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.