Feybeasts

Or did you look at the bombast and the destruction and the hate, and decide you wanted to do more? More airships, more bombs, more devastation, more mercenaries, more war?

Seems to me you didn’t learn a damn thing, you butchers of Hoffnung.

I think people are too quick to jump Zero’s bones when it’s a lot rougher around the edges with far less developed characters. Too often I see people sum up Zero by its few (very very) standout scenes, but who kinda glaze over its weak interstitial storytelling. Gameplay-wise, it’s miles better than 5, but 5 has a genuinely interesting and well-written narrative, more than one character that undergoes an honest-to-god arc, excellent twists and turns, and by the end, you feel the weight of the elements that have been laid on your shoulders. A quiet moment in the final mission holds more weight to it than the bulk of Zero’s story, and I think people just tend to mistake moments of reflection for “dead air”.

People who drew the wrong impressions from Zero think the whole point of the games is that you’re a mute, mythological psychopath around whom the world revolves. They try to recapture the nihilistic power fantasy they imagine, ignoring the lessons the game tries to hammer home- but with 5, those lessons are impossible to ignore, the message too loud to silence.

The point was never the war- the point was pursuing your truth no matter the obstacles, to draw meaning from the madness around you.

It’s hopeful, optimistic- not due to the conflict and the senseless destruction, but in spite of it.

It’s a lesson often forgotten in the power fantasies, and it saddens me.

• those who seek jank
• those who live for cry
  and
• those who can read the back of a pizza box

Those are the three.

And them…?

They were a true dipshit

I think one of my favorite things about Ace Combat Zero is- at their core, A World With No Boundaries was right- the Belkan War was a senseless slaughter brought on by nationalistic fervor and nothing more, a massacre that was fed gleefully by even the “good” guys. It was a geopolitical pissing match that descended so far into senselessness that the only solution in the eyes of one combatant was to commit an unspeakable atrocity on their own soil- who wouldn’t look at that madness brought about by politicians and generals and not see what brought us there- the false gods of nationalism?

But then, what happens? Their movement is co-opted by voices that feel the only answer to the violence is more senseless violence- that to un-stick the gears of change, they must ultimately bring about a calamity far worse than the one that was, in many ways, the nucleus of their cause. The notion that one must look beyond nation and identity to see one another’s mutual humanity, that we gain nothing from arbitrary divisions and borders, set aside for a fetishistic obsession with apocalyptic thinking. The victory of the “we just need to kill everyone not like us” crowd over the pragmatists.

I see a lot of parallels to real-world movements in that- the louder voices of reprisal for reprisal’s sake drowning out the philosophical and pragmatic underpinnings of a cause. In the end, Pixy’s interview kinda… sums up the hopelessness one can feel when confronted with that, that for all his fervent belief, he ultimately saw that what he thought he could bring about through murderous catharsis was something that mankind, by their nature, resisted.

But I think there was hope there, too- that the answer to so many of our divisions lies not in grand proclamations and warfare, but in reaching out to the people around us, living to protect and foster the simple dignity and rights of our neighbors- forming communities outside of the empty structures of power, and supporting one another simply because we care. It takes time, work- it’s not gloriously violent or flashy, but it brings about positive change in your environment.

That, I think, is how you bring about a world that truly has no boundaries.