Video game related notes and links

[petronia]

1) Actually Larsa has the strongest mage potential of all the party and guest characters. XD Max MP of 90 at level 21, and it's not like he's carrying a rod or anything. Wears mystic armour which is damned fushigi mystery since he doesn't know any spells; should've been light armour for the max HP boost instead.

"Natural" physical to magical scale (HP, which is ability to take damage really, versus MP, ability to cast spells): Basch -> Balthier -> Vaan -> Fran -> Ashe -> Penelo -> Larsa. It makes me wonder if they meant Larsa to be White Mage then made him Chemist because items act faster. I don't remember Vossler's exact stats but he does cast spells - Balance, anyway.

The story justification, I guess, is that (like Penelo at first) he's completely untrained. It's common knowledge in Ivalice that anyone can cast spells if they cracked the books properly, but Larsa wouldn't be aware that he had a particular affinity for it. The kryptonite nethicite must have been drinking up his mana the entire time he carries the thing (half damage, all elementary spells; auto-Silence - in English, it hoovers up Mist in the immediate vicinity, so if you have it in your pocket you have nothing to draw on for spells), he just never noticed. I think Fran might, though, hence the end of the fic. Which is probably not readily apparent. UNEXPLAINED SIGNIFICANT GLANCES ARE PART OF THIS GAME'S NARRATIVE AESTHETIC, I'M ONLY STAYING TRUE TO CANON.

...Given which I never had Penelo carry the thing around despite what the story says, are you kidding. I think I had Basch equip it, like, twice. OTOH I guess if she actually did, starting with her rescue all the way up to the Henne Mines, one could get a fic out of it. I'm imagining a hypothetical game in which Penelo were auto-Silenced all the time and no one knew, so Vaan white mages it instead and Penelo shoots a bow, or thieves, or whacks things with a sword. I think she might feel bad about it, if there were something Vaan could learn quite easily and she couldn't no matter how she tried. And then she realizes it's all Larsa's fault. XD;;

I like how plausible the gameplay is. People write fic all the time about fighting random encounters in FFXII. No one ever writes fic about fighting random encounters in FFVII, because it would just come off as completely retarded. Midgar is filled with, what? Killer robot dogs? Evil houses on legs?

2) mullenkamp is recording and uploading Vagrant Story cutscenes, if you ever felt an urge to watch/re-watch the thing. Some parts are unexpectedly... poignant, after FFXII. "Ohshi, you guys, it's a single floating stone block! The Lord be our shield!"

Father Grissom's dullahan: exactly the way summons work in FFXII, innit. Although it's a common critter not an esper, so it's more like summons work the way they seem to do in, um, Revenant Wings. (Next drabble_trade request: Sydney summons host of enraged cactoids and alraunes to delay Ashley. Prickly, yet delicious succulent fruit reduces Risk!) This entire fight is like the original template for FFXII's engine. ^^; I still refer to random bangaa hunters and whatnot as "the Sydney AI".

Oh and the end of the game with Hardin and Joshua, sigh. ...Hardin makes me sort of uncomfortable. I wrote a whole paragraph but what it comes down to is I don't want to watch somebody get fucked over like that; out of respect for the human condition if nothing else. I mean, he gets ACCIDENTALLY MINDRAPED. BY MERLOSE.

On carnet I was talking about pairing "fantecedents", or maybe (taking timeline and influence out of the equation) what you'd call non-instantiable abstract classes in object-oriented programming: like, KuroFye and Klaus/Dorian belong to the same abstract base class, JonaDio and Clex belong to the same abstract base class. Ultimately Ashley/Sydney is the same abstract class as Richard/Alec, I think. OHSHI NULL SET POST.

...Has anyone ever written Ashley/adult!Joshua? I guess not, eh.

3) As seen on fabulous_papaya: flOw for PS3 (the O stands for Oxycontin). Your wasted time guaranteed or... actually you don't even have to pay for it.

I don't find it as relaxing as advertised, precisely because it taps into what I assume are primal brain-stem urges. Eating protozoa? Running away from jellyfish? Serious business, j0. XD

There is also Cloud, where your job is apparently to move clouds around. I am totally on this, right now.

Comments

[beeblebabe.livejournal.com]

Has anyone ever written Ashley/adult!Joshua? I guess not, eh.

ladysisyphus kind of did! Back in yon Technomancy days of yore. But I think it was, by some means that I don't remember, actually Sydney/Hardin. ....maybe you should ask her.

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

...Shit, I don't know if I should own up to that.

...Whatever, I've re-read it recently, the fanon is retardational, but the writing is still pretty dang good, iff'n I do say so myself.

...I'm still not linking to it here.

...Also, yes, it was roundabout Syndey/Hardin.

...Maybe I should actually write Ashley/adult_Joshua!

...Too many elipses.

[pantswarrior]

I loved that Sydney!Ashley/Hardin!Joshua scene. Recced the fic when I did Sydney/Hardin over at ship_manifesto, in fact.

...I had to note this just so that I could write that utterly cracktastic pairing. Sydney!Ashley/Hardin!Joshua. Heeeeeee.

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

It's not the most ridiculous thing I've ever perpetrated, but it comes dang close. Glad someone else likes it, though!

No, I should really write more. Really, I should only be allowed to write O.Smithian-related nonsense ever again. My own brand of nonsense is far too severe to be let loose on less suspecting fandoms.

...Man, that's a hot icon.

... >_> ... <_< ... *cough* (http://www.kekkai.org/bishop/fic/kingofspades.html)

[pantswarrior]

Ah, but what have Matsuno and Mr. O. Smith taught us but that crack can be gold in the right hands? (I'm in favor of crack in most fandoms, really, but it works best in fandoms where the crack is canon.) It's like alchemy, in a way...

And thanks. It was perhaps my most-ogled screenshot back in the GIA days. ;)

Oh, excellent. I couldn't find another source for that fic at the time. *edits*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Awesome! ...I remember that one. I think I stopped reading a few paragraphs in because I had no idea what was happening. XD But probably at the time I hadn't even finished the game, let alone given it any real thought.

[mithrigil.livejournal.com]

Re: 2)

I have written Ashley/Postpubescent!Joshua. I don't know if it is still on the Net, or recall if I actually typed it up, but I know it is handwritten.

I also recently wrote something that extrapolated on the Dullahan armor as it relates to FFXII.

Also, your terms, Sydney AI and fantecedent, are awesome.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I also recently wrote something that extrapolated on the Dullahan armor as it relates to FFXII.

Oh hell is that what it's supposed to be ahahahaha. XD

[mithrigil.livejournal.com]

Was the idea that started the thing, actually. And Grissom is totally a great^n grandnephew.

everyone is commenting on this one question!

[halcyonjazz.livejournal.com]

...Has anyone ever written Ashley/adult!Joshua?

...Does Muun's psuedo-sequel introduction count?

Re: everyone is commenting on this one question!

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I really like that one! I don't think it's supposed to be pairing fic though. XD

[prototypical]

*Once again adds Vagrant Story to the list of games to play once done with replaying FFVIII* But I'm gonna need a good walkthrough. The first time I tried the game, it drove me damn insane.

[bell]

No one ever writes fic about fighting random encounters in FFVII

No, you're wrong there. XD Back in the 1990s (*cringes*) I wrote a small fic that took place during a random encounter (they were near Red's village, I think). Never published it but I always thought that OTHER people should also try their hand at the idea.

Hardin. :( Man. Life of suckage, that one.

[bell]

PS: I don't suppose you remember in which scene Sydney gets his arms lopped off (and they regenerate)? I've been wanting to rewatch that.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

That's just before Rosencrantz gets squished IIRC, I don't think mullenkamp has it up yet (probably soon XD).

[bell]

Okay, because when she does, I am totally saving that file. ♥

[pantswarrior]

Here you go! YouTube or direct download. ;)

[bell]

Sweeeeet! Thanks so much. ♥

[pantswarrior]

Yep, it might even be the next cut scene, in fact. (It's before Sydney goes up to put a stop to what Guildenstern's currently doing, at any rate, and I know there's nothing more involving Guildenstern or those up there with him before he does that. Possibly a bunch of boss battles, though.)

And I have two days off starting at 6:30 am tomorrow morning, so... :D

[two-if-by-sea.livejournal.com]

flow actually really scares me. The jellyfish really really scare me ._.

[cis.livejournal.com]

flOw was linked off penny-arcade a little while back and has been eating my brain since: you're not wrong about how non-relaxing it is. I spend the entire time flinching away from the cloudy bacterium things (so. terrifying.) and jeering at other spiny beasts for being 'single-cell organisms' then crowing over chomping down on their nuclei. eating to survive: srs bsnss.

omg cloud looks amazing - yes, the weather level on we ♥ katamari is my very favourite, how did you guess - but whyyy is it for pc only? sadface.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

What's more I have a sneaking suspicion I'm terrible at it. As soon as I get long I start tangling myself up in my own tail whenever I try to eat anything. Played for several hours and still didn't make jellyfish level. :/

There's a weather level in We ♥ Katamari? Okay I need to keep playing. XD

[cis.livejournal.com]

You know, if you go along not eating the food scattered about the place (but still attacking other creatures and eating their nuclei), you don't get very long, and you still have go-faster fins. I tend to get to jellyfish level, but by the time i'm at the end i'm flailing all over the place, and i've never worked out if i've defeated the final boss of that level or just... lost him.

weather level = you roll up all the clouds in the sky! So, so satisfying.

ps richie hawtin's hipwiggling! awes.

[arboretum]

oh, I know, re: Hardin, right. I was always really :| :| :| about him and would try to pair him with Sydney if only because I thought it would be even crueller to make him sit on the sidelines watching Sydney do some other dude. :( :( :(

(...A SITUATION WHICH PEOPLE REALLY FICCED. Oh, my heart.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I knowww, but then I'm like, wow, Sydney screws him over so badly. Let alone the rest of the cult.

:| is about right re: the entire game because there's this huge disparity between what one would like to have happened and... what reason reluctantly admits actually happened. XD

[aefallen.livejournal.com]

Actually Larsa has the strongest mage potential of all the party and guest characters.
Hence my frustration when Larsa is a guest: some part of me is always raging Why can't he be playable!

Wears mystic armour which is damned fushigi mystery
I put that down to the whole future-Emperor, therefore has better gear than everyone else thing. ;)

UNEXPLAINED SIGNIFICANT GLANCES ARE PART OF THIS GAME'S NARRATIVE AESTHETIC, I'M ONLY STAYING TRUE TO CANON.
I AGREE COMPLETELY. >D I could even write a Vaan/Larsa on unexplained significant glances alone.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I so wish he could! At the very least it would let me make him auto-buff. XD

[akatonbo.livejournal.com]

In our household, every time we watch that scene, I say for Penelo, "...actually, I lent it to Basch." By which I mean, he wore that thing for basically every possible moment, and we were annoyed when Larsa took it away. But then we got the Bubble Belt.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Hahaha so true. XD

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

The story justification, I guess, is that (like Penelo at first) he's completely untrained.

Which I can buy with Penelo, but not with scion of imperial family. Surely they would check potential heirs for this sort of thing. (Thanks to other fantasy fandoms, the tenet that "untrained mage = a danger to himself and others" is so ingrained in me that the cavalier treatment of mage potential in FF universe(s?) is totally bewildering. XD; Why are all these children not being sent to wizard school.)

Magickal!Larsa is kind of killing me, though. Is there anything he doesn't do.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

As you say I don't think it's dangerous in that way, in this FF at least (magic works differently in all of them). It's more like musical talent: everyone has it to varying degrees, because Mist gathers in all living things - the rabbits on the Giza Plains can cast spells. But even if you're a born genius it wouldn't do you any harm to leave it untrained, just a bit of a waste of native ability. XD Humes can tolerate extremely high Mist concentrations without blinking, as seen in-game viera are much more sensitive.

I'd think they'd teach an Imperial heir a little, once again analogous to musical ability, but maybe it's not the custom in Archades. Could be that they prefer taking it apart in the name of science.

By Vagrant Story era it's a very big deal, though - dark arts and heresy, the whole shebang.

[akatonbo.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that even though 'untrained mage = a danger to himself and others' is a pretty significant tenet of MY fantasy universe -- which predates one of the fandoms I am sure you are thinking of, since it's over 15 years old -- I don't usually apply it to fandoms where it's not explicitly stated. Video game magic systems are different than fantasy novel magic systems -- fen often do fun things with fleshing them out, but the systems themselves lack a lot of the interesting non-game-mechanics magical detail that you get in a good fantasy novel. (My own magic system would make a lousy, lousy system for a video game or a tabletop RPG; all my mages are civil servants.)

[sesame-seed.livejournal.com]

Maybe Larsa's magical powers were never trained because Vaan recognized the futility of it? He would've been the first to know about nethicite being mass-produced, not to mention that magic in FFXII is pretty lousy in the first place. (The only spells I ever use are buffs, heals and esuna-type incantations, the latter two of which aren't even necessary if you a) carry 9834759283 X-Potions on you, and b) have the gil to stash 9834759283 Remedies in the other pocket.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I use status and time spells too. But I mean, that's still a lot of spells. XD And AoE damage spells like Dark work just as well gambited as physical attack, especially in areas where mobs crowd together.

(And then I walked into the Paramina Rift and couldn't figure out for several minutes why the skeletons weren't dying. SMRT.)

[sesame-seed.livejournal.com]

*coughs* Niph-whatever + Remedy. Beats all status/time debuff spells hands down.

[arboretum]

that unspellable thing is my favorite accessory in the history of rpgs. *___*

[sesame-seed.livejournal.com]

I knowww. I wish there were some way to tweak gambits to equip/unequip gear, since it's the inevitable first step upon meeting a boss.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

My clan rank isn't high enough to buy that thing yet. XD (My last plot-save was at the foot of Bur-Omisace.) Also I need Remedies to uh, Remedy, but once I have the rank and cash? Totally on that.

[sesame-seed.livejournal.com]

Honestly, though, you can achieve the effects of almost any spell with items, and the items are faster besides. You can even buy Dark Matters once you reach the highest Clan level. Players don't use them because we're penniless street rats in skimpy clothes, but if I had Larsa's Pants of Holding and deep, deep coffers, I'd consider switching. *g*

[yoshitsune.livejournal.com]

Ultimately Ashley/Sydney is the same abstract class as Richard/Alec, I think. OHSHI NULL SET POST.

Are you talking about Swordspoint? Because if so, it's not entirely null-set (though Vagrant Story's gameplay did drive me up the wall with its annoyingness).