7th Moon: the spirit world

After last week's post, I realized I have left the nature of the spirit world wide open. Spoiler alert, I have no plans to actually visit the spirit world in any of the five novels I will write in this series, so if you care, this blog post will be the one time I go over the actual details of a spirit world I intended to leave behind the veil.

The other dimension is yin and yang, or more accurately, from yang to yin. The spirit world is polar, running from yang, the pole of creation, to yin, the pole of destruction. The mortal realm is a plane of existence that exists at the point of convergence at the center of the spirit world. Everything on the yang side is Togenkyo, everything on the yin side is Jigoku. There is a natural flow of raw energy from yang to yin, Shinryuu shapes the energy into spirits called shikigami, charged with yang energy, then they take on mortal form as po energy, and when they reach the end of their lives, they convert to yin shikigami and go on to be consumed by Kageryuu and get recycled back to the beginning of the cycle all over again.

The natural flow does have exceptions, and it all has to do with hun, the spirit of mind that connects to the po, spirit of body. Everything in nature has po, but only humans have hun. The hun's purpose is to attain enlightenment through religion, gathering yang to return to Togenkyo at death. Hun that achieve enlightenment independently through self-discipline become bodhisattva and exist in Togenkyo as immortal beings while their po reincarnates with brand new hun that repeat the cycle. Hun that fail to become bodhisattva can still ascend to Togenkyo if their soul recieves enough prayers to be venerated as an ancestral kami, which yields the same result as becoming a bodhisattva except that the when the po reincarnates there is no gurantee that it will be protected through further cycles of reincarnation. Then there are the great kami of legend, the ancient gods of Japan. The great kami were ancestral kami that were so influential that their po did not reincarnate as mortals but instead connected to yoshiro and their shrines across Japan to persist as long as they are worshipped and the hun influence earthly matters by directing the flow of yang through Togenkyo to the mortal realm. Each of the great kami of legend is limited in their influence by position and only have power by directing the flow of energy in Togenkyo, meaning that if any of them returned to the mortal realm they would be powerless because once the energy gets to the mortal realm it has already settled and is too late for the kami to exert their influence.

There is one exceptional kami, Raiju. As stated in the last post, Raiju is the only spirit besides the dragons Shinryuu and Kageryuu that has any power that can be maintained even when in the mortal realm, specifically Raiju has electrokinesis in his own right and can manipulate electricity and even generate it even when bound in the mortal realm. Another thing that makes Raiju unique is that he is the only kami that consists of po rather than hun. in the time of swordsmith Masamune, a samurai named Kyutsume killed eight men in battle before loing his own arm and being forced into retirement. His eight victims returned as undead and tried to reanimate the severed arm using the corresponding po which should have passed into Jigoku. Their plan was to get revenge against Kyutsume by creating a monster with his arm to kill him by his own hand. However, they performed the ritual incorrectly and the price they paid was that they each lost an equal portion of their po and the collective po became a new spirit that was Raiju. Raiju returned to Kyutsume and became bound to a ten piece yoshiro that can be used to summon Raiju when all ten pieces are assembled by Kyustume or a reincarnation of him. When Raiju is not manifesting with his yoshiro he is typically with Kyutsume who became a bodhisattva after death and creates random lightning storms, which, like all of the other natural phenomena under the influence of the kami is indiscernible except by enlightened mystics.

When a soul fails to attain enlightenment, they proceed into Jigoku where the hun and po are bound by the sins they committed in life and suffer accordingly, the greater the sin, the longer the suffering. Those who didn't sin very much but still failed to attain enlightenment will go through this phase quickly and once the bonds of sin break, the hun and po separate and are devoured by Kageryuu to return tothe natural cycle. This is arguably better than the alternative which is to become a yokai. Yokai are the result of a soul that does not repent through their suffering and instead embrace their sin and become corrupt. The po still separates and proceeds through the natural cycle, but the hun becomes yokai. Without po, the yokai cannot return to the mortal realm and must remain in Jigoku. The leader of the yokai is Akuma, the first yokai, as ancient as the great kami of legend. Akuma was a cruel tyrant in life who had so much sin that he became exceptionally corrupt and stubbornly refused to die. When he faced his ultimate fate of being devoured by Kageryuu, he fought until he subdued Kageryuu. Subsequently, Akuma became the ruler of Jigoku and torments the souls that end up there, attempting to corrupt any soul he can into another yokai to serve him.

So now the big question, if I have no intention of going to the spirit world in this series of stories, why is any of this relevant? This is relevant because of the Shrine of the Golden Dragon which was key in the war against the one hundred and eight yokai that was fought in the time of the swordsmith Masamune and is reenacted by the reincarnations of the yokai and the bodhisattvas that defeated them when the seal at the shrine was broken. In the book 7th Moon, the shrine's seal is broken when Ryu and Sakura leave, the yoshiro of Raiju are stolen, and Sasuke is killed. When the seal is broken the souls of the yokai are released to return to the mortal realm. The only way spirits of the dead can return to the mortal realm is if they have a body without a soul to inhabit. Historically, the only bodies without souls were corpses, but when 7th Moon genetically engineered artificial humans, they were not part of the natural flow and therefore they would not be viable. Once the seal at the shrine was broken and the yokai were free, they were able to reincarnate as the one hundred and eight soldiers that were successfully produced. Well, actually, to be more precise, one hundred and five of the soldiers were yokai, the remaining three were the bodhisattvas that defeated the yokai in the past, the protagonists of the story, Hidariude, Keisei, and Kichiku, who were reincarnated specifically to combat the yokai. The last three yokai were the Tsukomugami who used a machine body as Seichei, Kageryuu who like Shinryuu couldn't reincarnate until the biotech was perfected to create a suitable vessel, and Akuma who wanted to use Han Toromi himself.

I will go over the origins of the yokai and their relationship to Shinryuu, Raiju and the three boddhisattvas in a later book titled Guardians of Paradise, but it was hinted at in 7th Moon. A few decades before the time of the swordsmith Masamune, Japan was invaded by Chinese from the mainland. They failed in their invasion and drowned at sea attempting to return home. After the ritual that created Raiju, the yokai that inadvertently created him rallied the army of one hundred and eight yokai and Akuma took over their little plot and led his own invasion using the drowned bodies to march on Japan. Shinryuu brought together Kyutsume, Bakeneko, and Nyudo and blessed them to use their power to stop the yokai. Once the yokai were defeated, to make sure they never returned, the shrine was used to make a seal that prevented them from coming back to the mortal realm. To maintain this seal, there had to be a monk, a miko, and a sword priest to maintian the shrine and it's rituals. This tradition continued unbroken for eight centuries until Ryu and Sakura left the shrine and the seal began to be weakened, and was finaly broken completely with the death of Sasuke and the theft of the yoshiro.

The context of these spirits, both good and evil, is the world I have just explained. The stories I have to tell will take place only in the mortal realm and neither Togenkyo nor Jigoku, or any of the other spirits beyond the one hundred and eight yokai, the three bodhisattvas, Shinryuu and Raiju will ever have any role to play in any of these stories.

7th Moon magic system and website woes

First of all, 7thMoon.co went down a few weeks ago because I didn't renew the website builder, which turns out to also be the host service and it is currently not cos efficient for me to have a website for a book nobody is buying and a ame nobody is playing, so if you want it back, buy the book using the links here or go straight to Amazon and play the game on Steam and give me some feedback to let me know you actually like what I'm doing and that this project is worth me paying for my own website.

Second, there is some stuff I had thought about adding to my website, but since I don't have my own website anymore, I'll post it here. I had submitted my book to one reviewer who said I had an unclear magic system. I would like to explain the magic system here, starting with this handy venn diagram chart.

So we have a total of five categories of special powered individuals; robots, cyborgs, espers, bioroids, and shinto. Strictly speaking, only shinto and espers have any actual use of magic or anything even resembling magic.

• Robots - humanoid machines that are designed for warfare and are typically more efficient by design, their primary advantage is that they are made of metal which is more durable, and they may also have special modifications that can make a type of robot more effective for particular tasks. The downside is that they follow programming and except for Seichei exhibit no free will which makes them effective servants but erratic without a master.
• Cyborgs - humans who have had machine parts added to them giving them certain mehanical advantages like robots, but still have free will as well as other possible biological advantages. Only four are in this story, Baz, Aka, Hidariude and a surprise at the end of the story.
• Bioroids - genetically engineered humans, they have a variety of advantages over humans but all are derived from existing biological examples, so while their abilities exceed human limits, they are not exceeding the limits of biology, physics, or any other science.
• Shinto - Japanese spirituality, blessed followers have access to certain powers that involve spirits, inhabitants of a parallel universe that does not strictly adhere to the laws of science in our dimension. However, while spirits are unrestricted in their own world, to exist in our world they do have to follow certain rules or else our world rejects them and expels them to their world.
• Espers - bioroids and cyborgs that have access to shinto powers that allow them use of psychic abilities that exceed normal abilities. Only five characters in the story have reached this level of power, Hidariude, Keisei, Kichiku, Douji, and Hime, although Hime's powers are limited because she is not a true esper.

Psychic Powers
Psychic powers are technically not magic, they are abilities that are possible due to neural resonance. Resonance is a natural phenomenon in which materials will vibrate at a particular frequency, triggered by proximity to vibrations of another object. Since such vibrations are due to waves, and the human brain emits measurable brain waves, this means that it is hypothetically possible for brain waves to resonate with other waves and allow for brain activity that extends beyond the brain. There are four specific abilities that come from this.

• Psychokinesis - this is the broader umbrella category for three more specific abilities, pyrokinesis, geokinesis, and electrokinesis, and usually an esper can only use one. The reason for this limitation is that using these abilities is already a strain beyond normal human abilities, even an esper's enhanced mind simply cannot stretch far enough to use more than one without breaking the esper's mind.

1. Pyrokinesis - brain waves resonate with heat energy, since fire is simply heat energy released from rapid exothermic oxidation or combustion, this allows an esper to manipulate the energy to control fire, including its direction, as well as igniting flammable materials by focusing heat energy in one spot or delaying a fire by holding back the energy. Pyrokinesis is limited by the fact that fire can't be created without fuel, so a combustible item is required, without a ready supply of natural fire, this ability generally doesn't work.
2. Geokinesis - brain waves resonate with seismic waves, the energy measured during earthquakes, this allows an esper to manipulate the earth to cause tremors and move stone. This ability involves a lot of heavy lifting, and like lifting with the body, lifting with mind causes strain. While the ability to move earth with the mind tends to be greater than the ability to move physically, it still has limits by the amount that can be moved and how far, for example, moving a small stone is much easier than moving a boulder, and moving a boulder is easier than cracking the ground open, and trying to make movements beyond what the esper sees is all but impossible for the esper to retain control of.
3. Electrokinesis- uniquely, Hidariude exhibits this power somatically instead of through his brain, although Douji and Hime could exhibit electrokinesis by synchronising their brain waves with the electromagnetic spectrum. Hidariude has an electrogenic organ in his arm that normally allows him to produce enough electricity to operate his cybernetic arm, but with trainign he can double or even triple his output in short bursts, and even direct the field as long as it remains in physical contact with him, his retractable blades, or his sword. However, once he releases the electricty, his control diminishes with distance and overuse strains his body so that he can be faigued if he attempts to increase his output beyond triple or use it multiple times in succession and this fatigue leads to him not being able to even produe enough electricity to use his cybernetic arm.

• Telepathy - neural resonance between espers, allowing them to share thoughts by synchronising their brain waves. This ability is limited to espers and they can only use it with each other, like many forms of communication, it requires both a transmitter and a reciever, meaning an esper can project thoughts only to another esper that can read the thought projections. They cannot read the minds of non-espers nor can they project their thoughts upon a non-esper.
• Precognition - The ability to predict events, limited to a few seconds at best, this ability is really only useful to evade and counter attacks. It is triggered by adrenaline and involves synchronising with an opponent who has simple thoughts from their lower brain regarding movements, and also suffers the restriction that the body must be able to keep up with the rate of perception, if for any reason the esper's reaction is slower than the opponent, the ability will prove ineffective.
• Transdimensional transcendance - the one ability useable by non-espers, though with extreme rarity, this alows an esper to interact with a parallel universe across a dimensional divide. excpet for a rare few nexus points where the dimensional divide is thin and the two universes overlap, the other universe is completely inaccessible to beings of this universe, but the spirits that inhabit it can exist interdimensionally, but have their own limitations that prevent most humans from being aware of their presence.

Transdimensional Powers
There is a dimension that is beyond mortal comprehension that seperates the world we know from a paralell universe where our laws of science do not apply. Simply put, the inhabitants of this other world are spirits and they are capable of magic. However, while spirits are fully aware of our world, they cannot interact with it directly without a compatible vessel in this world, either an inanimate object known as a yoshiro, or a living being known as a yoshiromi. Using these vessels, spirits can enter into our world by using them as physical bodies, a process known as shintai, but their powers are limited once they do. Only three spirits can use their powers fully during shintai, the Golden Dragon Shinryuu, his countepart the Shadow Dragon Kageryuu, and thunderbeast Raiju. Raiju can use electrokinesis and prefers connecting with elctrokinetic espers so their abilities synchronize better. Shinryuu and Kageryuu are able to fully manifest, but strain their vessels in doing so and must either surrender their vessels after a short time to allow for recovery or risk destroying their host completely and be unable to return to this world at all, the amount of time they get depends on how much power they use during shintai. Aside from these exceptions, spirits are limited to being able to animate the inanimate and enhance the abilities the host has already. This means that they cannot impart any ability the host doesn't already have and prefer hosts that have similar abilities already. Aside from the the dragons and Raiju, other spirits include souls of the dead, shikigami, and the yokai demons. Souls of the dead are humans whose minds were able to synchronize with the other dimension so that when they die, they continue to persist in the spirit world. Typically, the souls of the dead attain a status of bodhisattva and reincarnate in the living world after serving their purpose and fulfilling their duties in the spirit world, becoming more powerful with each reincarnation. The yokai demons are powerful beings that serve Akuma, their king who subdued Kageryuu and forced the otherwise omnipotent being to join their ranks. In the spirit world, the yokai are tyrants that claim a territory called Jigoku where they torment human souls and attempt to corrupt them into yokai, and they want to enter our world so that they can torment the living as well as the dead. Finally, the shikigami are the random lesser beings of the spirit world that only come to this world when summoned by those who know how. Shikigami differ from other spirits in that they their lack of power and intelligence comes with the trade-off that they can inhabit any physical object without needing it to be a dedicated yoshiro, but otherwise face the same restrictions.

Magical Objects
Yoshiro - as mentioned before, yoshiro are physical objects that can be inhabited by spirits. The only yoshiro mentioned in this story are the blades of Kyutsume and the Genji gauntlet that collectively form the yoshiro of Raiju, the Masamune Shinryuu that can be a vessel for Shinryuu or the souls of its previous wielders, and the statue of the Golden Dragon, which is supposed to be used for Shinryuu, but never functions as such during the whole story.

Yoshiromi - as mentioned before, yoshiromi are humans that act as vessels for spirits. Technically, this means that the espers are all yoshiromi as well as Seichei as the Tsukomogami and the bioroids as reincarnations of the yokai, but formal use of the term is reserved for Douji and Hime as the intermittent hosts of the dragon spirits, and Hidariude as temporary host of Ryu and Shinryuu. Otherwise, they are reincarnations, the difference being that reincarnations inhabit their vessels for their entire mortal lives.

Shimenawa - a rope decorated with zig-zag paper lightning bolts that protects yoshiro or yoshiromi, in this case allowing for others to control shintai, meaning that it can be used to stop shintai and expel a spirit from its host.

Onifuda - written prayers, which in themselves lack any significant powers, except when a miko (female shrine attendant/priestess) or kunoichi(female ninja) makes one using flashpaper by writing in ink made with sulfuric acid on cotton sheets, then it becomes an explosive that is particularly compatible with pyrokinesis.

Once Upon a Time

I was planning on talking about Black Clover, but that's moving so freaking slow, it's going to have to wait until there is something worth writing about. In the meantime, I'm going to give an update on Once Upon a Time.

The series attempted a reboot, which was a good idea, but perhaps they should have taken a cue from fellow fairy tale show Grimm and went out a high note. After years of establishing the complicated family tree of Henry Mills, they decided to send him off to an alternate fairy tale world where he falls in love with a Spanish Cinderella and another round of the Dark Curse moves the new cast to a suburb of Seattle. The problem is trying to keep track of all of the new characters and old ones and how they work with the third iteration of the curse.

Henry and Regina are back, along with Regina's sister Zelena, who has a now grown daughter named Robin who has fallen in love with Alice from Wonderland, who is the daughter of Captain Hook from an alternate world and Mother Goethel who entrapped Rapunzel who is also Lady Tremaine the mother of Druzella and stepmother of Cinderella bringing everyone except Tiana and Jack into one tangled family tree. The problem is, alternate Hook is supposed to be from a world that exists because of a wish that just happened last season, and yet he is tied to a history that goes back to when the fist curse was cast, not to mention we already covered Cinderella, Tremaine, and Druzella in two episodes back in Storybrooke and Rapunzel in another, which means we are crossing a lot of wires here. Oh and also they've added new rules to the curse yet again. This show has been entertaining, but they are struggling to hold this version together and they need to wrap this up and end the series with this season.

I'm back! Reign of the Nephilim, Final Fantasy updates, and other stuff that happened in the last six months

It's been a while and I feel I owe an explanation. I was on unemployment and I was supposed to report when I was working, and since technically this is advertising, it counts as work and I didn't want anyone catching my blog and saying I was working for one day a week and having to face a penalty. Just playing it safe. Well my unemployment ran out and I got a new job, so I'm bring back the blog and boy did I have some stuff that I missed out on.

First of all, during National Novel Writer's Month I came up with a new book, Reign of the Nephilim. It's about Noah's sons, Shem and Ham, before the flood. The story begins with the family being told that the flood is coming and they need to build the Ark, but while collecting materials, the brothers, as well as their great great grandfather Enoch, and Shem's wife Nora, all get dragged away by the Nephilim who drag them into their holy war. With the protection of their guardian angel Kanjahiel, they struggle to survive the war of ancient gods from various mythologies which are all actually half-angels that are destined to be washed away from the world in the flood. I tried to make it a good action story, but it will probably need a bit more work before it can be published.

Then there's Final Fantasy XV, which has some cool DLC, the Assassin's Festival and the Multiplayer Expansion Comrades. The Assassin's Festival, like the Moogle Chocobo Festival is a time-limited, non-canon event in which a town in FFXV gets redecorated for some mindless fun. This time, Noctis brought his friends along which results in some fun dialog, and there's a fun combat story that uses Assassin's Creed style gameplay to pit Noctis against a Niflheim officer anmed Loqi Tummelt, placing the event in a particular point in the story between their first confrontation with Loqi and their final battle with him before leaving Lucis. The story is short, but good. I haven't played Assassin's Creed, but this event does make me interested. The festival is largely a tribute to the game, which, like Cup Noodles and Coleman camping gear, is inexplicably existing in the game's world in the exact same form as it does here. The weird part is, they also mention a legendary Assassin in the local lore of Lestallum, suggesting that it is both a part of Eos history and it's own fictional story. If you don't think about it too hard, it's a ton of fun. All the mini-games are back from the Moogle Chocobo Festival and we finally get the prize from the Dream Egg, an alternate costume for Noctis. 

Then there's Comrades, which allows you to fill in the gap of ten years since Noctis went in the crystal. For this you play as your own original character, a member of the Kingsglaive turned Hunter, the Kingsglaive part is really just a way to explain why you have magic comparable to Noctis, including warping, summoning weapons, and magic that can be used for offense, defense and healing. There are a few tweaks, mainly that you no longer use items, except ingredients which strangely function like phoenix downs and if you don't use them in battle you get a bonus meal. Also you have some different weapons to work with, and overall it feels like FFXV version 2.0 with an overhauled system. I would argue the original game was better, but if you actually care about the story it's a great answer to what happened to the rest of Lucis besides what you see at the end of the game. Also, if you want to make your own character to visit Eos and play on your own this is fun for that too. The multiplayer part is actually optional, if you don't want to pay for PSN Plus you will be supplied with AI support, the multiplayer option is just if you want to play with friends or other actual people. The story to comrades is that Exeneris in Lestallum can provide enough power to sustain Lucis through the Long Night, but you need to collect meteor shards to get that power and then distribute it as you see fit to open options to customize your character. Everything from the beta went into the final game, but that just scratched the surface. While your main base is Lestallum, you also have to connect to four other outposts that you can visit. Familiar faces will come in from time to time and some play a somewhat major role, Iris runs the clothing shop, Cid upgrades weapons, Vyv collects and organizes your photos, and Monica and Holly are basically your new bosses. If you're wondering about Gladiolus, Prompto, and Ignis, they are busy but visit Lestallum from time to time so you get to see them and catch up with their activities. Going solo, it's a decent fanfic, if you've got friends it can probably be even cooler, but for now, I'm just playing through the story. Once I've got my act together, I'll go online and recruit people to play this game with me.

Not everything is gold though, King's Knight came out and it's kind of crap. It gets bogged down with the gimmick of collecting multiple characters which is awesome, except that it isn't long before your characters get overpowered and you can't move forward with anyone new. The original was probably better than this overmarketed update with a weak story and weak gameplay. Basically, it's just a vertical shooter, the screen scrolls up and you avoid obstacles, collect items and fight monsters. What sucks the most is that only a few battles in to the story mode, you can't defeat the enemies before you scroll past them, or worse, into them. Brave Exvius and Mobius have raised my standards for mobile apps from Square Enix and King's Knight fell short of those standards. If you're into shooters, maybe you'll enjoy it, but I prefer my good old RPGs. How many of these cross genre crapfests will SE try before they realize they need to stick to what their good at?

However, there are worse things, like the Michael Jackson Halloween special a few months ago. Thriller was a seasonal classic, so it would make the perfect basis for a full length Halloween special right? Maybe, but this was not it. The worst part is, not only is it nothing but one cliche after another, but the story is supposed to be about fighting conformity, both figuratively and literally as the villain is actually named Conformity who has outlawed dancing in her microcosm. I'm sure Michael Jackson would have been proud of the message, but the execution is flawed as we follow two cookie cutter protagonists, the heir of a family business who wants to pursue artistic dreams rather than follow tradition and an overworked assistant who has dreams beyond climbing the corporate ladder.Their adventure follows the standard series of three encounters including a generic introduction, and one dark mirror for each showing what their future holds if they keep on their current paths. Michael Jackson music plays in the background way too quiet and subtle for an eponymous star vehicle, all leading up to the climax of combining the three spirits back into Michael Jackson. So to recap, we fight conformity by combining three people into one and do a perfectly synced flash mob, because everybody following the King of Pop is not any sort of conformity. The irony hasn't been so bad since Captain Planet made plastic toys. I'm not trying to say anything bad about Michael Jackson, but perhaps Thriller should have been left alone, never has there been a better example of a remake gone horribly wrong, let this special go the way of the Star Wars Holiday special and never air again.

On the other hand, the David S. Pumpkins Halloween special was awesome, partly because it was only a half hour instead of a full hour so they had less time to screw it up, and partly because it didn't take itself seriously at all. Basically they just took the viral sketch, and redid it with enough filler to drag out the joke for it's own special. For a joke that made it's point by not making any sense, this one met expectations.

I also want to take a moment to talk about the Disaster Artist, a movie about the worst movie ever made, The Room. The reason I bring this up is because The Room was the running April Fool's joke on Adult Swim until Toonami came back and replaced it one year, but I got to hear Tommy Wiseau say "You're tearing me apart Lisa!" before Toonmai made it's epic comeback. Curiosity led me to figure out the context only to learn there really isn't one. The Room is so bad, it has become a cautionary tale in film school of what happens if you don't listen to anyone and make a crap project despite people telling you it's bad. This concerns me, because I'm afraid 7th Moon will become The Room, and I will end up the next Tommy Wisseau. On the other hand, he is the most famous maker of a bad film in Hollywood who's still banking off of it, so maybe it's not so bad.

Finally, coming back to Toonami, Dragon Ball Super has been coming along, Iron-Blooded Orphans returned, Stardust Crusaders has made me fall in love with Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop are doing a Space Cowboy Showdown and now we have Black Clover, which looks promising in a "What if Naruto took place in a Western/European setting?" sort of way.

Follow ups to come soon, stay tuned!

Final Fantasy XV Comrades

The Beta Test is going on right now for Final Fantasy XV Comrades, the multiplayer online DLC, if you want in hurry up and get in on it while it lasts, and don't worry if you don't hav a lot of time to play it, there isn't that much to do with it right now, just a few quests, but it's still kind of fun to get a sneak peak at this. The coolest part is probably just getting to make your own character. It has been confirmed, you make your own original character for FFXV.

Story wise, we don't find out much right now, but we do know that Cor, Monica, and Cindy form the main story make appearances putting us in the timeline of the game. We start in Old Lestallum which looks kind of like Hamerhead in Chapter 14, and a sign on Kenny's Crow's Nest saying they're closed until the sun rises again suggests that this DLC is, as I expected, taking place during the time that Noctis went into te crystal and the darkness descends upon Eos.

Your character in the game is a member of the Kingsglaive, which means you get to use magic, although magic in the beta works a little different from the main game. For now, you can actually use healing magic, but your offensive magic is poor, think Holy with the Ring of Lucii, hopefully they upgrade this or revert to elemancy for the final product. You also have the ability to produce a protective shield and warp and all of these abilities require MP. Warp is one of the few mechanics that works like the main game. Although the Kingsglaive hasn't been covered in depth until now, what I have read says they were granted some of the King's magic to use themselves, so the precedent goes back to Kingsglaive the movie that there are these soldiers that have these powers. For the game, apparently Cor gathers the survivors of the coup to hold down the fort in Noctis's absence.

The gameplay is basically just three quests, each with a second follow-up quest. You get four weapons to use right now, a katana, a shuriken, a mace, and a pair of daggers, with some upgrades in game, but you can't really enjoy them because the beta resets once you finish the second quest in the set. Still it's promising because we can assume we'll see the rest of Lucis during the darkness in the final product. They also say the main cast will make an appearance, but I don't see how Noctis will be there if I'm right about the time frame, the others could be interesting, especially Ignis who will overcome his blindness during the time frame of Comrades.

The beta itself is lacking, the biggest problem is server connections making it hard to team up for quests, which is presently required, my game freezes if I try to join somebody else's team, my game only works if I make my own camp. Square Enix claims that there will be single player quests in the final product which makes sense, since this seems to actually have some canonical story content and some of it may be played out without other players, but for the beta, they want to make sure multiplayer works so single player tests are pointless at this stage. If I'm right, there is a lot of potential for where this can go, but mainly expect that it's going to be a lot like the main game with even more sidequests. Another problem is lag with the mace, which seems to result in everybody just using the katana. As for customization, it is going to need some work, right now options are pretty limited and even the features that you can change sometimes are too subtle to notice at all. Somehow everybody's avatars look like pot-bellied neanderthals no matter how much care we put into making them. Still, this game will be worthwhile for anyone who liked the main game enough to even once consider a fan fiction.

So if you want in, hurry up it's only up until August 8. And don't forget about Sharknado 5: Global Swarming Sunday night on SyFy!

Final Fantasy XV Episode Prompto

I know I said I was taking a break from the blog, but then Episode Prompto came out for Final Fantasy XV and I realized I needed to do at least one more post. This downloadable content finally answers the question what happened to Prompto between when he fell off the train and when Noctis and the others found him again. Story wise, this was much more relevant than Episode Gladiolus, and there was more variety to make it more interesting, but at the same time, the gameplay is awkward and probably needed more time to work out the kinks.

The story is Prompto got knocked off the train by Noctis when Ardyn used his powers of illusion to make it appear that Ardyn was going to shoot Prompto but it was the other way around. Prompto then wanders the arctic tundra of Niflheim(inexplicably wearing weather appropriate attire, where did he get the hat and coat, really?) and passes out in a blizzard waking up in a lab where he has to fight magitek soldiers and face down their maker(and his) Verstael Besithia. Through documents and voice recordings, we find out that Verstael cloned himself to make the Magitek troops and Prompto was one of them, but Prompto alone was somehow liberated by Lucians and grew up free. In denial, he shoots Verstael thinking he has ended this ordeal, but it seems this was part of the plan, Verstael has transmigrated his soul to the "Immortalis" which sounds pretty bad, and it is. Aranea shows up and helps Prompto escape and he rides a snowmobile around the open world of Niflheim's tundra, which is potentially fun if you get the hang of it, but the real point is to just go to another facility where Prompto fights more magitek troops and the penultimate boss Barbarus who buys enough time for Verstael to resurrect himself as the Immortalis, a giant mechanical worm that basically plays out as a movie and you have to shoot it with a machine gun and get so many hits before the movie ends or it kills you. After that, Prompto goes off to find the crystal and the credits dovetail back into the main story.

The story itself is cool and the options of sidequests is an improvement over Episode Gladiolus, and also Prompto's equipment held promise with a melee weapon, flares/grenades, and three different guns in addition to his handgun(a machine gun, a sniper rifle, and a bazooka), but ultimately the execution falls flat. For one thing, Prompto takes damage too easily, and unlike Gladiolus, this DC uses the main game's damage system which means Prompto runs out of HP and stumbles before he's KO'd and can use a phoenix down, which sucks because this means you can get stuck unable to fight and when you try to restore HP you don't have enough to keep form getting in the danger zone again in a few seconds. It also gets hard to aim, which makes the sniper rifle worthless if you don't have the element of surprise and the bazooka isn't much better. Ultimately, unless you are already proficient in FPS mechanics, you are better off spamming the machine gun until you run out of bullets and then find a refill and use your handgun or melee weapon until you get the refill. Magitek troops are a pain because there is a mechanic where they get stunned and you can finish them off to steal their weapon, but it also makes them somewhat invulnerable to anythin other than the finishing move and gives them a chance to recover, so until you get used this mechanic, it actually slows you down. Ultimately the system makes Prompto so weak, the sidequests are more touble than they are worth, just wasting restoratives and ammo.

If you have the patience to to handle the main quest, it fills in some gaps for the completion of the story, but don't play this for the gameplay experience unless you want to relive the disappointment of Dirge of Cerebrus. Actually, Dirge of Cerebrus was better.

Matched and a break from the blog

Okay, first of all, I've been going through some life changes and until I get some things straightened out, I think I will have to take a break from the blog. For what may be my final installment, (hopefully not though) I'm going to talk about the Matched trilogy. If you've never heard of it, it is a dystopian young adult sci-fi with a love triangle, much like the Hunger Games. However this story starts with the good and works it's way to the bad.

The central character is Cassia, whose story starts out so picture perfect that if you picked it up and started reading it without knowing something would go wrong, you would be bored by chapter 3. And if it weren't for a twist that almost artificially injects conflict into the story, it would end right there. However there is a twist, Cassia needs to choose between her dream guy Xander, the future doctor, and Ky, a boy she would hardly have noticed if it weren't for a glitch in the matching system that suggests for a slit second that he is the one she should be with. In Cassia's Society, everyone is matched up with a life mate systematically at the age of 16, then they spend a few years courting, marry at 21, and proceed to procreate until 32 at which point they are sterilized so they can spend the rest of their lives raising their children and die precisely and promptly on their 80th birthday. Depending on your perspective, the world is a perfect system, or it is a sterile individuality crushing hell; what is good for the individual is not necessarily good for the many, and what is good for the many is not necessarily good for the individual. Society has existed for about three or four generations and Cassia's generation knows only a perfect world where everybody eats exactly what the need for proper nourishment, get a precise exercise regimen for their body type, follow a path of education that leads to their most productive occupation and any luxury that is not absolutely necessary for survival including arts and entertainment and even fashion have been reduced to the top one hundred popular accepted specimens that everybody can choose from to spend a certain allotted period of personal time to relax and unwind after doing their part in this perfect Society. But little by little, Cassia discovers that the freedom of choice is an illusion, and that illusion exists to placate the few that might be unhappy with a system that lacks any freedom at all, nobody knows how to create anything new, nobody sings except the national anthem, nobody creates art, nobody paints nobody sculpts, nobody acts, and nobody writes, all examples of the arts are artifacts of the past, presumably so nobody wastes their time actually creating  anything that isn't deemed necessary and important for survival. The system is almost perfect, there are Aberrations and Anomalies, Anomalies are those who reject Society's restrictions and therefore endanger Society, and Aberrations are those who have expressed an awareness that is too far beyond Society's parameters to be trusted as an integral part of Society. Ky is one of these Aberrations, coming from a town on the edge of Society where enough Anomalies congregated that the whole place had to be bombed, Ky was only a child and he was spared, but only because he had an aunt and uncle in Society that could not bear children so he was allowed to exist under the restriction that he could not disclose the ugly truth of his origins and he would have to be single and do grunt work beneath proper Society folk. At the end of the first book, Cassia is forced to use her job as a sorter to sort him and his coworkers into two groups, one that would receive a promotion and another that would suffer for being less effective. She isn't actually told which group would be which, but they leave her feeling responsible for Ky getting the decidedly worse of the two options.

The second book Crossed adds Ky's perspective as the two star-crossed lovers seek each other out on the outskirts of Society, but the biggest twist of all comes in the third book when Xander's perspective is introduced and we find out that he is actually a rebel himself and the three of them together help overthrow Society. But that isn't the end, it's only the beginning of the third book as they experience a world in which the change of regime is not necessarily the solution they were looking for. As it turns out, human civilization has an inherent flaw in that those in power must restrict those they are in charge of to keep the peace, but if there are enough people, there will always be outliers that don' fit the perfect system no matter what it is, you just can't please everybody. While our love triangle figures this out, their dynamic gets more complicated as each boy gets an alternate girl that he may end up with if not Cassia. Xander is surprising in that the value of choice is more important than getting Cassia, although he can eliminate Ky, it doesn't mean anything to him to get her by default, he has to give her the choice and let her choose him. This becomes important when Ky falls victim to a mutant plague. The plague was engineered as a weapon against Society and the rebels believed they could control t with a vaccine, but it mutates and puts some people in comas that the original treatment won't fix. I was really impressed because the chapters alternate first person perspectives, but Ky's chapters get shorter as his coma robs him of his connection to the world, the most powerful chapter I ever read in my whole life was a chapter that was blank except for the chapter heading and the note that it is Ky, that contrast really showed the emptiness of  being in a coma.

Overall, the series is pretty good, but it relies on a formula that can seem overdone if you aren't ready to take it on with fresh eyes. If you ignore the basic love triangle formula, this is one of the best dystopian stories because instead of showing the horrors of a world that oppresses the common folk, it demonstrates how such a world would be supported by those who benefit enough to not realize the price they pay, a message as timely as ever.

Exalted

Pen and paper table top role playing games are not really my thing. Part of this is because I'm too spoiled by video games and part because I'm either too nerdy or not nerdy enough to be invited to a game. However, I have taken some time to look into some games and one that really captures my attention is Exalted. Essentially it is the anime of RPGs, if you want to turn your favorite JRPG vide game into a table top experience, this is the one to go through. I have no idea how the mechanics actually play out, but the story is interesting, so I'll go into that. Before we get started,  I want to note that it was made by White Wolf, who also made World of Darkness, the series that allows you to play monsters in the modern world. Because that was their flagship, Exalted is modeled as the mythical origin of the creatures of  the modern World of Darkness, but despite several references, ever since the WoD reboot over a decade ago, Exalted has strayed into becoming it's own thing. Largely it is anime in the most over the top fantasy style you may ever play.

In the beginning there was nothing, then there was Shinma. Shinma wasn't anything, it was the precursor of existence, and from Shinma came the raksha, the most primitive and chaotic beings who couldn't even define themselves. From this chaos came the Primordials, beings which defied order and craved a consistency that opposed all that came before it. Then came Creation, the world that the Primordials built and ultimately the world we exist in. The Primordials created the gods to oversee Creation, then came the Dragon Kings to serve the gods and finally humans to serve the Dragon Kings. There was conflict at first, but eventually the gods and the Dragon Kings got everythign under control and the Primordials felt there was no need to remain in Creation and retreated to their own separate realm of Yu Shan to play the Games of Divinity. The gods were not pleased with the Primordals' laziness, but they were not given the free will to rebel against their masters, free will was unique to humans who were so weak they could do nothing. Then in a stroke of brilliance, the seven Celestial gods, the Unconquered Sun, Luna, and the Five Maidens, Exalted humans, granting them enough of their own divine power that they could stand equal to the Dragon Kings, the gods, the raksha, and even the Primordials themselves, ad they would have the free will to rebel. The Exalted killed a few Primordials, which scared the others since they had created the very concept of death itself and thought they were above it, and they surrendered to the Exalted. Those that surrendered were exiled as demons, and those that were killed formed the Underworld and gathered the restless souls of mortals who defied the cycle of reincarnation. Both groups of Primordials were kept outside Creation, the gods ascended to Yu Shan, and the Exalted took over the world, beginning the First Age of man. In the First Age, the Solar Exalted ruled, married the Lunar Exalted, advised by the Sidereal Exalted and served by the Terrestrial Exalted. But they also carried a curse from the Primordials and after a couple thousand years, the curse took root and the Exalted became corrupt. The Sidereals who understood fate saw that this would lead to the ruin of the world unless something changed. Half thought the Solars needed to more advice, the other half thought the Solars needed to be replaced. The latter won and got the Terrestria Exalted, the only Exalted who could breed, to use their superior numbers to make up for their other weaknesses and bring down the Solars. The Celestial Exalted reincarnated, so the essences had to be collected and imprisoned.So began the Second Age of man, when the Terrestrial Exalted ruled, the Lunars were hunted, and both the Solars and the Sidereals were forgotten, the latter because they brought upon a curse on themselves that prevents others from remembering that they are even there, which can sometimes help them when they want to manipulate events. However, the Terrestrial Exalted were not as powerful and could not maintain Creation, it has been deteriorating, and after another couple thousand years, the raksha, the undead, and even the demons are starting to creep back in, and the Solars broke free of their prison. Half of the Solars were captured, fifty possessed by the demons to become Infernal Exalted, and the rest of the captured became Abyssal Exalted, slaves of the undead. Five years after the Solars escaped and the Scarlet Empress of the Terrestrial Exalted went missing, the Second Age of man comes to an end, the question is who will inherit the world as the Third Age approaches?

Basically, Abyssals are vampires, Lunars are werewolves. Since Abyssals were Solars, their new forms reject the Sun and the Sun rejects them, hence the vampiric weakness regarding the sun. Lunars are shapeshifters with animal themes which can be any animal but explains what the moon has to do with werewolves. After that, it all sort of falls apart, but the divine power of the Exalted tends toward anime heroes and villains, complete with flashy anima banners. Martial arts play a heavy role, and then there's over-sized weapons like daiklaives (see also Buster Sword).  If you need something more than werewolves, vampires, sorcerers, and demons, the raksha are better known as the Fair Folk and fill the role of fairies, the Terrestrial Exalted are better known as the Dragon-Blooded and have elemental affinities that can make them the most fun to play with, but if you really want dragons then go with the Dragon Kings, which are actually humanoid dinosaurs that are disappointed by being rendered obsolete by the Exalted and range from enlightened fire-breathing flying Pterok and water master Mosok to savage monsters who forgot what they were, and the Alchemical Exalted, cyborgs that exist in the alternate world of  the one Primordial who escaped the wrath of the Exalted but now that Primordial and his world is dying and the people have begun to invade Creation out of sheer desperation. And all of that is just the playable characters, game masters can throw in a variety of undead to accompany the Abyssal Exalted and populate the world with the various spirits and gods that still walk among men. With a little imagination you can play out any anime fantasy in this world. Great practice for amateur writers and especially budding fan fiction authors.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Dragon Ball Xenoverse and Grimm Everafter

I spent the last month working on a Grimm fan fiction and just finished it, all four parts are up on Grimm Forum but I did find time to watch Guardians of the Galaxy which I will review now.

The movie is ridiculous, but when the heroes are Chris Pratt, a raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper and a talking tree that only says "I am Groot" you should expect nothing else. The movie opens with a great battle, half of which is off screen while Baby Groot dances around the edges of the battlefield to music provided by Peter Qwill. It's hilarious and sets the bar for the rest of the movie.Rocket steals some of the batteries which they were supposed to be protecting, which draws the ire of their employers and they have to make a mad get away. This leads them to an unlikely rescue by none other than Peter's father Ego, the celestial avatar of the eponymous living planet. While Peter gets reconnected with his long lost father, everyone else has their own family issues to contend with, most prominently Gamora and Nebula the latter of whom wants to make the former suffer for how Thanos replaced her body parts every time she lost a confrontation with her sister, but it turns out they have a sisterly bond stronger than hate. The other big one is Yondu who is action packed with issues, exiled by the Ravagers for abducting Peter as a child, relating to Rocket for being a lonely outcast and finally the revelation that "I'm Mary Poppins y'all"...but really he feels more like Peter's dad than Ego. The whole mess comes together in an epic battle that can only be handled with such nonchalant casualty as the Guardians of the Galaxy can pull off. The one weakness of the movie is that the theme of finding family is delivered a little too heavy-handed, some of the sub-plots seem forced to fit the larger narrative. Fortunately, despite the strain on the core story, the jokes, action and visual effects are so damn entertaining it's worth it.

I found time to finish Dragon Ball Xenoverse, months after the sequel came out and nobody cares about the original, but it's still good, so get it and play it before the servers get cut off. Xenoverse gives the Dragon Ball story a fresh take by working the future Trunks time traveler angle. After Trunks traveled through time in the Cell Saga he gets caught by the Supreme Kai of Time who employs him to fix time distortions. When his own timeline gets compromised, rather than tamper himself and earn more ire from Time Kai, he uses the Dragon Balls to wish for a third party to step in, and that is you. Pulled from some random point in time disconnected with the main story, you are a human, saiyan, namek, majin, or "Frieza Race" that is tasked with correcting time. At first you just go through the main story of Dragon ball Z starting with Radditz, but little details go differently, someone has changed the course of time so the story is not what we know. As you fight through these battles and set things right, you will return to Toki Toki City where you can train under the Z Fighters and take on parallel quests which are bizarre alternate realities that you can learn more techniques from. This is the ultimate fan fiction, you can create whatever kind of character you want to look any way you want and use any techniques you want, and most likely you will play a Saiyan, dress like Goku and spam kamehameha, and you can do that. In the Frieza saga things kind of go sideways as Towa and Mira show up a demon and her android who want to take over the world, but can't because the Z Fighters left a planet too powerful for them so they want to kill Goku before he raises the bar for Earthling fighters. Later you find out these two are just pawns for Demigra, a demon god Time Kai trapped in a crack of time and now he's trying to get out. Once you complete the known DBZ story, all that's left is to fight Demigra himself, and if you make it that far, Goku helps you and you get to finish off Demigra with a double-team Kamehameha, which is just so awesome, you HAVE to play this game because it is worth every headache to see your OC kamehameha with Goku. I mean really, it is a thing of beauty! As far as headaches, I'll be honest it took me a while because I rage quit multiple times. The worst hands down is a mission where you have body swapped with Ginyu which means no matter what awesome build you have going, you're stuck with Ginyu's presets, and even worse it's an escort mission with Krillin and Gohan. One thing that helped was I purchased one of the DLC, specifically the second one which allows me access to high level parallel quests and Nuova Shenron which means level up big time. Anyway, seriously, if you haven't done it yet, play this game and make your DBZ dreams come true!

As for Grimm Everafter, this is my fanfic for Grimm featuring Kelly, Diana, and the triplets twenty years in the future, and also when they are thirteen going through their first woges. It jumps back and forth telling a big story that involves a vibora dorada, a damonfeuerer, the Coins of Zakynthos, and the Royals. First Kelly uses a glove made from a damonfeurer by a vibora dorada to fight some geiers, and during that fight Diana finds the Coins of Zakynthos which builds up into a megalomaniacal scheme involving the Royals bringing her back home to Austria. Sound interesting? Check it out and maybe we can make this the spin off!

Final Fantasy Spirits Legacy

My life has been a bit hectic lately, but I'm still trying to get writing done, working on two projects at once. While I'm still in the middle of my Grimm Fanfic (currently at Grimm Forum) I also have let my mind wander to some world building for a sequel to Final Fantasy Spirits Within. I know, the movie wasn't that good, but hear me out, a common theme of Final Fantasy is that there was some event that was almost the end of the world "a thousand years ago" what if the events of Spirits Within is such an event and we do a proper Final Fantasy story one thousand years after the movie?

After the eight spirits neutralized the phantoms, life returned to the world, but not as it once was. Some creatures are benign, like chocobos and moogles that are easily domesticated. Others are vicious monsters that threaten to destroy what is left of humanity. But humans are resilient, they continue to fight, and some are born different, evolving with the monsters, some people have psychic abilities referred to commonly as magic. Of those who exhibit such abilities, males have the power to manipulate electricty and heat energy to generate fire and ice, while females can promote healing and generate protective fields. Females can develop their ability to generate force fields to conjure eidolons, which invariably take on eight forms which people believe are the eight spirits that saved the world during the Phantom War. Thus the Church of Eight Spirits is formed, with the Summoners as the highest order, the White Mages beneath them aspiring to ascension, and the Black Mages ostensibly equal to white mages, but due to an inability to ascend to the rank of Summoner, are in practice forever second class among the church. Eventually there is a schism, the Black Mages decide to revolt and lay claim to the authority of the church themselves. The Red Mages form as a splinter group of weaker males with limited powers who compensate by developing their physical prowess more and side with the White Mages and Summoners and together the Black Mage revolt is suppressed. However, Black Mages continue to be born and not all are conent to join the ranks of the Red Mages, instead, they go off and form their new state of Mysidia with the Order of the Dark Knights serving their cause. Meanwhile, the Church of Eight Spirits continues to build their numbers with the Order of the Dragoons, non-magical warriors who prove themselves in ritual combat against the eidolons and earn the right of holy protectors of the church. The church serves and protects the ordinary citizens while they continue with their day to day lives, but twenty-one years after the Black Mage Revolt, the Mysidian Empire of black Mages reveals itself.

A White Mage named Sara Corneria has just summoned Carbuncle for the first time, marking her as Summoner. Her ascension is paired with the final trial of Biggs Highwind, aspiring Dragoon. The ceremonies are interrupted by Emperor Garland the Blue Mage and his lieutenant Gilgamesh, leader of the Dark Knights and support from tamers, non-magical specialists who command wild beasts to hunt other monsters, or in this case, the mages of the church. In the conflict, four survivors are isolated, Sara and Biggs as well as Wedge Lionheart, one of the last five Red Mages who is only capable of Fira, and Gilbert the Spoony Bard with his dancing moogle Mog. They seek respite at the Gysahl Ranch under the engineer Cid who loans them chocobos and ultimately his own restored vintage airship as they try to save the world by recovering the crystal quarters of the phantom meteor and fulfill the prophecy of the church, that in the darkest of times, hope will lie in four Warriors of Light...

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Samurai Jack Finale

It's been a long time coming, but Samurai Jack's journey is finally coming to an end tonight on Toonami. A long time ago, when Cartoon Network was still new and good, Samurai Jack was the contribution of Genndy Tartakovsky and was a tribute to...well everything he could make a tribute to. Primarily it was derived frommthe graphic novel Ronin which was also about a samurai fighting a demon with a magic sword whose battle is taken into the future. Jack's specific story was told every episode by Aku himself.

Jack's father had defeated Aku when he first emerged using a sword forged by Odin, Shiva and Osiris. WIht the blessings of three gods from three different lands, the samurai weakened the incarnation of pure evil and sealed him away. But then, a few years later, the demon escaped. The samurai sent his son away to be safe and the boy grew up learning to fight in every style humans had ever come up with on Earth. As a grown man, his journey around the world ended where it began and he took up his father's sword and went to finish Aku once and for all, but Aku sent the young samurai into the distant future where Aku rules the entire Earth and has invited many creatures from many worlds to inhabit Earth and terrorize the populace. In this future the samurai ends up with the name Jack and becomes a beacon of hope for the hopeless, fighting a nearly endless supply of enemies. Some battles have been particularly special, like the Woolies, and the jumping apes, and the three cursed archers, and the Spartans. my personal favorite was when he fought five specialized robots and got a cyberarm to help him fight them, mostly because thisis the part most like 7th Moon.

Of course if you ask any other fan, the best part of a ll was the Scotsman, the only recurring character in the entire series, the Scotsman was a warrior with a machine gun for a leg who wielded a magic sword covered in runes and had a habit of sputing celtic gibberish that stood out in a series that got by mostly on visuals and could often go nearly an entire episode without any spoken dialogue. The style itself was pretty impressive, and the character of Jack always seemed to live up to the hype, being so heroic an d selfless, that multiple times he found a time protal that could take him home, but when faced with the choice whether to take the easy way out or help others, he always saved people at his own expense.

Sadly, despite how fun the show was, it just ran on with no clear end in sight until Cartoon Network cancelled it, leaving fans wondering how this journey ended. It was years of no Jack until just a few months ago, Jack was brought back to finally finish what he started. In this final mini-series, Aku has fathered an elite group of assasins who Jack made short work of, except one, named Ashi. For the past few weeks, Jack and Ashi have had a very wierd adventure as Jack reclaims his lost sword along with his destiny, and Ashi learns the true evil of AKu and switches sides, even falling in love with Samurai Jack. Now Aku steps forward to challenge Samurai Jack one last time, but in a twist, the newly reformed Ashi is corrupted by her father and becomes the one enemy Jack can not fight. The stage is set and the most epic battle in american animation ends tonight...

Attack on Titan

So I almost forgot to post something and then I remembered Attack on Titan just returned to Toonami and I never went over this, so, yeah, here we go.

Attack on Titan is...well, wierd. It's not clear when exactly it is set, let alone where, but the basic idea is that titans are giant naked people that just sort of lumber aound until they see humans and then they eat the little people, and because of this, humanity has been forced into isolation in a citadel where people live a life that is mostly like medieval Europe. The one remarkable exception to their lack of technology is the gas powered omni-directional system that allows soldiers to use hooks and wires to propel themselves through the air and attack the titans at their one weak spot, the nape of their neck. The story centers on one soldier named Eren who watched his family get killed by a titan when he was a child and then titans were not seen for over a decade and he joined the military specifically to fight them should they ever return, and sure enough, right after he finished training with his friends Mikasa and Armin, the titans returned. Things get really wierd when Eren discovers he can transform into a titan himself, which begins a period of controversy deciding whether he is a threat or an asset, the latter being assumed when Eren focuses entirely on fighting other titans when he transforms. At first it seems Eren is unique, but then they discover other titans may be like Eren, only in reverse, spying on humans and preparing to attack the city from within. As season one ended, they identified the first of these titans as a member of their own team who, upon being discovered, transformed, fought as best as she could and when all else failed, crystallized herself. Now season two has begun, and the next discovery is that the walls of the citadel that keep out the titans are made of petrified titans much in the same way that their recent quarry crystallized herself.

This show has a very interesting aesthetic, a kind of steampunk resembling the kind of world a JRPG takes place in, but the story is clearly some sort of post apocalyptic scenario that seems quite bleak because with no civilization known outside of this citadel, it seems humanity is doomed by a ruthlessly efficient apex predator that will break through and destroy everything eventually. esistance is futile, and yet the heroes are determined to go down swinging, resulting in a beautifully rendered war between man and monster, you root for the humans even though it seems pretty clear they'regong to lose, you keep hoping they will win, because dammit, they believe they will figure out some way some how. The show has a pretty serious tone, with rare exceptions such as the girl obsessed with potatoes and a scientist who has circumstantial sympathy at best. Almost every scene appears to be at twilight, which may be symbolic of the twilight of humanity. It won't happen all at once, it will take a long time and it will be a long fight, and we won't realize it's over until it's too late. But assuming it doesn't actually happen to us in reality, watching this version is very entertaining, sometimes preferable to the doom of reality.

New episodes every Saturday night right after Dragon Ball Z Kai. Stay gold Toonami Faithful!

Toonami update: Samurai Jack and Tokyo Ghoul, plus Grimm fanfiction

It's been a crazy few weeks and I'm going to catch up a little on some Toonami stuff and announce a new writing project.

Samurai Jack is back and it's pretty awesome. First off, he's not alone anymore, now there is Ashi, one of the daughters of Aku, a cult who have trained girls to be elite assassins in service of Aku who actually doesn't even interact with them so they hunt Jack under the auspices that he is the villain and he is trying to undo the world that Aku created. Ashi is unique because she is the only one of the cult who has doubts, and while the cult sees this as weakness, Jack sees this as possibility for redemption. Jack has had his own troubles, its been fifty years since the beginning of his journey, but he doesn't age(no, we don't know why) and he keeps fighting even aftr he lost his sword. He fights on auto-pilot until he meets the daughters of Aku and discovers they are the first human enemies he has encountered, a significant scene since the show originally skirted censors by having robots and aliens that didn't bleed, but since moving to Adult Swim, finally break the taboos that held them back. They go even further with dirty jokes, swearing, and recently revealing that Ashi was not wearing a skin tight suit, but that she had nothing covering her body but a layer of soot. Oh and the Scotsman came back for a few minutes, but there was a tease that he may have some sort of role in the finale yet to come. Aku is not the same, and not just because his original voice actor Mako passed away and now he is voiced by an imitator, but also because he destroyed the last time portal, and shortly after Jack lost his sword, so he sort of won and has gotten bored with toying with the samurai. Last we left off, Jack recovered his sword and is back in top form, and he and Ashi (and the Scotsman and his daughters?) are goign to finish off Aku once and for all. This should be good...

Also new to the block is Tokyo Ghoul, a morbid yet profoundly sad story of ghouls who are compelled to eat human flesh but still try to be decent people. In this story, ghouls are humanoids that eat flesh, but it has to do with a specialized digestive system and sense of taste that they can't eat anythign else except coffee for some reason. Our main point of view comes from Kaneki, an unfortunate individual who goes on a date with a girl named Rize, only to find out she's a ghoul with a bit of an eating disorder who wants to eat him. Before she can, he tries to get away running through a construction site, only to get into an accident which almost kills both of them, but a doctor transplants her organs into his body, which saves his life, but also makes him a half-ghoul. The bad news is now he needs to eat human flesh like a ghoul. He's horified by what he's becoming and the thought of eating human flesh, but he comes across a ghoul named Toka who brings him to a coffee shop where the proprietor takes care of ghouls who have unusual circumstances, and while Kaneki is by far the wierdest, he's not alone. Toka is trying to pass for human and has actually grown fond of a human and tries to eat her food so she can fit in, even though it makes her sick. Then there's Nishiki, who never liked killing humans, but since he fell in love with a human he's trying to survive on coffee alone because he doesn't want ot kill for her sake. And then there's Hinami, a young ghoul who isn't old enough to hunt for herself and shows a unique innocence in that she will eat human flesh, but only because she has to, otherwise she is clearly a decent person. What really makes all of this so sad is realizing that a ghoul may not necessarily be bad just because they eat human flesh, they have to do this to survive, and it tears them up when they realize they have to live among their prey and befriend them as well as eat them. Kaneki has a slow descent into the worst case scenario while the other three struggle to be decent people despite a biological imperative to be predators.

Finally, I am working on a fanfiction for Grimm. It's been a month since the show ended, but they finished with a tease that has been gnawing at me ever since. My story is about Kelly, Diana, and the triplets twenty years after the series ended, and also thirteen years after it ended which is seven years before the other events of the story. Alternating between flashbacks where they are kids experiencing their first woges and the future where they are adults hunting wesen, it explains how the next generation carries on their parents' legacy. I plan to publish this to the official Grimm forum where hopefully fans get behind it and demand it be made canon. Most importantly we need to cover four characters who need more details because of the lack of info at the end of the series.

• Kelly Burkhardt - part zauberbiest, specifically his left arm which grants him superhuman strength and telekinesis, a handy advantage when fighting wesen, he is also still a Grimm. He is in a relationship with one of Monroe and Rosalee's daughters(see below).
• Juliette - fuchsbau, daughter of Monroe and Rosalee, takes after her mother, named after Eve who never took her old name back. In a relationship with Kelly (see above).
• Monroe Jr. - only blutbadt son of Monroe and Rosalee, like his father he tries to fight his urges, but unlike his father, he has no history of giving in to his urges and without that regret to guide him, he may be more inclined to fall off the wagon. He is in love with Diana, and she kind of feels the same way, but they have yet to admit it to each other.
• Theresa - fuchsbau, daughter of Monroe and Rosalee, named after Truble, she is a bit of a wild child compared to her siblings. She is partial to bad boys and wants to be a criminal defense lawyer like Adalind so she can protect those lost souls she's so fond of.

Well, that's a four part story that is coming up, and I still need to finish 7th Moon Mecha so I need to get back to writing.

Camp NaNoWriMo conclusion and Rocky Horor Picture Show Hoopla

Firt off, I'll just get this out of the way, I failed Camp NaNoWriMo, I only got about 15,000 out of 50,000 words written. I suck. However, I will not give up on 7th Moon Mecha, I will just conced this will take a while. It took six months for me to write the last draft, and ten years to get that far through three drafts, so yeah, this one will take some time, but I will write it. And no, not a lot of progress on what I last said, I'll update you when I get to the next arc, whenever that is.

Among my many distractions, last night I went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show the right way, with a group that presents the movie with audience participation, going by the name Hoopla. For those of you do not know, the Rocky Horror picture show is arguably the best worst movie ever made. It is bad actually, horribly bad, even the fans agree it falls apart halfway through, but somehow it becomes the most amazing experience when you go to a theater and watch it with a dozen fans so dedicated that they perform the movie along with the film and heckle the screen and set up jokes with the actors giving punchlines owing to extremely awkward timing in the original filming and a little audience participation as well. Of course it's a sing along, but there is so much more, including strangers taking off their clothes, $2 prop bags that you don't understand until the vets get involved, and silly string at uncomfortable times. The only preparation I can give you is that if they ask you if you want them to take your virginity the easy way or the hard way, only take the easy way if you actually want to disrobe in front of strangers, and know that Brad is an Asshole and Janet is a Slut, and you must point that out every time their names are said. Aside from that, well, there is no preparation, the plot, the gags, none of it makes any sense, but it is tons of fun, so if you're in Western New York, look up Hoopla for their next show, otherwise look up your local troupe for when they will put on the wierdest viewing party you will ever see.

Tora Con 2017

So I didn't make it into the Artist Alley to sell my books, but I did get to host a panel where I showed my trailer with Steve Blum's voiceover and my video game...to a grand total of six people including three staff and volunteers and my artist Alex Demchak, and the guy who recorded the voiceover with Steve Blum, so not too much progress. Alex and I talked about the graphic novel version of 7th Moon, and it seems progress is being made, slowly but steadily. I also got to check out their maid cafe, a vocaloid concert, and took in a few other panels including the Tora Idol contest where some otaku competed in a Japanese singing contest...some were good...

Most interesting was a panel on yokai and pokemon. I learned that there is a type of catfish that is named after a yokai and lives int he waters off of Fukushima that abandoned the area just before the tsunami, because apparently they knew, and now scientists are watching the catfish in case this happens again. I also found out that Jynx is not in fact a negro minstrel caricature, but in fact a caricature of white women from Hollywood who dye their hair blond, get collagen injections in their lips and get dark tans, so it's still racist, just in a different way than we thought. but most interesting was a revelation about Shishigami, the deer god that inspired a pokemon, but more importantl was a central character in Princess Mononoke. Now, we all know Princess Mononoke is an environmental fable, but it takes a new level in Japan for those who understand the significance of the deer god, Shishigami, which is their most ancient god, predating the gods of Shinto. Here's the big deal, since the deer god is represents the most ancient roots of Japan, the deer god in Princess Mononoke is not just another nature god like Moro, Nago, and Okkoto, this is the supreme deity of nature, lording over the other three on a scale that can not be understood by the uninformed western audiences. Shishigami doesn't just represent nature, he represents the Japan that is being taken over by the Shogunate. This isn't just the end of nature, it's the end of an era of Jpanese history. This also makes the relationship between Ashitaka and Yakul his elk a litle more meaningful, since Yakul is a deer, he is akin to Shishigami, possibly an avatar, and the fact that they get along and are unconditionally loyal to each other despite the otherwise antagonistic relationship between man and nature demonstrates that Ashitaka is uniquely allied with nature, which was already apparent, but now it means even more because it shows Ashitaka's traditional background.

Okay, now I'll leave you with some pictures of cosplayers and a video from the maid cafe.

Ghost in the Shell, Your Name, and Camp WriMo Week 2

I tried to write, but it was also my birthday this week so I have been celebrating, and by celebrating, I mean I am trying to go out and party as much as a socially awkward otaku can and watching movies I've put off for a long time.

First up, Ghost in the Shell. Let's get this out of the way, it sucks that they whitewashed the cast that should have been Japanese. Having said that, I really think they did the best job anyone in America is ever going to do with this and if we can just shut up and enjoy it, this could be the beginning of a franchise, perhaps a whole new era of anime adaptations. But who am I kidding? We're al going to bitch about this until it's DOA. In my humble opinion, this movie was good, and perfect for introducing the character of Major Motoko Kusanagi. It is not the same as the original anime movie, but rather takes from 2nd Gig, the second season of the tv series. I can understand why they went this way, it is a good story and preserves the spirit of Ghost in the Shell. This story explains who and what the Major is and her significance in the changing world. The world itself is shown in such a beautiful style that if it weren't for out of place caucasians it would be flawless. However even the white folks have their place in the story. Batou's eyes finally ge a full explanation, they get burned out by an explosion and replaced so he looks like the Batou we know and love. Speaking of appearances, once you get past the Major being white, you realize she's actually pretty dead on, hair, costume, everything, she is badass. Speaking of badass, Aramaki, the official boss of section 9 gets my full respect in this film, particularly near the end. The ending is incredibly satisfying, although I don't want to give too much away, there is a spider tank(tachikoma) that would make for the ultimate boss battle in a game adaptation, and there are some other details that really make it worthwhile including an explanation for who Motoko really is...all I'll say is that her body is synthetic and doesn't necessarily match what her original body actually looked like, so you will forgive that she's played by a white chick, a very clever writing trick. So the main story is that the Major, who believes her name is Mira, is the first cyborg with a fully synthetic body, literally her brain is all that is left of her original body and it is now housed inside an android body, the ghost in the shell, which they rather heavy handedly describe in so many words in the beginning exposition to make sure the audience knows right away and isn't left figuring it out and missing the story. She has no memory of who she once was but is told that her family were immigrants and they died trying to reach Japan, attacked by terrorists. She is placed in Defense Section 9 along with Batou, Ishikawa, Saito and a few unnamed agents under Aramaki, and together they fight cyberterrorism. One year into her assignment, the Major as she is now known more by her rank, is handling a meeting where a robot geisha has been reprogrammed to assasinate a scientist from Hanka Robotics, the company that made the Major. The robot had been hacked by someone known only as Kuze. While investigating this further, more scientists from Hanka are killed by Kuze and they track him down only to find a trap where Batou loses his eyes. Then the truth comes out about Kuze and the Major's connection. The story mainly follows the intent of the franchise, questioning what is real when the artificial mimics reality so well. I particularly found the character of Dr. Oulette moving, the doctor who created the Major and performs maintenance on her. She takes a moral turn that some people may find unexpected, but you have to remember that the major represents Dr. Oulette's life's work, and she becomes very protective, so no matter how corrupt you may think she is, when it comes down to it, she does care about her creation more than her own life.

Next, Your Name, okay Funimation, you got me to watch the movie. This movie is about two teenagers whose lives become intertwined when they start to switch bodies with each other and live out every other day as the other one. At first they think it's just a dream, until there are real world consequences, then they begin to realize it's real and they need to take care of each other. They form a unique bond that becomes critical when the switching stops and the boy, Taki, realizes that the girl Mitsuha died. Not only have they been seperated by physical distance between Tokyo and a small rural town called Itomori, but they have also been seperated by three years that she lived in the past. The second half of the movie is about Taki trying to make one last trip to save the town knowing that it was destoryed by a meteor. There really is no way to convey the emotion in watching these two fall in love without ever meeting each other, knowing each other only by the notes they leave to each other, but it is truly beautiful and draws you in until the very end. No detail is unimportant, every little thing matters in the end, from a string to a jar of sake, from a landscape to a pen mark,

So back in my writing, in 7th Moon Mecha, we jus got through our first battle of the Three Kingdoms portion of the story and it did not turn out the way they expected. I haven't fit in as much as I would have liked, but I did finish a chaoter, so that's something. Also it didn't help that Dangerous Ariana came back to Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and I'm trying to make sure I get all of the event items. Not easy at all, but just wanted to let everyone know, if you missed it last time, heres your second chance. Well, back to writing for me.

Camp NaNoWriMo Week 1 7th Moon Mecha

This week was not highly productive sadly, but I did complete chapter 3. So far the espers are crossing the sea from Japan to China as prisoners of Lord Mao of Wei. The national security of Japan is now dependent on Hidariude and the others piloting the Nagasaki Trojan in the service of Lord Mao along with the Japanese traitor Himiko who may not be who she seems. This is setting up for a re-enactment of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms which may be familiar to players of Dynasty Warriors. This is actually only one part of the larger story which will go global, a world tour from Asia through Europe and even to North America. The common thread is that everywhere they go, there will be mecha involved, and Hidariude will be pilotign the Trojan in every battle. Well, That's all I've got for now, I really need to get back to writing, so see you next time.

Episode Gladiolus, Grimm Finale, 7th Moon Mecha/Camp NaNoWriMo

First off, the first DLC for Fnal Fantasy XV dropped this week, Episode Gladiolus, and it has been a bit of a disappointment. As hoped for, it does finally answer the question of what Gladio did when he left the party for Chapter 7, and simultaneously came with an alternate chapter 13 showing what Gladio and Ignis did after being separated from Noctis, which was better. Both are pretty short and to the point and are so stripped down from the main game they feel completely different. Chapter 13 features a special sequence that explains what happened to Aldercept and Ravus and is totally worth playing this sequence, although it does kind of piss me off that Ardyn gave these two a shortcut, like why the hell couldn't Noctis have found that passage? But that's nothing compared to the Trial of Gilgamesh, Gladio's reason for leaving the party. Apparently this trial is for the Crownsguard and is roughly the equivalent of Noctis reclaiming for the Royal Arms. It's promising in concept and it's a fun romp to see some familiar faces in Enkidu and Gilgamesh, the latter coming with another signature Battle on the Big Bridge complete with a new remix of the song, but for the first time since Gilgamesh began his transdimensional journey, it's not the same Gilgamesh humorously breaking the fourth wall and admitting how many worlds he's been in, this time it's the ghost of the first King's Shield, the knight whose title is now held by Gladio himself. The frustrating part is that everything you did in the game goes out the window, Gladio is now at level 24 armed with a Claymore, no alternate weapons, no items except what you collect in the dungeon. Gladio has access to his own techniques which he now uses with his own meter, but there's no warp strikes, no magic, nothing but Cor having your back between bosses, but the four trial bosses you have to fight completely alone. I haven't been able to finish the final battle with Gilgamesh, largely because I blew through a lot of items fighting Humbaba, a boss that is based on the Red Giant that is the most pain in the ass demon to fight when you have a full party of four let alone Gladio alone. I did get far enough to see that Gladio got his scar from Gilgamesh when he slashes our hero across his face and Gladio continues undaunted, which answers the question of how that happened, but until I defeat Gilgamesh and see how this actually ends, the whole thing pretty much blows, I hope the other DLC are better. What I wish would have happened was that this worked like the Moogle Chocobo Carnival where you access the DLC with a save file and use Gladio with the gear, stats and items he has from the file, I even saved a file from Chapter 6 just for this. Instead, the current format lacks leveling and reduces the experience to being visually the same as the main game, but mechanically it's just a hack and slash minigame with minimal impact on the game overall. EDIT: I finished the fight with Gilgamesh, you get the Genji Blade which allows Gladio to perform Dual Master, we also find out the blade was Cor's and he used it to cut off Gilgamesh's arm, although they claim Cor did not defeat Gilgamesh, I want to know the definition of defeat when one guy cuts off his opponent's arm and is not considered as successful as the guy who gets a scar but leaves none on his enemy. Anyway, final ruling, unless you absolutely have to know exactly what Gladio was doing when he left the party in Chapter 7 or at the very least you want to play as Gladio instead of Noctis, this DLC is a letdown and not really worth it to any but the most ardent fans.

Grimm just ended in a fittingly weird way, the Destroyer came from another dimension and killed everyone leaving Nick with a choice to save his friends or kill him.Then his mother and aunt, both dead mind you, appear out of nowhere to help him do the right thing. Then Nick gets pulled into another world where none of what happened actually happened and nobody remembers it but him and Diane. Fast Forward twenty years, his son Kelly now hunts wesen with his sister Diane and the triplets Rosalee and Monroe had. Frankly I'm disappointed that we never saw the triplets nor found out whether they were Blutbaden, Fuchsbau or some sort of mutt. The ending was good, but I'm sad that that particular plotline was rushed. For the shippers out there, I think one of the triplets is a girl and falls in love with Kelly, probably a Fuchsbau, a real vixen through and through, it all started the first time she woged in front of him, while most wesen see their inner horror in a Grimm's eyes she saw the inner beauty he saw in her, his eyes reflecting the passion of love not hate, then they knew they were soulmates. Also, what if Kelly is part zauberbiest like Sean? His hand could be the part that woges, giving him super strength and telekinesis to bring weapons to his hands or throw them with heightened accuracy and brew the occasional zaubertrank or cast a spell when necessary. And back to shipping, Diana should date the blutbad son of Monrosalee, Monroe Jr. perhaps. Feel free to run with any of this with your own fan fiction, maybe we can get a convincing universe going for a possible reboot down the road.

Now for my big news, National Novel Writing Month spring Camp WriMo is beginning and now for the main event...7th Moon Mecha! After five years, I'm going to challenge myself this month to finally tackle the first sequel to 7th Moon! I attempted this years ago and botched it, but that means little, the first novel took three or four drafts over ten years, 7th Moon Mecha has only begun to fight and this time the book will be written! I will be dragging out the first three chapters I had before and continue the story of a mech war that starts with China reenacting the Three Kingdoms era, then flowing into a holy war in the holy land with clones of Tengu, then off to Europe to face vampires and steampunk mecha, and then to North America to take a tour of the last five cities on the continent and find out the truth behind the new war.

With this, I leave you to get back to serious writing after taking a break for a few months, I need to get back to work, and for the rest of the month, this blog will be nothing but updates on my writing. Next month, Tokyo Ghoul review, but that will have to wait for now...