Video game related notes and links
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.
"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.