Before I continue:

• no, I did not hail from the GVH fandom
• no, I'm not trans/nb
• no, I don't think SG is transphobic nor harbor undertones of such
• I am not against the LGBT community and very much support our queer brethrens to express themselves
• Trish > Naomi no diff (this isn't related I just wanna put it out there)

My reasoning is entirely subjective. Though I'll be referencing themes/plot points from the story I won't be reaching over my head to make my arguements. This is just how I feel. Your opinions regarding mine are as correct (and wrong) as mine.
With the idea that by E4, Fang finds her sense of self-worth and becomes truly herself, I find it a bit bland for the story to just turn Fang into a "normal" character; normal as in her aesthetics and behaviour are completely mellowed out when Anon comes back from college. It's a big shame, cause' I'm sure that Fang's aesthetic and identity was a big pull to why we like her in the first place (aside from wanting to bang qt goth ptero dinussy). It also feels a bit to me like character assassination. I'll explain more below.
Throughout the story and the subsequent events leading to E4 we see Fang discarding Trish's influences, but to completely rid of her history is unrealistic, I feel. Manipulation or not, living a whole year and maybe more in a certain mindset will change someone, moreso if they're a teen, and you don't just forget or discard it in a mere few months. You aren't just who you're born as, you're also influenced by your surroundings and your history. This is why you find stories of misplaced twins in orphanages who become completely different people when they meet again, because that's how strong upbringings can be.
Plus, regardless of Trish's manipulation, she still had a big hand in helping with Fang's life. They were still best friends with misguided intentions. Trish just wanted what's best for Fang, as twisted as it may be. I feel like the story overexaggerated how negative Trish's actions were. At worst, Fang simply had a phase like how all teenagers do. At best, Trish gave Fang an outlet to tell her worries and have friends she could count on during times of crisis. I'd argue Fang would probably be worse off if Trish wasn't there.
And, even if Fang was still a lost soul throughout the first half of the story, we could see her rough tenacity and strong headedness about an identity she supposedly didn't abide by. Being NB gave her an outlet to express her dissatisfaction against the world, and I think many queer people could relate to that before they eventually found their identity. It should make sense that her non-binary-ness(?) would dictate a major part of her metamorphosis into E4 Fang.
Now I'm not a writer (I've got 2 years as a failed fan fiction/original web-author and no finished series under my belt) but I would make it so that Fang still retains her non-binary identity but frame it so that she's non-binary BECAUSE it dictated much of what she's experienced during her growth, not because Trish told her she's NB. I'll even go as far as to make her gender fluid (NB/Female) and adopt she/they pronouns, as a way to combine canon Fang together with my interpretation of her.
This also serves to aid Anon's character arc. He'd supposedly learned to have empathy and compassion for things he doesn't understand or agrees with by then, so better way to show that growth other than for him to start using Fang's preferred pronouns? He could start small, by interjecting with a small insult every time he has to consciously use [they] to refer to Fang, but he comes to get used to it overtime and finally learns to accept it by the end.
I understand this isn't a popular opinion and that it cuts Fang's detransition which plays a big part in her finding an identity but I like what I've substituted: acceptance of not only self but your past and the people that came along the way.
•
No doubt there'll be unsavoury, bigoted comments below but I hope the responses are civil. I know we hail from the Mongolian basket weaving forum but come on, it gets old, y'know. I just want to discuss headcanons and analysis for a second instead of shit flinging in /pol/.

(BIG NOTE: There's gonna be a lot of spoilers mentioned, including the ARG and VHS footage on Mob's YouTube channel! also, this is going to be very long....)
Hi, hello- I'm not exactly new to Poppy Playtime, but recently, I've gotten really interested because of Chapter 3's release. So I decided to do a deeper dive sorta study on the entire game, and I wanted to point out some things as well as address some of the questions I had. I know I'm gonna sound nitpicky and I am completely and obviously aware that the game isn't finished yet, and I might be taking it a bit too seriously (lOL), but I've been wondering this for a while now, and I was hoping some of you guys would like to discuss with me about this!
So first off, despite what I say, I genuinely do enjoy Poppy Playtime. The production value Mob's taken has been phenomenal, and there are clearly a lot of majorly talented people on staff. I adore how far the graphics have gotten, and the animations on the characters are only one of the reasons why the game can set itself apart from others of the mascot horror genre. I also really enjoy the game mechanics; the grabpack and how we solve puzzles not only enhance world-building but also give the game a unique identity. While I believe there are a lot of flaws, Poppy Playtime does deserve every bit of praise it has gotten.
Now, about the questions I have.....
I wanna start with the main character. Specifically, who we play as. I'm fully aware we're an ex-employee of the factory who has taken part in the human-to-toy experimentation (Mob really loves shoving that in our faces and nothing else about us apparently). And we're meant to be an actual in-universe character (Rich, for example) or just a sorta vessel that we insert ourselves in; but either way, I don't feel like we're actually a character. A lot of people have pointed out that we've come back to the factory to either repent for our sins or bury the evidence of our wrongdoings. If we're a person truly guilty of the crimes we've committed, why did we wait 10 years to finally face what we've done? More importantly, why did we believe this mysterious note that was just left in our mail saying how our coworkers disappeared? In any case, why didn't we turn ourselves in to the police after the factory shut down? Now, in regards to all this, I do believe we've turned away from our crimes since The Hour of Joy because we probably just wanted nothing to do with the factory anymore. Like when someone does something horrible, it might be easier for them to bury away their past and never face it again due to the sheer amount of impact that will devastate them. That can explain why we've been away for so long. With the note, while I still don't think anyone could willingly march back into the factory after just reading it (especially with the misspellings), I can see it as us realizing that we need to undo our actions and maybe go to the factory to gather evidence on what we did, then submitting it to the police. But we.. don't really do that, we just show up right away putting all our faith into this one note and thinking we're going to see our coworkers again. And right after the Huggy Wuggy chase, we just willingly free Poppy, no questions asked, and then after that, we decided to get out. Although, I guess you could say that Poppy could be the evidence we need for the child experimentation, so that might be why we're willing to risk our lives to the point where we'd need to save her? If so, that would probably debunk the whole "destroying the evidence and bury our crimes" theory, because our clear motive for chapter 2 is getting out the factory; that only changed because Poppy sabotaged the train. However, even in Chapter 3, we're supposedly willing to work with Poppy to kill The Prototype (well, maybe not willing, since we basically implied to have no choice). At that point, our main objective would to kill The Prototype, at least that is what the game's implying.
The reason I'm stating all this is because, well, I'm confused obviously. Our objectives flip-flop until Chapter 3, but even then, what's stopping us from finding another way out of Playcare that isn't the train? Why did we choose to believe the note in the first place? Why do we never actually question anything inside the game? My main problem is that we just do whatever the characters tell us to do. Poppy says we're leaving? We'll follow her, no questions asked. A random "kid" (who I actually believe is just The Prototype) named Ollie suddenly appears and tells us what to do? Sure, why not? It feels less like a silent, mysterious protagonist and more like some mindless thing, just following whatever the game's script wants them to do. I don't feel a distinct personality, and I can't really insert any personality into that protagonist because, well, the game's not choice-driven, there's no unique action to do that'll deviate from what the characters expect you to do. I can't see us as anyone established in-universe because most characters Mob focused on had these colorful personalities I don't see through the main character. Throughout the game, mostly in Chapter 3, the most Mob gives us is that we caused a lot of these toys' suffering, but that's just about it. There should've been much more expansion on that in the latest chapter because we already knew that in the previous one. The characters themselves don't really react to our supposed apprehension and they don't really do anything to convince us to be on their side, there's just a short explanation and we're off to do whatever they want us to do. I just wish there was more flexibility, and maybe even have this game be completely choice-driven, giving us options on what to say, what to do, and even who to save. But I don't know, maybe Mob has an explanation as to why we're doing what we're doing and maybe we'll cause a surprise twist in the end. Although, even so, I do just wonder why it took us 10 years to do it until a note summons us to start the game. I feel like the game should've started maybe just a week or two after The Hour of Joy; a lot more enemies, maybe a couple of survivors, both toy and still-human, to team up with, things like that.
And since The Hour of Joy was 10 years ago, and so many people are confirmed to be dead, why hasn't there been an uproar about it? Maybe Playtime Co.'s experimentation was funded by the government, police force, and the FBI or something was told to guard its secrets and everything? But even that reasoning is flawed because Rowen, an I.T. guy for Playtime Co., tried to tell his mother to give information about the factory's secrets to the police, and Playtime Co. was QUICK to shut him up, so that would imply that the government/police don't know anything about this. So why hasn't anyone, like the families and loved ones of those people, contacted the police about this? There should have been a HUGE uprising about these mass disappearances, instead of it just being a rumor (with the note saying "Everyone thinks the staff disappeared 10 years ago.") So... did those peoples' families just go, "Oh no, they disappeared...anyway, you guys wanna get something to eat?" (Digital Circus ref lol). I HIGHLY doubt that especially since Playtime Co. was a beloved company that had appearances in the media (chapter 3 introduction).
I really think that right after The Hour of Joy, there's this whole containment of the factory with dozens of soldiers guarding the place and some going inside to investigate. But the toys manage to beat them back, so the government has no choice but to bomb the place or something. That's where we come in. We're still an ex-employee of Playtime Co., a scientist who discovered the horrors of the factory (much like the biologist) and wanted to report to the police, but after knowing what they'd do to us, we were forced to keep quiet. After each experiment, we're haunted with massive amounts of guilt every day, until one day we just couldn't show up to work. That's when the news erupts about the mass disappearances and the discovery of living toys in the factory trying to escape. There's news about the place being destroyed by a nuke, and we then think about the children's lives all cooped in there, waiting for freedom. So, we sneak by the forces and into the factory, determined to free our victims before the bomb goes off.
I dunno, just a thought. But maybe Mob will explain this as the game moves forward. That's why can't say these are my "locked-in" opinions about our character yet; they're completely temporary. Who knows, maybe the world is set in the apocalypse era, and that's why the government hasn't completely destroyed the place. The game isn't finished, so I'm more than willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
However, I can't say that for what I think about CatNap and the rest of chapter 3.
Now, I LOVE CatNap. His design is so well done and his characterization in Home Sweet Home was nearly flawless. Right off the bat, we know that he's someone who will use our minds and guilt against us. He's studying us to know how to break us (although it's hard to tell what actually affects us in this game because we literally do not react to anything). Furthermore, we see him stalking us a few times as we try to get out of Home Sweet Home, and that would imply that he knows what tools we use to keep ourselves safe (our gas mask and the grabpack - let me further emphasize grabpack because that is going to be very important for a point I'm gonna make later on). A literal predator hunting prey.
But I do think he was very underutilized after this. I do disagree with the fact that CatNap had to appear more often; however, I do think what would have made this up is his presence being more impactful throughout the game. This leads me to The Red Smoke - it doesn't make too much sense to me. It's used to put people to sleep, give them nightmares, and make them hallucinate, which is again established in Home Sweet Home. But after that, in smaller sections of the game, we just die if we inhale the smoke for too long. We were doused in for quite a while during the final fight, why wasn't that used to kill us then? Why didn't we instead hallucinate a path that completely lead us off track and into CatNap's claws? In fact, we don't get to see it very often throughout the chapter either; it should've been a main focal point. When I was dropped into Playcare, I saw this red light entrance that reminded me of the red smoke, I thought that could be an indicator that this environment would be filled to the brim with it and we can't ever tell what's real or not. Throughout all of it, flickers of our past would show up, making us more panicked and anxious. The chapter could've been all about paranoia and how to overcome it, trusting yourself to fight back against what's being brought upon you. But nah, we just die from it after Home Sweet Home. A major missed opportunity if you ask me...
With CatNap being underutilized, he doesn't do much after this. There could've been a few sequences where he'd use his red smoke to help the smaller antagonists, putting in more hints of who we are and even making the antagonists look more nightmarish. Maybe there could've been bigger toys that are the devoted followers of CatNap and ultimately The Prototype, giving this a more cult-like feel. More "heretics" like DogDay could be strung up in the prisons, with most of them either dead and in the process of being eaten or just have completely lost their mind, with DogDay being the only one who has some amount of sanity left. And because of this, we could even be given a chance to save him, just like we did with Poppy. If we drop down to the prisons, CatNap could find that we're intruding upon his home and send everyone, the mad heretics, and devoted followers, after us. If we do it quickly enough, we could free DogDay from his prison; although this would come with the price of carrying him and us being slower because of it. If we fail, then he becomes possessed by the miniature ruined critters, lost in the crowd of hunters. This event could show how CatNap runs the entire place.
But now for what I dislike most about this entire chapter...CatNap's big final fight. And no, my problem isn't that "it's too hard" or anything. I did feel that they explained it poorly, but that's not my main issue.
The issue is that it breaks CatNap's character.
Let me explain. After we get out of the Playhouse, Ollie calls us to rant about CatNap, explaining how there was an accident, The Prototype saved him, which then lead him to become a devout follower of The Prototype. Then he states this: "He'll take away anything you have to defend yourself."
...No he doesn't. He doesn't. Well, he takes away our gas mask, but that's it. Why didn't he take away our grabpack? What was stopping him from doing that? ESPECIALLY our green hand?
In the ARG, it was discovered that CatNap used to be a boy named Theodore, who was friends with The Prototype. One day, he took a grabpack upon The Prototype's request and used it to try to free him and the children. But being a literal novice, he accidentally shocks himself with the electric green hand and is brought to the brink of death, only to be revived by The Prototype and the scientists who turned him into CatNap. It's a small detail, but it has a huge impact on his background; you'd think such an event would cause him a lot of trauma, especially surrounding any sort of electricity and even grabpacks overall.
So why did he let us keep it???
He has very, very seen us not only with the green hand but also actively use it to complete puzzles and dive further into Playcare. Why would he let us utilize the weapon that almost killed him back when he was human? I don't believe he forgot about it, because remember the Huggy Wuggy YouTube video Mob put out? About the one where Huggy escapes and, at the end, is seen standing outside of a house? That implies that the toys have some sort of recollection of their past events. With something this big and traumatic happening to Theodore, I'm pretty sure he'd have no trouble remembering this, especially with him knowing and stating that The Prototype saved him, as said in the trailer for Chapter 3.
So I ask again. W h y did he let us use the grabpack??? And even more so, why did he follow us into a room that he knew had a bunch of green electricity? And I say 'knew' because it's canon that these characters have been wandering around the factory for 10 years. CatNap has resided in Playcare for 10 years, even including the years he spent with the orphans. So HO W did he not know this room was there???? It very clearly screams, "HEY SOMEONE CAN USE A GREEN HAND TO DEFEND THEMSELVES HERE." Also- the room itself doesn't make sense. Why does Playcare need a room that generates so much electricity just to emit some steam??
I haven't seen anyone point this out. I'd understand if the whole Theodore dying incident was forgotten because a lot of people did forget that we killed Huggy- but still, Mob should've known about this. They're the ones who wrote him to be this way!
Even removing this incident entirely, CatNap is still shown to be very incompetent for this because if you were hunting down someone and wanted to be this slow-burn kill kinda thing, why would you let them keep the VERY THING that is OBVIOUSLY the ONLY REASON why we're even doing anything in the factory, to begin with. We used it against Huggy Wuggy, we used it against Mommy Long Legs, the chapter could've been a bit more unique and taking the grabpack away from us so it can catch us off guard and make us feel powerless, but then we would learn that we don't need to depend on it.
Here's what I think should've happened: After the Playhouse, we're completely alone. No Ollie, no nobody. It's just us. We go back down underneath the statue and see that a big ol' blue battery and key's been sent our way, which then leads us to the Councilor's Office. We go inside, solve a few puzzles, get some chances to learn more lore (because let's be honest, the established lore of Poppy Playtime was just repeated in this chapter, just in a very gruesome way; we get it, we caused this, oh n o o, the children were used as experiments - thanks for telling us that The Prototype can mimic voices, that's actually very cool, but please just give us a little more than that, Mob). And then, all of a sudden, CatNap jumpscares us. When we wake up (there's no message from him telling us to get out of Playcare; love the chilling voice, but the line itself is pretty corny and we just end up not listening to him, also he should know that his god just kills anyone who tries to leave anyway, so this line serves 0 purpose), there's red smoke everywhere, and we find out that we're without our gas mask. All of the exits are boarded up, so we take the blue battery, activate the lift, and take it up to, not a steam room, but a monitor room. This room is absolutely destroyed, with claw marks ravishing the TVs and control systems, especially on the green electric outlets (or maybe there are none, hinting at CatNap's ultimate weakness). With more of our memories plaguing us, we're then led to the underground caverns, where CatNap is waiting to toy with his defenseless prey before the final strike.
.....Also, I just think the final fight's just incredibly lame. It serves very little connection to CatNap's character (apart from us launching our hand toward him and him freaking out over electricity, which again, is basically HIS OWN FAULT TO BEGIN WITH), and just overall so underwhelming. I did love how The Prototype carried him up into the light to show more religious undertones, it was awesome.
But, yeah, these are basically my thoughts. Chapter 3 was a huge step up from chapter 2 in terms of atmosphere, but there should've been more progression in the lore. Like they're just restating a bunch of stuff we already know but in a much more polished and horrific way. I'm glad they're not shying away from hiding events away from us, I did love how they just straight-up showed us The Hour of Joy tape, but underneath all the amazing animations and atmosphere, what did we learn in this chapter aside from The Prototype mimicking voices? We did get new characters, The Smiling Critters, Mrs. Delight, and Ollie, but all of the Smiling Critters and Mrs. Delight ended up dying anyway without really contributing much to the overall story. Aside from DogDay, who hinted at how absolutely insane this whole place and CatNap had become, but he and CatNap died anyway, so I felt like even that didn't serve too much of a purpose. And I hate to say that because DogDay and CatNap were my absolute favorites in this chapter. And Ollie just sorta told us what to do, we don't know anything about him and we're never given a chance to ask. Again, we're just following whatever the characters tell us to do.
Plus, didn’t mention this before but- a lot of the puzzles in chapter 3 did feel like they were just used to pad out time. In the words of Markiplier, “Just build stairs!!”
Overall, I do love Poppy Playtime, it has some really strong talent, but the writing does have some holes that feel quite easy to iron out. Maybe a lot of my temporary questions will be answered in later chapters, but for right now, I'd like to hear some of your guys' thoughts about this!

Saw the post yesterday about how the brothel madame has a “scar” (it’s not a scar, is a protruding vein) on her left hand and it matches Michelle Bonnard’a hand and therefore, Aemond has to be with her. I want to counter that theory with a few comments/a theory of my own. I know the majority of people here (within this sub) just despise the idea of canon Helaemond and therefore will shoot down any theories surrounding them, but hear me out.
-For one, Phia has the exact same protruding veins in her hands as well. They’re in the same exact spot, right under the knuckle. Frankly, I think most women have them lol. It’s not a unique feature, and the only reason you can see it in the trailer shot is bc the woman is flexing her hand just a bit to hold Aemond’s arm. I’ll post Phia pics down in the comments to prove it.
-My theory is that the scene itself happens really early in the season; either 2x01 or early 2x02, before B&C happens. We see Aemond looking emotional/sad in the shot itself, so perhaps the context of the scene is that he is still dealing/processing Luke’s death and what happened in Storm’s End. He’s never going to admit to his family (or to anyone) that Luke & Arrax’s deaths were accidents. Doing so would mean he was an irresponsible, impulsive fool who can’t control his dragon, and he absolutely doesn’t want to be perceived that way. It would also just make him look weak in general, which again, he doesn’t want. So he has all these inner emotions of guilt and remorse and he has no outlet to turn to in order to help him process everything, except Helaena. Phia said herself that Helaena can see the future and the past, so perhaps she saw what really happened at Storm’s End & how everything was an accident, so she wants to comfort her brother & be there for him. She would be the only one who would truly understand. And if it is her and he’s laying on her naked, then it’s pretty clear that they’ve been together.
-I don’t think the scene takes place after B&C. With Ewan saying Aemond goes “black” this season, and with Tom also saying that Aemond “flies off the rails”, I think he’s going to be too enraged and too heartbroken* and too focused on revenge after Jae dies to do anything else but seek out vengeance. In the shot itself, Aemond doesn’t look absolutely destroyed. Sure, he looks sad, but again, Luke’s death & his guilt over Storm’s End could explain that.
-If you actually focus on the shot itself, you’d see that whoever Aemond is with is wearing a blue dress that seems to be pretty form fitting at the shoulders/bodice. The sleeves also seem very loose as well, and looks similar to the loose sleeved dresses both Alicent & Helaena wore in S1. Judging by what we can see, it definitely seems like a dress that’s fits regally/is worn by royalty, and doesn’t really appear like something a brothel girl/madame would wear. It seems modest and tight fitting; something that you wouldn’t find in a brothel itself.
-This isn’t really part of the theory itself, but my own personal opinion. Regardless of how “in his feelings” Aemond was, I don’t think he’d ever allow himself to be that vulnerable (naked, eyepatch off) with just anyone, much less than woman that abused him. That is definitely something that fits more with Aegon than with Aemond. His missing eye is a huge insecurity for him. I don’t think he takes it off freely in front of just anyone and leaves it off.
-Ewan is seemingly obsessed with Helaena based on some of the promo we’ve gotten; saying she’s good with books and money, saying she’s his emergency contact, and telling a fan at the Mexico City con that he’d kill for her.
Yes, I realize that this post with probably be brigaded with antis and book purists and helaegon stans. I’d still love to have a civil discussion about it if possible though. Let me know what you think.

Hey all!
I am a nature lover studying botany, biology generally, and I am interested in photography as a creative outlet. Primarily nature and wildlife photography interest me, so that is going to be my first port of call.
I have been looking into the Canon EOS R10, paired with the Canon 100-400mm F5.6-F8 IS USM lens as an interesting first combination. It seems the AF, frame rate, and eye tracking on the R10 paired with the focal length of the lens would be ideal and versatile for portraits of birds and mammals, non-portrait images of the animals, and also some semi-macro shots, which interests me. The low-light performance of the R10 is concerning, but as a beginner my focus likely won't be dusk and night-time photography, so this is something I can invest in in the future if I decide this interests me.
I am concerned however that the budget is distributed too heavily towards the camera body, given that I have read that money invested into the lenses tends to depreciate more slowly than the body. However, the features on the R10 seem incredibly good for a starter.
Any advice on this topic? Thanks in advance!

I'm hoping to expand a bit into baseball photography this year, and admittedly, I'm feeling a little out of my element. I'll likely be starting with a smaller local Frontier League team where the stakes are a lot lower, and I'd imagine restrictions aren't as strong. The hope is to move up and cover MLB at some point, as the outlet I'm with does regularly cover the Reds. I have a couple of questions. First, where exactly do I stand to shoot. I understand that this may vary from team to team, but I'm just asking generally.
Next part of the question is what settings you might recommend I shoot with. I'm shooting with a Rebel T6 and my primary lens is a Canon 70-300mm 1:4-5.6. My biggest concern is the lighting. I generally shoot soccer, and while I've managed to mostly figure out my settings there, I do still struggle a bit, especially at night and during super bright day games. I'm just curious as to baseball specifically, and what you folks might recommend. Thanks for your help!

Hello, I hope anyone who is reading this is having a great day/night. I am a 25 year old nonbinary writer in search for a rp partner who’s interested in writing a literate/novella style story based in the world of Baldurs Gate 3. I am also open to alternative universes involving the characters from BG3.
I'm currently looking for a possibly long term canon x oc or oc x oc roleplay. I'm exclusively interested in writing stories with lgbtq+ characters so if you are interesting in exclusively writing straight characters and pairings, I am not the partner to reach out to.
Characters I am comfortable playing (* are a current craving): Gale, Astarion, Gortash, Halsin, Karlach, Kar'Niss, Dame Aylin, Tav (OC), Dark Urge (OC)*
Characters I am looking to play against(* are my faves): Gale, Astarion, Halsin, Wyll, Gortash*, Dark Urge (oc), Tav (oc)*, Shadowheart, Isobel, Karlach
Below is some information about me and what I am looking for in a partner: (Please read this before you reach out. There is a password hidden in there to ensure you have read it. If you reach out to me, start out your message with said password.)

• No one liners! I use roleplaying as a creative outlet and I feel like both of us would be able to have A LOT more fun if some effort is put into it. I am looking for partners interested in writing literate-novella style roleplays. But I also value quality over quantity and won't police you on wordcount. Just try to keep it to at least a few paragraphs.
  
• I write in third person past tense and need you to do the same. Literacy is also something I value and I would love someone who uses a lot of descriptive language etc. I will not be mad for grammatical errors as English isn't my native language anyway, but I would like to be able to understand what you're saying and I'd like for you to know the difference between you're, your, their, they're etc.
  
• Be patient with my responses. I am a working adult and I have a life outside of roleplaying. This means I can't be online the 24/7 for replies. I am most likely available for OOC talk most of the time. The more you'll push me for a response when I'm busy the more likely you are to not get one at all. Please be respectful and I will do the exact same to you.
  
• You need to pull your own weight in the rp, I don't want to lead your character through the plot, this is meant to be a story we create together.
  
• I love talking about our characters and whatever world we decide to go for. Plotting and just talking about headcanons/whatever is also great and something I appreciate a lot. The password is blighted.
  
• I am very friendly OOC and will gladly have OOC conversations with you if that's something you'd want!
  
• I would prefer to roleplay with someone in my age range.
  
• I will not reply to you if I feel like you did not read all of these things properly.
  
• I am happy to provide writing samples to ensure we are a good match, and will happily take yours.
  

If reading this still leaves you interested, feel free to reach out to me. Start out your message by giving me the password, telling me about yourself, what characters you are looking to play/for me to play, what kind of story you would like to do. I will not reply to vague messages.

I’m having a bit of trouble getting the canon endings for rival 2 and 6! For rival 2, she won’t light the can on fire?? And for rival 6, I can’t find anywhere to plug the power outlet or the microphone that is mentioned in online tutorials.. please help!!

Flash!! My camera: Canon r6. Will be updating to r5 in the near future. My flash: Elinchrom D-lite rx4 Subject: Tarantulas mainly.
I have, and use this external flash and it works well. Problem is its bulky, and I have to connect it to a a power outlet. Its hard to take it to places. What I need is a very powerful, and feature packed on-camera flash. And one that I could take off the camera and attach it to a small tripod and place them it anywhere in my room. What is the best all around, price is no object, flash I can use for my camera.
I was looking at the Profoto a10 video on youtube, and I was puzzled. I was under the impression that if your using any kind of flash, you cannot go above the shutter speed of 1/200 or 1/250 because flash is not fast enough to keep up with fast shutter speed. So in the video for the Profoto a10, they show examples of photos that they shot (using flash) and the shutter is 1/6000. How is this possible? What is it that am I not understanding regarding flash?
Thank you in advance

Hi there -
I am looking to write in the Disco Elysium world.
I’m 31, F and only interested in para-rp, long or short form. I have written Kim Kitsuragi primarily but could also write Harry DuBois.
We can plot within the canon universe of the game or play in an alternate universe.
I can play over Discord, Email, or maybe some other outlet I have not yet tried. This might be a long shot, but just wanted to put some feelers out there!
Thanks!

I've played a bunch of different survival and mixed survival/other genre games: Subnautica, Don't Starve, 7 Days to Die, Fallout 4 and New Vegas with their survival modes, Palworld, Minecraft, Dysmantle, and bits of some other games like Conan Exiles, Raft, The Forest, Project Zomboid, The Long Dark, and State of Decay (though I'm fuzzy on some of the details). There's a wide range of difficulty, obviously, with regard to the survival aspects. Let's talk about how the new beta survival features in Starfield stack up to some of them.
Before getting into the details, let me say that Starfield is obviously an RPG with survival elements, not a pure Survival game. As such, survival is meant to add to the challenge, not be the challenge. I'm sure there will be mods that let you go hardcore like Fallout Frost in the future now that the Creation Kit is out with beta testers.
Food: The need to eat food is handled wildly differently in different games. There are two core challenges here: how hard is it to get food, and how hard is it to stockpile food? Different games have mechanics for food spoilage, refrigeration, etc. A different aspect is the role of different foods in terms of how it affects you, e.g., eating a berry is not as filling as eating a sandwich. For Starfield, where a lot of the gameplay is centered around civilization in the core Settled Systems, keeping it simple is probably the right choice. A simple 30 minute timer with buffs and debuffs makes food important without having to micromanage things. Food is trivially easy to get -- just find a vending machine or stop at your local bar or Chunks outlet. The option to enhance food's healing and slow down the effects of medpaks adds some depth and utility to the whole process. Food spoilage is also not worth modeling -- refrigeration and food preservation is commonplace, and most of the packaged items (especially Chunks) won't go bad in any reasonable timeframe.
Water: Dehydration ranges from a simple counter in some games to a whole set of debuffs distinct from hunger with various issues. Apparently, in real life you can survive a lot longer without food than you can without water. Given that planet descriptions describe what type of fluids exist on the surface and you can farm water, it's a little disappointing how Starfield's water mechanic just mimics food. Now, don't get me wrong. The debates on how water is handled in games like 7 Days to Die can go on and on and on... A little more detail here would go a long way, though -- even just being able to rehydrate at water coolers and such.
Temperature: This ranges from a very lethal threat in games like The Long Dark to essentially a minor nuisance in Palworld to mostly ignored, where a game like Subnautica only seems to care about dangerous levels of heat as a hazard. On one hand, everybody in Starfield walks around in a space suit intended to keep you at a safe temperature in space. On the other hand, you can walk around on the surfaces of Mercury and Pluto (average temperatures of 333 F vs. -387 F). Using afflictions works in terms of inflicting debuffs, especially if you ramp up the difficulty settings. Where the game really suffers, I think, is that they do a very poor job explaining how effective the protections are -- clothing and suit resistances, plus the various skills. The resistance numbers don't really seem to translate into anything obvious and it is hard to tell the relative dangers of different world environments. It's also really unclear when weather effects or the night/day cycle are playing a role.
Injuries: Any game not focused purely on survival is going to abstract the hell out of combat injuries, because in real life you're going to not be able to take twenty bullets to the chest and escape unscathed, even with body armor. Still, I really like the difficulty settings added. Apparently, increasing enemy damage actually increases rate of fire and accuracy. The afflictions also means tanking damage runs the risk of something more serious than just some hp knocked off your health meter. Turn off instant heals for afflictions and you'll find yourself being a lot more cautious. Allow afflictions to worsen and you'll make sure you have the necessary health supplies. I got a puncture wound on Kreet in the prologue and hadn't yet collected any medical supplies. I ended up with two infections before I was able to treat it, with multiple debuffs (including taking hp damage if I tried melee or sprinting). Environmental injuries are also a thing. I ended up falling and both breaking and dislocating limbs, and it sucked. Immobilizer improved the prognosis and prevented things from getting worse, but the debuffs lasted for a while. It really makes you take things more carefully. I think the new setting in this area are right on the money.
Sickness: In some games, you have to worry a lot about illness, as it can sideline your characters. In Starfield, illness is really only a result of environmental effects or injuries. The humans in the Settled Systems seem to have really robust immune systems in general -- and I think there are actually canon reasons for that. Genetic engineering and 24th century medicine have probably eliminated things like influenza. There are even in-game indications that humanity had to be adjusted to thrive on so many different worlds with different organisms. Bundling these situations in with the afflictions is probably the right call here.
Sleep: Some games require you to sleep periodically. Annoyingly, Fallout 4's survival mode required it to save your game, which to me just completely broke immersion. "I'm going to take a nap on this moldy mattress I found in a swamp so I don't lose my game progress." Other games just use it as away to pass time, and may default to advancing the clock to morning like with Minecraft or Palworld. In Starfield, sleep will heal you. With the new settings, you can set it so that you only cure environmental damage by sleeping, and you can restrict that effect to only safe locations (ships, outposts, and settlements). You also get an xp bonus (with an extra bonus after sexy time). While the game doesn't ignore it entirely, I think it is a little shallow. It seems odd to me that you can have a spaceship with up to a dozen folks and there may be only one or even zero places to sleep. Still, they didn't replicate the FO4 mechanic, so they get credit for that.
Other People: For games with some type of settlement mechanic, you often have to provide for residents. This ranges from full-on colony simulators like RimWorld where the quality of bedding matters to Fallout 4's settlement food/watebeds requirement. In Starfield, everybody takes care of themselves. I'm honestly torn as to whether I would want to see more focus on this. If it is done well, it could add interesting challenges and benefits -- you might want Barrett or Mickey Caviar on your crew because they know how to cook. I could also see this getting tedious as hell if it isn't done well.
Travel: Your ability to move around the game is vastly different for CRPGs and survival games. Once you've been somewhere, your average CRPG is going to let you fast travel around at will. Survival games, though, make you spend time and resources to move from one place to another. One of my favorite things about Fallout 4's survival mode is how it turned that off, while still allowing more limited travel options like aircraft and teleporters. A lot of the criticism of Starfield is, ironically, that travel is both too slow and too fast. Travelling across a generated map tile feels ludicrously slow at times, while warping to the other end of the galaxy is trivial. I can fast travel from Jake's in the Well on Jemison to the Astral Lounge on Neon (which would be pretty cool in terms of IRL bar hopping but doesn't seem realistic). It really affects the pacing of the game and I can understand the criticism. There are two things in the beta that help with this. The first is the new overhead maps. I am shocked at how much they improve the cross-country experience -- and they're perfectly logical because I just flew in on a spaceship so of course I have a top-down view of the area. The second is the easily overlooked ability to change your cargo hold access. Setting it to outpost/settlement only is a significant change that both alleviates tedium and changes how you operate in the wild. In New Atlantis, you no longer have to fast travel to the Spaceport to get to your cargo, which makes moving things to the Lodge SO much easier and vice versa. The trade off is that you can't be loading up your cargo hold in the middle of combat at a POI just because you landed at the local pad. I think the addition of ground vehicles and fuel constraints on grav jumping might just strike the perfect balance in an area that has gotten a lot of flack.
TLDR: In terms of the survival experience, I really like the new affliction options. I think the way they handle both food and injury/illness is adequate for the level of tech in the 24th century; the new affliction and food options make for a fun change. Temperature (and other resistances) still needs some clarity in terms of threat severity and mitigation efficacy. Water is a little over-simplified given the setting. Sleep is not great but at least avoids the mistake made with FO4. Travel has gotten a big boost with the map and cargo access options, but can still improve with some of the expected coming changes from Bethesda. Finally, the lack of consideration for crew at starship and outposts is something that I feel probably should have an impact but makes me concerned as to how it might be implemented effectively.

DISCLAIMER: this post will be heavy. We are dealing with themes of racism, neo-nazi imagery, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and things of that sort. It would be not explained in details, but i will link articles talking about it in lenght. Please be careful while browsing!
Hello again people of Hobbydrama. This time my introduction will be brief since the post will probably be very long, just wanted to say: thank you for sticking with me. Remember to read the disclaimer and also be aware that this post might contain spoilers, particularly for Life Is Strange 1 and 3!
What the hell is Life Is Strange?
“Ready for the mosh pit, shaka brah”
Life Is Strange is a series of adventure games published by Square Enix’s External Studios. Created by Dontnod Entertainment, the series debuted with its first installment which was released in five episodes throughout 2015 on PS3, PS4, XBOX 360, PC, iOS and Android. It also recived a remastered version for the Nintendo Switch in 2021. Which was…not very good tbh, but we don’t talk about that. The story of the first game revolves around Max Caulfield, a girl who discovers that she has the ability to rewind time at any moment, causing each of her choices to make events unfold differently. After predicting the arrival of a giant storm, Max will have to use her powers to try to save her city, Arcadia Bay. She starts this by saving her former best friend (and future love interest) Chloe Price by dying in a bathroom stall. Since that, the plot will also focus on the search of Rachel Amber, a girl who misteriously disappeared without leaving trace. The player’s actions will affect the game’s story, which can be rewritten once they are able to rewind time. The introduction of the possibility of rewinding time allows to go back and do any action differently from the one first done in certain narrative checkpoints. This structure also offers a polarity system: choices made modify and influence the story through short- or long-term consequences. I mean, technically is not really like that because the game has only two possible endings and the choices you make can’t change it, but they affect the way other characters see you and interact with you. Dialogue scenes can also be rewound by choosing a different response option. Once an event is restored the previously provided data can also be used in the future: for example objects found in the future will be preserved after rewinding time. This, as you can imagine, offers a lot of possibilities for puzzle mechanics and things of that sort.
The game was a massive success, winning a shiton of awards in the following years and gaining an immense fanbase. This was due to its emotionally raw plot dealing with themes such as depression and suicide, bullying, fear of abandonment, LGBTQ+ representation, growing up and of course time shenaningans that subjects the main character to an unbelivable amount of trauma! Yay! Jokes aside, the game was so succesfull that it spawned an entire franchise: a prequel with Chloe Price as a protagonist came out in 2017 and a comic spin-off) was published in 2018.
Also: Life Is Strange 2 and Life Is Strange 3 were made, but they are different stories with totally different characters not related with Max and Chloe in any means, besides some minor easter eggs. For the context of this post, is important to know that when Lis became a franchise, they started to explore different stories with different characters: the only one thing in common is that in this world some people have some kinds of superpowers for…reasons that are never really fully explained. Max had time-rewind, it’s heavily implied in the prequel that Rachel Amber had some kind of fire powers or, in alternative, powers very similar to Max’s based on what some characters says about her, Sean’s brother has telekinesis and Alex has an “emotional aura” reading ability
There are also rumors going on about an Amazon Prime series adapting the story of the first game, but nothing has came out of it at the time of writing this.
With that being said, let’s move on.
The weird dynamics between Dontnod and Square Enix
Now, before we focus on the gist of the drama, it’s important to clarify one thing: Dontnod no longer holds any ownership of the Life Is Strange franchise and doesn’t work on the series anymore, only SquareEnix and Deck Nine are in charge now. To explain why this happened we need to go on a tangent here.
Development of the first Life Is Strange began in April 2013: the idea of developing it in episodes was due to creative, marketing and, above all, financial reasons. Mind you, at the time Dontnod was a little french indie game developing company. Their debut title was Remember Me), which at first they wanted it to be a PlayStation 3-exclusive role-playing game, but was dropped by publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2011 on account of cuts in funding. It was presented at Gamescom the same year to attract another publishing deal. The following year, Capcom Europe acquired the rights and reimagined it as an action-adventure game.
In 2013, Dontnod was the most subsidised studio with 600 000€ aid by the French agency Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC), including aid for a new intellectual property project codenamed “What if?” (later retitled to Life is Strange to avoid confusion with the film of the same name.) for something like 200 000 euros. On 28 January 2014, Dontnod filed for rjudicial reorganisation, a form of receivership in France. The proceeding filing was discovered by Factornews and some media outlets like Polygon reported it as Dontnod filing for bankruptcy as a result of the poor sales of Remember Me. However, Dontnod responded to these reports explaining that they were in the process of “judicial reorganisation” to resize the company and denying bankruptcy..
In June 2014, Dontnod announced that they were working with Square Enix Europe on a new game, which was announced as Life Is Strange that year and released in 2015 over the course of five instalments, like i said earlier. The critical and commercial success of Life Is Strange caused Dontnod to be solicited by publishers, whereas they previously had to pursue publishers themselves. Is also important to note that Life Is Strange received attention for the choice to include a female protagonist in the game. Before signing the collaboration with Square Enix, Dontnod had in fact encountered distrust from the curators of the project, who had attempted to insert a male protagonist in Max’s place. Baiscally, Square Enix was the only company that was willing to publish them without questioning the gender of the main character. Remember this, because it will be important later.
Following the release and success of the first Life is Strange, publisher Square Enix chose American developer Deck Nine to develop a prequel game focusing on the life of Chloe Price, while the Dontnod team began developing a direct sequel. Development on the prequel began in 2016 with assistance from Square Enix’ London Studios. Ashly Burch, who voiced Chloe in Life Is Strange, was replaced by Rhianna DeVries due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. However, Burch and Hannah Telle (Max’s VA) both reprised their roles for the bonus episode “Farewell.” The script for the game was over 1,500 pages, written by lead writer Zak Garriss and a writers’ room. Remember this name because it will come up again.
Prior to its official announcement, images had leaked online indicating that a prequel to Life Is Strange was in development. Finally, Square Enix revealed Life Is Strange: Before the Storm on 11 June during Microsoft’s E3 2017 presentation. At that time, Dontnod had declared that prospective follow-ups to Life Is Strange would feature new characters and locations to the original, with the developers feeling that Max and Chloe’s story had run its course over the first two games. Game co-director Raoul Barbet explained that

“It’s a question we asked ourselves at the beginning. Is it Max and Chloe, Arcadia Bay? No, it’s about everyday characters, relatable characters with stories you can involve yourself in, because it reflects your own experiences. With some supernatural stuff on the top.”

Michel Koch added that

“everyone loved Max, Chloe, Rachel. But their story…it’s done. We have nothing more to tell. We don’t want to. Other people will do it, and it’s okay. But for us, we have nothing more to do. Take them and do whatever you want.”

You can read the full interview here
However this would turn out to not be entirely true follwing recent events, but let’s leave this information for later.
Development on Life Is Strange 2 began in early 2016 as the first game shipped its physical edition. Michel Koch and Raoul Barbet returned to direct the sequel, with Christian Divine and Jean-Luc Cano reprising their roles as co-writers.. The game, despite its very heavy advertising campaign, recived a mixed reception from the audience if not downright negative. The main criticism, besides problems with the writing, the characters and the story, was that people…simply didn’t really care about a new cast, to be honest. Particularly when they are not written as good as the character from the first game. They would have much preferred a sequel with Max and Chloe. Keep this also in mind, because it will be important in a bit.
At the same time, Deck Nine began working on True Colors after completing Before the Storm in 2017. You can probably notice that for this new chapter they decided to return to an episodic format (Life Is Strange Before The Storm was released all in once, for context I was wrong, it was relased episodically, the difference is that there was a "complete season" version earlier than the first game! It was also the first Lis game to contain a DLC), just like the first game and Lis 2, both made by Dontnod.
Now, it’s also important to specify that Before The Storm was also recived lukewarmly, mainly because the plot felt rushed and a lot of very important lore bits of the first game weren’t even addressed, like how the fuck Rachel ended up in the dark room. You know…it was just the main reasons people were exited to play the prequel in the first place.
For context, in Lis 1 there are many moments where it is hinted that Rachel tried to deceive and manipulate Chloe, all so she could escape Arcadia Bay without her. In short: Rachel is not depicted as a good person in this game. There is even an entire section where Max finds out that Rachel was cheating on Chloe with her drug dealer. People were intrigued by this and wanted to know what Rachel’s deal was: was she a good person? Was she evil? How did she die? Did she also had powers? Did she caused the tornado? Is she the tornado? Did she passed down her powers to Max?
When the prequel was announced everyone went ballistic. Are we finally going to play as her? Well, no. Instead we got a story centered around Chloe (which we already knew well thanks to the first game), no powers, weird gameplay based on literally insulting npcs and very little of Rachel. Additionally she was depicted as a strangely different character, way more nicer than the first game made by the original developers probably intended. Her entire affair with the drug dealer was…simply not mentioned at all despite being a crucial point to the lore? Plus we got this post credits scene that literally explained nothing and in fact raised even more questions that would never be answered. Thanks!
Back to the point: when Life Is Strange 3 came out it was recived equally lukewarmly in some points. (clarification needed: it was COMMERCIALLY recived better than Lis 1 and 2, it won a shiton of awards too. I'm talking mainly about a section of the fanbase. Obviously there were also people who liked it, however the point is another here.) Many people pointed out that it’s so similar to the first game in terms or plot, general vibe and characters that it feels almost like a blatant copy. The protagonist is a socially awkard, introverted nerdy bisexual girl with a loudmouth, reckless, secretly nerdy lesbian punk-girl love interest and the plot concerns a disapperance of a person, that Alex and Steph need to investigate onto. Sounds familiar yet?
Also, people argued that Alex and Max share a very similar name, they make the literal same pose on the cover of their respective games and Steph was redesigned to look very similar to Chloe, hat and all..
For some people, it was pretty evident that after the lukewarm reception of BtS and Lis 2 and the complaints about it being too different from the established formula, Square Enix wanted to win back the love of former fans who liked the ideas of the original game. The problem is that they didn’t quite understood why the Dontond game had that impact on people, and borrowed from it only the most superficial aspects. The point is that people liked the first game because the characters were alive, with motivations, they were original and capable of making you really empathize with them. The plot was engaging and the mechanics were something new never seen in the video game industry (at that time). People liked the way the story was written and the way the game played, not necessarily the presence of Max and Chloe. People just wanted new protagonists that were written at least as good as them, basically.
So basically the way of thinking in some parts of the fandom was on the line of: rather than trying to poorly imitate Max and Chloe in a new game with an “original story” (do not steal) in a desperate attempt to regain the fans’ admiration, making a direct sequel to the first game with those characters would have been a better choice.
The comic spin-off with Max and Chloe wasn’t doing that good either. Well, it was a commercial success but the fanbase didn’t really liked it that much.. For context: it was not published by Dontnod or Square Enix, the people behind it were from Titan Comics. The series is set one year after the events of the original Life is Strange, and is a continuation to one of two of the games possible endings, known as the “Sacrifice Arcadia Bay” ending. It is written by Emma Vieceli, with interior art by Claudia Leonardi and coloring by Andrea Izzo. In fact the team behind it is entirely italian, which i find very cool as an italian myself. However, the problems were the same as said before: weird plot, character assasinations, introducing new powers for Max that make absolutely no sense, (now she is able to have “visions” of a different timeline and mess with the literal course of time without any real explanation or sensible motivation for WHY she is capable to do this all of a sudden) and in general they read a lot like a bad fanfiction.
Also i think it’s important to mention that the comics gave us a timeline in which Rachel is alive and she is in a romantic relationship with Chloe, while Max is their third wheel friend. I find this extremely hilarious so take this pic. It fucking kills me everytime.
So, to sum up all this mess before going on: Dontnod doesn’t own the intellectual property of Life Is Strange anymore. This happened after Lis 2, for reasons not yet disclosed. Square Enix and Deck Nine are now the heads of the entire franchise and they are not the best at managing it. In a desperate attempt to reach Dontnod success following the bad reception of BtS and Lis 2, they basically copied and pasted the entire plot of the first game (or at least borrowed a lot of context from it) for Lis 3, causing a sensible distaste in some parts of the fanbase.
The hidden hate imagery and the abuse scandal
Ok. Now we are quitting being funny and silly. This is the section were it starts to get REALLY dark REALLY suddenly. So please, keep in mind that i’m hovering a gigantic trigger warning over your head. All the links in this section can be extremely triggering for some people. Read the disclaimer, please. Are we good? Good. Now we can talk about the more recent news that literally throwed the fandom in a maniacal frenzy.
An article (GIGANTIC TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS ONE) was published by IGN the 5th April 2024, in which it’s described a very strange and disturbing episode that happened in the Deck Nine offices.
IMPORTANT INFO SINCE SOME PEOPLE WERE CONFUSED: I report the article as faithfully as possible given that in its entirety it could be considered uncomfortable by some people. Please be aware that I have copy pasted parts. This is not to plagiarize, I'm not saying that the contents of this article or the points of this speech are my own words. Keep in mind that it is only to give everyone a fair perspective, especially for people who may not like the mentions of certain things in the original article. However excuse me, i should have clarified this earlier. Thanks for everyone that spoke on this.
To put it simply since the article is very long, during the development of the fourth Life Is Strange game near the end of 2022, a few developers stumbled upon hate symbols hidden in the textures. They initially noticed a reference to the number 88, but they simply tought it was an unfortunate coincidence. It was just a number, right? Maybe their boss didn’t knew the implications of it. But then they quickly started to find more problematic and inequivocable signs, such as references to a racist meme, the number 18, and the Hagal rune.. It was definetly not a mistake: someone was putting those simbols there on purpose.
The weirdest thing is that weeks went by, then months, and management remained strangely silent about this. The incriminated assets remained in the game and people started to get really nervous for obvious reasons. At the end, they removed the symbols but the culprit was never discovered. Again, very strange. The company was behaving almost as if they were trying to defend however was behind this attack. This issue however, literally opened the fucking Pandora’s box.
According to current and former employees across several departments, most of whom have chosen to remain anonymus, Deck Nine’s management has caused a very toxic work culture. They claim the C-suite has protected multiple abusive leaders, encouraged crunch, and allowed bullying of individuals advocating internally for more authentic representation in Life Is Strange. Yeah, you heard that right.
Square Enix in particular was another whole can of worms: the employees said that the company was way too “defensive” of the script of True Colors. In the sense that they seemed oddly reluctant or outright hostile to the diverse themes and ideas that Life Is Strange has always explored. For instance, multiple people recalled an incident during True Colors development where Square Enix told multiple developers they didn’t want Life Is Strange to be thought of as the “gay game.” Which…you know, it’s very weird coming from a franchise that, when under Dontnod management, was always pretty open about its bisexual protagonists.
Well, theoretically Max and Sean are driven entirely by the choice of the player, so they are “playersexual”. You can choose what gender to romance in both games, in theory. However, Max is way more implied to be canonically bi or at least to have a crush on Chloe indipendetly by your choice in the original game, while Sean is more “open” in that sense. However, the main point is not really that. Is that Lis as a franchise always explored queer themes, so this kind of reaction by Square Enix is pretty odd. They knew what they were working with, right? Mallory Littleton, a narrative designer who worked on Life Is Strange under Deck Nine, even said that

”There’s a lot of press out there praising True Colors for having the first bisexual lead in a Life Is Strange game, even if in our press guides from Square Enix, all the way up until review copies were out, we were not to say anything about Alex’s sexuality, period, at all. And then they did the advance copies, and all of these reviews came out saying how amazing it was to finally see an explicitly bi protagonist, and after that, Square was like, just kidding, Alex is absolutely, canonically, 100% bisexual.”

Additionally, multiple sources gave the impression that Deck Nine’s relationship with Square Enix for Life Is Strange was one of money convenience rather than a deep appreciation for the series. Square Enix liked that Deck Nine was willing to do the game for a lower budget than other studios, while Deck Nine needed a good IP, so the deal was born solely for economical convenience However, many developers said that the people in charge of Deck Nine seemed seriously unprepared for dealing with a game with “serious” themes, especially when it came to thoughtful portrayals of diverse individuals. And this is when the real shit started. I won’t go into much detail (read the article if you are curious) but people reported a SHITON of accounts of sexual harassment, bullying and transphobia.
Remember Zack Garris? Well, sources say that he began forming close relationships with a number of younger women, often in situations where he had some mentorship or power over them. He was basically love bombing them, staying late at the studio talking to them, inviting them to lunch, dinner, movies or even to his house. He would also instigate personal conversations and text some of this women after work hours about personal topics. If you want more info about his (frankly disgusting) shenaningans, once again read the article.
It doesn’t stop here however.
In short: nobody, male or female, was able to tell him “no” when he crossed personal boundaries due to his status. This feeling only increased over time, with several people reporting incidents of him lashing out against those who disagreed with his decisions. This was especially true with people fighting for more sensitive portrayals of diverse characters. A woman named Tate Littleton, for instance, recalled being formally reprimanded for criticizing Garriss’ reluctance to allow women in his scripts to express anger. Basically he didn’t think representation mattered because “he didn’t necessarily identify with every white man protagonist, and so other people shouldn’t identify with characters because they look the same.”
The main episode that made this entire thing knew in the first place was the removal of a transgender character from True Colors that took place very late in development. Which, again, sounds really unusual considering the type of media Lis has always been. Additionally, two anonymous employees declared that in 2020 Garriss called BLM a hate group when the team at Deck Nine wanted to post something for the protests that were happening in America. In another example he fought weirdly hard for a twist on True Colors’ final choice that a number of writers pointed out included a problematic portrayal of migrant workers (it eventually was removed, so at least we have that i guess). He would also go daily on rants about how everyone was being “too political”. There was also another instance of a scene Garriss wrote for True Colors that the writers felt they had to fight him excessively to change. For those who don’t know, in the final script of True Colors the main character Alex is taken into the woods by Jed, who she view as a friend at this point of the story. He betrays her, shooting her and missing, causing her to fall into an abandoned mine shaft. However, in Garriss’ original version, Jed spikes her drink at a bar and takes her out to the woods for an attempted murder. When they saw this version of the scene, a number of people pushed back, arguing that the scene would unintentionally cause associations with date rape. Multiple individuals had to fight extensively with Garriss about this scene before it was eventually changed.
Additionally, Garris distanced himself from his team of writers. He and another lead would make most of the story decisions, rewriting work from other writers without allowing them the opportunity to give feedback, even on stories centering marginalized characters. Toward the end of True Colors development, Deck Nine implemented a new, anonymous performance evaluation tool: this is what caused all of this to surface recently, mind you, we would have never known if it wasn’t for this. Some time time later, Garriss quit the team voluntarily. But this wasn’t the end: True Colors launched to critical acclaim, and following the wave of its commercial success, Deck Nine parared immediatly the development of another Lis game. But it was struggling with one plot point apperently, and the leadership suggested to bring Garriss back to fix it. As you can probably imagined, the narrative team went insane. Everyone begged them not to bring him back in a series of meetings, messages, emails, everything. HR was even involved at some point and they even suggested that Deck Nine would be legally liable for Garriss’ behavior if they invited him back after the shiton of reports. When the company CEO and CFO persisted in arguing that they needed Garriss, multiple writers handed in resignations. Finally, management relented and the man did not return.
You probably get the vibe at this point. It was a mess. However, Garris later tried to defend himself against the accusations, but he was ultimately never called back again. At least not officially. Because he then landed at Telltale Games, which was working on a project in close partnership with Deck Nine at the time. Only a few months after his departure, several of those who had protested his return were told that a few narrative team members had been holding story breaking sessions at Garriss’ home. So…ok i guess?
However, this is not even the main tea. Remember when i said that Dontnod abandoned the franchise after the second chapter and it was never clarified why? Well, it’s theorized that the main reason why they went away it’s because Square Enix wasn’t willing to make them publish what they wanted in Life Is Strange. Which is incredibly sad and ironic considering the development issues the first game had. The main proof people point over this is another game made by Dontnod in 2020 called “Tell Me Why”, which stars a trans male protagonists and is objectively very similar to a Lis game without being really a Lis game. The main character has supernatural powers, the gameplay is identical, the story has a very similar vibe, you get the gist. The analogies were…a little bit too close for some people. Now, it’s important to remember that this are only speculations and nothing is being officially confirmed, but judging by the time coincidence and what surfaced recently, some people started to think that Dontnod published this game indipendently because Deck Nine and Square Enix didn’t want the main character to be trans. Which honestly kinda makes sense. However, another thing happened that fueled the speculations even more: Dontnod has recently annuced their new game, “Lost Records”, which they directly called a “spiritual successor to Life Is Strange”. They even stated that in this game they will insert ideas that they would have liked to explore with Max and Chloe in Lis sequels, which they can no longer produce since the franchise and those characters are no longer in their hands. Quoting from this article:

”When we started to work on the very first Life Is Strange a long time ago, we had no publishers. We didn’t know exactly where we would sell the game or…if we would even sell it. […] At this time, we were in need of publishing, and Square was interested in buying the games; they bought the rights for it, and they bought the franchise. […] But since they bought the franchise, our hands were tied. We couldn’t really work as we wanted on what paths the character should go, what kind of game we could make, and how we would like to make the franchise evolve.”

Which in retrospect many tought all of this sounded really weird. Didn’t they said years ago that their vision of the series was always to make stories with different characters and that Chloe and Max’s story was “over”? Many people tought this was a weird claim and so speculations started.
Many belive that the initial plan was to have at least a proper sequel to Lis 1 under their management, but the idea went to shit when Deck Nine and Square Enix acquired the IP for BtS, gaining effective ownership to the franchise and to Max and Chloe. Dontnod could not effectively use those character anymore and so they were obligated to create something new.
This theory gains credibility when we take into consideration the fact that recently a leak about a supposed sequel to the first game with Max and Chloe surfaced. Is important to note that in 2021 there was also another leak in which a person predicted very specific details about True Colors when it was still codenamed “Siren”, basically describing correctly the plot, the final title, the name of the protagonist and her powers. They even predicted the remastered of the first game! Additionally, at the end of the post they mention that the team was looking to make a Lis 1 follow up game with Max and Chloe, so the more recent leak was lining up almost scarily with the former. Another thing that adds fuel to the fire is the fact that the leaker mentioned to have saw an initial concept of this idea in 2022 during a survey in which they showed some future Lis content and apparently there was also an NDA involved. However, since this idea (mainly the bit when they describe Max being able to jump into different timelines) is very similar to what ended up happenning in the comics, some people tought it was simply a scrapped idea that they later reworked into the spin-off. Others instead think that the comics served to introduce us to this very concept and that they are still working on this supposed game. At this point in time we don’t know what the future olds, but it’s confirmed thanks to the article concerning the hate symbols scandal, that a fourth Lis game is currently being worked on. However, we don’t know if it’s that sequel the leaker mentioned or an entire different thing.
The aftermath
So…yeah. As you can probably guess, this situation is a total mess. The fandom is still trying to process what happened, and many are unsure whether to continue supporting the series or not, given everything that happened behind the scenes. It created a bit of a Blizzard situation, if you know what I’m talking about.
Personally, I’m a huge fan of the first Life Is Strange and it played a huge part in my growth. The other games didn’t fascinate me as much as the first tbh, but I loved Arcadia Bay and its world, Max and Chloe, the mystery, the characters, the story, the emotions. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was the game that changed my life and helped me come to terms with my sexuality. Seeing two girls get together romantically like this in a video game really triggered something in me. It helped me understand that my feelings weren’t wrong. That I wasn’t alone. That i wasn’t broken. I know that probably sounds very cheesy and cringe, but it’s the way it is and I can’t help it. You can imagine what my reaction was when I witnessed this mess unfold irl. In a way I felt hurt. It’s strange to think that a saga that has done so much for me is being run by people who would like to see me dead. Or at the very least, people who were not that open as they liked to present themselves. And I don’t have an answer to the question “should we still support this video game?” Honestly I do not know. On one hand I feel sorry for all the creatives who desperately tried to make Life Is Strange something special despite everything, but at the same time… my god. What the fuck.
I can’t help but wonder how Life Is Strange could have been if it remained under Dontnod’s creative control: what kind of stories they would tell, what future they would invent for Max and Chloe, what adventures they would get into. But maybe it’s better this way. Those girls have grown up, they went trought a lot, and maybe we just need to learn to let them go. After all, isn’t it the entire point of the game? Learning to grow? As for me, I will continue to replay Life Is Strange 1 periodically, I will continue to be part of the frankly amazing community that is the Lis fandom, I will continue to read fanfictions and support fan creations, being it fangames or fanarts. Because they can never take it away from me. They can’t take it away from us. Never.
Thank you for reading this far, i hope it was interesting and that you learned something new.
That being said…quit with the sad bullshit! I want to use this section to shoutout a fellow creator that is currently working on a fan-made sequel of the first game: Life Is Strange After the Storm. If you like this kind of stuffs, make sure to follow him on twitter and to support the project!
Ok now i’m really over. See ya!
EDIT: added clarifictions in the True Colors section. Changed a link in there too (i realized i put the wrong thing). Corrected some BtS informations. Added a clarification in the article section. Edited some formatting and corrected grammatical errors. Added a link in the Hagal rune section. Uncensored the word "nazi", since a person wrote me in private to make me know that my post would not be put down now that it's approved. Rephrased some words to not make them sounds hostile, since a lot of people were getting on my troath for this. I would also like to clarify while i'm here that i don't hate Lis 3 in its entirety nor i'm alluding that Lis 1 has not recived any valid criticism, since people are putting words in my mouth that i did, in fact, not say.
ALSO IMPORTANT CAVIAT: you are not in the wrong if you liked True Colors! It's ok! The game has it's moments and can absolutely be good. In fact, i personally liked some of its plot points and ideas. A good amount of people recived it very well. In this post i'm talking about general negative fan reception to explain why many people are growing disillusioned with the series and to make clear why people criticize it more than the first game, i'm not saying your tastes are bad/you are in the wrong. It's ok to like different things.

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Ryo Saeba

(Alternate Header Image 1 2)

"You pulled off a shrewd plan, I applaud you for that. But you made one mistake. You showed me the tears of a woman. And now you have to pay the price for it."

Anyone who has spent considerable time in Tokyo, or Japan as a whole for that matter, may have heard rumors about the blackboard in Shinjuku station. They say that if you have a problem and can't go to the police, all you have to do is write a note with the letters XYZ at the end and wait for the mysterious City Hunter to come and find you. However, pretty much anyone that's done this will tell you that the City Hunter isn't exactly the man you might expect.
At the incredibly young age of three years old, Ryo Saeba was traveling with his parents when their plane crashed in a country in Central America that was in the middle of a civil war. Being the sole survivor, Ryo wandered the jungle for days until he stumbled upon a village of guerilla fighters that were battling their country's government. The guerillas would only accept warriors that could fight with them, so Ryo joined their ranks in order to survive. They taught him everything they knew about fighting, weapons, and warfare until Ryo grew to be one of the most dangerous men on the battlefield. However, the government forces eventually overwhelmed them, chasing the guerillas out of the country. Now an adult, Ryo made his way to the United States and opted to become a sweeper, a mercenary/bounty hunteprivate detective that performs off the books jobs to clean up the filthy criminal underworld. Partnering with Mick Angel, another sweeper and one of his best friends, Ryo formed the team known as City Hunter.
At some point, Ryo left the US and returned to Japan, the country of his birth, where he kept the City Hunter name for himself and continued doing sweeper work with a new partner, ex-detective Hideyuki Makimura. Ryo's reputation spread rapidly, becoming known as one of the most dangerous men in the criminal underworld. So what's the problem? Well, he does have one weakness: Beautiful women. Despite his upbringing, Ryo is a goofy pervert and womanizer that would only accept jobs from the prettiest women around if he had his way. For awhile, he had Makimura to keep him in check, but his partner would meet a tragic end after refusing a job from a powerful drug syndicate, giving Ryo the dying request of looking after his little sister Kaori. Initially planning to help Kaori get out of the city, Ryo was surprised to find that Kaori wanted to take her brother's place as Ryo's assistant/partner and continue the work he thought was so important. Together, they became the newest iteration of City Hunter, sweeping the streets of Japan of evil and assisting any beautiful women that requested their services.
While his methods may be questionable, rest assured that the City Hunter always sees a job through no matter what criminal organizations, serial killers, or assassins stand in his way.
Note:

• Surprisingly, City Hunter was never given a full official English translation until early 2022. While chapters have been releasing steadily since then, only Chapters 1-38 are actually translated. This thread uses all available pages of the official translation, but afterwards will be forced to rely on fan-translations.
• Kaori hitting Ryo in the head with hammers whenever he acts pervy is a running gag throughout the series, which results in some of his better durability feats. While it may seem best to write these off as gag feats, there's plenty of evidence to suggest these feats are actual aspects of the City Hunter world and should be taken literally.
  • The hammers are acknowledged by unrelated bystanders as too heavy to lift^Ch99
  • A hammer plays an integral part of a serious scene, with it's handle being destroyed leading into the villains kidnapping Kaori^Ch120
  • Kaori literally destroys their bath to prevent Ryo from getting intimate with a woman which affects the plot of that chapter^Ch145
  • Kaori is legitimately strong in her own right so these feats aren't unprecedented^Ch187
• The most notable feats in each section will be bolded.

Strength

Striking
Vs Enemies

• Knocks out a biker far larger than him with a single punch to the stomach^Ch8
• Knocks out three Yakuza members with a camera^Ch45
• Incapacitates a large biker gang, including a member who was twice as tall as the others^Ch75
• Sends a large man flying down an alley and later knocks that same man out of a window^Ch121

Destructive Output

• Breaks a baton and sends a mob member far larger than him flying back^Ch6
• Smashes through a wall with a wooden mallet^Ch69
• Sends a man far larger than him flying back, destroying the set of a dance recital^Ch71
• Knocks a pair of thugs through a wooden door^Ch166
• Defeats a group of mercenaries offscreen, one of which was shown to have had his head smashed into a small crater in the ground^Ch174
• Kicks down a metal gate after shooting the lock^Ch175

Lifting/Throwing

• Lifts a student off the ground, smashing his head through the ceiling of the lecture hall and leaving a sizeable hole^Ch15
• Isn't slowed down at all as he carries his ally while fleeing a torrent of bullets^Ch21
• Catches one of Kaori's hammer swings^Ch47
  • The majority of Kaori's best hammer feats can be found in the Durability section for scaling
• Catches a punch from behind and throws the attacker hard enough to knock over some tombstones^Ch81
• Throws a knife hard enough to embed it in a wall^Ch95
• Stands up while a giant spikey metal ball is tied to his back^Ch162

Jumping/Charging

• Leaps through the ceiling of his apartment in terror^Ch65
• Dives with enough force to smash his head through a stone wall^Ch94
• While tied to a giant spikey metal ball, he lifts it up and uses it to crash through a wall and stop the man that was attacking his client^Ch162

Other

• Uses garrote wire to decapitate a man^Ch4
• Digs his fingers and toes into stone to avoid falling into a spike trap^Ch53
• Bites through the tip of a spear^Ch93
• Flicks a pachinko ball hard enough that it knocks a knife out of a thug's hand which is embedded in the handle of a wheelchair^Ch102
• [Anti-Feat] Was unable to free himself after getting his dick trapped in the doors of a train^Ch104
• Bites and stabs his toes into a stone wall so that he could climb it despite being tied up^Ch109
• Easily catches the stab and breaks the wrist of a serial killer^Ch131

Speed

Travel

• After killing a suicide bomber he charges a short distance to knock him away before his body can fall to the ground^Ch5
• Pushes a woman out of the way of a speeding truck and then proceeds to briefly outrun that truck^Ch14
• In the time that it took a thug to enter a building and break into a girl's appartment, Ryo traveled all the way there from his appartment (the exact distance is unclear, but the reflection of the girl's telescope appears to be at least several blocks away)^Ch102
• While bra-lusted, he runs straight through a mine field and emerges unharmed^Ch154
• Instantly crosses a large warehouse to where his opponents were standing^Ch159

Reactions
Melee

• Sidesteps a biker's punch^Ch8
• Grabs someone so that they take a bat to the face for him when the swing was mere inches from his head^Ch35
• Easily dodges and catches a serial killer's stab^Ch130
• Ryo narrowly avoided Mick Angel's attacks after he had been injected with Angel Dust^Ch182
  • Angel dust increases muscular power beyond its limits^Ch184

Aim Dodging

• Leans back and narrowly avoids a point blank pistol shot from Miki, an ex-mercenary^Ch86
  • He later jumps around a store so that she was unable to land a shot on him^Ch86
• After Miki hypnotized herself to shoot him immediately after he said a certain key word, he was narrowly able to react in time to knock aside her gun^Ch88
• Avoids Koumori's aim long enough to get thrown his own gun and retaliate (Koumori is another professional hitman)^Ch124/118
• Narrowly avoids Umibozu's shots at various points throughout their duel^Ch148
  • Ryo previously described Umibozu as a sniper of the highest caliber and one of the most dangerous guys in the business^Ch53
  • Umibozu is an incredible shot in his own right, hitting numerous perfect shots while blindfolded^Ch145
• Jumps to avoid nearly point blank machine gun fire from a professional assassin called the Black Lizard^Ch153
• Engages in a gunfight with Mick Angel, during which he climbed the outside of his building without getting hit^Ch175
  • Mick claims to be the number one sweeper in America and Umibozu corroborates this, saying that Mick is likely Ryo's equal in skill^Ch175
• Avoids the fire of several well trained soldiers at once^Ch191

Projectiles

• Moves Kaori out of the way of some thrown daggers^Ch6
• Dodges and reacts to various thrown, metal-edged playing cards^Ch23
• Reacts to a revolver round, moving his erection an instant before it was blasted off^Ch53
  • This comes with the caveat that Ryo already knew Umibozu was watching him to make sure he didn't act up, and he realized his mistake before the shot was fired^Ch53
• Catches a thrown knife with his teeth^Ch90
• Seemingly deflect trap arrows while sprinting down a booby trapped hallway^Ch93
• Chops two trap spears that were launched at him to the ground^Ch154
• Shoots through a knife after it was thrown at him^Ch162
• Narrowly reacts to darts fired from a mechanism on Mick's wrist^Ch188

Other

• Protects himself with a table before a grenade can explode in his face^Ch112
• After triggering a car bomb it's revealed that he managed to avoid it^Ch167

Combat/Attacking

• When a drugged up opponent attacks him from behind, Ryo draws his gun and shoots him to the ground and, by the time he staggered to his feet, had already moved behind him to strangle him^Ch4
• Leaps high into the air, moving fast enough to seemingly vanish to his attackers^Ch8
• Repeatedly stabs the space between his fingers at high speeds without cutting himself^Ch10
• Moves faster than a soldier can track, appearing behind her after dodging her punch^Ch20
• Even while his opponent has a gun trained on him, Ryo throws a bra over his eyes and scampers into the ceiling before he can recover^Ch21
  • This man could react fast enough to catch knives thrown from a short distance away^Ch20
• Flicks a series of pachinko balls at some thugs at high speeds^Ch46
• Steals Reika's bra off her person before she can realize what happened^Ch59
• Beats up a group of Yakuza in a few seconds^Ch72
• When a disguised police detective has a gun trained on him, Ryo grabs and throws a scalpel into his hand before he can pull the trigger^Ch103

Quickdraw/Shooting

• Has multiple examples of shooting opponents who were already aiming at him
  • High ranking mob member^Ch6
  • Foreign prince that could react fast enough to catch knives thrown from a short distance away^Ch21/20
  • Professional killer^Ch119
  • A well trained soldier^Ch190
• Quickdraws a shotgun to destroy his attacker's whip mid-swing^Ch9
• Using a mounted machine gun, he takes out a squad of terrorists before any of them could fire a single shot back^Ch19
• Beats his opponent in a quickdraw even after giving him a head start (this opponent also claimed to be more skilled than ordinary soldiers)^Ch19
• Quickdraws and fires before a Yakuza hitman had even grabbed his weapon, moving so fast that the hitman didn't believe him to be human^Ch23
• Notices a series of scalpels falling from the sky and shoots them out of the air before they can hit his client^Ch38
• Uses his gun to disarm six thugs in a split second before any of them could pull their triggers despite having their guns trained on him and then immediately does it again^Ch76
• Beats a hitman in a quickdraw, disarming him and destroying his belt to drop his pants before he realized what happened^Ch90
• Defeats Koumori, not just in a quickdraw but actually managing to hit him in the face with his gun before the other man pulled his trigger (Koumori is another professional hitman)^Ch124/118
• While Umibozu had his gun trained on him, Ryo managed to pull his gun and fire in the same time it took Umibozu to only pull his trigger^Ch149
  • Ryo previously described Umibozu as a sniper of the highest caliber and one of the most dangerous guys in the business^Ch53
• Shoots multiple hidden explosives in an instant^Ch159

Agility/Mobility

Acrobatics

• Vaults over a countertop and tackles a cashier to the ground to avoid a torrent of gunfire^Ch30
• Flips out of the way of an incoming truck from a seated position^Ch74
• Performs several back handsprings to distance himself from an explosion^Ch154

Jumping

• Leaps from a stage and gets tangled in the lights^Ch68
• Repeatedly jumping across a street while traversing rooftops without any sleep the night before^Ch94
• [NSFW] After falling from a rooftop, he leaps back up to retaliate against his opponent^Ch95
• Leaps up to a second story platform where his opponents were standing^Ch159

Climbing

• Rapidly scales the side of a building^Ch94
• Performs pullups by sticking his fingers into holes in the ceiling^Ch102
• Clings to the side of a window^Ch102
• Climbs down a wall like Spider-Man^Ch109
  • He has done this on several occasions^Ch173
• Scales the outside of his building during a gunfight^Ch175

Hanging

• Dangles from a rope by his feet like a spider^Ch68
• Clings to a windowsill by his toes^Ch98

Propping/Wedging

• Props himself in the top corner of a room^Ch65
• Wedges himself between two ceiling rafters^Ch82
• Hides from Kaori by going into an alley and propping himself high between two buildings^Ch102
• [NSFW] Props himself between the wall and ceiling of a shower at an impossible angle^Ch161

Other

• Drops onto a moving car from a tree branch, maintaining his balance with apparent ease even when the car crashes into a light pole^Ch16
• Uses a rope to swing onto a stage and save an idol from a rabid mob^Ch24
• Runs along walls while avoiding booby traps^Ch93
• Saves a man from a collapsing floor^Ch114

Durability

Blunt

• Kaori embeds him into the ground and then smashes his head through the side of a building^Ch52
• Gets sent flying through a door and embedded in a wall^Ch68
• Kaori hits him hard enough to make a crater bigger than he is^Ch78
• Kaori smashes an entire bed over his head, partially sending him through his apartment's floor^Ch79
• Kaori knocks him through the wall of a bathhouse and he isn't bothered at all^Ch85
• Umibozu slams him into a wall hard enough to crater it and he immediately recovered^Ch87
• Takes blows from Umibozu on multiple different ocassions, with Umibozu being strong enough to crush the top of a car and and split a wooden table in half with his strikes^{Ch147/90/55/146}
• Immediately gets up after Kaori smashes him into the pavement^Ch104
• Umibozu rips a lamp post from the ground and throws it at Ryo's face hard enough to bend it^Ch146
• Kaori knocks him through a stone wall^Ch151
• Kaori craters him into the roof of their building^Ch175

Piercing

• Getting swarmed by piranhas and has no visible damage after^Ch112
• Gets slammed by a giant spiked ball trap with no visible puncture wound afterwards^Ch151

Explosive

• Gets caught in a trap where multiple grenades and dynamite packs explode on top of him, blasting a hole in the side of his apartment building^Ch87
  • Here is the destruction from that blast from several other angles^Ch88
• Is hit with a pointblank explosion that destroys a wall in his appartment^Ch102
• Repeatedly shoots through a plane from the inside, causing it to blowup so he can escape^Ch119

Falling

• Jumps from his apartment and crashes onto a car below, heavily denting the top of it without injury^Ch32
  • We see in a later chapter that Ryo lives on the fifth floor^Ch67
• Gets dropped from the fourth floor of a hospital, crashing into the pavement and forming a fairly large crater^Ch38
• [NSFW] Falls from a rooftop and craters into the street^Ch93

Electrical

• Kaori electrocutes him twice with a defibrillator and he immediately gets up (though the third time causes his heart to stop)^Ch47
  • Afterwards he was revealed to have been temporarily crippled by the attacks^Ch47
• A door trap electrocutes him and soon after the same thing happens when he touches barred windows^Ch53

Endurance/Survivability

• Saeko kicks him in the face with heels, puncturing his forehead^Ch19
• Has sex with forty women over the course of two weeks, leaving him visibly drained but still able to continue^Ch21
• Capable of fighting effectively even with a broken leg^Ch38
• Gets flattened and pops back into shape^Ch69
• Kaori hits him with a spikey metal ball and a spike goes straight through his head^Ch97
• Drank extensively for two days straight without sleep and was still able to operate at normal efficiency^Ch159

Other

• Gets trampled by a crowd of rabid idol fans that had previously burst through several walls^Ch24
• Gets crushed under a large weight^Ch67
• His Super Mokkori pushes him up against concrete with enough force to crack it^Ch86
• Is standing on the roof of a several story tall abandoned building when Kaori accidentally triggers the explosives she'd filled it with, causing the building to collapse and he survives^Ch175
• Pray for his recovery...^Ch185
  • Oh god not again...^Ch185
• After getting injected with a tranquilizer, he was able to defend a surgeon immediately after, claiming a Yakuza's animosity negated the tranquilizer's effects^Ch186

Cock

Yes, you read that right. Ryo's penis, his erection, his boner, his mokkori. It's frankly capable of some pretty incredible things and seems to have stats that are completely independent of Ryo's other physical abilities. So much so that it's probably best to have an entire section of the thread dedicated to it. I'm not sorry.
Physicals
Strength/Growing Power

• Bursts through bullet proof glass^Ch21
• [NSFW] Supports a 100kg weight^Ch28
• After getting placed in a steel chastity belt, Ryo eventually gets a boner so strong that it breaks through^Ch32
  • Though this does leave him in a... rough state^Ch32
• Bursts straight through a wall (though he was unable to free himself afterwards)^Ch40
• Traps Ryo's head between it and the roof of a car like a vice^Ch46
• Knocks a door off its hinges^Ch73
• Pushes against a store's wooden support beams with enough force to crack concrete and eventually destroy several of the wooden beams^Ch86

Speed

• Moves to avoid a bullet from a revolver when is was an inch away from hitting him^Ch53

Durability

• [NSFW] Is electrocuted when it touches a mannequin that had been attached to an electrical outlet, and after the initial shock Ryo recovered mostly fine^Ch24
• Withstands getting smashed through a wall twice^Ch45
• Caves in Ryo's face when his head is slammed into it by Kaori, implying its durability is higher than that of Ryo himself^Ch48
• A rapist breaks his ankle trying to kick it^Ch48
• [NSFW][Anti-Feat] Gets trapped in the door of a train^Ch104
  • This was revealed to have seriously injured him^Ch104

Abilities
Detecting Women

• His boner let him detect that his assailant was a pretty woman even when he couldn't see them in the dark^Ch12
• Ryo acts up after accidentally walking in on his client who had disguised herself as a man, despite not actually seeing through the disguise himself^Ch77
• [NSFW] Acts as a "beauty detector" to lead him towards beautiful women, but it has been fooled by dirty magazines before^Ch104

Other

• Even if you don't use your eyes Ryo is canonically packing heat^Ch38
• I just... I... uhhh...^Ch45
• Can repeatedly retract it at will and at a moment's notice^Ch45
• [Anti-Feat] Seeing a princess in a leotard did nothing for him, with Ryo describing it as if she has an aura that blocks his horny power^Ch65
  • He later describes this aura as "the repulsion of a girl who didn't know what love was", which disappeared when the princess began to fall for him^Ch65
  • The princess' handler later describes it a "noble aura" that not even Ryo can break through^Ch65

Intelligence

General Knowledge
World Knowledge

• Claims to have every criminal case from the last ten years memorized^Ch10
• Does heavy background checks and memorizes information on women people he's working with^Ch60
• When a woman describes how her sister was shot during a fight between Yakuza, Ryo was already familiar with the situation^Ch102

Weapon/Chemical Knowledge

• Recognized the scent of chloroform in a room despite it being ventilated from it's earlier use^Ch41/40
• Disarms a car bomb^Ch51
• Immediately recognizes an old scar as a bullet wound^Ch102
• Disarms a bomb^Ch119
• When a fire alarm is set off, he quickly recognizes that the smoke is closer to that of a smoke bomb than an ordinary fire^Ch136

Deduction

• Recognizes that his assailant was using old guerilla warfare tactics and that he was about to be driven directly into a minefield^Ch12
• Determines that a room must have a secret passageway based on the kidnapper's rush^Ch41
• Figures out that a man was actually poisoned rather than dying of sickness just by looking at his picture^Ch92

Other

• Disables a mansion's alarms^Ch95
• Determines a woman's measurements with a glance^Ch104
• Tricks his client's uncle into revealing his true motivation for stopping her business^Ch109
• Managed to steal classified information from a police detective's computer using unknown means^Ch118
• Seemingly capable of basic lockpicking (though he may have just kicked the door down)^Ch132

Planning

• Lures a serial killer into attacking him in his room, only for it to be revealed that he had placed a mannequin under his covers while he was hiding under the bed itself, which also allowed his ally to get a glimpse of the mystery killer's face^Ch2
• When a mob boss believed he had led him into a trap, its revealed that Ryo had planned for it, stuffing his car's tailpipe with nails to shred through the enemy force and stealing an armored truck full of drug money^Ch6
• Came up with a plan to fake a man's death by literally shooting him, wounding him to the point where he could still escape before his body was supposedly destroyed in a car explosion^Ch10
  • While the escape route was partially ruined by Ryo's assistants, he managed to stall the man they were trying to fool long enough for the plan to be successful anyway^Ch10
• Impersonates a sergeant so that he can slip a sleeping agent into her entire squad's dinner, then proceeds to impersonate the man their squad was working for and order that they quickly eat their dinner, which leads to every guard being knocked out so that Ryo could engage with the boss unimpeded^Ch20
• Intentionally chose his apartment because there is only one location someone could potentially snipe him from that was over a kilometer away, which allowed him to predict where a Yakuza sniper would set up^Ch60
• After the head of the police narcotics division admits to various crimes to a woman who he is about to eliminate, Ryo announces that it was all captured on a secret microphone he hid in the room^Ch61
• Knowing that his old partner was trying to kill him he used a mirror to trick her so that he could appear behind her^Ch113
• After briefly handling a thug's gun he's revealed to have placed a bug on it so that he will track down the woman Ryo was looking for for him^Ch121

Quick Thinking

• When a man takes a girl hostage in front of a large crowd, Ryo shoots through his own hand to slow the bullet down so that it takes out the assailant but doesn't break the glass behind him^Ch2
  • It's later confirmed that he made sure to avoid the bones in his hand, making this an accuracy feat as well^Ch2
• Uses the sparks from a bullet to briefly illuminate a pitch black room so that he could see his target^Ch3
• After noticing that he was surrounded by a group of Yakuza, he goads a massive man into attacking them so he and his client can make a quick getaway^Ch23
• In order to accomplish his mission of causing a truck to crash without revealing his identity as the City Hunter, he pretends to assault the woman he was with so that she would push him away, sending him tumbling towards the truck so he could clandestinely shoot its tires^Ch74

Mental Fortitude/Pain Resistance

• Doesn't react to the pain of shooting through his own hand^Ch2
• Resists the urge to emote after getting shot twice in the ass with arrows^Ch25
• Breaks his own leg to get himself admitted into a hospital^Ch38
  • Doesn't react after using that same broken leg to foil a hitman which was later said to have broken his leg even further^Ch38
• Bluffs that he swapped an assassin's hidden gun camera with an ordinary one, being so convincing that the assassin both surrendered and wet himself in fear^Ch51
• Was able to deny his urges when a sexy lady was flirting with him in order to keep up the appearance that he was engaged to his client so that her suitors would leave her alone^Ch106
• Doesn't hesitate when a bullet grazes his cheek, continuing his fight^Ch175

Gear

Firearms

• Colt .357 Magnum^Ch2
  • Has a second magnum he keeps in an ankle holster for if the first one runs out of ammo^Ch6
  • Comes with a scope for longer distance shots and a silencer which was effective enough that he didn't draw attention after firing in the middle of a crowd of people^Ch28/10
  • While it theoretically only holds six bullets he has fired more than that either without reloading or by seamlessly reloading between shots^Ch28
  • Strong enough to fire straight through a plane's exterior (also another example of firing more than six shots in rapid succession)^Ch119
  • Was modified by a legendary gunsmith to be more accurate^Ch124
  • Shots partially destroy various gravestones^Ch147
  • Fires straight through a stone wall into the opposite wall^Ch175
• .44 Magnum^Ch19
• .41 Magnum (he considers this to be a "one of a thousand" gun with far greater accuracy than other firearms)^Ch19
• M36 Revolver^Ch7
• M686 Revolver^Ch90
• Rifle^Ch1
• Pump-Action Shotgun^Ch6
• Machine Gun^Ch26
• Submachine Gun^Ch114
• Sniper rifle^Ch27

Ammo

• Full metal jacket bullets for his Colt Python that ricochet off of solid surfaces and produce sparks when they do^Ch3
• A golden .500 Nitro Express that Ryo claimed can move a 2 ton object a whole foot when fired from over 100 meters away, which when fired into a target's ear sticks to the inside of their skull without piercing through^Ch1
• A .30 M1 Carbine Jacket that fires and spins slowly enough that it can shoot through a man's stomach without damaging any internal organs, resulting in a wound rather than a fatal shot^Ch10
• Rubber bullets^Ch28

Other Long Ranged Weapons

• Bazooka^Ch37
  • Blasts large craters in the street^Ch37
  • Kaori later used one to blast sizeable holes in concrete^Ch114
• Twin RPGs^Ch191
• Crossbow with short arrows, making them impossible to pull out^Ch2
• Various throwing knives lining his inner coat^Ch11
• Pachinko balls which he can flick with pinpoint accuracy^Ch102

Melee Weapons

• Garrote wire^Ch4
• Hidden ankle blades^Ch5
• A glove with a metal attachment that gives a secondary blow to whoever he punches^Ch6
• Brass knuckles^Ch25
• A hidden knife in his belt buckle^Ch142

Explosives

• Nitroglycerine, which Ryo claims an entire spilled bottle would blow a pair of kidnappers to smitherines^Ch16
• Remote explosives which he uses to destroy a lab^Ch37
• Dynamite that when used repeatedly eventually resulted in a yakuza clan's headquarters to be completely leveled (the headquarters was a fairly tall building)^Ch84
• His partner Kaori has shown to pack grenades which she would've gotten from his armory^Ch168
  • This is true for flash bangs as well^Ch172

Espionage/Tracking/Surveillance

• Small microphones to bug targets^Ch6
• Police radio^Ch6
• Homing transmitter^Ch42
  • Ryo has dozens of them attached to people of interest around the city, all of which he can track using a device in his car^Ch80
  • Their signals are fairly weak, having a range of only one kilometer^Ch80
• Gear that allows him to listen in on Umibozu's phone call^Ch174

Chemicals

• A ring laced with fast acting poison^Ch5
• A fast acting sleeping pill which he stores in his tooth^Ch20
  • Says that someone he used it on would sleep "at least till tomorrow" (the time of day he used it is unclear but it would presumably be at least 12 hours)^Ch113
• His secret weapon PATCH-WORK PATTERN PANTALOONS (a pair of boxer briefs that are filled with packets of various chemicals, including anesthetics, truth serum, and sleeping agents)^Ch20
• Instant acting sleeping powder^Ch64

Other

• Bullet proof vest (along with fake blood packs to be extra convincing)^Ch6
• Ear plugs^Ch109
• Lighter^Ch142
• The inner lining of his coat is lined with a special chemical that, when burned, causes a massive cloud of tear gas to emit from it and the outer coat is packed with plastic explosives and a detonator^Ch142
  • He also keeps various weapons in the lining of his coat, such as a dismantled revolver, a miniature time bomb that he uses to blow up a criminal organization's ammo depot, and most importantly condoms^Ch141/142

This Thread is Continued in the Comments Below

Ryo Saeba

(Alternate Header Image 1 2)

"You pulled off a shrewd plan, I applaud you for that. But you made one mistake. You showed me the tears of a woman. And now you have to pay the price for it."

Anyone who has spent considerable time in Tokyo, or Japan as a whole for that matter, may have heard rumors about the blackboard in Shinjuku station. They say that if you have a problem and can't go to the police, all you have to do is write a note with the letters XYZ at the end and wait for the mysterious City Hunter to come and find you. However, pretty much anyone that's done this will tell you that the City Hunter isn't exactly the man you might expect.
At the incredibly young age of three years old, Ryo Saeba was traveling with his parents when their plane crashed in a country in Central America that was in the middle of a civil war. Being the sole survivor, Ryo wandered the jungle for days until he stumbled upon a village of guerilla fighters that were battling their country's government. The guerillas would only accept warriors that could fight with them, so Ryo joined their ranks in order to survive. They taught him everything they knew about fighting, weapons, and warfare until Ryo grew to be one of the most dangerous men on the battlefield. However, the government forces eventually overwhelmed them, chasing the guerillas out of the country. Now an adult, Ryo made his way to the United States and opted to become a sweeper, a mercenary/bounty hunteprivate detective that performs off the books jobs to clean up the filthy criminal underworld. Partnering with Mick Angel, another sweeper and one of his best friends, Ryo formed the team known as City Hunter.
At some point, Ryo left the US and returned to Japan, the country of his birth, where he kept the City Hunter name for himself and continued doing sweeper work with a new partner, ex-detective Hideyuki Makimura. Ryo's reputation spread rapidly, becoming known as one of the most dangerous men in the criminal underworld. So what's the problem? Well, he does have one weakness: Beautiful women. Despite his upbringing, Ryo is a goofy pervert and womanizer that would only accept jobs from the prettiest women around if he had his way. For awhile, he had Makimura to keep him in check, but his partner would meet a tragic end after refusing a job from a powerful drug syndicate, giving Ryo the dying request of looking after his little sister Kaori. Initially planning to help Kaori get out of the city, Ryo was surprised to find that Kaori wanted to take her brother's place as Ryo's assistant/partner and continue the work he thought was so important. Together, they became the newest iteration of City Hunter, sweeping the streets of Japan of evil and assisting any beautiful women that requested their services.
While his methods may be questionable, rest assured that the City Hunter always sees a job through no matter what criminal organizations, serial killers, or assassins stand in his way.
Note:

• Surprisingly, City Hunter was never given a full official English translation until early 2022. While chapters have been releasing steadily since then, this translation is still far from complete. This thread uses all available pages of the official translation, but afterwards will be forced to rely on fan-translations.
• Kaori hitting Ryo in the head with hammers whenever he acts pervy is a running gag throughout the series, which results in some of his better durability feats. While it may seem best to write these off as gag feats, there's plenty of evidence to suggest these feats are actual aspects of the City Hunter world and should be taken literally.
  • The hammers are acknowledged by unrelated bystanders as too heavy to lift^Ch99
  • A hammer plays an integral part of a serious scene, with it's handle being destroyed leading into the villains kidnapping Kaori^Ch120
  • Kaori literally destroys their bath to prevent Ryo from getting intimate with a woman which affects the plot of that chapter^Ch145
  • Kaori is legitimately strong in her own right so these feats aren't unprecedented^Ch187
• The most notable feats in each section will be bolded.

Strength

Striking
Vs Enemies

• Knocks out a biker far larger than him with a single punch to the stomach^Ch8
• Knocks out three Yakuza members with a camera^Ch45
• Incapacitates a large biker gang, including a member who was twice as tall as the others^Ch75
• Sends a large man flying down an alley and later knocks that same man out of a window^Ch121

Destructive Output

• Breaks a baton and sends a mob member far larger than him flying back^Ch6
• Smashes through a wall with a wooden mallet^Ch69
• Sends a man far larger than him flying back, destroying the set of a dance recital^Ch71
• Knocks a pair of thugs through a wooden door^Ch166
• Defeats a group of mercenaries offscreen, one of which was shown to have had his head smashed into a small crater in the ground^Ch174
• Kicks down a metal gate after shooting the lock^Ch175

Lifting/Throwing

• Lifts a student off the ground, smashing his head through the ceiling of the lecture hall and leaving a sizeable hole^Ch15
• Isn't slowed down at all as he carries his ally while fleeing a torrent of bullets^Ch21
• Catches one of Kaori's hammer swings^Ch47
  • The majority of Kaori's best hammer feats can be found in the Durability section for scaling
• Catches a punch from behind and throws the attacker hard enough to knock over some tombstones^Ch81
• Throws a knife hard enough to embed it in a wall^Ch95
• Stands up while a giant spikey metal ball is tied to his back^Ch162

Jumping/Charging

• Leaps through the ceiling of his apartment in terror^Ch65
• Dives with enough force to smash his head through a stone wall^Ch94
• While tied to a giant spikey metal ball, he lifts it up and uses it to crash through a wall and stop the man that was attacking his client^Ch162

Other

• Uses garrote wire to decapitate a man^Ch4
• Digs his fingers and toes into stone to avoid falling into a spike trap^Ch53
• Bites through the tip of a spear^Ch93
• Flicks a pachinko ball hard enough that it knocks a knife out of a thug's hand which is embedded in the handle of a wheelchair^Ch102
• [Anti-Feat] Was unable to free himself after getting his dick trapped in the doors of a train^Ch104
• Bites and stabs his toes into a stone wall so that he could climb it despite being tied up^Ch109
• Easily catches the stab and breaks the wrist of a serial killer^Ch131

Speed

Travel

• After killing a suicide bomber he charges a short distance to knock him away before his body can fall to the ground^Ch5
• Pushes a woman out of the way of a speeding truck and then proceeds to briefly outrun that truck^Ch14
• In the time that it took a thug to enter a building and break into a girl's appartment, Ryo traveled all the way there from his appartment (the exact distance is unclear, but the reflection of the girl's telescope appears to be at least several blocks away)^Ch102
• While bra-lusted, he runs straight through a mine field and emerges unharmed^Ch154
• Instantly crosses a large warehouse to where his opponents were standing^Ch159

Reactions
Melee

• Sidesteps a biker's punch^Ch8
• Grabs someone so that they take a bat to the face for him when the swing was mere inches from his head^Ch35
• Easily dodges and catches a serial killer's stab^Ch130
• Ryo narrowly avoided Mick Angel's attacks after he had been injected with Angel Dust^Ch182
  • Angel dust increases muscular power beyond its limits^Ch184

Aim Dodging

• Leans back and narrowly avoids a point blank pistol shot from Miki, an ex-mercenary^Ch86
  • He later jumps around a store so that she was unable to land a shot on him^Ch86
• After Miki hypnotized herself to shoot him immediately after he said a certain key word, he was narrowly able to react in time to knock aside her gun^Ch88
• Avoids Koumori's aim long enough to get thrown his own gun and retaliate (Koumori is another professional hitman)^Ch124/118
• Narrowly avoids Umibozu's shots at various points throughout their duel^Ch148
  • Ryo previously described Umibozu as a sniper of the highest caliber and one of the most dangerous guys in the business^Ch53
  • Umibozu is an incredible shot in his own right, hitting numerous perfect shots while blindfolded^Ch145
• Jumps to avoid nearly point blank machine gun fire from a professional assassin called the Black Lizard^Ch153
• Engages in a gunfight with Mick Angel, during which he climbed the outside of his building without getting hit^Ch175
  • Mick claims to be the number one sweeper in America and Umibozu corroborates this, saying that Mick is likely Ryo's equal in skill^Ch175
• Avoids the fire of several well trained soldiers at once^Ch191

Projectiles

• Moves Kaori out of the way of some thrown daggers^Ch6
• Dodges and reacts to various thrown, metal-edged playing cards^Ch23
• Reacts to a revolver round, moving his erection an instant before it was blasted off^Ch53
  • This comes with the caveat that Ryo already knew Umibozu was watching him to make sure he didn't act up, and he realized his mistake before the shot was fired^Ch53
• Catches a thrown knife with his teeth^Ch90
• Seemingly deflect trap arrows while sprinting down a booby trapped hallway^Ch93
• Chops two trap spears that were launched at him to the ground^Ch154
• Shoots through a knife after it was thrown at him^Ch162
• Narrowly reacts to darts fired from a mechanism on Mick's wrist^Ch188

Other

• Protects himself with a table before a grenade can explode in his face^Ch112
• After triggering a car bomb it's revealed that he managed to avoid it^Ch167

Combat/Attacking

• When a drugged up opponent attacks him from behind, Ryo draws his gun and shoots him to the ground and, by the time he staggered to his feet, had already moved behind him to strangle him^Ch4
• Leaps high into the air, moving fast enough to seemingly vanish to his attackers^Ch8
• Repeatedly stabs the space between his fingers at high speeds without cutting himself^Ch10
• Moves faster than a soldier can track, appearing behind her after dodging her punch^Ch20
• Even while his opponent has a gun trained on him, Ryo throws a bra over his eyes and scampers into the ceiling before he can recover^Ch21
  • This man could react fast enough to catch knives thrown from a short distance away^Ch20
• Flicks a series of pachinko balls at some thugs at high speeds^Ch46
• Steals Reika's bra off her person before she can realize what happened^Ch59
• Beats up a group of Yakuza in a few seconds^Ch72
• When a disguised police detective has a gun trained on him, Ryo grabs and throws a scalpel into his hand before he can pull the trigger^Ch103

Quickdraw/Shooting

• Has multiple examples of shooting opponents who were already aiming at him
  • High ranking mob member^Ch6
  • Foreign prince that could react fast enough to catch knives thrown from a short distance away^Ch21/20
  • Professional killer^Ch119
  • A well trained soldier^Ch190
• Quickdraws a shotgun to destroy his attacker's whip mid-swing^Ch9
• Using a mounted machine gun, he takes out a squad of terrorists before any of them could fire a single shot back^Ch19
• Beats his opponent in a quickdraw even after giving him a head start (this opponent also claimed to be more skilled than ordinary soldiers)^Ch19
• Quickdraws and fires before a Yakuza hitman had even grabbed his weapon, moving so fast that the hitman didn't believe him to be human^Ch23
• Notices a series of scalpels falling from the sky and shoots them out of the air before they can hit his client^Ch38
• Uses his gun to disarm six thugs in a split second before any of them could pull their triggers despite having their guns trained on him and then immediately does it again^Ch76
• Beats a hitman in a quickdraw, disarming him and destroying his belt to drop his pants before he realized what happened^Ch90
• Defeats Koumori, not just in a quickdraw but actually managing to hit him in the face with his gun before the other man pulled his trigger (Koumori is another professional hitman)^Ch124/118
• While Umibozu had his gun trained on him, Ryo managed to pull his gun and fire in the same time it took Umibozu to only pull his trigger^Ch149
  • Ryo previously described Umibozu as a sniper of the highest caliber and one of the most dangerous guys in the business^Ch53
• Shoots multiple hidden explosives in an instant^Ch159

Agility/Mobility

Acrobatics

• Vaults over a countertop and tackles a cashier to the ground to avoid a torrent of gunfire^Ch30
• Flips out of the way of an incoming truck from a seated position^Ch74
• Performs several back handsprings to distance himself from an explosion^Ch154

Jumping

• Leaps from a stage and gets tangled in the lights^Ch68
• Repeatedly jumping across a street while traversing rooftops without any sleep the night before^Ch94
• [NSFW] After falling from a rooftop, he leaps back up to retaliate against his opponent^Ch95
• Leaps up to a second story platform where his opponents were standing^Ch159

Climbing

• Rapidly scales the side of a building^Ch94
• Performs pullups by sticking his fingers into holes in the ceiling^Ch102
• Clings to the side of a window^Ch102
• Climbs down a wall like Spider-Man^Ch109
  • He has done this on several occasions^Ch173
• Scales the outside of his building during a gunfight^Ch175

Hanging

• Dangles from a rope by his feet like a spider^Ch68
• Clings to a windowsill by his toes^Ch98

Propping/Wedging

• Props himself in the top corner of a room^Ch65
• Wedges himself between two ceiling rafters^Ch82
• Hides from Kaori by going into an alley and propping himself high between two buildings^Ch102
• [NSFW] Props himself between the wall and ceiling of a shower at an impossible angle^Ch161

Other

• Drops onto a moving car from a tree branch, maintaining his balance with apparent ease even when the car crashes into a light pole^Ch16
• Uses a rope to swing onto a stage and save an idol from a rabid mob^Ch24
• Runs along walls while avoiding booby traps^Ch93
• Saves a man from a collapsing floor^Ch114

Durability

Blunt

• Kaori embeds him into the ground and then smashes his head through the side of a building^Ch52
• Gets sent flying through a door and embedded in a wall^Ch68
• Kaori hits him hard enough to make a crater bigger than he is^Ch78
• Kaori smashes an entire bed over his head, partially sending him through his apartment's floor^Ch79
• Kaori knocks him through the wall of a bathhouse and he isn't bothered at all^Ch85
• Umibozu slams him into a wall hard enough to crater it and he immediately recovered^Ch87
• Takes blows from Umibozu on multiple different ocassions, with Umibozu being strong enough to crush the top of a car and and split a wooden table in half with his strikes^{Ch147/90/55/146}
• Immediately gets up after Kaori smashes him into the pavement^Ch104
• Umibozu rips a lamp post from the ground and throws it at Ryo's face hard enough to bend it^Ch146
• Kaori knocks him through a stone wall^Ch151
• Kaori craters him into the roof of their building^Ch175

Piercing

• Getting swarmed by piranhas and has no visible damage after^Ch112
• Gets slammed by a giant spiked ball trap with no visible puncture wound afterwards^Ch151

Explosive

• Gets caught in a trap where multiple grenades and dynamite packs explode on top of him, blasting a hole in the side of his apartment building^Ch87
  • Here is the destruction from that blast from several other angles^Ch88
• Is hit with a pointblank explosion that destroys a wall in his appartment^Ch102
• Repeatedly shoots through a plane from the inside, causing it to blowup so he can escape^Ch119

Falling

• Jumps from his apartment and crashes onto a car below, heavily denting the top of it without injury^Ch32
  • We see in a later chapter that Ryo lives on the fifth floor^Ch67
• Gets dropped from the fourth floor of a hospital, crashing into the pavement and forming a fairly large crater^Ch38
• [NSFW] Falls from a rooftop and craters into the street^Ch93

Electrical

• Kaori electrocutes him twice with a defibrillator and he immediately gets up (though the third time causes his heart to stop)^Ch47
  • Afterwards he was revealed to have been temporarily crippled by the attacks^Ch47
• A door trap electrocutes him and soon after the same thing happens when he touches barred windows^Ch53

Endurance/Survivability

• Saeko kicks him in the face with heels, puncturing his forehead^Ch19
• Has sex with forty women over the course of two weeks, leaving him visibly drained but still able to continue^Ch21
• Capable of fighting effectively even with a broken leg^Ch38
• Gets flattened and pops back into shape^Ch69
• Kaori hits him with a spikey metal ball and a spike goes straight through his head^Ch97
• Drank extensively for two days straight without sleep and was still able to operate at normal efficiency^Ch159

Other

• Gets trampled by a crowd of rabid idol fans that had previously burst through several walls^Ch24
• Gets crushed under a large weight^Ch67
• His Super Mokkori pushes him up against concrete with enough force to crack it^Ch86
• Is standing on the roof of a several story tall abandoned building when Kaori accidentally triggers the explosives she'd filled it with, causing the building to collapse and he survives^Ch175
• Pray for his recovery...^Ch185
  • Oh god not again...^Ch185
• After getting injected with a tranquilizer, he was able to defend a surgeon immediately after, claiming a Yakuza's animosity negated the tranquilizer's effects^Ch186

Cock

Yes, you read that right. Ryo's penis, his erection, his boner, his mokkori. It's frankly capable of some pretty incredible things and seems to have stats that are completely independent of Ryo's other physical abilities. So much so that it's probably best to have an entire section of the thread dedicated to it. I'm not sorry.
Physicals
Strength/Growing Power

• Bursts through bullet proof glass^Ch21
• [NSFW] Supports a 100kg weight^Ch28
• After getting placed in a steel chastity belt, Ryo eventually gets a boner so strong that it breaks through^Ch32
  • Though this does leave him in a... rough state^Ch32
• Bursts straight through a wall (though he was unable to free himself afterwards)^Ch40
• Traps Ryo's head between it and the roof of a car like a vice^Ch46
• Knocks a door off its hinges^Ch73
• Pushes against a store's wooden support beams with enough force to crack concrete and eventually destroy several of the wooden beams^Ch86

Speed

• Moves to avoid a bullet from a revolver when is was an inch away from hitting him^Ch53

Durability

• [NSFW] Is electrocuted when it touches a mannequin that had been attached to an electrical outlet, and after the initial shock Ryo recovered mostly fine^Ch24
• Withstands getting smashed through a wall twice^Ch45
• Caves in Ryo's face when his head is slammed into it by Kaori, implying its durability is higher than that of Ryo himself^Ch48
• A rapist breaks his ankle trying to kick it^Ch48
• [NSFW][Anti-Feat] Gets trapped in the door of a train^Ch104
  • This was revealed to have seriously injured him^Ch104

Abilities
Detecting Women

• His boner let him detect that his assailant was a pretty woman even when he couldn't see them in the dark^Ch12
• Ryo acts up after accidentally walking in on his client who had disguised herself as a man, despite not actually seeing through the disguise himself^Ch77
• [NSFW] Acts as a "beauty detector" to lead him towards beautiful women, but it has been fooled by dirty magazines before^Ch104

Other

• Even if you don't use your eyes Ryo is canonically packing heat^Ch38
• I just... I... uhhh...^Ch45
• Can repeatedly retract it at will and at a moment's notice^Ch45
• [Anti-Feat] Seeing a princess in a leotard did nothing for him, with Ryo describing it as if she has an aura that blocks his horny power^Ch65
  • He later describes this aura as "the repulsion of a girl who didn't know what love was", which disappeared when the princess began to fall for him^Ch65
  • The princess' handler later describes it a "noble aura" that not even Ryo can break through^Ch65

Intelligence

General Knowledge
World Knowledge

• Claims to have every criminal case from the last ten years memorized^Ch10
• Does heavy background checks and memorizes information on women people he's working with^Ch60
• When a woman describes how her sister was shot during a fight between Yakuza, Ryo was already familiar with the situation^Ch102

Weapon/Chemical Knowledge

• Recognized the scent of chloroform in a room despite it being ventilated from it's earlier use^Ch41/40
• Disarms a car bomb^Ch51
• Immediately recognizes an old scar as a bullet wound^Ch102
• Disarms a bomb^Ch119
• When a fire alarm is set off, he quickly recognizes that the smoke is closer to that of a smoke bomb than an ordinary fire^Ch136

Deduction

• Recognizes that his assailant was using old guerilla warfare tactics and that he was about to be driven directly into a minefield^Ch12
• Determines that a room must have a secret passageway based on the kidnapper's rush^Ch41
• Figures out that a man was actually poisoned rather than dying of sickness just by looking at his picture^Ch92

Other

• Disables a mansion's alarms^Ch95
• Determines a woman's measurements with a glance^Ch104
• Tricks his client's uncle into revealing his true motivation for stopping her business^Ch109
• Managed to steal classified information from a police detective's computer using unknown means^Ch118
• Seemingly capable of basic lockpicking (though he may have just kicked the door down)^Ch132

Planning

• Lures a serial killer into attacking him in his room, only for it to be revealed that he had placed a mannequin under his covers while he was hiding under the bed itself, which also allowed his ally to get a glimpse of the mystery killer's face^Ch2
• When a mob boss believed he had led him into a trap, its revealed that Ryo had planned for it, stuffing his car's tailpipe with nails to shred through the enemy force and stealing an armored truck full of drug money^Ch6
• Came up with a plan to fake a man's death by literally shooting him, wounding him to the point where he could still escape before his body was supposedly destroyed in a car explosion^Ch10
  • While the escape route was partially ruined by Ryo's assistants, he managed to stall the man they were trying to fool long enough for the plan to be successful anyway^Ch10
• Impersonates a sergeant so that he can slip a sleeping agent into her entire squad's dinner, then proceeds to impersonate the man their squad was working for and order that they quickly eat their dinner, which leads to every guard being knocked out so that Ryo could engage with the boss unimpeded^Ch20
• Intentionally chose his apartment because there is only one location someone could potentially snipe him from that was over a kilometer away, which allowed him to predict where a Yakuza sniper would set up^Ch60
• After the head of the police narcotics division admits to various crimes to a woman who he is about to eliminate, Ryo announces that it was all captured on a secret microphone he hid in the room^Ch61
• Knowing that his old partner was trying to kill him he used a mirror to trick her so that he could appear behind her^Ch113
• After briefly handling a thug's gun he's revealed to have placed a bug on it so that he will track down the woman Ryo was looking for for him^Ch121

Quick Thinking

• When a man takes a girl hostage in front of a large crowd, Ryo shoots through his own hand to slow the bullet down so that it takes out the assailant but doesn't break the glass behind him^Ch2
  • It's later confirmed that he made sure to avoid the bones in his hand, making this an accuracy feat as well^Ch2
• Uses the sparks from a bullet to briefly illuminate a pitch black room so that he could see his target^Ch3
• After noticing that he was surrounded by a group of Yakuza, he goads a massive man into attacking them so he and his client can make a quick getaway^Ch23
• In order to accomplish his mission of causing a truck to crash without revealing his identity as the City Hunter, he pretends to assault the woman he was with so that she would push him away, sending him tumbling towards the truck so he could clandestinely shoot its tires^Ch74

Mental Fortitude/Pain Resistance

• Doesn't react to the pain of shooting through his own hand^Ch2
• Resists the urge to emote after getting shot twice in the ass with arrows^Ch25
• Breaks his own leg to get himself admitted into a hospital^Ch38
  • Doesn't react after using that same broken leg to foil a hitman which was later said to have broken his leg even further^Ch38
• Bluffs that he swapped an assassin's hidden gun camera with an ordinary one, being so convincing that the assassin both surrendered and wet himself in fear^Ch51
• Was able to deny his urges when a sexy lady was flirting with him in order to keep up the appearance that he was engaged to his client so that her suitors would leave her alone^Ch106
• Doesn't hesitate when a bullet grazes his cheek, continuing his fight^Ch175

Gear

Firearms

• Colt .357 Magnum^Ch2
  • Has a second magnum he keeps in an ankle holster for if the first one runs out of ammo^Ch6
  • Comes with a scope for longer distance shots and a silencer which was effective enough that he didn't draw attention after firing in the middle of a crowd of people^Ch28/10
  • While it theoretically only holds six bullets he has fired more than that either without reloading or by seamlessly reloading between shots^Ch28
  • Strong enough to fire straight through a plane's exterior (also another example of firing more than six shots in rapid succession)^Ch119
  • Was modified by a legendary gunsmith to be more accurate^Ch124
  • Shots partially destroy various gravestones^Ch147
  • Fires straight through a stone wall into the opposite wall^Ch175
• .44 Magnum^Ch19
• .41 Magnum (he considers this to be a "one of a thousand" gun with far greater accuracy than other firearms)^Ch19
• M36 Revolver^Ch7
• M686 Revolver^Ch90
• Rifle^Ch1
• Pump-Action Shotgun^Ch6
• Machine Gun^Ch26
• Submachine Gun^Ch114
• Sniper rifle^Ch27

Ammo

• Full metal jacket bullets for his Colt Python that ricochet off of solid surfaces and produce sparks when they do^Ch3
• A golden .500 Nitro Express that Ryo claimed can move a 2 ton object a whole foot when fired from over 100 meters away, which when fired into a target's ear sticks to the inside of their skull without piercing through^Ch1
• A .30 M1 Carbine Jacket that fires and spins slowly enough that it can shoot through a man's stomach without damaging any internal organs, resulting in a wound rather than a fatal shot^Ch10
• Rubber bullets^Ch28

Other Long Ranged Weapons

• Bazooka^Ch37
  • Blasts large craters in the street^Ch37
  • Kaori later used one to blast sizeable holes in concrete^Ch114
• Twin RPGs^Ch191
• Crossbow with short arrows, making them impossible to pull out^Ch2
• Various throwing knives lining his inner coat^Ch11
• Pachinko balls which he can flick with pinpoint accuracy^Ch102

Melee Weapons

• Garrote wire^Ch4
• Hidden ankle blades^Ch5
• A glove with a metal attachment that gives a secondary blow to whoever he punches^Ch6
• Brass knuckles^Ch25
• A hidden knife in his belt buckle^Ch142

Explosives

• Nitroglycerine, which Ryo claims an entire spilled bottle would blow a pair of kidnappers to smitherines^Ch16
• Remote explosives which he uses to destroy a lab^Ch37
• Dynamite that when used repeatedly eventually resulted in a yakuza clan's headquarters to be completely leveled (the headquarters was a fairly tall building)^Ch84
• His partner Kaori has shown to pack grenades which she would've gotten from his armory^Ch168
  • This is true for flash bangs as well^Ch172

Espionage/Tracking/Surveillance

• Small microphones to bug targets^Ch6
• Police radio^Ch6
• Homing transmitter^Ch42
  • Ryo has dozens of them attached to people of interest around the city, all of which he can track using a device in his car^Ch80
  • Their signals are fairly weak, having a range of only one kilometer^Ch80
• Gear that allows him to listen in on Umibozu's phone call^Ch174

Chemicals

• A ring laced with fast acting poison^Ch5
• A fast acting sleeping pill which he stores in his tooth^Ch20
  • Says that someone he used it on would sleep "at least till tomorrow" (the time of day he used it is unclear but it would presumably be at least 12 hours)^Ch113
• His secret weapon PATCH-WORK PATTERN PANTALOONS (a pair of boxer briefs that are filled with packets of various chemicals, including anesthetics, truth serum, and sleeping agents)^Ch20
• Instant acting sleeping powder^Ch64

Other

• Bullet proof vest (along with fake blood packs to be extra convincing)^Ch6
• Ear plugs^Ch109
• Lighter^Ch142
• The inner lining of his coat is lined with a special chemical that, when burned, causes a massive cloud of tear gas to emit from it and the outer coat is packed with plastic explosives and a detonator^Ch142
  • He also keeps various hidden weapons in the lining of his coat, such as a dismantled revolver, a miniature time bomb that he uses to blow up a criminal organization's ammo depot, and most importantly condoms^Ch141/142

This Thread is Continued in the Comments Below

I have the Rogers Ignite 1.5 Gbps internet, with the ignite home internet white gateway model XB8. It absolutely refuses to let my canon pixma TS3420 hook up to it. I’ve tried using the wps method, the wireless connect method. There’s only an outlet to hook the printer up to a computer. How can I connect my printer to my internet router? PLEASE HELP
I’m so unbelievably done🙄 My first printer stopped working once I switched my wifi from Telus to Rogers, it had nothing but problems when finally an error code came up I contacted support about and they said the printer was basically broken and that I needed a replacement, the printer I have now was a free replacement of the same model because it was still within the warranty. I knew I shouldn’t have cheaped out on the printer.

Note: non-canon
“Are you kidding me?”
Emma looked at me, freshly exited from the portal.
“Jealous?” I put my hands on my hips. “It’s the black, right?”
“They…there was another suit and they never told me?” She was shocked. “And they let you choose the color?”
“I thought it looked good on me.”
I could tell she was rolling her eyes.
“I think the black stands out.” Thacea said. “The polish is very well done.”
“I concur.” Thalmin added on.
Illunor stared at me. “It looks like you are covered by the soot of a dragon’s breath.”
I snorted. “Good one.”
Emma looked at my suit. “They give you any upgrades?”
“No. Don’t have an EVI either.”
“Damn. I’m surprised that they put it together so quickly. How’s it feel?”
“It’s like I’m wearing a tank.”
“You’ll get used to it, trust me. It’s-”
Knock knock.
“I’ll get it.” Emma walked over to the door, opening it. “Apprentice-”
“Cadet Booker.” The elf nodded. “You are needed immediately.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I apologize for the disturbance, but you are needed now.” The elf’s eyes narrowed. “This is most urgent, and cannot be delayed.”
“I…see.” She turned towards me. “Let’s go.”
I began to follow Emma.
What could this be?
_____
Faculty Tower, Staff Meeting Room. Local Time: 1456 Hours.
After a hasty trip through shortcuts and backrooms, led by an unusually tight-lipped Larial, we arrived at a familiar sight.
The same room where the Librarian condemned the black-robed Mal’Tory to his fate.
The same room where the Academy’s assembled professors ousted their dean.
Those same professors, as well as the white-robed Vanavan, sat in those very same seats, some giving us looks of sympathy and worry.
As well as…
“Oh, shit.” I heard Emma practically seethe through our private channel, just beating me to the punch.
“They sent ANOTHER black-robe!?” I shot back, the pit of my stomach reflexively coiling in dread.
“Greetings. Cadet Emma Booker, yes? Please, take a seat.” The man in question, having noticed our approach, motioned towards a singular chair, notably unadorned compared to its peers. With only a moment of reluctant hesitation from Emma, she moved to occupy it - the chair surprisingly taking the weight of her suit without the aid of any observable spell.
“Ah, that’s simply grand. It would seem that the furniture I requested in anticipation of your presence here was adequate enough to withstand your armored form. It would be unbecoming of a student of this institution to lose face to a mere chair, yes?”
…
If nothing else, this guy was much more of a conversationalist than the last one.
“...Yeah, I guess so… sir?” Emma replied with an undercurrent of trepidation.
“His Eternal Majesty’s personally-appointed black-robed representative to the Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts, one Professor Alak Chergena. A pleasure to meet you, Cadet Booker.”
Oh.
Oh dear.
So he knows about us now.
I could sense the same revelation hitting Emma with the force of a truck, but unlike me she had proven unable to slink into a corner and was actively being spoken to; it was only the Nexian love for wasting conversational time that allowed her lack of any sort of initial response to go relatively unnoticed.
“...I… It’s nice to meet you as well, Professor Chergena.” Emma eventually managed. “But why bring my golem and I here alone, if your intention was just to introduce yourself? Surely you’re too busy to do this with every student, yeah? That’s what emergency assemblies are for? Heck, even breakfast?”
“Your assertion would be correct, unfortunate less-than-enlightened ramble notwithstanding. It would seem that you and your puppet,” the black-robed Professor managed to lock eyes with me under my suit, sending an involuntary shiver down my spine before shifting back to Emma just as quickly. “Have been at the center of a lot of ill attention as of late. From my predecessor’s attempts on the lives of you and those in your peer-group, for which I apologize,” he directly stated, taking us completely by surprise, “to your purported role in the reshuffling of the faculty present here with us,” Vanavan visibly turned his head away from us, if only slightly. The rest of the faculty held their best poker faces, though body language suggested varying signs of discomfort. “To your dealings with The Library, again, spurred on in large part due to the direct antagonization by my predecessor, but all the same has seen that institution which has been hosted by The Nexus for eons abandon its true home for that which is lesser, as well as much else.” Chergena finally relented.
At least, that’s what I thought, before he started up again mere seconds later.
“Which brings us to the true meat of why you have been brought before us. Before me.” His tone changed to something markedly less friendly. “Your actions over the past weeks, Cadet Emma Booker, have served to threaten, and indeed disrupt the Status Eternia that guards the eternal sanctity of civilization. Now, it can plainly be seen through the craftsmanship of the armor that adorns both yourself and your inanimate servile construct,” the black-robe gave me another brief flick of the eyes. “As well as your novel weapons which, in spite of their primitive mana-less disposition, have managed to dispatch those creatures which even this faculty, and by extension myself, would have difficulty in subduing, to your own personal status as a commoner, that your realm has been engaged in a constant battle against ruination. A constant battle, a losing battle, even, that has seen your realm’s kind shed whatever form of proper decorum you may have once possessed, to throw your all into the creation of weapons of war; unburdened by advanced sociological organizations.”
“I understand, that in these contexts, perhaps the greatest show of an Earthrealmer’s civility would be those which destabilize, disrupt, and decimate the forces of ruination; that which would see what little civilization your realm has retained lost to the annals of history. However,” Professor Chergena continued. “You must realize that you now find yourself at the center of civilization. The center of all civilizations. Indeed, far from a ravenous tribe of barbarians, The Nexus, under the enlightened guidance and tutelage of His Majesty, has delivered many a realm from the same jaws of apocalypse that you yourself have likely stared down before your induction into this Academy. It is under these contexts,” he fixed Emma with a hard stare. “That your actions, however well-meaning you believe them to be in the service of the propagation of civilization, are actively detrimental to a society as perfect and vibrant as the one you find yourself in right now.”
“The Adventurer hunts the common beast, the Guard fights the mad king’s shield-bearer, and the Mage delivers the force of the righteous against that which threatens to undo what we strive to maintain. To put it in simpler words, Cadet Booker, there is no extraneous danger in the Nexus - not one created without direct action and intent to do so. Your fear of that which was unfamiliar, including the rejection of the Oath of Binding, as well as your realm’s defiling of a heretofore-unknown Gift, provoked the previous black-robe into their actions against you. Your martial responses thus forced him to parry, in an unfortunate series of escalatory actions that has brought me to this very academy, and seen perhaps the greatest arsenal of knowledge leave us, those who can use that most effectively in the quest to maintain the longevity of civilization - all civilization.”
“Let this meeting prove to be a stern word of caution to you, Cadet Emma Booker. For while you may believe that your actions in undermining the Status Eternia to be beneficial to the propagation of the civil order, it is anything but. To simply acknowledge your rank and station, and to listen to your betters, is to participate in the very pinnacle of civilization.” His steely gaze at Emma, maintained throughout his entire monologue, hardened as he reached his conclusion. “I understand that your realm stands on the precipice of destruction, Cadet. But that in of itself is not an acceptable reason for this behavior of yours; to fight ruination where there is simply none. Be still and calm your spirit, for owing to the apparent condition of peril amongst your people, we shall soon arrive and save Earthrealm ourselves, just as we have done with the thousands of realms before you. You need only exercise patience, and deliverance will come in return.”
Professor Chergena finally stood back, his hardened look fading slightly.
“That is all, Cadet Booker. From here on out, I would encourage you to redirect your efforts in chasing societal phantoms to your own studies - for both the safety of yourself and your fellow students. Should you fail to heed this most valuable advice, I shall know and take appropriate actions to protect this Academy from incurring further dishonor. Now then, if you would be so kind as to collect your golem and return to your dormitory - Apprentice Larial will show you the way. This faculty has much to discuss, and there are only so many hours in the day.”
Emma silently got up from the chair, her and I moving towards the door without so much as a word spoken, quickly received by a Larial that looked more unnerved than on her arrival.
“Farewell, Cadet Emma Booker. May we, for the sake of both of us, not have to meet again so soon, and under such dire circumstances.”
______
Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30, Living Room. Local Time: 1537 Hours.
Emma and I arrived back at the dorm at what increasingly became a breakneck pace, as our own mutual debrief carried with it the weight of perhaps the greatest threat openly declared against the UN in its entire history.
“I… There has to be some sort of different meaning to that-”
“There isn’t, Emma. The man personally sent here by the Big Boss himself just said we’re going to war.”
We practically burst back through the dorm doors, only paying a curt nod to a winded-looking Larial, who had been increasingly struggling to keep up.
“Well, James, it just so happens that we’re in the company of three people who know just a little bit about subliminal messaging,” came Emma’s immediate retort, as we barged into the the Living Room, starting an Avinor, a Lupinor, and a Vunerian in the process.
“...Emma? James? Are you two quite alright?” Thacea immediately broke the awkward silence that ensued. “Was there some sort of pressing issue pertaining to the faculty that needed attention?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Thalmin affirmed. “Given the chaotic state of the Academy, given our latest upsets, it’s only natural that there was a loose end or two that required tying.”
The blue creature said nothing, electing to gaze at us expectantly.
“It’s… complicated,” I managed to get out, reaching for my tablet. “And I think it’s better if we showed you.”

2 Hours Later
“Indeed, Emma. As much as I wish it to be otherwise, it is highly unlikely that Professor Chergena’s words were an empty threat.” Thacea confirmed what had become our greatest fears with a single sentence. “For a person such as himself, both with regard to his rank and station, and the fact that he was explicitly sent by His Eternal Majesty, it would be illogical and counterproductive to take a stance that is different in any way to the current established order. That is to say,” she concluded, “That the new Black-Robe is speaking the truth. Earthrealm faces down the tip of the Nexian Spear, Emma, James.”
…
“For what it’s worth, you two, Havenbrock stands with you and your cause.” Thalmin interjected. “You and your people are perhaps the greatest chance history will ever offer in finally throwing off the Nexian yoke; both for my own realm and the thousands of others it has subjugated.”
“I… Thank you, Thalmin, but-”
“Now, now, James. I was not finished.” The Lupinor held up a finger, paired with a toothy grin. “I know that, given the inherent limitations in inter-realm communications and transportation, that my kin will not be able to assist you directly. Therefore, at least allow me to give you some form of aid by which to fight for your, and our, freedoms.” With an amount of martial flair that I could only dream of possessing, Thalmin drew out his dagger, stretching it out to its full length as a greatsword, before-
LOCALIZED SOURCE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED: 400% ABOVE BACKGROUND LEVELS.
-using a spell that had remained unknown to us, evicting any and all traces of detectable mana from the weapon.
Thalmin presented it to me.
“You have my sword.”
To say this was unexpected was an understatement.
To say that it meant the world to be would be a disservice to the statement.
“Thalmin, I… But the magic you had in-”
“If my memory serves me right, mana would be poisonous to an Earthrealmer, yes? It would be difficult to use a weapon if it were actively trying to kill you.” He left off with a snarky tone.
“...I will treasure this.” Within the safety of my mana-repulsion field, I took off my own helmet, matching Thalmin’s savage grin with one of my own. “And don’t worry. It’s not gonna be a mantlepiece, either.” He nodded sagely in return.
“Of course, while my realm, much the same as Prince Havenbrock’s, cannot lend any material support to yours,” Thacea re-joined the conversation, you will have our aid in the realm of espionage; the deconstruction of Nexian social decorum with the purpose of establishing a clearly defined narrative.”
“Which is something we’ll be eternally grateful for, Thacea,” Emma replied.
And then there was one.
Ilunor, having put on a stoic visage for the entire exchange, finally dropped it with a hefty sigh.
“While I subscribe to the axioms of civilization, and the principles of the Perpetual Regime… I cannot deny that this move from His Eternal Majesty is uncharacteristically shortsighted.” His eyes flashed with realization, before finally meeting both of our gazes.
“He doesn’t know. There’s no way He couldn’t have possibly known the nature of your realm, as shown through your sight-seer,” He half-gasped out. “All logic in absence of that would point to an uppity mana-deficient newrealm trying to undermine Nexian authority. This is the same conclusion Professor Chergena came to. It stands to reason, then, that His Eternal Majesty, for all his power and wisdom, is operating with an incomplete picture of who he wishes to reform.”
“Reform, Ilunor?” I questioned the lizard, putting my helmet back on.
“Yes, James, reform.” He responded in kind. “The Nexian Reformations are a series of edicts thrust upon any newrealm that makes contact, to preserve the longevity of their civilization, modeled off the Nexian System, under the watch and scrutiny of The Nexus. In the case of Earthrealm, that would entail a dismantling of your ‘Euen,’ and a return to the rule of monarchs.”
“A return to Feudalism.” Emma stately bluntly.
Three nods immediately followed that summary.
“...Thank you, Ilunor, for that information.” I said curtly. “And thank all of you for your support.” The three of them responded with varying degrees of acknowledgement.
“With that being said,” Emma concluded, starting to walk to her tent with me in tow. “We’ve got a report to write.”
________
Greater United Nations, Earth, Atlantic Ocean Floor. Institute of Anomalous Studies Portal Complex. 0800 Hours UNST.
Second Lieutenant James O’Neil appeared in the Portal Room on an unscheduled return, seconds before an emergency-priority report was received from Cadet Emma Booker’s Exo-reality Communications Suite. Director Laura Weir was immediately flagged down, in a manner that stretched the definition of professional, before being pulled into an emergency meeting with one O’Neil, as well as vital staff, in addition to various government and military representatives.
Thirty minutes later, as Captain Li of the United Nations Long Range Expeditionary Forces was engaged in a near-shouting match with several members of the Sociology Department, a package was received in the Portal Room, bearing what had been previously identified as official Nexian Markings. A hasty read and a more thorough re-read of the elaborately-packaged ultimatum presented to them served to extinguish any ideas or fears of a potential miscommunication with the powers beyond the portal.
Director Weir, three hours and forty-five minutes after James O’Neil’s return, relayed the demands of The Nexus, as well as the all-but-confirmed preparations for war to all relevant government and military offices.
________
Earth-Luna Lagrange Point L1, Greater United Nations General Assembly Parliamentary Capitol. Office of the First Secretary. 1200 Hours UNST.
The most powerful human alive, having been interrupted from a late-morning brunch, sat at the front of the table, the First Speaker immediately adjacent to them. The First Commanders of the United Nations Armed Forces sat on their flanks, all of them having been present in the Sol System by lucky chance; all had been authorized the use of emergency warps, their ships arriving in Earth-Luna space within minutes. The heads of the executive departments, those still within Sol, were also present.
Speaking remotely from Earth, Director Weir of the United Nations Science Advisory’s Institute for Anomalous studies, joined on her right by a nervous but determined young Lieutenant, recounted the demands of the enigmatic civilization beyond the precipice.
The dismantling of “Earthrealm’s seditious governing institutions.”
The reinstatement of the Monarchs of those few remaining relevant member states to “Their positions of rightful authority, to swear an oath of fealty to His Eternal Majesty.”
The “Immediate revocation of unwarranted and undeserved ‘commoner privileges.’ ”
A return of Humanity to a medieval state, lest it be subjected to the interdimensional jackboot.
The Secretary and Speaker queried about the state of the UN’s military and logistical assets.
It was deftly relayed that, with Lieutenant O’Neil’s prior report to the First Commanders, that tangible plans had been laid for a full evacuation of Earth’s surface of all non-military personnel within 4 months.
A brief consultation in turn with the only one who had seen The Nexus for themselves, Lieutenant O’Neil, would solidify the Secretary’s decision.
After an on-the-spot decision to make James O’Neil the “Special Advisor to the First Speaker on Exo-Reality Affairs,” a post ordained to bridge the imminent chasm that would be the gap in knowledge between the military and the vast majority of the civilian government, two executive decisions would be made.
The re-designation of The Nexian diplomatic standing to an E-9 as per the Revised New Oslo Criteria,
And the enabling of “Plan Arc.”
Fifteen minutes after the conclusion of the meeting of the UN’s highest government and military leaders, scarcely enough for contacted news agencies to prepare their emergency broadcasts, thirty billion people would be forced from their homes.
As transport ships both in the Sol System and in Extrasolar Space, on pleasure cruises, carrying cargo, and everything in between received their alerts through the QE network and started to spool up their warp drives, the First Secretary collapsed into the finely-upholstered chair in their personal office, having finagled a minute of solitude from their Press Secretary; their emergency address would be upon them imminently.
The First Secretary of the United Nations of Earth and Luna nibbled on their now-cold food, finding that they were no longer hungry.
Earth, Acela Corridor, NYC New Quarter, Brooklyn, Inside of a megatall skyscraper. Room 2325. Booker Residence. 1317 Hours UNST.
The hero of the Jovian Insurrection, for the briefest of moments, though she was back on that damned station when every electronic device with a speaker blared in an ear-splitting klaxon. Immediately regaining her senses, Ran Booker saw a Bim-Bim-shaped mass of irritated fur dart underneath a table, before digesting the message displayed on and orated out of every screen in her apartment.
“ATTENTION. ATTENTION. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY BROADCAST FROM THE FIRST SECRETARY, FIRST SPEAKER, AND THE UNIFIED CENTRAL COMMAND. AS OF THIS MORNING, THE PRESENCE OF A HOSTILE INTERDIMENSIONAL POLITY KNOWN AS ‘THE NEXUS’ HAS BEEN CONFIRMED, WITH DIRECT ACCESS TO EARTH.
UN AGENTS OPERATING WITHIN ‘THE NEXUS’ HAVE CONFIRMED INITIAL PREPARATIONS FOR A MILITARY INVASION OF EARTH ARE UNDERWAY. ESTIMATED TIME OF INVASION IS CURRENTLY UNKNOWN.
THE FIRST SECRETARY AND SPEAKER, IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE ARMED FORCES AND THE UNITED NATIONS EMERGENCY RELOCATION OFFICE, HAVE AUTHORIZED THE TOTAL EVACUATION OF ALL CIVILIAN PERSONNEL FROM EARTH’S SURFACE. INFORMATION REGARDING YOUR TIME AND PLACE OF EVACUATION SHALL BE SENT TO YOUR PERSONAL DEVICES.
PLEASE REMAIN CALM. PLEASE COOPERATE WITH STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AT THIS TIME.
MORE INFORMATION SHALL BE GIVEN AS IT IS RECEIVED. PLEASE REMAIN UPDATED THROUGH YOUR LOCAL NEWS OUTLETS AS WELL AS THIS EMERGENCY MESSAGE CHANNEL.
THIS MESSAGE WILL REPEAT THREE TIMES.”
It took only a handful of seconds of hearing the shouts of her neighbors, as well as the sudden cacophony of screams from the city below for Ran to understand that, despite the behest of the message to “remain calm,” New York and Acela’s riot police would likely be donning their gear for the first time outside of drill for the first time in decades.
Soon after, much to her lack of surprise, her phone started buzzing, an unknown number staring back at her before she swiped to answer, immediately holding it to her ear.
“This is Booker.”
“Sergeant Major Booker,” the gruff voice on the other end of the line started. “This is General Mark Stone of the United Nations TSEC Special Operations Group. You are being reactivated, effective immediately. You have two hours to report to the High Security Terminal at the Port of New York and New Jersey. Your identity will be confirmed and you will receive further orders.”
“Roger.”
The line went dead immediately after, Sergeant Major Ran Booker of the United Nations Terrestrial Space and Expeditionary Command taking another moment to regard the chaos that had now enveloped what had once been a peaceful city, the roar of police and other emergency sirens re-introducing a type of mid-millenium flair that was better left to the annals of history.
It would seem that the young man who had knocked on her door so recently had his hands full.
The same force that had repeatedly tried to kill her adoptive daughter now threatened to raze Humanity’s cradle to the ground.
For all the centuries of Humanity’s preparations to fight an extraterrestrial enemy, they had still been caught by absolute surprise.
War was coming.
And Ran Booker now faced the most difficult challenge of her life.
Finding a goddamn cat-sitter.
Orion Spur, 2500 Light-years from Earth. 2250 Light-years from UN incorporated space. Mid-Warp. Fleet time: 1319 Hours.
Commodore John Perry, were he back on Earth, would’ve been an incredibly busy man. Organizing this Long Patrol had been a tall order, even considering his own admittedly small role in the finer details. However, this far out into space, and in warp space at that, there was little else for him to do but sit at the bridge of the Heavy Cruiser LREFS Pathfinder and watch the stars pass him by like raindrops on a windshield.
This had been his routing for months; chart another lifeless rock, perhaps a gas giant or two, harvest an asteroid when needed, then move on to the next system.
Perhaps, he thought to himself, I need a change of pace.
And it was at that moment that the ship’s QE machine whined to life with a series of coded beeps that designated the received message as the highest-possible priority.
He immediately read it, of course.
After checking and double-checking its contents, as well as composing and sending off a message to the rest of his own Lead Task Unit, Commodore Perry calmly stood up from the seat he had taken, met the worried gazes of the few bridge crew were needed to operate the Pathfinder, and gently slammed his fist on the General Quarters alarm.

10 Minutes Later
“I am going to relay to you what every captain on every other ship of this patrol group is telling their own crews right now.” Perry forced out in an even tone, over the ship-wide intercom to his crew, assembled at their battle stations. “Fifteen minutes ago, we received a message from LREF Command back home. They have confirmed the presence of a hostile extraterrestrial force on Earth’s doorstep.” Several gasps were heard from the now-packed bridge of the ship. Others looked on, ashen-faced.
“This polity, known to us as ‘The Nexus,’ sent our leaders an ultimatum. One that would see Humanity reduced to serfs. See us returned to a medieval state.” Several grimaces joined the chorus of expressions dotting the bridge. “It goes without saying what our answer to such demands are.” Resolute determination, now. “It is for that reason, everyone, that I have elected to cut our patrol short. It’s entirely possible that we’re too far out to render any assistance, but given the seeming gap in capabilities represented by their mastery in interdimensional travel, in spite of other limitations, the coming conflict may be long and grueling.”
“Our stop at the next system will be our last, at which point we will hold to rendezvous with all other task units in our Patrol Group before proceeding directly back to Earth. And speaking of-” Perry turned to the helmsman. “We are nearly due to drop out of warp, yes?”
“In approximately three hours, sir. I’d recommend taking a seat and keeping everyone at their stations.”
“And so it shall be.”
_____
Orion Spur, uncharted star system. 2500 Light-years from Earth. 2250 Light-years from UN incorporated space. Mid-Warp. Fleet time: 1630 Hours.
“Dropping out of warp in T-minus 10, 9, 8…”
Commodore John Perry never so desperately wanted to be back home in his life.
It was under threat.
Everything he knew, loved, and held dear, save for the Patrol Group he commanded at this instant, was liable to be destroyed.
“7, 6, 5…”
He was going to get this job done as quickly as possible.
He needed to get back.
“4, 3, 2, 1…”
He owed it to everyone here.
“Warp Drive disengaged!”
The sight of smeared stars on the transparent metal in front of him suddenly disappeared, replaced with a single white sun immediately ahead of them. Several smaller “stars” could be seen nearby. All around him, the 28 other combat ships of his patrol group, as well as the handful of support craft blinked into existence in a ring around the Pathfinder kilometers away, in a professionally choreographed display.
Telescopes pointed at this system, almost a thousand years ago, had identified six planets. Two gas giants, four rocky bodies. Fleet-wide sensors confirmed those findings, as well as an asteroid belt between the rocky planets and gas giants.
The second-closest to its star was in the habitable zone of its G2V-class star. That same one hosted an atmospheric composition that was one of the closest mirrors to Earth on record. That same one also had a mass nearly identical to the homeworld.
It was the sole reason Perry had elected to not simply disengage warp in the middle of interstellar space, turn back, and gun it for friendlier waters.
If nothing else, it may one day make a great colony.
Perry elected to simply get it over with, before anything else unexpected happened.
“Sir! I’m picking something up on the Exotic Energy Detection Suite! It’s coming from the planet in the habitable zone!”
Fuck.
Perry was already on his newly-liberated fleet-wide radio as he commanded his response. “All ships, this is Commodore Perry. Set an interception course for the second planet in the system. Be prepared to decelerate into a parking orbit. Prepare for interception burn in T-minus five minutes.”
John Perry sat back in his seat, keeping up the appearance of a dignified, disciplined commanding officer.
The man behind that appearance inwardly lamented what that sensor reading had meant.
The information packet he had received, for his eyes only, had told him two things.
While “The Nexus,” as confirmed by UN operatives, was an infinite plane, there were other civilizations connected to The Nexus, “Adjacent Realms,” that had the potential to occupy Humanity’s same corner of the multiverse.
And that the “Exotic Energy” that those hastily-added sensors were meant to detect went by another name, for those locals of the Nexus and Adjacent Realms alike.
Mana.
Whether he liked it or not, the United Nations of Earth and Luna had just found another.
________
Next time on: ‘The Backup:’
The Beginning of the End
A/N:
This chapter took a bit longer than usual to get out, but me and my editor had to make sure it was written well.
So, everyone, I have some news.
The next chapter is going to be the last one of The Backup. But don’t worry! There is a sequel in the works. To avoid burnout, after the last chapter is posted, I’ll be taking an extended break for around a month. This sequel will be the finale of The Backup, and bring a conclusion to my story.
I want to thank everyone who upvoted and commented on this story - to each and every one of you, I’m very grateful for your help, as it motivated me to continue writing.
Special thanks to u/0strich_Master on JCB’s discord server for providing edits, lore help, and other kinds of literary assistance!
-TurianCabal/kranberry488
__________
Part 1: Short Story: The Backup : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 2: Short Story: The Backup, Part 2 : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 3: Short Story: The Backup, Part 3 : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 4: Short Story: The Backup, Part 4: Show-and-Tell : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 5: Short Story: The Backup, Part 5: A Chat with the Higher-Ups : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 6: Short Story: The Backup, Part 6: A New Disguise : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 7: Short Story: The Backup, Part 7: The Mercenary and the Second Lieutenant : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 8: Short Story: The Backup, Part 8: Fly Me to the Moon : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 9: Short Story: The Backup, Part 9: How It All Began : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 10: Short Story: The Backup, Part 10: Welcome to the IAS : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 11: Short Story: The Backup, Part 11: The Library's Decision : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 12: Short Story: The Backup, Part 12: Teacher's Pet : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 13: Short Story: The Backup, Part 13: Bull Beatdown : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 14: Short Story: The Backup, Part 14: Faculty Issues : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 15: Short Story: The Backup, Part 15: Coup D'etat : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 16: Short Story: The Backup, Part 16: The Library's Judgement : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 17: Short Story: The Backup, Part 17: Who We Really Are : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 18: Short Story: The Backup, Part 18: Back to Earth : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 19: Short Story: The Backup, Part 19: The War Hero : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)
Part 20: Short Story: The Backup, Part 20: Suiting Up : JCBWritingCorner (reddit.com)