radio414

“Keep going!” Sergei said. Which, like, it was good that they were on the same page -- that was what he was going to do anyway -- but now it felt to Chris like they were leaving him behind. He still did as he was told, though, drawing the three mushrooms still following them away from the group along with his two teammates. If anything else, he aimed to make Sergei’s position a bit more tenable. Hopefully. But the mushrooms were catching up again. His and Lana and Estellise’s racing along the perimeter had allowed another, more direct path for the monsters, one that would cut them off just before they reached the stairs. Well, that was just the new plan then, wasn’t it? If they could fend off their three mushrooms long enough for Sergei to break from the ones around him, they could disengage again and finish their mad dash, right? It wasn’t like the mushrooms were better in a sprint. With the matter settled (in his head, at least), Chris pushed on, practically daring the monsters to pursue. And when, once again, engagement was unavoidable, he spun on a dime and let his momentum guide his sword, this time aiming for the mushroom’s arms, or whatever you could call the bit carrying the weapons.

only ever played super paper mario but love it a lot and all the character designs are fun in all of the games so there probably isnt anything that is a total miss, shoot.

I'm probably the opposite of a burger purist? Tomatoes, lettuce, onions, cheese, whatever condiment, it all goes on. I understand the people that find that way of thinking unnatural and blots out the taste of the patty itself, but I really don't care. I don't get a burger because I want to taste something, I want a burger so I can mash a giant sandwich in my mouth. I never had any "weird" things, but I have heard of a Luther burger, and if you have not, well, it's real simple. Imagine a normal burger. Now replace the bun with doughnuts. That's it, really. If I ever do try one, I'll let you know.

Biscuits The journey back to Levanna’s office was pretty quick, all things considered. Levanna didn’t feel the need to give a tour, after all, and largely kept her head down as she guided the Nuumu watchdog through the streets. Multiple people called out to her, but she paid them no mind. The only person who managed to break her will and grab her attention was Aiden, who’d followed alongside her for quite a distance. When she tried to dismiss him with an “I’ll hear your concerns later,” that was when he finally spoke up. “Three people. That’s how many showed up to worship today,” Aiden said. “The fire’s waning too.” “Your concerns are noted. I’ll be sure to bring them up at tomorrow’s council meeting,” Levanna said. “I have other matters to attend to right now.” Aiden tried to get in front of her then, but Levanna just kept on walking. She almost felt like she was walking right through him with how effortless it was, actually. It was like he was a one-person crowd. After checking that her charge had not gotten lost again in the meantime, she pressed onwards. “You’ll have to forgive the mess,” Levanna said as they two entered her office, motioning to the tea set on her desk. “We left in a bit of a hurry last time. Everyone wanted to hurry off to see their temples and who was I to not oblige? The biscuits should still be good, and if you give me a few moments, I can offer some fresher tea. Make yourself at home in the meantime. I’ll be right back.” Hashing It Out There was something comforting, Emily thought, in hearing someone else -- especially someone of religious authority -- comfort her and say she was not destined to meet the same dreadful fate as her parents. “From your lips to the gods’ ears,” Emily found herself saying, though she felt less reassured when he said it must have been the result of a curse. How could she have the same curse as her parents and not be destined to fall to it? But she thought back to her dream, and realized, maybe there was something there she had to do still. Then, of course, came the questions. Had she had any other strange experiences? Was there something weird going on on Galatea? “You mean besides watching my mother and father turn to stone?” Emily said. “They are not the only ones, you know. News tends to travel of who’s passed on and of what, especially when you’re trying to figure out why business is down. These are just whispers, but I believe them. “As for new people?” Emily rubbed the back of her neck, trying to think. “I could not tell you. Galatea is a popular island, but it is not like new arrivals go unnoticed. I suppose Simon Weatherson’s current stint is significantly different from what he used to do, do you mean something like that?” Washing It Down The exterior of Galatea’s main city wasn’t defined by a wall or anything of the sort. It was more of a gradual progression; the density of the buildings slowly decreased, replaced by trees and natural scenery until Finn arrived, at the outskirts of the outskirts, at a cave. Signs along the way had announced the cave as “Cornucopia Rock,” and a similar sign appeared at the mouth of the cave, a larger one with a drawing of the titular symbol right next to the name. If one squinted, they could probably see it, though the rock face was closer to an abstract impression of a goat’s horn than any actual resemblance. Outside the cave was a line of people. It wasn’t too long, but it certainly was noticeable. Most in the queue had a bucket with them, though some had larger containers than even that. None of them paid Finn any mind as he approached. The Tea Levanna reopened the door to her office carrying a newly refreshed tea set, including some extra biscuits just in case, which she set down on her desk going back and closing the door behind her. “All comfortable? Good,” she said. “I didn’t know which kind of tea you prefer, but I hope this will suffice.” Her mood shifted dramatically when she sat down, however, and the room darkened as though it was sympathetic to her whims. “Now,” Levanna said. “I suppose I could ask you again where you heard that word, but I’m sure I’ll get the same answer as before so I will not bother. I could ask you to never repeat what I am about to tell you, but I am sure it will end up on the lips of every other watchdog on the island, in addition to whoever you heard it from. And their associates. And so on, and so on. That’s the danger with words like these. They catch on quickly. And yet… “‘Inanis.’” Levanna allowed herself a sip of her tea to punctuate the word. “To translate it now, I suppose the closest approximation I can give it is ‘void’. But you must understand, it means so much more than that. It is the idea of nothingness. Oblivion, even. You’re a watchdog for Nuumu, yes? So you should know the difference between dying and being consigned to such a fate. “But it is dangerous to know. That’s why I ask you not to repeat these things carelessly. To know it is to be vulnerable to it.” Levanna leaned forward and gestured to the platter. “You should have some more of these biscuits. I certainly won’t be able to have all these once you leave.” OOC

There're videos of the original German lyrics to Pirate Jenny with English subtitles but the audio is worse so you get this one.

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Duel 09 -- The Castle Said To Hold Eternity Or: The Two Worst Characters (So Far) Grew Up Together That Means We Can Ship Them, Right? First thing’s first, I came across a pretty comprehensive list of content warnings for Revolutionary Girl Utena. It’s already in the opening post, but I’m also going to post it here for those who have been following along just in case. Again, I’ll say the major ones in these posts themselves, and we haven’t gotten to those yet, but if you find content warnings useful, especially related to mental or physical abuse, I recommend checking out that link. I apologize for not doing due diligence and seeking that out sooner. With that said, let’s talk about video games because Utena has a video game. Someday, My Revolution Will Come (there are a bunch of translations for the title, most notably “Story of the Someday Revolution” or “Four Days in Ohtori Academy” but “Someday…” is my favorite so I’m using it here) is a visual novel for the Sega Saturn published in 1998. It has largely the same writing team and voice team, and takes place within the anime’s canon, specifically between Episodes Eight and Nine. It involves a playable new character interacting with not only the rest of the main cast, but also the mysterious Chigusa Sanjouin, who also seeks the power to revolutionize the world. Finding gameplay of this game was a bit difficult, actually. If you want to play it, you can either learn Japanese and have a Sega Saturn (and a bunch of money to snap Someday… up should it pop up on eBay), or you can trawl through an archived forum where not every page got saved hoping that the thread where the game got talked about is still there, find a Saturn emulator and a virtual disk drive, download not one, but two .iso files, and run a .bat script, but only after a little bit more editing in the process. I did all that (the second option, I mean), but then I realized it was late Friday night and I wasn’t going to be able to process most of what I was doing anyway, so I just watched a playthrough instead. Maybe I could do an LP of my own someday, but for now, let’s just do a general overview of the story. There isn’t a content warning list for this game that I could find, but a good substitute would be going through the broader ones featured in the list above, specifically the ones of the first two arcs, “Student Council arc” and “Black Rose arc”. Despite taking place between Episodes Eight and Nine, it also serves as a primer for that second arc, as well as serving as foreshadowing for the third “Apocalypse” arc, including Anthy’s brother Akio at times and a few pictures of eventually relevant Ruka Tsuchiya. I say that it serves as a primer because the Black Rose arc -- and I’ll talk about this more when we get to it in a month or so -- is all about character foils. We’ll learn about each of our main characters largely through exploring who they are not. With that in mind, the question of the game becomes, who is Chigusa Sanjouin a foil to? Spoilers for the game, by the way. It’s easy to say Utena. Chigusa constantly describes herself as masculine, from her appearance (which isn’t very clear in the key art but who’s to say) to her activities, which is similar to Utena constantly striving to be a prince, but Chigusa is constantly portrayed as uncomfortable with this presentation of herself. Her “more masculine qualities” are what caused her to lose her crush, which then led to her burning down the old duel hall in an act of suicidal arson. It’s also easy to say this because the game’s main character is a bit wishy-washy and constantly over her head, to the point where one might imagine she’s not a character at all, simply a conduit for the player. But that’s not really the case. The main character of Someday, My Revolution Will Come does have a story and it is important to the game. Her father was Chigusa’s crush, and her mother was the rival Chigusa lost to. We also see a few references to Snow White, not only in the imagery, but also during the climax, where Chigusa literally calls herself the “Evil Queen” and the PC “Snow White-san”. Part of me wants to say it’s not a very interesting counterpoint, as it literally pairs the two canon foreigners in a way that they can easily be missed, making the game unnecessary, but it is notable that it literally introduces the stockiest of stock characters for us to play as before challenging those assumptions. I mentioned that I would talk about “why” each character fought for Anthy’s hand and the power to revolutionize the world. In this case, the game states it outright. Chigusa fights for all the Evil Queens of the world because if she wins, it proves that they are superior and can, in fact, someday find their prince. But she’s misguided. “Evil Queens” in Chigusa’s mind, are women who don’t conform to feminine ideals. But Utena Tenjou is exactly that, and she seems perfectly content with her lot. And when Chigusa loses, it is because of someone feminine, relying on her own experiences to break the four-day curse on Ohtori Academy. If there’s a reason to dislike this game, it’s because the relationship between the protagonist’s parents goes completely uncommented on, or if it is, it is in a way that is uncharacteristic for the series. This is a marriage that initially formed between student and teacher, and in a show that examines how power dynamics like this one can wreck a relationship, it’s a little unclear why this one was not. In fact, outside of the main story, Someday My Revolution Will Come includes a lot of fanservice. To be fair, I would have expected as much in a game with dating sim mechanics (the specific ending you get is determined by the “nobility” of the main characters, and you raise nobility by spending time with them), but some of the scenes are especially heavy on it. “Juri and I played a fighting game and I won!” is a possible option, for example, not to mention the multiple shower scenes. All in all, I think the game presents some good ideas, and I’m glad it exists, but let’s talk about an actual episode now. Saionji is the Vice President of the Student Council while Touga is the President. A simple distinction, but one that looms over both of them. Touga always wins, after all, whether it’s when they spar or who gets the girl. As one can imagine, after ten years of this, Saionji has developed quite the inferiority complex. Even when Saionji has a flashback that’s a third of an episode long, it’s still mostly about Touga. But let’s talk about that flashback for a moment. Remember way back in Episode Three when I made the distinction that while Touga definitely isn’t Utena’s mysterious prince, he definitely has a connection to Utena’s past? Here’s where we first see that. This is the first time we see the framing story, the “Once Upon a Time…” that begins many of Utena’s episodes, and it’s interesting how it drops the fantastic nature of it. Utena isn’t a princess, she’s a young girl whose parents were in a car accident. She isn’t sad -- there aren’t tears for potential princes to wipe from her eyes -- she’s crushingly depressed, hiding away in a coffin and waiting to die. Touga cannot provide the “something eternal” that she wants, again, revealing that he isn’t, nor can he be her prince, but also the episode starts pulling back on his intent as well. He doesn’t want to be “her prince,” he wants Utena to forget her prince in favor of him. This is evidenced in how he saves her at the end. He doesn’t say “Because it’s what your prince would do,” he says, “wasn’t your prince a guy like me?” It’s Utena that conflates the two. But while Touga is infatuated with the girl in the coffin, Saionji notices something else: Touga’s failure. This is the gap in Touga’s otherwise impenetrable armor and it’s something that Saionji fixates on, because if he can find something eternal, he can prove himself better than his friend/rival. It still objectifies Anthy and he’s still an irredeemable jerk to her, but we are continuing to humanize the Student Council by giving them familiar motivations at least. Meanwhile, though this just turns Touga Kiryuu into more of an anomaly, because he appears to be devoid of these motivations besides seducing Utena and winning Anthy’s hand, going so far as to manipulate Saionji into breaking the rules of the dueling game and expelling him when he does. It’s this charming inscrutability that makes him more of a threat, I think, so the motivation card works both ways. We’ll learn more about Touga eventually, but it’s going to take a while. -r Next time: You know how in the opening we see Nanami fighting Utena? This is that part. ←Previous Post -- Link to Episode -- Next Post→

Her name was Leila. Okay, that was a useful bit of information to get out of just a “hi” and whatever Hana was doing. Though Leila also asked if they were part of a club and Peter was pretty sure that had been explained at some point. But maybe she had missed it like Peter did with most of Hana’s ramblings. Before he could answer though, he was distracted by Hana pulling more handfuls of noodles off the shelf. “Why do you think I got two carts?” Hana said, followed by “I dunno if that’s enough…” “Well, one for each person and then a couple extra in our cart just in case, right? You can get whatever you want as long as you don’t expect Coach Clara to pay for it.” Telling Hana to cut loose in essence was probably asking for trouble but it seemed like she was already doing that without their help, so it wasn’t like it was going to hurt. Or hurt too much, anyway. Meanwhile, there was still Leila’s question that needed answering. “Yeah, we’re, uh, we’re part of Horizon Academy’s dueling club. I’m Peter, that’s Makoto, and she’s Hana. Where do you go, Leila?”

Either Chris had completely misjudged the speed at which the mushrooms could move or they’d spent too long settling on their plan, but either way, it quickly became obvious that they weren’t going to outrun anything without at least a little skirmish. On the plus side, dealing with the closest ones was less than dealing with all ten? That was something, but the mushroom men were ready now, so not getting bogged down was going to be more difficult than before. Chris focused on going with the group for as long as possible, getting everyone as far ahead as they could. Once the first of the mushrooms got close enough, he kicked off the left wall, converting all his momentum to move towards it in a flying lunge, swinging his sword in a diagonal arc aiming to cut through the stalk of the thing as cleanly as possible. A battle cry wasn’t normally his thing, but he still let out a “Yaaaah!” as he flew towards the monster. His sword didn’t manage to go all the way through, though. In fact, he didn’t even manage to get it halfway. It was still a nasty gash, but there appeared to be spores around the edge of it that surely were going to do something, and either way, the mushroom was completely unfazed. Worse, now Chris found himself in stabbing distance and had to pull back pretty far to avoid that particular attack, nearly bumping into the wall behind him. But he managed, and, having wasted enough time, took off down the perimeter of the cavern again. There was still at least one more mushroom they’d probably have to deal with before they could finish their mad dash, but all Chris wanted at that moment was to get as much distance between him and the now crooked fungus, who in turn continued in its chase.

Elsie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with her not-even-half-empty mug of “ale”. She considered just pawning it off on Lucine since she seemed to enjoy it for some reason, but Lucine had already ordered a second straight from Lauryn, so that plan was over before it even began. She thought about just casting a spell and turning it into water or something, but she didn’t want to do it with Lauryn watching in case it caused a scene, so when she sat down with them that plan went out the window as well. All that was left was just ignoring the mug and hoping that it just went unnoticed. The food was good at least. Elsie wasn’t as picky about food, but it was still above average, she thought. She placed a few pieces aside for Corbin, who hopped down to the table and started happily pecking away. Of course, in all the excitement about food and drink, Elsie hadn’t been paying as much attention to the actual questions being asked. She did pick up on Lauryn confirming that yes, these were nighttime attacks, though, which snapped her back to attention just in time for the most interesting part, that the number of people missing and the number of monsters seemed to be related. “Oh, we’ll definitely have to look into that,” Elsie said. “I guess that means we’re staying the night, then? You have room for, uh --” she did a quick count on her fingers “-- eight, no, maybe nine?” “And a bird,” Corbin chimed in. “Eight or nine and a bird.”