GuardianSing

THAT'S the size of the screenshots? Alright folks, you'll have to squint your eyes for this one. This is like the one game where the community has memed it into oblivion to the point where I, as a first time player, have zero idea what to actually expect. Is this game even real?? Is Sigurd an actual character who dies the funny death?? I have no idea. I feel like I know everything and nothing about this game. I'll post the rest tomorrow. My eyelids can only take so much more of the bright screen of my laptop. Likewise, is Kaga real??? Oh hold on, wrong game. Oh wow, we're really doing this now huh? Well that was a nice chronology of events that scrolled by way too fast for me to process any of it. I've had enough of Prince Kurths at this point. Now Claudes on the other hand... SIX houses?? That's like double the content of Three Houses! Kaga took a gander at Austria-Hungary I see. Oh thank god he's real. I thought that said "Gran Colombia" for a second, I got so excited... ...King? Seems highly irresponsible to leave the country largely unprotected to serve a foreign war, the king's been playing too much EU4. Welcome to the 4th entry of a long long series, Sigurd.

I remember telling a yankee friend of mine that I was from Central America and they were like "Oh so you're from the midwest?" Most Americans don't know anything about the modern history of Latin America, even concerning the native history people talk about the ancient Maya or Aztecs without going into their recent histories. Most Latino's have a decent amount of indigenous blood in them, though it's no coincidence the class disparities between darker skinned and white folks is still very prevalent down here. They brought them back!! It was nice of that movie to bring attention to poachers in Brazil being a big problem for endangered species, though I personally recommend "Boy and the World" as an animated film that takes place in Brazil and takes it a step forward by showing how direct action or inaction from the government is what destroys ecosystems. There's also Blanka. Him being the only other Brazilian character kind of implies that that's just what the sexual dimorphism is for Brazilians in the Street Fighter universe which is very racist but also incredibly funny. Guatemala is one of the few Latin American countries to really celebrate their indigenous heritage in their tourism sector. Of course they'll quietly swipe the Mayan Genocide that took place a mere 40 years ago under the rug... Vietnam I would say is SEAsian. Most Americans sort of subconsciously see it as diet China but other than the war I can't think of much representation of it in the media at the top of my head. Mongolia does have the whole Mongol Empire that teens are obsessed with and that throat singing video got super viral but yeah, can't think of any popular pieces of media about a Mongol character. Singapore gets a huge break in Pirates of the Caribbean 3 at least. On the topic of popular media about the middle east, Aladdin as a film is pretty racist for having a mingled view of middle eastern cultures, but it's also funny how much it insisted in keeping that American perceived aesthetic. They make direct references to "Allah" and it's like, not even a Disney movie taking place in White Christain land would make a reference to capital G God. Ancient Egypt is pretty popular in the public conscious, though lots of films about ancient Egypt tend to generalize in the Arab direction with some of it's aesthetic choices even if that isn't entirely accurate for the time. Though that's less of an offense in my mind. And there's also somewhat of an idea of African tribes down south but of course those are generalized to hell and back. Marvel's Black Panther is pretty popular (And is also the only good marvel film in my opinion) but I admit to not knowing what part of Africa they were trying to represent. My brain wants to say central Africa in the Congo region but I don't know enough about the continent and it's many many cultures to say for sure. The wikipedia says in East Africa of the Sub-Sahara. Not that I need daddy disney to validate my racial identity but I am very jealous of Polynesians for getting Moana as a film where as I'm stuck with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as representation. Vietnam says trans rights. That's pretty cool. Socialism wins this time. They could make an entire saga about the Sikh Empire. I can understand Italy somewhat, and I'm glad 5 had Venice as a separate Civ, but Mexico definitely should be in there. If Rome, Byzantium, and Greece can coexist, so can Mexico, Maya, and Azteca. I'd say they have even more a reason to than the first three. *Cough* Zapata *Cough* I honestly think this. Civ should have like a controversial leader pack for Civ 7. Having Mao and Stalin back as leaders would be very entertaining. Firaxis when adding Vietnam: "Well we want the leaders to be clean uncontroversial figures as to not offend anyone, so we went for an ancient figure." Vietnam: "Our capital is literally called Ho Chi Minh city."

I can't wait to see how many states are gonna be like "Wait, you can just do that?" in response to Colorado. I have empathy for the consumers of these games and their abusing of people's gambling addictions, though at the very least Heroes seems a bit more generous with it's in game currency than most other Gachas. Not as though the bar was significantly raised or anything but still. And in the topic of fanservice, from the art I've seen it seems to go half and half and appeal to the bisexual gaze so it's a-okay in my book.

It's genius. Everyone works retail and learns first hand what it's like and then retail workers will get less shit from annoying customers! It's like how every politician should get punched in the face.

Glad I'm not the only one who uses Discord as a journal.

Is the Master Rasputin? Or is Rasputin the Master. We will never know for sure. I remember a Tio of mine taking me and my cousins to a Hooters when I was like 13 because we were touring Phoenix and looking for food, and even back then I was bewildered at the concept.

One of the great things about the Latin American Wars of independence was that it got the Spaniards to start shooting at each other instead of the Natives for once. We should bring it back. Honestly Rasputin totally feels like a Doctor Who addition to history, you know what I mean? Like If I didn't know anything about Russian history and you told me that Doctor Who added a crazy peasant wizard man into the Russian Revolution that wasn't there before I would believe you.

Happy holidays folks. I today learned that apparently that during the screenplay of the musical 1776, President at the time Nixon forced the stage production to keep out the song "Cool Considerate men" because he saw it as a critique of the modern right wing. This is up there as being one of the funniest Nixon facts for me now. I'll write a three page essay on her someday.

I'm reminded of when digging out Chichen itza engineers were brought in to build drainage channels for rain water only to find that the Chichen Itzans did so already centuries ago in the same place they planned to build them. As a side note, you say built by the Chimu "culture" which got me thinking about how commonly we generalize a thing that a governing force did as something that the entire culture or people did. Historians will say things like "The Romans did this, the Russians did that, the Americans won this war, the Chinese traded with the Persians" And so on. Obviously we do that for simplistic sake so we don't have to over complicate the explanation every time by specifying "The X country government" every single time. But still it's curious and sort of bleeds into folks being racist towards a group of people for actions that the government did, China being a great example funnily enough. Native Empires especially tend to get bogged down by European histories misrepresenting their centralized state as a "culture" because many non-natives implicitly assume that indigenous people never had fully centralized or complicated political structures of government, so whenever they did something cool it's often described as something the "culture" just decided to do spontaneously. Not to accuse you of anything of course, especially if this wall in particular was built by collectivized volunteers of the local community who lived there rather than a state of officials and hired laborers. I definitely don't know as much about the Pre-Columbian history of South America as I should. She's not even on the list. Her doppleganger from Fates got the right of way. How could you make a peg tierlist without including the best pegger of them all. Reina up there is class though.

When I was a wee lad I used to be unable to sleep the night before Christmas eve because I was just so excited. Now I'm unable to sleep because I have fucking insomnia apparently and haven't had a stable sleep pattern in like 5 months. See the great thing about capitalism is that instead of it being state enforced, the majority of couples aren't going to have any more than 1 or 2 kids anyways because they can't afford it.

Ahhh China. The largest communist government of our age. You can tell it's communist because they'd rather kill children than let women actively participate in the work place which would theoretically lower birthrates naturally.

China's economic policy is hilarious. You'll have these huge corporations committing terrible human right's abuses on their workers manufacturing a huge majority of products that are shipped to the rest of the world, and then the government will go "Okay but gatcha games shouldn't be exploiting the consumers like that." Side note. This reminds me of the time China banned female models for lingerie advertisements so they started using male models instead. I remember that image! I believe it was I who sent it like a year ago.

Anime was inspired by western cartoons, so does that mean they are a mistake? Considering the racial stereotyping in the early ones, probably. I mean there's an argument to be made that the pedo tendencies of some anime is just as prevalent in western media. "Born sexy yesterday" is still a popular trope after all, if not as explicit as "lolis". Not to mention Twilight's famous late book mess where guy falls in love with a damn infant. Wait. Is Miyazaki anime? Because his works I would put up there as being like some of the best media ever, period.

The biggest strike in US history consisted of 5 Million workers back in 1945. Doesn't sound like a lot compared to the overall amount of people but then you remember that the Russian general strike of 1905 consisted of 2 million workers in what was around a 100 million population and that was enough to force the Tsar's hand and write up a constitution. Actually I don't know if it was 2 million. That was the closest thing to an estimate I found on Wikipedia and I don't know if that's counting peasants or dependents. But yeah. still very unlikely, especially since it revolves around a foreign conflict that the vast majority of the country isn't even directly involved in. We can't even get people to strike for better wages since it's way harder to strike with your 5 coworkers in the urban sprawl Mcdonald's than it would've been to strike with the textile unions in the city back in the day. Fun fact, that US strike wave with 5 million people was what made the government pass the Taft–Hartley Act restricting the power of unions in the country up to this day. And the red scare (Which was a result of that Russian general strike of 1905 and the later one in 1917, funny how that works) only made things worse there on out. Key workers going on strike would be a big deal, such as supply workers on railways and truck lines, or government officials in the white house, some of whom have already resigned in protest I've been hearing. Theoretically If sailors on shipment vessels to Israel mutinied that'd also be huge but army people going on strike pretty much only happens when they're literally starving.

Clearly you've never been around Tumblr or 4chan back in 2014. I'd wager it depends on the individual, as like any country, Israel has it's fair share of anti-genocide pro-human rights advocates. Even though many folks there are indoctrinated into the systems that be in Israel's apartheid, like the Quaker abolitionist in the US, there will always be people standing against it. There have been ideas floating around of a general strike happening the US. Hoping that by shutting down the country entirely we can force the government to go with the UN resolution plan. But of course something like that would only work if enough people are striking.

True but it is through the indifference of many democrats that we still keep around the electoral college. Theoretically it's something we could vote out as seen with the NPVIC plan still going on, but that's up to the state voters if they choose a candidate who will sign it, if they even know what it is or that it exists since many Americans don't. Though at the same time I I guess I could call a monarchy a tyranny of the majority by that majority "allowing" the minority to rule them since theoretically if they united they could overthrow that rule by sheer force of numbers, but that's obviously way easier said than done, and also far from what we currently have here. Fact of the matter is, there is a growing amount of apolitical and/or moderate voters within the states, mostly within young people, who don't bother to vote at all or participate within politics even if they have somewhat an interest on social progress. So it's mostly older folks who are voting and creating the situations we have now. And local elections are important because those are what set up the federal ones, and it's also the final barrier between whether or not your local school board starts banning books just for having gay characters in it. I think that it being still a fairly new industry is an even bigger reason. There are still very few regulations regarding games as they aren't held to the same standards as movies or books. It's also why many of the biggest companies can get away abusing their work force because unionization and labor laws regarding these companies have yet to be considered. Fandoms have always been about this, the toxic side of them anyhow, and it's typically young people who don't know any better and shouldn't be using twitter. People have been sending death threats about ship fanart for as long the internet has been around, it's just far easier to catch sight of it now. Following this, I've been seeing a few protests from Israeli's in Jerusalem demanding that Netanhayu resign. I don't know how big or significant these protests are but Israeli's keeping the pressure on him down there is possibly the best chance there is right now that the invasion stops.

To be fair, even in a quote on quote "healthy" democracy I'd like to think we'd still be actively talking about and participating in elections, federal and local. Emailing our representatives about bills and laws and taking the responsibility given to us by being in a universal suffrage democracy. I would just like it to not be between the "I hate rights" and "I tolerate rights" parties. Biggest issue in the US I feel, aside from the electoral college, is just a tyranny of the majority. A democracy only works in making effective positive change if the majority of voters are actively participating in politics. But as it stands many people here live comfortably enough that they're willing to tone out politics entirely, even if there is still work to be done. It's a common theory among the whole left and right idea of politics that a pull from one end usually results in a hard pull from the other. It's why Berlin, arguably the most progressive city in Europe at the time, fell to the most inhumane regime in history, as Hitler easily gained the populist popularity from rural folks who were outraged at the liberal attitude of the city. Or why today the middle east is home to both Isis, one of the most regressive of religious terrorist organizations of our era, and Rojava, one of the most progressive democratic countries...just ever. Indeed it's where we get the term reactionary. Right-winged groups pushing for something more authoritarian as a reaction to progress. And speaking of reactionaries and conservatives, here's what the reactionaries and conservatives of the Confederacy had to say about it during the Civil War, a war started as a reaction to a slavery abolitionist being elected president. "It would have been well for us, if the seemingly pompous inanities of the Declaration of Independence, of the Virginia Bill of Rights and the Act of Religious Toleration had remained dead letters. Their charla­tanic, half-learned, pedantic authors, which rendered them most potent engines of destruction, [Believed that] all men are created equal. This is an infidel doctrine." "We now come to the Southern Revolution of 1861, which we maintain was reactionary and conservative—a rolling back of the excesses of the Reformation—of Reformation run mad—a solemn protest against the doctrines of natural liberty, human equality and the social contract, as taught by Locke and the American sages of 1776, and an equally solemn protest against the doctrines of Adam Smith, Franklin, Say, Tom Paine, and the rest of the infidel political economists who maintain that the world is too much governed." -George Fitzhugh, 1863. I think about these comically evil writings often whenever I see people say how proud they are to be conservative, think about how, in their flag waving and strong man supporting, how close they are to giving away their agency willingly. ...But anyways enough about that depressing stuff. Lets talk about the Henry Ford versus Karl Marx ERB video.

Double Colorado voting W Living in a democracy is so stressful. I wish we lived in a dictatorship so the government could just do everything for us /s It'll be hard to say. Lots of Republican politicians would be glad to see him gone just so they can get a leg up in the race but if they'd survive a GOP schism I don't know.

Already I'm seeing some Trump supporters call for Civil War. Sorry lads, unlike the first one this is actually about states rights. Worrying ambitions aside, it would be supremely funny if the decades long two-party system of the US was ended by guy creating his own Trump party. I predict an instant balkanization of the GOP if Trump dies. It's honestly hilarious, I've gone to various conservative corners and saw folks lamenting about how they donated all their money to Trump and got nothing he promised from it.

I have no idea what this conversation is about but Battle of Blair Mountain all the way.

Radiant Dawn review. Maybe not my full full thoughts because I'm kind of tired right now. As mentioned, I prefer it over Radiant Dawn which is the best thing a direct sequel to a story and game can do. Regarding the plot I imagine there's a bit of a blindspot I'll have because I have not read any of the stuff that apparently it gives you on a second playthrough nor do I speak Japanese to reach the Japanese exclusive material. Removing story content from a first playthrough is a criticism by itself but not one against the quality of the story so whatever I may say about the plot could be wrong if various details are left in the new game+ Generally, I think this game approaches worldbuilding dynamics in a far more interesting way than most other FE or even RPG fantasy games tend to do. The worldbuilding is more about politics and the societies within those politics rather than abstract information about divinity or magic. The existence of each of the countries, their histories and domestic affairs directly influence their significance to the story in a way that made me want to learn about each of these countries individually. Thing about this game is that it would've been very easy to make the plot as simple as "Begnion declares war against the Laguz countries. The Laguz make an alliance together. Ike comes in and beats the Dark god that the senators revived because of their evilness." A plot in which the events of the previous game effectively would've had no relevance. Instead, the plot of Radiant Dawn is one of cause and effect, not just from events within the main story but also events of the previous game. The story of Daein becoming independent is significant and the actions of the Begnion council in PoR were the seeds of the main conflict between Begnion and the Allies. The politics of the Senators and the apostle and how that all interactions with every thing else was what kept me invested. The ending, though presenting in a traditional Fire Emblem way, is much more interesting and unique to me as well. The gods are presented as ideas, actions, and instincts. They are described as order and chaos, restriction and freedom, old and new. Tellius has always been about racism and discrimination and they concluded that with a war between the two fundamental viewpoints surrounding discrimination, a desire for order and a desire for justice. The Goddess of order imposes peace for 1000 years to guarantee that the people can stay alive, and should they stray, they shall die. But this peace is shown to be rife with horror and atrocity, things done to "keep order" and any attempt to stop it being threatened by the cause of full scale war. But authority does not care by itself if there is justice, just so long as there is order. Chaos is shown to being a direct counter to that, and surprisingly, it is with Chaos that the heroes side with. Chaos in this sense does not care for order and stability if that order is at the cost of so many people's lives. It is pragmatic for an authoritarian to discriminate and cause suffering if it's in service to that authority. Elincia's order and stability would've benefited had she been harsh on Daein after the war, Sanaki's order and stability would've benefited had she just let the senate do what it wanted, and by choosing justice over order they both risk their entire rule by causing a Civil War. Generally that is the theme I see in the story of this game. Perhaps it is deeper than what the writers intended but it is my interpretation. Also I like the way the men are drawn and written. I like pretty boys. I like that there are some male characters placed in explicit roles of vulnerability and passiveness which is something that games before and since never do like ever. There are a few problems I have with the story, namely that the Laguz race allegory are presented as being fundamentally different from "regular humans" or Beorc. In fact this is the one part of the both Tellius games I think I would actively encourage a change for. The Laguz being an animal race only effects the plot line in that some characters may be older than others and also we needed Laguz enemy units for certain maps so "Feral ones" are apart of the story. Things that honestly are not important enough to outweigh the benefit of getting rid of the animal people element entirely. There is indeed the blood pact and the retcon surrounding it, which while annoying, I still feel as though the story handles interestingly enough that it didn't actively deteriorate the story for me as the contested nature around the race allegory did. The gameplay I have mixed feelings about. I imagine that Radiant Dawn is the type of game where it's very fun on a first playthrough, but becomes stagnant on a second. Lots of FE games have a linear progression path with one single army that grows and expands, and for that reason the developers have to account for the fact that they can't always predict the player's team and the builds within that team. However Radiant Dawn didn't have much team or unit building, and instead gave you three armies with maps that were built around the composition of those armies. For that reason many of the maps early to mid game feel very fined tone and fitting with your team. But it's also for that reason that any following playthroughs may feel same-y and boring. There are only so many units you can exclude for most of the game. Though that's only a theory I suppose. All and all I really enjoyed the game for what it was, even if the maps quickly fell apart in the late game. So...yeah. I'm sure I have more thoughts that I'll splurge randomly when I feel like it. A tragedy. T'was far from the way I expected Rafiel to lose his ability to walk straight. To be fair, the first two and half hours of that was me managing inventory stuff before starting which in itself was interrupted by me forgetting to save something and losing tons of progress and also me having to return to my real life to clean up a mess my cat had made. Oh...yeah I forgot terrain effects where a thing. I'm a real "if I don't see it then it's not real!" kind of guy when it comes to that. I tried looking for ship art but alas, game is far too niche to have much. I love all of this.

Well now I have to play Genealogy just to figure out what this is about.

I don't even know how I'm going to structure this. I could post it ins spoilers but that would be a bitch to reply to but I also don't want to create a giant wall of image and text. Pretty sure when I started this it was 5 PM in the afternoon ...I finished it at 1 in the morning. Some real "I beat the king of Grado and ended the war" type shit. And all of them are on the Welsh flag. THE TSAR'S WILL IS ABSOLUTE YOU CRETIN! It's very exaggerated here but being mixed race in real life does make it so you lose a sense of cultural belonging. Instead of belonging to both cultures you feel as though you don't belong to any and stand out like a sore thumb when trying to fit in with one or the other. This was the justification for forbidding race mixing in real life as well, particularly with the idea of white and black couples back in the day within the United States and something that Martin Luther King Jr went to great lengths to try and disprove, the myth that the bible condemned race mixing of any kind. Yep, pretty much. Happens a lot, you'd be surprised. ...Or maybe you wouldn't. Even though they're not doing much in the story, I do still find this compelling, especially Almedha's fall into depression from the loss of her son. Ena: "Hey don't worry, you aren't at fault for my husband's death" Nasir: "Hey just popping in to say literally everything is your fault, including her husband's death." "Few spellcaster can master these powerful dark spells, also here are the test answers for learning how to master these powerful dark spells." Also am I going insane, because I swear to god I checked every unit and not a single one can even use dark magic. Micaiah needs some eye candy for the long road ahead. You know, Rafiel is probably the better choice mechanically but I there's no way I'm not bringing my beautiful baby bird boy Reyso- Okay I went into the tower forgetting that I only had 15 out of 16 units so I reloaded the save and grabbed Nailah in which case I had to bring Rafiel as well. She needs something to play with in the long road ahead. I'm so sad I couldn't get Lethe with Jill in this final chapter, because even though these are all remain the same regardless of who their partner is I can't help but find it adorable. Welp, everyone pack your bags. Guy is using light magic, he's clearly on the right side of history. I'm sure there's some insightful conversation to be had between this guy and Rafiel. ...Shame he died before Rafiel could reach 'em. I like that the Daein characters have unique conversations with him, that's cute. The true enemy to racism is lesbians Obligatory joke about how that's what the writers should've done to the script when they wrote in the blood pact. Oh fuck you. That's why I like social history so much, I think. I was going to make a joke about it being a meal from Burger King or something but I've never actually been to that place in the entirety of my life. I have several questions. Okay I see why Nihil is a useful skill now. A battle won from pure skill ...And Ike's collection of Elixer's. I like how the revenge aspect of this side plot has just faded out entirely. The voice acting is...uhh. So just in case Ike didn't have enough cool weapons all for himself. A question I think most everyone should ask in regards to history. I forgot that Micaiah ages differently because of the- This makes it slightly weirder, I retract all my previous jokes. This game is honestly quite radical for Fire Emblem. "Dueling at Dawn" huh? Is that what they call it here? If atrocities continue to be committed even without a great war, is it really a thousand years of peace? Authoritarianism does that to ya. Dammit all, he's an echo-fasicst. Still hot though Ironic, saying that to someone who is living proof of the opposite of hatred between Laguz and Beorc The end is nigh. Amen brother. As you do trying to kill god. Oh Fiona, I wanted you to be the one to kill her, but your lack of hit chance remained your most terrible flaw till the very end... Swear to god, if he gets booted from the records because of this... Okay after killing Ashera over an over again I apparently had to do with Ike, which I swear I already did and thought that wasn't the solution but whatever. And thus the woman with the most violent army takes the throne. Everything was meaningless, I might as well restart the entire game. My victory was worthless. Jesus Christ, this game doesn't know when to stop That sounds nice. And they were lovers. No ifs or buts. And after 46 hours and 52 minutes, the game is finally complete after like three months. I have many thoughts but in general I really loved it. More than Path of Radiance I'd say, even with it's somewhat stuffed story. Tellius took about a year for myself to complete which felt fitting for how much really was in here. As for the next Fire Emblem game I'll play? Well, I imagine it'll be quite the...genealogy. ...Anyways, I'm off to work because I'm already 5 minutes late writing this, byeeee.

I am very tired.

I wonder if I'm obsessed... The serenes forum's unique emojis give me a fight or flight response, I swear. But yes I appreciate Radiant Dawn for having a good milf/dilf ratio. I'll probably do it once I get off work today, if not after some errands downtown.