape, Torture, Blood, Dark, Reader is a cursed spirit) (Two Parts!)

Little Miss Nobody (Plot, Rough Sex, Gojo is an asshole) (Three Parts!)

Geto x Reader

The Sweetest Torture (Mafia AU, Edging, Handcuffs)

In The Library (College AU, Gojo and Geto bully Reader, Rape, Dark)

The Doll House (Dubcon, Humiliation, Public Nudity, Dom/Sub Dynamics, AU) (Four Parts!)

Pick Me Up (Gojo x Reader x Geto, Halloween fic, Serial Killer AU) (Five Parts!)

Toji x Reader

Forest Guide (Toji as a Werewolf, Rape, Breeding)

His Favorite Target (Toji is hired to kill you)

The Doll House (AU, Size Difference, Age Difference, Cock Drunkenness, Use of Aphrodisiacs) (Four Parts!)

Nanami x Reader

The Stranger at the Bar (AU, Degradation, Size Difference)

The Doll House (AU, Daddy Kink, Spanking, Hair Pulling, Reader is afraid of men.) (Four Parts!)

Choso x Reader

The Doll House (AU, Dom!Reader, Sub Choso, Teasing, Collars, Pegging) (Four Parts!)

Multi-Character

JJK Men as Pervy Mall Santas

Original X Reader

Roses in the Sky (Alien x Reader, Sci-Fi, Novel Length, Romance) (In Progress!)

#shigaraki x reader #dabi x reader #gojo x reader #geto x reader #Toji x reader #bnha x reader #jujutsu kaisen smut #jjk x reader #league of villains x reader

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kdinjenzen · 5 months

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just saw your post about how Golden Sun is on the switch now. would you be cool with telling us more about it?

(i struggle to get into media that is new to me without knowing a bit about it first, and it's usually best when i hear it from someone who loves the media in question)

Golden Sun began as a two-part Game Boy Advance JRPG series starting with 2001's "Golden Sun" and ending the first arc with "Golden Sun: The Lost Age" in 2002. The second arc of the story began with "Golden Sun: Dark Dawn" on the Nintendo DS released in 2010 and is the last title in the series to this date with an unfortunate "The End?" cliffhanger suggesting the closure of the series as a whole would come with a FOURTH game to be released at some point in time. To this day there has been no true word on a fourth title to finally finish the series.

The Golden Sun series of games were developed by Camelot Software whom originally were a Sega Only Developer specifically focusing on the "Shining" series starting with Shining in the Darkness in 1991 and ending with Shining Force III in 1998.

Camelot Software then became a Second-Party Development Studio for Nintendo focusing on the Mario Sports series of titles including both the home console and handheld versions of these games, beginning with Mario Golf in 1999.

Camelot Software was also the creator of the Waluigi character who first appeared in Mario Tennis in 2000. (They also created both the UNSEEN version and now KNOWN versions of Wapeach for Mario Tennis and Power Tennis respectively.)

The game series was created with the intent of allowing Camelot to get back to their roots or more RPG style games and to bolster the Nintendo IP owned roster with diverse gameplay titles. Much of Golden Sun's style can be seen in Camelot's older "Shining" titles with a more evolved and "of the era" style. Golden Sun was originally being conceived as a Nintendo 64 title before it was revealed that the Game Cube would be releasing soon and the N64 would be sunset. Development then moved to the GBA.

Originally Golden Sun and The Lost Age were intended to be ONE GAME, but the cartridge space on the GBA was too small and would need far more memory to whole the full game so the idea to split it in two was devised to create a much more well rounded story, give devs more time to finish the latter half of the game, and get the first title out sooner.

Golden Sun (as a series) is fairly simple and follows more traditional JRPG standards of turn based battles, a party of four characters, elemental magic, leveling up, and various collectable armors and creatures to enhance characters in and out of battle.

Elements are a key point to both gameplay and story as the world is inhabited by a small amount of "Adepts" whom can control these elements based on four types: Wind, Earth, Fire, and Water.

Djinni, small elemental creatures, can be found all over the world that will add new abilities and skills to the party's Psynergy (the game equivalent of magic spells) as well as used as parts of larger summons.

The main plot of the first title follows Isaac and Garet, years after the tragic loss of Isaac's father and their mutual friend Jenna's brother and parents being killed in a storm, as they learn more about their town, the world around them, psynergy, and the history of Mt Aleph's Sol Sanctum (a temple hidden within mountain near their small village) from one of the village's historians Kraden.

After opening up Sol Sanctum they are approached by two people who were part of the cause that ended up taking the lives of Isaac's dad and Jenna's family, a third masked figure, and their presumed fourth partner who are currently hunting for the Elemental Stars in an effort to light all the Elemental Lighthouses and releasing the power of Alchemy and Psynergy (again, the game's magic system) across the world which could be potentially disastrous.

After most of the Elemental Stars are stolen, Jenna and their teacher Kraden are kidnapped, Garet and Isaac meet "The Wise One" (a giant floating rock with an eyeball) who tasks them to stop the opposing party of four before they can attain their goal and quite possibly doom the world.

Along this journey they are eventually joined by Ivan, a young Wind Adept, and Mia an expert healer and Water Adept. Between these two and Isaac, an Earth Adept, and Garet, a Fire Adept, the party is able to round out with the full elemental psynergy roster.

They end the first game with a cliff hanger that directly and immediately starts back up with Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

The Lost Age features 4 new party members, who you do meet some of in the first game (no spoilers), and eventually the two teams of four merge into a team of 8 (two of each elemental type) - the groups combine their powers and the first arc ends.

Dark Dawn, the DS title, takes place 30 years after the end of The Lost Age and primarily follows around the children of the protagonists from the first two games going on an adventure that started far before their birth with something that happened at the end of The Lost Age.

Each game features both in and out of combat use of Psynergy. For combat it's as simple as attack/defend/buff/heal/etc. Outside of combat certain elements of Psynergy are used to solve puzzles in various ways from growing plants, pushing large stones, reading character's minds, blowing away objects with great winds, freezing water to create new platforms, etc.

The game features lots of fun collectables, side-quests, world building events, optional dungeons, and more.

I could go on and on about this series more, but that would involve a TON of spoilers so like... GO PLAY THE GAMES! THEY ARE VERY FUN!

#golden sun #kdin #ask me anything #kdin jenzen #kdinjenzen

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patchwork-crow-writes · 1 month

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The RalsAlmanac, Volume I

Okay, here it is! A series of essays that will attempt to definitively explain just who or what Ralsei is, referring to scenes from the game as evidence, as well as external sources where appropriate.

There will be some conjecture, as there's just so much we don't know about him, and what little we are given isn't exactly the most revealing. However, I've done my best to cleave as closely to the source material as I can, and I believe there's a strong case to be had here.

Hopefully you'll be able to see where my points come from, or at the very least you'll learn something you didn't know before. Either way, thanks for your consideration!

Volume I - Ralsei Is A Character In A Role-Playing Game.

Self-indulgent reference out of the way, lemme ask you a question.

Who is Ralsei?

It's a question that seems like it should be easy to answer. He's the Prince From The Dark, the third of the three Delta Warriors, he exists to serve the lightners, and is the most precious little cinnamon roll that ever lived. He enjoys baking and crochet, can hold a tune, is a decent interior-decorator, and holds his friends Kris and Susie in very high regard.

Thing is, that's about all you can really say about him without veering into speculation and headcanons, and they're more surface-level observations than anything else. What exactly does "Prince From The Dark" mean, for instance? Prince in what sense, exactly? Ceremonial, or with the actual power that royalty conveys? Where does he rank in comparison to, say, King or Queen, both actual rulers of actual kingdoms? The title of "prince" would suggest that he answers to them, but while they rule their own municipalities, Ralsei's title implies he rules over ALL dark worlds. You could go on asking these questions forever, but I think you see what I'm getting at.

A more productive avenue of questioning might be: What role does Ralsei play in the story of Deltarune? Perhaps more of his underlying character and motivation could be gleaned by looking at what he does for the story and the game. And this would be correct... sort of.

We tend to think of him as the squishy healer of the party, the Heart and moral centre of the Fun Gang. And he absolutely is that, but he's also quite a bit more. He plays all sorts of different roles and character archetypes in the first two chapters of the game, including but not limited to:

the old man whose purpose is to wax poetic about the ancient prophecy...

the know-it-all tutorial fairy who walks you through the basic game mechanics...

the straight-man DM trying to keep everything on the rails...

the young sheltered noble experiencing the outside world for the first time...

the demure love-interest to the main protagonist...

the Polyanna determined to see the good in everybody...

the mysterious waif who knows things he shouldn't...

...eye candy…?

...and so on and so forth.

And so what, I hear you cry. Characters in video games can have more than one personality trait, after all. And yes, this is true! But usually, the different aspects of a character's roles, how they interact with, reinforce or contradict each other, can tell us more about their inner world - what motivates them, what they actively like and dislike... in short, it grants them depth and allows us to engage with them as actual people, rather than just a series of game functions and character traits dressed up in a pretty bow.

But that's not what we see with Ralsei. In fact, far from showing us any real, deep aspect of his character, each new guise he dons and part he plays in the narrative further obfuscates him from us. We learn no new meaningful information from any of these exchanges... except for one thing, but we'll come to that in a moment.

This vexes us, because we WANT to know more about him, but all we end up getting is stock JRPG tropes dressed up in a warm, fluffy coat. There HAS to be something deeper, we reason - he's hiding things from us, so he must be a secret villain. Or his backstory is so tragic, so traumatising, that he cannot properly articulate it to us right now. Or maybe what we see really IS what we get - a simpering, airheaded fool whose only desires in life are to be cute, please his betters and do what he's told. Yet even this explanation seems... unsatisfying, especially since we KNOW he harbours some angst about himself and his sense of identity.

And speaking of which, that one thing we learn? Right at the end of Chapter 2's Acid Tunnel sequence, he utters a single sentence:

This is arguably one of the most significant lines of dialogue in the entire game up to this point. But what does it mean, exactly? I believe most people assume it means he doesn't have a clear sense of who he is outside of his ordained purpose, which is certainly valid, and definitely something I believed for a long time. And yet, this explanation does not deepen our understanding of his character in any meaningful way; looking back over all his interactions with the cast, it does not allow us to glean any further information about him.

And you can say that's because he himself doesn't know what he's like... but again, this doesn't actually change anything, and we just end up with a circular logic trap. We don't know anything because he doesn't tell us anything, and he doesn't tell us anything because he doesn't know anything, so how can we be expected to know anything, except that no-one seems to know anything about him… which is very frustrating to us Ralsei scholars, and gets us no closer to truly understanding him.

But look at what he says again. Really look at it. It’s a very strange way of saying “I don’t really know who I am”, isn’t it? After all, if that’s what he means, then why doesn’t he just say that? I’m certain you’ve realised by now, but it’s because that’s NOT what he’s saying at all. He literally has no clue what being “himself” is supposed to be, because he wasn’t even created with a sense of “Ralsei-ness” in the first place. Little wonder, then, that we can’t discern anything about his internal world, when there is nothing there to be discerned.

But before I elaborate any further, I want to talk about a couple of scenes in Deltarune that are just... puzzling. This is relevant, I promise. The first is during the dialogue with Rouxls Kaard before the rematch with K.Round. Ralsei says something interesting in the lead-up to the fight:

Note Susie’s baffled reaction to this. Then not long afterwards, he continues with:

Throwaway joke, right? We laugh because Susie's right - K. Round and its crown do look exactly the same to us, and so Ralsei's dramatic utterances are deflated and lose their impact. We laugh, beat the boss with Susie's help and forget all about it. But here's the thing - if K.Round looks the same to us, and it looks the same to Susie, and presumably by extension the rest of the in-game characters... when why exactly does Ralsei take the time to insist otherwise?

Is he... lying? Our most precious little boy, guilty of perjury? Say it ain't so! :O

The second scene is in chapter 2 - Queen has challenged us to a game of Punch-Out on her absurdly tall arcade machine, and we can talk to the characters before trying to interact with it. Talk to Ralsei, and if you answer "Gaming is my life" to his prompt, he says this:

Most people don't even come across this in their playthrough, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's new to you reading this. But again, note this strange discrepancy between what Ralsei reports is happening and what Susie says is actually happening. It becomes apparent to most people that Kris can affect the tone of their voice when saying what we tell them to, which affects how the response is taken by other characters and gives us a subtle clue about how they actually feel about certain characters or situations.

Are we to assume, then, that Ralsei isn't actually listening to how Kris says things, but only what they're saying? And if that's correct, then... what does that say about him?

Taken at face-value, within the context of the game, neither of these events really make much sense. It just looks like Ralsei is being overly-dramatic, or lying, or perhaps even insensitive to what their friend is trying to tell him, which doesn't quite track with his per-established shallow traits of kind, all-loving and moralistic. It's perplexing and seemingly out-of-character for him. So it might help to consider, in each of these scenarios, who exactly Ralsei is talking to.

Is it Kris and/or Susie? This would make the most sense, but it's actually not that likely, considering the aforementioned discrepencies between his descriptions and Susie's observations. So is it himself? Again, if he can see things the same as everyone else in-game, that wouldn't make much sense, because then he's just saying stuff that... isn't true? Or in the latter example's case, just completely ignoring what Kris is saying, which doesn't seem to entirely gel with what we know about him.

So, who does that leave? Well, the only other person - or should I say entity - who is present for both of those scenes is... us. The player of Deltarune. And that might seem even stranger than the previous options, until you realise what it is he's actually doing - providing flavour text, additional exposition informing us of details that we wouldn't - or shouldn't - be able to make out on a pixelated display with no voice-acting, attempting to give us a richer sense of these events in order to increase our sense of immersion in the game and world of Deltarune. In effect, he's playing the part of a character in a role playing game, doling out “flavour text” that contradicts another character’s experience of the same scenes, and he's doing it entirely for OUR benefit. Not Kris’s, not Susie's – ours.

He tells us that K.Round's crown is different, and that it is in pain from its forced control, to try and increase the stakes of the fight, and to give us a motivation that's not "here's the exact same boss again lul". He responds to Kris's words the way he does, not because he doesn't understand the nuances of their tone, but to try and amp us up for the upcoming challenge, and to validate our choice when we select the dialogue option "Gaming is my life". Because we cannot hear Kris's tone of voice - and Ralsei knows that. To him, Kris's tone literally doesn't matter, because he doesn't believe it matters to us in that exact moment.

And here’s the thing: if not for Susie’s asides immediately contradicting him, we’d likely take what he says here as what’s actually going on. To Ralsei, the reality he and his friends experience is not important – it’s the image of that reality that he’s trying to convey to the player. It’s like he knows he’s part of a game, meant just for us to experience and enjoy, as opposed to a real world filled with real people having real experiences.

And the reason I brought this up is to illustrate what I believe Ralsei to actually be - namely, that he a walking, talking, singing and dancing amalgam of stock JRPG characters and tropes that's trying very hard to present as an actual person, to the point of knowing absolutely nothing about who he even is outside of that. Put in even blunter terms, he's literally a fluffy goat-shaped vehicle to set the player on their journey through the game, to keep them playing and to keep them invested. People looking for deeper aspects of his character come up short and are disappointed because they're looking for something that does not currently exist.

And just so that I'm clear, I do not mean that Ralsei is "acting", or that he's "wearing a mask", because that would imply that there was actually something underneath his "facade" to begin with. No, this is who the Prince of the Dark is - a very convincing fascimile of a person, following his directive to ensure that the story of Deltarune is resolved, and that the game of Deltarune is played to completion. And once you realise that, a lot of things that Ralsei says and does that seemed strange before suddenly make a lot more sense.

As for the why... well, that'll have to wait for another time. But hopefully you can begin to see how my future essays in this series all tie in to this one, because I think you can only really understand those with the framework that this text provides. I hope that my reasoning made sense and wasn't too difficult to follow, but I'll be happy to provide additional information, clarification, or even just discussion on any aspect of this essay... even if we just wind up (respectfully) agreeing to disagree. Would love to hear what people thought about this!

Thanks for reading!

#Writing #essay #analysis #theory #Deltarune #Ralsei #character study #The RalsAlmanac #deltarune chapter 1 #deltarune chapter 2 #essay collection

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stillness-in-green · 8 months

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What Helck Does Right That BNHA Is Doing Wrong

I wrote this out in a spate of frustration a while back, lost it, and then was able to recover it again, so in the interest of conservation, I figure I might as well share. It contains massive spoilers for Helck—details of its ending, its overarching plot, deep world secrets, and so on—so read at your own risk if you're one of the few people following the anime. On the other hand, very few people do seem to be watching Helck, so if you watched the first episode and then dumped it for being too goofy and comedic, this write-up will definitely give you some context for where that story goes.

(More people should read/watch Helck. Please read this and then go read Helck.)

(If you prefer, you can also just skim the Helck bits until you get to me complaining about BNHA’s crappy endgame. Hit the jump, either way!)

Helck: What It Does

For my readers unfamiliar with the series (e.g. probably most of you), Helck’s elevator pitch is, “After the Hero defeats the Demon King, the demons hold a tournament to select the new Demon King. But wait, why is there a human here?!” It’s riffing, obviously, on the foundational JRPG story, and starts out in a high-key goofy comedy mode, which, while representative of its sense of humor, is not actually very reflective of the tonal zone it winds up occupying for most of its run. The darkness and horror elements of the series are foreshadowed by the title character—Helck, the human who showed up to join the Demon King selection tournament—cheerily proclaiming that he hates and wants to destroy all humans. Something is very wrong in the human lands, it seems, and the main character—Vamirio, one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the demon empire, sent to oversee the tournament—uncovering and then responding to that wrong forms the bulk of the story.

That said, it takes a good long while for Helck to reveal the true nature of its conflict. While there are some key villainous figures that have been in play for long before that point, the ultimate truth is that the world of Helck contains a disembodied force that contacts people when they’re in their darkest, most despairing moments, providing them an “answer” for why their situations are so miserable and how to go about fixing the world that hurt them so badly, as well as power to help them do so. The answer given by this force, called “The Will of the World,” is twisted and omnicidal, but between a degree of implied mental influence and the timing of the approach, lots of otherwise innocent, hurt people can wind up becoming the figures behind literally world-threatening dangers.

Eventually, we find out that Helck himself was approached by The Will when he was a child in a bad situation. He wasn’t quite ready to give in yet—he had a kid brother to look out for—and so he powered past it, but it’s remained in the back of his head since that day, ever-ready to whisper its apocalyptic solutions to extreme class disparity and abuse. This gives him a degree of empathy for the villains of the series, even as they do extremely awful stuff that he can’t otherwise forgive.

In the epilogue, a new king is crowned and we’re generally assured that things in Helck’s country are going to improve from now on. The demons are developing magical treatment to reverse a once-thought-irreversible transformation from sentient person into mindless monster, preparing groups that will venture forth to find all the affected humans still wandering the countryside so that they can be helped. Helck himself could easily rest on his laurels, either settling in with the human friends he had to go to extreme lengths to save or accepting his demon friends’ invitation to come live with them, the ones who fought at his side and gave him hope when he was so often on the verge of despair.

But he does neither, because he knows that The Will of the World is still out there whispering to other people in pain—it’s a force of nature that will always be out there, until someday it succeeds at finding someone it can use to overturn and restart the world. It can never be killed, only circumvented. However, The Will can’t act on its own, only through those that have fallen under its sway, and those people don’t start out as raving, gleefully evil maniacs! They start out as people experiencing unconscionable suffering, because people suffering to that extent are the only ones who can be convinced to believe that the answer is total annihilation.

Helck knows better than to assume that simply installing one good king in one overall-good country will be enough to save everyone in the world—or even in that one country!—from despair, and he’s intimately familiar with what that despair is like. So, he packs up with one of his besties and they set out on a journey that will, implicitly, never really have an end. Of course, he’ll come visit his friends and loved ones from time to time, but what he’s really dedicating himself to is finding and rescuing other people, other victims, giving them reasons to hope, reasons to believe in the world as it is now, because, as he himself experienced, that’s the only thing that can really stop someone from falling prey to The Will of the World.

Saving those victims is a practical means of preventing all the harm they would have gone on to wreak, yes, but it also means said victims don’t have to be put to the sword when they turn up at the head of an army of monsters or some shit a few decades down the line.

Helck’s answer to the problem of recurrent, inevitable suffering is thus threefold:

Improve the system at large by clearing out the corruption on top.

Dedicate active, ongoing efforts to redressing the sins of the previous system and helping its victims, even if they seem too far gone.

Proactively seek out and bring aid to problem areas before the sufferers there metastasize into world-shaking dangers.

Its characters are involved in all three of those stages—the heroic side cast does Point 1, Vamirio and her allies handle Point 2, and Helck takes up the responsibility of Point 3. He goes out into the world to be that extra safety net when the better society he helped put in place inevitably still fails people, in places where his allies can’t reach. To find them—the people who are in such bad situations that apocalypse looks like a reasonable solution—he’s going to have to wade, personally, into the deepest and worst mires he can find, pulling people out of that darkness one hand at a time.

As a series, then, Helck believes in systemic change while also believing that systemic change will never be sufficient on its own to prevent all suffering. However, rather than then simply shrugging and accepting that suffering is inevitable and so the heroes will have no choice but to deal violently with the people who fell through the cracks when they inevitably return as dangerous villains, it sends its hero out to do that ground-level work of saving people. And he himself isn’t enough either, but his actions are still meaningful, because every life he saves is both that one soul saved from darkness, and one more vector cut off that could otherwise spiral into exponential amounts of suffering and death.

BNHA: What It's Not Doing

We can see an echo of the path into darkness which turns victims into villains in BNHA, where the villains are not Born Monsters, but rather become monsters because of the circumstances of their lives. The pain they endure, the discrimination and violence they face, leads them to their extremist reactions to try and repair—or simply destroy—a world they perceive as fundamentally hostile to them. While there’s no overarching Will of the World manipulating them for its own ends—All For One is akin to it in how he operates, but at the end of the day, he’s still just another man, not a literal planetary anima—the end result remains the same: people forged by suffering into enemies so dangerous and resolute that they threaten the entire foundation of the world as it currently exists, as well as all those who are living in peace and happiness in the current world.

So, when faced with the prospect of enemies who are an unavoidable consequence of the endurance of the status quo (because the status quo the heroes have chosen to support is full of discrimination and repression), what exactly is BNHA proposing to do about those enemies arising in the future? How will the heroes’ course of action regarding those enemies be different at the end of the story than it was at the beginning? Well, so far we’ve got:

Shouji functionally telling the heteromorphs at the hospital that all they can do is endure their suffering until the people around them decide on their own to improve.

Even as she’s embraced by a Hero, Toga believing there’s no possible ending in which she can reach a world she wants to live in, and so resigning herself to finding a satisfactory death instead.

The seeming resolution of the subplot concerning the civilians lashing out at the heroes for their failure being for them to collectively agree to support heroes even more, with no explanation of what that would change for the children out of view of a hero, like Tenko was, or being victimized by a hero, like Touya.

I feel like the manga wants us to believe that the future will be better because heroes as a group, inspired by the kids of 1-A and with the corruption of the HPSC purged, are going to be more empathetic towards villains as a group going forward. I don’t believe that, however, thanks to even the students’ (and especially Deku’s) continued willingness to completely ignore the humanity of the villains they don’t have pre-existing bonds with. Their empathy for “their” designated villains is admirable, certainly, and a good start on the necessary change, but it’s not sufficient if it starts and ends with that highly conditional empathy.

What is going to be different on a systemic level to help people like Toga or Spinner? What will change in society at large such that the average person on the street will become willing to help someone off-putting and potentially dangerous like Tenko or Jin? What overhaul of professional heroism can we expect to help prevent situations like Touya’s or assuage the generational grudges behind Mr. Compress or Re-Destro? What new oversight mechanisms will be put in place to prevent more children from being scooped up to be raised as weapons like Lady Nagant and Hawks? What can be done to catch people like Muscular or Moonfish at a younger age and intervene before they grow up into murderers? What better counselling programs in prison could be introduced such that someone like Ending might actually be less suicidal when their prison sentence ends than they were when it began? What social safety nets need to be strengthened such that children like Overhaul and Geten wind up in normal, loving homes with the resources to help them sort through their issues rather than criminal organizations and cults?

After the dust settles on this endgame, what in god’s name is going to change?

Further, even if those changes are enacted, what are the main characters going to do personally for those who still slip through the cracks? As @robotlesbianjavert wrote previously, once everything has been done as best it can for the greater good, what’s the second safety net there to catch those who can’t be saved in the greater good’s first pass?

BNHA vs. Helck's Threefold Answer

Consider again the three points Helck’s ending contained—improve the system, care for the victims that already exist, and proactively seek to prevent the creation of new victims—and contrast them to how things are going in BNHA’s end game.

1: Have the main characters improved the system?

No, not at all. The most concrete change to the system has surely been the death of the HPSC President, but no heroes had no hand in that, much less one of the kids. Clone Re-Destro took her out, one villain to another, so no hero had to sully their hands or risk taking on the very office that grants them their authority. Even with her death, we have no guarantee that whoever takes her position next will be any different than she was.

All Might’s retirement shook the system, but the series is out there as I type this recanonizing All Might and his legacy as wholly beyond reproach.

Endeavor and Hawks were exposed as, respectively, an abuser and a murderer on national TV and absolutely no official consequences befell them.

A heteromorphic mob stormed a hospital and the best a professional hero could muster was a feeble apology for not “realizing sooner,” with not a single word from anyone about being more mindful going forward.

Ujiko was removed from the web of orphanages he was maintaining, but there’s been nothing to address how he managed to get away with cultivating his “seedbeds of hatred and ferocity” right out in the open for decades, either, and so we have no real reason to believe the vulnerable children in those institutions are going to be safe from the next unscrupulous figure with ulterior motives to come along after him.

There’s been no recognition whatsoever of the role quirk counselling played in Toga’s repression, no discussion of making prisons more humane, no intention stated of making the current system even the tiniest bit less regressive via actual changes to the law and government-funded social safety nets. The system shows no signs whatsoever of improving, least of all due to any actions on the part of the main characters.

Neither Deku nor any other student has shown the faintest inclination to push back against the reactionary violence demanded of them by the system they intend to join. While they may act mercifully on their own time, they are wholly unwilling to actually protest against the authority that gives them their orders.

2: Are the main characters making efforts to care for the victims that already exist?

Yes and no. This is about the only one I can give them even partial credit for, but partial credit they do still get.

Ochaco made a world-shaking offer for Toga, one that melted away Toga’s aggression and brought her violence to a dead stop. That’s amazing! Shouto has managed to stop Dabi from killing himself and everyone around him against all odds, and we have every indication that he’ll keep dedicating himself to that for as long as it takes. Deku has concretely changed the paths of Gentle Criminal, La Brava and Lady Nagant,[*] and I have little reason to believe he’ll do any less for Shigaraki, however that turns out to look. Attempts are even being made to help the Noumu, following the reveal of Shirakumo’s lingering presence in Kurogiri.

…But that’s about where it stops.

[*] I hate absolutely everything about the way Lady N reacted to him, mind you, but what’s on the page is on the page.

Shouji never bothered to actually ask Spinner or Scarecrow what drove them to villainy, nor do we have any indication that he’s going to follow up with them now that the riot they were leading has been quelled.

Deku’s compassion begins and ends with people whose motivations he can understand; he has none to spare on those whose desires and goals are alien to him, or he attaches that compassion to stone-hearted ultimatums he has no authority to make.

Tsuyu’s got Ochaco’s back, and Iida has a line that you could interpret as being charitably disposed towards Dabi, but no one else in the class seems to be making any efforts to reach out to villains. Shinsou might have brought Gigantomachia to a place where he could confront AFO, but he damn sure didn’t give him a choice in the matter.

Things are even worse on the professional level. Between the flying coffin and the mass arrests, we’ve had no indication that the Pros are doing or are interested in doing the first damn thing to try and help the victims of their flawed status quo.

The first thing Hawks does when confronted with a risen Twice is scream to kill him again, for god’s sake. That’s as clear an indication as I could possibly ask for that nothing he’s experienced has altered Hawks’s methods or his willingness to use them.

As I said above, the empathy a tiny handful of students have for their villain foils is commendable, but insufficient to serve as tidemarks indicating an improved status quo.

3: Is there any indication that the main characters will proactively seek to prevent the pain that leads to the birth of villains?

No. In fact, under the current system, that isn’t even possible for them. That is simply not what professional heroism is or does. Under the current system, heroes are definitionally reactive; they’re not there as a preventative against suffering so much as they’re a topical ointment for it once it’s already arisen. Because the role of heroes seems on track to remain the same as it ever was, heroes can’t go into the dark places because that’s simply not their job.

Addressing bigotry and discrimination is not a hero’s job unless someone perpetuating it is using their quirk to do so.

Preventing domestic abuse is not a hero’s job even if a quirk is in use because quirk use is legal inside the home; abuse is thus a problem for police and social workers to handle, not heroes.

Dealing with corrupt systems and repressive laws is not a hero’s job because they’re enforcers for systems and laws; they can try to change them through the legal pathways available to all citizens, but they can’t bring their powers to bear without becoming villains themselves.

Heroes cannot walk into the heart of darkness of Hero Society because their job is to exist outside, in the open, in the light. Their only function is to stop villains—people using their quirks illegally—and to help out in disaster situations. That’s it. That’s all they’re there to do. And if the parameters of their jobs don’t change, that’s all they’re ever going to be able to do: try to talk a victim who’s already gone sour out of getting worse.

As it stands, if the 1-A kids are still just running around being Cool Heroes Punching Out Villains in the epilogue, they are failing to act as the second layer of aid Helck represents, but rather still only acting as their society’s last defense against those who have become twisted by pain and unaddressed need. In effect, they will continue to be the sword that puts down a monster rather than the hand that reaches out to a victim before the monster can be born.

Right now, I have seen precious little to convince me that, ten years down the line, they’re going to be anything more than fractionally better heroes than their predecessors were—punching first, asking questions virtually never, standing around in the aftermath congratulating themselves for their victories, posing for cameras as the people they just unthinkingly pummeled get packed into police cars to be dumped into a perfunctory legal system followed by a monstrously inhuman carceral complex.

The Impact of Timing

Is anyone thinking that it's not fair of me to compare stuff in BNHA's endgame to stuff in Helck's epilogue? Couldn't most of my complaints be handwaved in BNHA's epilogue? I mean, I guess, yeah, but with the small problem that such a resolution would be incredibly unsatisfying.

The thing with Helck is, that series doesn’t leave those three points for the epilogue; rather, its epilogue is a natural extension of the choices its characters have been making all along.

Helck leaves his chain of command, his kingdom, even his own species, when he realizes how deep their corruption runs. Helck’s struggle to overcome corrupt authority is the foundation the entire series rests on, from its beginning hook of, “Human hero tries to become the new Demon Lord,” to its climax of fighting against The Will of the World itself. (Point 1: Improve the system.)

Vamirio decides upon getting to know Helck that humans, her enemies, are ultimately victims of the corrupt power manipulating them. She shouts out loud her intention to save them, exulting in the sense of relief it gives her to clear away her uncertainty and come to that decision. Later, she passionately declares that she will disobey orders from her Emperor himself, if those orders are to fight humans with the intent of killing them. She’s a figure of authority amidst her own kind, but she is more than willing to go against that authority—and vocally so—if her morals tell her she must. (Point 2: Dedicate active efforts to helping the victims of the corrupt system, even if they already seem too far gone.)

I’ve already talked about Helck’s decision to wander the earth in the series’s epilogue, and this of all points would seem most likely to be relegated to the aftermath, but no, dedication to preventing future tragedies can be found in the body of the series itself as well. Vamirio’s peer Azudora has history with both humans and the transformations wrought by The Will of the World, and he’s been working on a cure since before the series even began. His efforts bring hope to the series at a critical point and provide a model for Helck’s decision at the series’s end, as both men make the same choice: to devote their lives to the hope of doing something that will better the future, even if it doesn’t change things for those who have already been lost. (Point 3: Proactively work to save today’s victims so that they don’t become tomorrow’s monsters.)

In essence, the entire run of Helck is dedicated to presenting the problem Vamirio and Helck are facing, exploring how and why they come to the decisions they do about how to solve that problem, and then forcing them, over and over, to face down their own doubt and fear, their allies’ hesitancy, and their opponents’ highly dedicated efforts to break them down and defeat them, be it through force of arms or despair. The heroes get the ending they do because they decide on the ending they want and then they spend the rest of the series damn well fighting for it.

BNHA’s epilogue handing the kids the passel of resolutions and changes they so desperately need for their bright futures to be remotely convincing—offscreened, timeskipped victories to battles they haven’t even yet realized the need to fight!—will just cement this rant’s contention that the series and its heroes don’t have half of the clarity of purpose and intellectual integrity of Helck and its lead duo of shounen manga Determinators.

In summary, please read Helck.

Disclaimer at the bottom: I don’t want to utterly oversell Helck here. The way it handles its classism angle is simplistic, even reductive, a bog-standard portrayal of, “All nobles are cartoonishly evil save the one (1) pure-hearted exception who just isn’t for some reason.” Its big change to its corrupt system at the end is simply to replace a “bad king” with a “good king,” which is self-evidently not a change that’s guaranteed-effective beyond the good king’s lifespan. Further, there’s obviously going to be a difference in realism between a story set in a medieval fantasy JRPG world and one set in a modified version of real-life, present-day Japan—BNHA does portray a much more complex, well-articulated society.

Still, even acknowledging that comparing the two series is kind of comparing apples and mandrakes, it’s striking to me how similar the themes are when you strip out the language of their respective genre idioms. Both are interrogating notions of traditional heroism and villainy, examining what drives villains, pushing to recognize the humanity in the traditionally monstrous. In that sense, Helck is just across-the-board better, more honest, and more passionate at portraying those themes, while BNHA consistently gestures at them only to bafflingly write them off again the moment they get a little too challenging to deal with.

#bnha #helck #helck propaganda #bnha critical #stillness has salt #my writing #unrelated note: i was reading helck for the first time as i was also reading frieren for the first time #and let me tell you guys #THAT is a fun compare and contrast exercise #need frieren to be a blowout success so it can get a season two and i can get the golden city arc animated please and thank you #but it'd be nice if helck's very...adequate anime did well enough that they could at least get through the whole thing

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themisteriousentity · 10 months

Text

You know, people forget that Soldier, Poet, King is a Christian song depicting different aspects of Jesus, but it sure is interesting to see that the fandom almost universally makes Dimitri the Soldier, Claude the Poet, and Edelgard the King

However, I argue a different order

*le gaspu*

Dimitri is still the soldier, but I think Claude and Edelgard should switch. I think Edelgard is the Poet and Claude is the King

Hear me out

Dimitri, we all know why he's the Soldier. I don't think we need to explain that. I don't need to get into the bible analysis, man LITERALLY tears cities down, oh lei oh lai oh lord

Edelgard is a very well spoken person. When she's actually given room to voice her ideas, despite being wrong because she's got just the tip of the iceberg of the true history, she can managed to convince almost anyone. In both games, she manages to convince most of her empire, which is FULL of very devout followers of Seiros and Sothis, to attack the Central Church and follow her lead. For a person who doesn't know much better, she's very damn convincing. She just doesn't do it very often, and she's terrible at listening when people try to counter her ideas (her argument with Dimitri and Azure Moon really highlights this when he tries to open a dialogue). But the important thing there is also that this is a role she chooses to take on in both games. If you look at the Poet, this easily relates to the start of Jesus's ministry in the bible, taking down establishments left and right on his word alone. Edelgard convinces her country to follow her on her accusations alone (as she was only 18 when she started the war and even as emperor she had to talk many ministers into following her lead or nothing would've happened without ministers like Count Bergliez and Count Hevring that she convinced), slaying the church with her tongue

Meanwhile, the King easily relates far more to Claude than the Poet. Claude doesn't really spend a lot of time convincing people of his ideals or talking them into anything aside from explaining his ambitions to Byleth and Shez, and depending on your supports in some ways to Leonie and Lorenz. Unlike Edelgard, Claude is in a situation he didn't ask for. He has a war thrust upon him and a conflict with a massive religious body that breeds prejudice to contend with. As an outsider who is deeply untrusted, he has to fight tooth and nail just to keep the Alliance whole. All the meanwhile he's constantly having insults thrust upon him by his own people, and in certain routes he's completely abandoned by one of the largest political players in his nation. The crown of thorns was not a burden Jesus chose to accept, like the burden of war Edelgard created and thrust upon the world, but was something thrusted upon him that he then had to deal with. It's easy to see that Claude never wanted to contend with this war and only stays because he HAS to, for the sake of both Almyra and Fódlan, despite knowing all he's doing is keeping things stable while not fixing the situation. But in the end he's still prepared to sacrifice everything to try and make the world better. In Houses, he even plans for his own death to protect the people of the Alliance, the people who fought against him and rejected him the most. In Hopes, he settles on working with people he fundamentally disagrees with and dislikes for the sake of protecting Fódlan. With a character progression like that, it just feels like the ruler who his brow laid in thorn, anointed in oil, that tracks to Claude much better than Edelgard

But hey, that's just my opinion. Wow, who knew being dragged to church kicking and screaming against my will would come in handy for a strategy JRPG

#fire emblem three houses #fire emblem three hopes #fe3h #edelgard fe3h #dimitri fe3h #claude fe3h #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #edelgard von hresvelg #claude von riegan #blue lions #black eagles #golden deer #soldier poet king #religious mentions #christianity #christianity mention

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theminecraftbee · 4 months

Note

For anyone looking to make their own Persona AUs, the Shin Megami Tensei wiki is honestly one of the better places to research the recurring tropes of various social links (ie, the Magician typically being the Protagonist's first male friend, the Justice typically being prone to anger). Do note that because of the nature of the Persona and SMT franchises you'll find potentially triggering content, so do tread lightly!

yes, very true! the wiki is SUPER HELPFUL in that regard!

and this is a good time to bring up actually: if my talking about persona has made you interested in playing, yay! they’re super cool and fun games! HOWEVER, they have some pretty big content warnings on them. (here the content warnings are for p3/p4/p5; I would be shocked if these themes aren’t in p1/p2, but I haven’t played those.)

all three games have at least some mentions/relevant sexual assault

all three games have scenes of severe bullying

all three games discuss suicide

all three games have death, including major character death, as a theme, with persona 3 having death be its MAIN theme.

all three games have some elements of institutionalized abuse as part of their story

familial/child abuse is also in at least one social link in all three games, and is a major plot point in at least p3 and p5.

mental health in general is a major theme of all three games.

all three games have some element of unreality as a theme.

additionally, while the above are the things I think atlus would say they intentionally put in as heavy themes, persona also has some… “jokes”… that it is irresponsible to make a recommendation without mentioning.

atlus tends to use the “predatory gay man” and “predatory trans woman” bit for laughs. yes, I’m sorry, in all three games, although I was pleasantly surprised to see they’d actually removed that from persona 3 in p3 reload! but it’s in one scene in p5, and in p4 it’s… complicated. one of the lead characters is gay, and part of his character arc is about internalized homophobia. however, another character will make statements like he’s scared to share a tent with him, which is never treated as justified but IS treated as a “joke”, on account of the character doing the homophobia being a comic relief character. additionally, naoto’s character arc can easily be read as transphobic (as naoto needing to accept being a woman rather than a man), although I know different people have different reactions to this arc. p4 is my favorite but it is NOT a recommendation I give without content warnings for a reason.

also, while p4 as a game is well aware of the amount of violence against women in it and the bad guy who does it is a nihilist and a loser, it is a major plot point, and it’s not always treated with grace.

also, all three games notoriously have at least one “comedy relief” scene of the guys picking up women and honestly it’s normally more like, anime cringe than actually misogynistic but it feels like I should bring it up?

also in both p3 and p5 there are social links that can lead to you flirting with your teacher. yeah. it’s avoidable but it’s sure there.

overall: REALLY GOOD GAMES, and when the writing is good in them it’s REALLY GOOD. they’re also consistently games that people who otherwise wouldn’t be into an 100-hour jrpgs end up realizing why people like the genre with! but they are ALSO games where the content warnings here are warranted!

#answered #latenitewaffles

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centrally-unplanned · 2 months

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The implied "theory of history" of the latest Fantasy RPGMaker "Kingdom Ruling" games I have been playing is always pretty consistent, even if its something of an emergent phenomenon. These games are a narrative, a narrative where the player "inserts" into the story, which means its gonna be a narrative of progress in some form (even if it has ups and downs). The player will "win", and you need a reason why they win and others lose - but in real life people rarely "win" at rulership to the extent these characters do. So how do they pull it off, and what is the implied model?

Good vs Bad People: Very commonly, the duke of this or that duchy is either a good person or a bad person - loyal & virtuous, or corrupt & venial. The problem the kingdom has is that too many unvirtuous folk have risen to the ranks of power.

Note while the above is often explicitly stated, it is also used as a sort of narrative shorthand - have a subplot about illicit slave markets in the capitol city? Replace the implicated mayor with someone you narratively know is good, and so the problem is gone, and you can now ignore it. You can walk away without feeling like you walked away, since Good Person is there to handle it.

Power of Friendship: So where do all of these good people come from? Sometimes its just things like visual coding, we all know what a "good" and "bad" character looks like in a JRPG. But the bread-and-butter is that as the main character you build up a group of friends. Classmates from the Magic Academy, childhood friends, a random barbaric wildchild you seduce with sweets, w/e. You play as them sometimes, they have cute scenes together, become friends, and so on. You get exposed to their personalities and humanity and generally the narrative constructs them as being emotionally invested in the protagonist & plot. And then they & their own families and friends (who get trust by association) can populate out the "bureaucracy" of your country when these problems come up. Obviously they won't take that opportunity to simply pursue their own interest, friends don't do that.

And in particular these aren't regular friends: they are nakama, a band of brothers, forged in the fire of battle and bound by the steel of the sword.

Also sometimes you are boning all of them.

Crisis = Opportunity: And the final piece of the puzzle is the hammer that makes any piece fit: copious amounts of violence! These stories are almost always war stories; primarily of course because in fiction "war is awesome" and it provides a big narrative throughline and all that, but also because that is the justification for the scale & pace of change. You could just take a peaceful-but-corrupt country and start beheading civil servants & nobles, but its a tough sell morally and realism-wise. But have those same people engaging in rebellion, raiding, or other forms of violence, and now they can die on the battlefield - and be undone by clever schemes and the abilities of the heroes as opposed to idk IRS investigations of tax irregularities. It also justifies that nakama as mentioned above, you need a reason to fight and therefore bond. And it confirms one's morality; war is a mirror that shows you the true self; coward, hero, villain, martyr, etc.

On top of that it provides an excuse in reverse, as to why the country had so many "bad" figures in the first place. It was peacetime, they played their game "inside the system" and you can't purge them without breaking the peace.

---

Okay, so what all that sums to is that this genre's median "theory of history" is that societies decay over time as Bad People populate the ranks of power, and things like crime, poverty, etc come from that decay. Good people could purge that, but too many lost the Game of Politics to the Bads. Eventually of course some crises comes along that breaks the weakened system. This allows for people of talent and good moral virtue to rise to the top again, purge the bad elements, and the arc of combat forges a class of moral leaders who will rule justly into the future.

Now obviously I do criticize the realism of this model - most societal problems are structural, emerging independently of the moral stance of the leaders in question and not amendable to HR reshuffles. It is stridently anti-materialist in a way I must object to. However, its a game, its not trying to be history, I'm not here to bash on that. It is a coherent model - it works! It explains history and its cycles and ebbs in a narratively satisfying way. (and ofc I am simplifying strongly here, it has more elements).

What I do find funny is how intensely Romance of the Three Kingdoms it is. Its an extremely specific outlook on what makes the mettle of a kingdom, how virtue flows from the top, how nations rise and fall in cycles based on that. Which isn't surprising - they are universal-enough themes of course, but the genre is "Japan"-RPGs for a reason. They may all be mainly styled after western fantasy aesthetics but their storytelling conventions come from Japan's own historical fiction literary tradition, which is intensely derived from China's.

But of course this is now a global tradition, most of these games don't come from that ecology of 1980's-1990's JRPG makers clustered around Tokyo & Osaka anymore. The legacy of that influence endures though, due to both a deep cultural history of how these things evolved ("genre staples") and also because the ludology of these games implies certain narrative directions. At this point its what audiences for these games all over "want".

Which, as always, is neat!

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damnfandomproblems · 29 days

Note

To fandom problem #4807

This is also true for video games that have anime like style. I've seen idiots (especially "gaming journalists") on social media saying things like: "EWWWWW! You play THAT?! You disgusting PERVERT!!!" (Even if said anime styled game doesn't even have lolis in it)

And then they praised BG3 that you can fuck a bear (who's a druid I know)

But when the same druid thing would be in an anime styled JRPG than they would call you zoophile –_–

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

#fandom problem 4807 #response to previous problem #mod sf

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satoshi-mochida · 2 months

Text

JRPG-inspired turn-based fantasy RPG Runa announced for PC

From Gematsu

Madrid-based developer Fennec Studio has announced Runa, a turn-based RPG inspired by modern and classic Japanese RPGs. A Kickstarter campaign will launch on April 16.

Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:

About

Runa is an adventure game inspired by modern and classic JRPG, with turn-based battle system, social links and a story-rich science fantasy world. Promising to keep intact what makes classic JRPG games fun, Runa also features elemental puzzles and base building, as well as minigames like farming, fishing and cooking. Runa is set in a world in which runas symbolize the technological advancements of an ancient civilization. Whether for domestic use or combat, the use of runas is key. Only some people, known as adepts, are able to fully control them and unleash their true powers.

Key Features

-Explore a Huge World – The world of Runa is a colorful and vibrant fantasy one, but also full of mysteries and sci-fi elements. Follow the journey of a group of adventurers who, driven by their unique motivations, find themselves traveling the world and unraveling all its hidden secrets.

-Fight Turn-Based Battles – The “Elemental Break System” is a battle system inspired by JRPG classics: turn-based battles with ordered turns, elemental affinities and strategical approach. With four active and a total of seven party members, that can be swapped anytime (no turn wasted), group ultimates, and a lot of powerful skills!

-Relationships and Romance – Date different characters individually to strengthen your relationships with them. If you’re trying to find that special someone in the world of Runa, you’ll have more than 15 romance options, including same-gender relationships.

-Solve Elemental Puzzles – Solve a wide variety of elemental riddles, with seven different elements and 12 elemental skills at your disposal. Engage in quick puzzles in both the overworld and cities, and navigate dungeons designed around unique puzzle combinations.

-Base Building and Minigames – Build your own base in the city of Enyth by creating and enhancing buildings according to your preferences. Recruiting certain characters or completing important quests unlock the creation of some buildings, including: Residences, Canteen, Dojo, Lab, Farm, Runa Research Center, Antique Shop…

-And More…

Weather and time changes

Day and night cycle

Mixed calendar system

Elaborate dialogue system with choices

No silent protagonist

Elaborate quests

Hand-painted minimaps

Watch the announcement trailer below. View the first screenshots at the gallery.

Announcement Trailer

youtube

#Runa game #Runa #Fennec Studio #RPG #Kickstarter #Gematsu #Youtube

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gothimgem · 5 months

Text

one, manah, and the hero complex trope

Let's take a look into my favorite Drakengard 2 character and my fourth fav Intoner. Be aware that there will be some slight spoilers for both Drakengard 2 + 3.

Manah, after 18 years since she nearly ended the world, is left alive to carry the weight of her sins. After losing her memories, she has witnessed the oppression the Knights of the Seal have placed on the people of Midgard. Thus beginning Manah's plan to become a rebellion leader by destroying the key districts (aka the seals just like she did in the first game). It's obvious to previous players that Manah's still in some possession by the Watchers to destroy humanity again, yet she is blinded by her goal to help save people mixed in with her need to be loved. She came from an abusive neglectful family, with her mother verbally and physically abusive for not having magical powers as well as an omen of doom. Obviously, this stems from Seere feeling guilty that he was a bystander to Manah's torment, with her being deprived of any love of some sort. She desparately seeks love to assure herself that she isn't a burden, whether that love comes from the Watchers, the people she wants to liberate, or Nowe who comes into her life later on.

Now, onto One. I personally think she's supposed to be a self-aware or a Yoko Taro take of the typical JRPG protagonist. She sets herself up with wanting to save the world, which she does by defeating the lords of midgard to bring the peaceful reign of the Intoners. She lives to save the lives of others much like Manah. Even if she has to kill those who stand in her way as well as all of humanity if she lets the Flower take over her. One is a very compassionate person too, she cares for her sisters despite the awful things they do, her dragon partner Gabriella/Gabriel, and her brother. Yet despite the just and caring front she puts on for others through her leadership, she is also doubtful of her plans, especially when Zero has to kill her in the end. Her pride also gets in the way as well, such as not revealing to her sisters what their true purpose is or why Zero has to kill them.

Overall, both Manah and One have their similarities within their goals, even with their own aspects of love that prevails, albeit in different ways.

#drakengard #drag on dragoon #drakengard 3 #manah #manah drakengard #drakengard 2 #one drakengard #character analysis

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ponett · 1 year

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when you express dissatisfaction with the fact that ff16 (as it's been marketed, at least) seems to be a pure character action game with only the most surface level rpg elements people always go "well square DOES still make traditional JRPGs, look at bravely default and octopath" which is true but also the problem is those games are bad and i would like square to make a new one that's good

#dq11 and ff7r are the only things carrying me through this dark era where square publishes tons of throwback JRPGs and they're all miserable #14 is also good but that's a completely different beast

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otakween · 6 months

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Digimon World 3 - Final Thoughts

I've beaten the third Digimon World woohoo!! It was a brisk 40 hours, the perfect JRPG length. Overall, it was way better than Digimon World 2, but maybe not better than 1?? I dunno. It was definitely more enjoyable than 1 gameplay-wise, but if I look at it big picture it was way more generic and less memorable. Defeating the first Digimon World felt like more of a triumph and beating 3 felt kinda hollow (because it was easy and anticlimactic).

Despite any gripes I have, I could see myself replaying this. I'm especially interested in a potential revisit (like 10 years from now lol) because I found out that the PAL version of the game (Digimon World 2003) is the true, complete version of the game. Whoops...

So uh...Lord Megadeath and Snatchmon huh...great naming sense guys, good job.

Confession: I straight-up ignored all of the side quests in this game. Skipped all of the card battles, never got the fishing pole, etc. In the end, I don't really regret it because those card battles were kind of pointless anyway.

Confession part 2: I WAS planning on getting back to the side quests in the post-game until I realized that there is no post-game in this game. This is one of those games where you beat the final boss and they kick you back to the start screen with no opportunity to save. I hate it when games do that TT__TT now there's now proof that I beat it!

That ending was kinda lame. I liked the final battle with all of the epic FMVs, but the epilogue with the kids was literally so boring. They did not make me care about any of these characters in the slightest.

Speaking of FMVs, this game had so many!! The FMVs combined with the awesome pixel art definitely made this game great. It was a little lame how half of the world was just the same environments but palette swapped, but eh...whatever. There was enough variation to keep me excited.

Travel in this game was BULLSHIT. I said in one of my previous posts "fast travel will probably come soon!" NOPE, never came. The worst was when you beat a boss and then they made you back track throughout the whole dungeon for no reason. Thank God I played this on an emulator because an unexpected death would have set me back AGES. Very often it would take me an hour in REAL TIME to get to the next place I needed to be. Entire game sessions were just me walking across the map. If it wasn't for this mechanic, the game would have been like 10 hours long lol. Definitely artificial padding.

I noticed a couple of digimon here and there that I had never seen before. I think this game had a great variety in its wild encounters, although it was kind of weird to battle so many ultimates and whoop their butts so easily.

Speaking of easy...I think this game was maybe too easy or at least too exploitable. Health items were dirt cheap so it was super simple to stock up on 99 of each at all times, the counter crest allowed me to deal massive damage beyond my digimon's levels. The final boss fight with Galacticmon was just a game of letting my digimon attack until they died, resurrecting them with a healing item, and repeating that cycle until the battle was finished. The resurrection item brings back all digimon in your party with their full health which is pretty OP. By the 2nd half of the game this strategy became unbeatable and battles became kind of stale.

SO many random battles, like an obnoxious amount. I would leave one random battle, take a single step and another one would be triggered. I listened to a lot of podcasts slogging through this.

One of the weakest parts of this game was the plot/writing, but that was also weak in Digimon World 1 & 2. At least the translation seemed pretty decent this time around. I guess the "stuck in the game world" cliche was kinda fun.

The other thing I ignored in this game was the bonus digimon you can pickup along the way. I did end up getting two of them, but I never used them. They start at level 1 and ain't nobody got time to level up digimon from level 1 halfway through the game. Also, I wasn't super interested in using Guilmon when my Renamon already had MegaloGrowmon in their digivolve roster. I kind of wish this game allowed you to catch the wild digimon because you could create some really crazy parties.

My "main digimon" that I ended up using the most was Kotemon in their Kyukimon form. This was unfortunate because I think Kyukimon is butt ugly, but oh well lol.

The blasted mechanic in battles was really great and I hope they bring it back in future games! It allows you a second chance when you're in a pinch and just feels epic. I rarely used the digivolve option in battles, so it was nice getting a "free" digivolve every now and then.

I could go on and on about this game apparently, but I'm gonna wrap it up here. I have many many more games to get through before I start the next season of the anime. Onwards!

I give Digimon World 3 a solid 6.5 out of 10

#digimon world 3 #video games #digimon #digimon world #PSX #epsxe

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