Garage bulletin board

Why am I not surprised that Twitter has now apparently decided that longform video essays are Bad Actually when nonwhite people are finally seeing some fucking advancement in their popularity in the genre.

 

Man I've been too busy to even talk about the things I like lately.

I'm currently playing through Xenoblade 3. I played through the first fourish hours with my friend on stream and immediately realised I'm not gonna be able to live trying to dodge spoilers, so guess I have to 100% this game before I can engage the fandom at all.

 

but also -- I'm still so discouraged about the state of fandom that I'm not even sure I want to do fandom for this game. What if it's full of antis or something

 

I really wanna talk about how good the character dynamics in this game are, though. And how good the character designs, I've forgotten how good the Monolith in-house style is, since 2 was such a mess aesthetically

 

Tbh I wonder if I would be half as sweet on Xeno 3 if it wasn't a follow-up to Xeno 2, a game I liked with clenched teeth and hating to have to defend it because of all the objectively bad-idea nonsense in it. Like, this game is at least not so horny for its female characters it completely ruins some scenes with its camerawork, and at least there are no Peruns or Dahlia's, with their blatant fetish bait designs that completely contradict their characterisation.

Like there's still plenty of cheesecake, most of the female characters have clothes that are painted-on, there is plenty of fanservice nonsense... But fuck, at least none of them get done as dirty as Dahlia.

 

And it's not like my limit is "what I personally find hot", because Mythra and Zenobia were my favourite Blades and Dahlia is way up there also.

 

Gender.

:(

 

"I'm honestly just, like, not that into women anymore" *sees a woman top ever* "I've never been this into women, what the fuck."

 

Anyway. Ashera Xenoblade. That is all.

 

She's not even my favourite character, she's not even my favourite Hero, but goddamn do I beg fandom to please give me the sustenance.

 

The NFE I have towards Xenoblade 3 is driving me absolutely nuts, especially because I don't trust the fandom and (also because my ex is still active on Tumblr so. Ha ha). Reading fanfic on Ao3 is not enough, fellas, I need to have conspiracy board conversations about my headcanons!!!!

 

For example: I don't think Nimue ever learned to use a proper Blade -- Katashiro can technically be used by anyone with the fine etheric control necessary, but they're practically speaking a lost technology outside of the colony she came from. (By the game's own rubrik, she would have been an Attacker, similar to Machine Assassin and Stalker that relies heavily on debuffs and zoning). That's how she was able to "teach" Taion how to use Mondo instead of a regular Blade, his gauntlet is basically the same kind of "storage" form as Noah's gauntlet when he has Lucky Seven drawn.

Does this mean Taion has a second, secret form to his Blade?.... I mean, on paper yes, but in practice he's so well-suited to using Katashiro that Bladelore has basically gone "lmao alright" and it's stuck that way. It would take a lot of conscious effort to be able to draw whatever the other form of his Blade might be because the Mondo *are* his Blade.

 

Strategos is also in direct lineage with Zephyr, but Isurd is too much of a squishy illboy mage and his body physically cannot take the stress of being an evasion tank, so his Blade has adjusted to compensate. He can use Katashiro, although just, like, the basics, nowhere near the level of proficiency Nimue or Taion can, but he is also. *Fundamentally* too hotheaded to get good utility out of them.

Bladelore will go quite far to conform to its wielder's personality. Eunie is another great example, she never enjoyed being a fullback support mage and kept wanting to go and kick the enemys' tail feathers personally, so eventually her Blade went "here, have A Gun" and that's why she has a hybrid staff/rifle.

 

Kevesi Bladelore often "feels" stricter than Agnian Bladelore, but this is an illusion -- Kevesi Blades will adjust just as much as Agnians, but their power frames need to be configured separately to allow the circulation of ether in a way that supports the form the Blade takes, and this can be a hard wall for Blade development if someone doesn't have access to a decent mechanic who can help with the adjustments. Agnians don't have this problem, since their core crystals allow them to circulate ether natively. Agnian mages tend to be stronger as a result, with allowance for batshit outliers like Eunie, who's had ether coming out of her wingtips her entire life, and Valdi, whose power frame was custom built by Fixifixi to match his output parameters.

 

Agnians having higher aptitude, and thus also higher sensitivity, to ether is also why a weakling like Joran was pressured into combat operations instead of being allowed to serve in staff and logistics. He was a mage, mages are far more effective against Agnians than physical force -- thus Keves was always starving for combat-capable mages. Kevesi Levnises were also broadly split into anti-infantry and anti-materiel based entirely on whether they had etheric or conventional weaponry.

 

Me: haha Isurd is a useless illboy
Me: wait
Me: oh goddammit this is just the Crip Agenda again, isn't it?

 

LIKE I WAS WONDERING. HE'S MUCH MORE OF A SAD WET CAT THAN WHAT I USUALLY GO FOR.

Like there is cause to question how in a game that also has Teach, Ashera and fucking Ashenpelt Grey, how Isurd still managed to win out as my favourite with a decent margin.

It was the fucking chronic illness feelings again!! Goddammit.

 

Finished with postgame.

Man, if Mio is Nia's daughter, that puts a whole fucked-up spin on her being able to "watch" the events from within the Cloudkeep. We don't know how many generations of soul recycling the war went through before we got "our" versions of the cast. Even the City is very vague on how long it's been.

 

Me: okay so logically speaking Iota and Lambda must cooperate all the time. Iota is a logistics-focused colony, whereas Lambda has at least three important procurement jobs, plus they apparently also grow and collect food, and while Cotte Falls isn't great for transporting lots of materials through, it's a damn sight better than the Urayan Trail, controlled by Colonies 5 and 30 and hotly contested in the east end by Keves due to the proximity of the Castle. Furthermore, Matkha is Agnian territory, as much as it can be called anyone's territory, so the entire western half of Pentelas is the only sensible transit route, and Lambda is the threshold guardian of the region.
Me: .....
Me: but wouldn't it be really fucking funny if--

 

I don't even imply anything bad, I'm just thinking it would be funny if Isurd had been familiar with the previous Iota commander, by all accounts a complete bastard, but hadn't yet really received confirmation that Alex wasn't more of the same. So he's just very icy polite when interacting with her and Alex is like "^_^); why is he mad? what did I do"

Also, if Alex was collecting competent people, she could have easily tried to poach Taion from Gamma, also putting her on Teach' shitlist.

IDK I love her, she deserves Inconveniences.