Life-changing JRPG Heroines

 Last night, I got into a debate with my brother and Mom over not choosing one of the other routes in Fire Emblem; Three Houses for my second playthrough.  The simple answer was this playthrough was to see how Annette fits into the Black Eagle house and I finally decided to do it after a KickStarter project featuring Tara Platt (Edelgard) and Abby Trott (Annette) went live (it was the final push I needed, the project didn't succeed, though), but after getting some anger control through a helpful therapy website, I decided to elaborate on it.  Also, don't worry, if I do it a third time, I doubt I'll play the same route, I can't think of more units to recruit unless you can recruit Catherine in the Black Eagles route, which I doubt you can.

I understand my family’s desire to broaden my horizons, but I don’t want to play those routes yet, because this route helped me with my emotions and loneliness when facing right-wing radicals.  I felt like we were defeating the systems of racism, homophobia and misogyny that I’m seeing too often in the news and that I could spend time away from the battlefield and just enjoy the company of soft-hearted individuals like Edelgard, Petra, Dorothea, Leonie, Lysithea and Annette.  In the end, the route becomes less about conquering the continent and more about healing Edelgard from her trauma, she becomes fonder and fonder of you throughout the game and even cries when she thinks you’re dead, something she earlier in the game claimed to no longer be able to do.  Maybe it’s just that I saw a Let’s Play of Persona 3 years before this, and Tara Platt as Mitsuru and Edelgard in the first half of the first act presents the “cool, unshakeable, willing to do anything to make things right” leader.  Then you hit the first C rank with Edelgard and hear that voice vulnerable, scared.  It’s so shaking and unsettling you want to draw a sword to protect her with your life.  You then hear all her trauma, the last time I heard things like this was when Naomi Ban visited my Middle School and detailed her time in Auschwitz.  Something snapped inside me in that conversation, it said, “I don’t care what you do, I’m going to make it so you never have nightmares like this again.  I will make you happy.”  I honestly wish I had met someone in real-life who made me feel that way and we’d date and get married.

 

The last time I felt this way with a JRPG character was ten years ago in Persona 4.  At the time, I was obsessed with Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato.  This game had its own J-Pop idol, Rise Kujikawa.  Here I finally started to understand the crap Miley and Demi go through.  The Pop music industry places someone on a pedestal for as long as they can be useful and as soon as they display something the industry doesn’t like, they shove them in the trash bin and move on to the next in line.  Rise Kujikawa becomes a victim of that by saying she wants to retire, watching someone else brought into her spotlight, given her sponsorships, her music and a movie she was in talks for.  This is ultimately too much for the young teenager, who starts breaking down in tears before the protagonist.  He can choose to hug her here.  Doing so causes Rise to let out an emotive, wailing sob.  It was between this and her pole-dancing shadow (a representation of her fear of losing herself in the Pop Business) that her voice actress truly impressed me.  I looked up the game on Wikipedia and found out it was Laura Bailey.  Almost ten years later, I routinely watch her every Thursday night playing Dungeons and Dragons with fellow voice actors in the show Critical Role.

Music Releases Diary 1/14/2022

 I have to confess I feel depressed and helpless.  Not that I have to clean the apartment, but that I feel so lonely.  I need to text and call more, but I feel like my interests are so…obtuse that no one else will get them.  Mom, Dad and Andrew won’t know a lot about Fairy Tail, RWBY, the Black Eagles path in Fire Emblem; Three Houses or Persona.  I don’t want to bore them with my thoughts and ramblings about video games, manga and anime that they haven’t played, watched or read or have no interest in.  So, then it all becomes about music, movies, and baseball again.  I’m tired of talking about these subjects and trying in vain to not tread on other people’s toes with my enjoyment of Miley Cyrus, DC movies, grunge, Billy Ray Cyrus and Ariana Grande.  Once again, it’s all about Deep Purple, Sammy Hagar/Van Halen, The Beatles, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Elton John, Idina Menzel, Godzilla, Marvel movies, Brandi Carlile and Demi Lovato.  And I have no answers for the Mariners, there’s been a total blackout for a month as the players and owners bicker and snipe like politicians.  I’m beginning to doubt we will ever have Major League Baseball again due to the familiarity of the language to that on Capitol Hill.  And the political discourse in this country makes me think I’ll be murdered by a right-wing radical before year’s end, people are packing their guns, flags and bulletproof shields in footage that looks like preludes to deadly terrorist attacks in the name of the antichrist.  I don’t feel safe in America anymore, not when the greatest threat to it is itself.

 

I didn’t have much time to listen to new music aside from the Kurstin x Grohl releases last week since I wanted a buffer before this week’s releases at 9:00 pm tonight.  However, they did have good versions of “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain and “Jump” by Van Halen and Violet Grohl rocked a cover of Amy Winehouse’s “Take The Box.”  The AmaLee album was delayed at the last minute to the 28^th, so I couldn’t talk about that anyway.  Jerry Cantrell has a live version of Brighten from his album last October available and Skillet is also releasing a new album.  I am hopeful this will help people on both the left and right and Skillet will not become a Political Religious band, I have seen a large number of “Christian” bands through their hats in the Political ring since 2010 (and some, even before), which is causing a spiritual crisis in America, people are losing track of who is Jesus is and thinking Him only a rubber stamp Republicans use to justify their anti-Democrat, anti-LGBTQ+, sexist, misogynist and in some cases, racist policies.  In fact, aside from Vicky Beeching, Switchfoot, Jon Foreman, Dolly Parton, Brandi Carlile, Billy Ray Cyrus, Carrie Underwood, the singles for KING and COUNTRY did with Dolly Parton, Tori Kelly and Kirk Franklin and Minnesota-based ELCA rapper Agape, I am often hard-pressed to find people who make spiritual music with humanity in mind, not just lip service to the redneck choir.  I worry heavily about the future of God in America, because the gatekeepers have let only one side speak for him.

 

On the plus side, I got new manga from Edens Zero and Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest and thoroughly enjoyed them.  I was rather concerned about the "turned into monsters" aspect in the Fairy Tail one because I had seen fan fiction where such stuff had happened and there had been no hope whatsoever for the characters to return to normal.  Here, they returned to normal easily (in one case, so easily it was comical) and didn't seem to be that traumatized by the event  (Lucy Heartfilia was most upset she had been made topless (no nipples were shown)).

I also beat the Switch game MiiTopia, which, while aimed for a younger audience, was a bit of therapy for how inferior I often feel next to my brother.  I had made my brother the Great Sage, but the villain infects the Great Sage after you beat him the first time, so I had to fight my brother to save him using a team of fictional characters that were more important to me than him; the members of Team RWBY, Erza and Wendy from Fairy Tail, Edelgard from Fire Emblem; Three Houses, Yu Narukami from Persona 4 and Gal Gadot, the real-life actress who plays Wonder Woman, Shank in Ralph Breaks The Internet and The Bishop in Red Notice.  Also, I found a children's book by Edelgard's voice actress, Tara Platt, and it was very soothing and maternal, I plan on later buying two copies, one for me and one for my cousin with small children.

Music Releases Diary 1/7/2022

                I hope everyone had a good Christmas and/or New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Day, depending on what you celebrate and how.  I received Metroid Dread, MiiTopia and Naruto; Ultimate Ninja Storm 4-Road to Boruto (the last through a gift card) for Christmas and bought all the songs I listed as my favorites of 2021 (was only missing Bukimisha’s acapella rendition of the Godzilla and Rodan Soundtracks and the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss album) and also got the track “Treasure” from the last RWBY Soundtrack, which is a love song about the characters Yang and Blake, one of a few lesbian/bisexual love songs the show has released.  It has become part of my favorites of 2021 in my iTunes playlist, but it’s not yet on Spotify (or Amazon’s MP3s, for that matter).

 

               On New Year’s Day, I finally deactivated my DeviantArt account after seeing the website embrace the stupid throughout the pandemic.  Ultimately, I had developed too many uncontrollable grudges and was enjoying myself much more on Twitter and Facebook, so I felt I had no choice, either quit or endure them giving my Edelgard/Edelgard-Byleth romance screenshots low likes in comparison to the other houses, especially the Blue Lions house, for the rest of my life.  That may not seem like that bad a thing, but when it feels everywhere says “don’t do the Black Eagles route, do the Blue Lions route” and it felt so liberating to befriend Edelgard that you don’t want to stop being around her, you follow Tara Platt on Twitter and give her and her husband praise and little inputs of your opinion when prompted and it makes you feel better as a whole, plus they trash Amber Heard, who posts pictures of herself with appropriate “Dad jokes” on Twitter, it becomes “stay and be muted more and more, or leave and don’t deal with that plus homophobia.”

 

               The first major release week of the year first deals with me finding a pair of cover albums credited to Kurstin X Grohl, as in Dave Grohl, drummer for Nirvana and lead singer/guitarist for the Foo Fighters.  They are called the Hannukah Sessions and feature Hannukah-themed album art, as well as an appearance of Dave’s daughter Violet.  Some of the songs covered include “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain, “Rock and Roll” by Lou Reed, “Jump” by Van Halen and “Rock and Roll All Night” by KISS.   Other releases include a box set of David Bowie music called “Toy Box,” an album by Anime and Video Game song cover artist AmaLee that seems to be all originals and a new album from GameChops, the people who brought us two albums called “Zelda and Chill” and one called “Samus and Chill,” with relaxed renditions of music from the Legend of Zelda and Metroid series.  This one is called “Chocobo and Chill” and features music from the Final Fantasy series.  This will feature relaxing versions of the main theme from Final Fantasy VII, Aerith’s Theme (one of the main characters of that game) and Terra’s Theme (one of the main characters from Final Fantasy VI).