AndyofIndiana
Highlighting a Death Battle
I've been watching a considerable amount of Anime lately after a break that has lasted roughly 15 years. One of the shows I watched was Bofuri: I don't want to get Hurt so I Maxed Out My Defense. I think that the reason so many Anime have ridiculously long and specific titles is to get your attention (much like American B-movies) but I'm not 100% sure about that. I enjoyed that series in particular as a show about people having fun in a virtual reality RPG and playing the game in unconventional ways to make themselves overpowered. I had previously watched Sword Art Online Abridged which I heard was a straight upgrade from the original series. Not only is it hilarious, but it takes the original series' moments of not making sense and fixes them (for the most part). I wanted to make a Death Battle template with Kirito from SAO Abridged and Maple from Bofuri on it. Just one problem, someone else beat me to it.
Congratulations to Nakuuro for making this deviation about four months before I even thought of making it. However, I want to add some analysis to this battle of OP players of Virtual Reality MMORPGs.
First up is Kirito. While he can use all his abilities from Sword Art Online itself, he should act like the version of himself from SAO Abridged. It's not just that SAO Abridged is hilarious and I haven't seen the original Sword Art Online, but because of his attitude. Kirito's character establishing moment came when he defeated a boar that Klein was having trouble with by throwing a pebble at it. He then proceeded to troll Klein by telling a fabricated story about this pebble's legend for several hours. After Kirito was done, Klein said that he sounded like the sort of guy who got beat up a lot to which Kirito replied "Shut up! Here, I have power!" That says a lot about his character. He probably gets bullied a lot, doesn't have many friends, and comes off as the smart person who looks down on others. Later in the series, it's assumed that he was glad to be trapped in the game since he wouldn't have to go back to that life. Kirito's whole arc in the first eleven episodes is learning that other people aren't as far below him as he thinks.
Maple/Kaede has a philosophy that nearly the opposite of Kirito's. She's not an obsessive gamer, she just got in to New World Online because her friend Sally/Risa wanted to play with her. Since she didn't want to get hurt (and probably thought getting hurt in the game meant getting hurt in real life), Maple put all of her stats into defense. This made her so strong that nothing could hurt her, which became doubly true after she gained poison immunity. The devs had to nerf her by creating piercing damage which could hurt her, but she kept finding more OP skills to use. Her secret is that she wasn't a gamer. Since Maple wasn't bound by gaming conventions, she could think outside the box a lot easier. That's one of the reason I love Bofuri. She becomes OP because of her abilities of creative problem solving, not through just being the absolute best gamer or knowing the most about pop culture. Also, this is all just for fun. There's no "Die in the game, die in real life" or "Control of the world's most powerful corporation" stakes, it's just a middle school girl and her friends having fun in a creatively designed world.
I don't know if anybody's going to read this, but if you do, could you speculate on who would win this death battle?
Novels made by Kids
I'm trying to get into Danganronpa right now. I'm sure that this series would perk up the ears of Duckyworth who is someone I watch. https://www.deviantart.com/duckyworth Anyway, only about 15 or 16 minutes into the Let's Play I'm watching, I got hit with the revelation that Toko Fukagawa wrote a book at the age of ten that got the literary world buzzing. Hope's Peak Academy is home to the best and brightest people of their respective crafts, but I was skeptical that even the most creative child could organize their thoughts and write a book. Turns out, when I went to Wikipedia, I found three examples of books written by children.
First up is The Lost Princess. It's a 69-page book written by Celeste and Carmel Buckingham. The two of them were eleven and nine years old respectively. Unfortunately, Wikipedia isn't giving me much information about the book itself other than its resemblance to the 1917 book The Lost Princess of Oz. For all I know, it could be an amazing or terrible book.
Next is The Romance of Atlantis written by Taylor Caldwell. She wrote it around 1912 and tried to get it published through her Grandfather's publishing company, but it got accused of plagiarism since it was thought that a 12 year old could not write a 269 page book. It wasn't published until 1975. As for the book itself, it's about an arranged marriage which is being used to try to save Atlantis from environmental and ecological disasters.
Finally, we got Swordbird. This was written by Chinese-American author Nancy Yi Fan when she was twelve. It's about a war between blue jays and cardinals which is being manipulated by a hawk. Wikipedia doesn't give me the page number, but it does seem like a legitimate book. All of these make it plausible that Toko could've written a good book as a ten year old.
- With a few exceptions, all player rankings are determined by career approximate value with that team. This statistic can be found on pro-football-reference.com. However, I also take the best four seasons of each player and double them. This gives players with brief but brilliant careers a leg up over those with long and mediocre careers. It also helps current players who usually don't have as many years to garner enough points.
- All starters have their names bolded.
- Any players with asterisks next to their names indicate fairly common specialties. An asterisk next to a tight end means they come in for two tight end formations. An asterisk next to a wide receiver means they get the call in three wide receiver formations (similarly, two asterisks indicate a fourth wide receiver). If there's an asterisk next to a defensive tackle or inside linebacker, then they get the call when a defense that uses a 4-3 or a 3-4 base scheme uses the opposite. Finally, a defensive back with an asterisk is the nickelback.
- Any player with an N after their profile had to have their number changed. I don't like the idea of two players on a team having the same number.
- I don't want a player to be on two different teams. For instance, Reggie White will have to be on either the Eagles or the Packers. He can't be on both teams.
- April 12th: Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, and New England Patriots
- April 13th: New York Jets
- April 14th: Houston Ravens (It's a composite team. Because the teams are relatively new, neither one has the players to be competitive on their own).
- April 15th: Cincinnati Bengals
- April 16th: Cleveland Browns
- April 17th: Pittsburgh Steelers
- April 18th: Indianapolis Colts
- April 19th: Jacksonville Panthers (The second and final composite team.)
- April 20th: Tennessee Titans
- April 21st: Denver Broncos
- April 22nd: Kansas City Chiefs
- April 23rd: Oakland Raiders (They haven't played a single game in Las Vegas yet.)
- April 24th: San Diego Chargers (They were there way longer than they've been in Los Angeles.)
- April 25th: Dallas Cowboys
- April 26th: New York Giants
- April 27th: Philadelphia Eagles
- April 28th: Washington Redskins
- April 29th: Chicago Bears
- April 30th: Detroit Lions
- May 1st: Green Bay Packers
- May 2nd: Minnesota Vikings
- May 3rd: Atlanta Falcons
- May 4th: New Orleans Saints
- May 5th: Tampa Bay Buccaneers
- May 6th: Arizona Cardinals
- May 7th: Los Angeles Rams
- May 8th: San Francisco 49ers
- May 9th: Seattle Seahawks
Random James Bond Thought
The one title that has jumped out at me as I'm sure it has for many other people is Octopussy. I know that Bond films tend to have women who have names that are sexual innuendos. I know about Pussy Galore from watching Goldfinger and I've seen the Moonraker episode of Bad Movie Beatdown enough times to remember Dr. Goodhead. I assume that there are plenty of other examples of women with sexual innuendo names in Bond movies, but I don't think there have been any other's right in the title (at least of the female variety, The Man with the Golden Gun provides innuendo of the male variety).
I think I first saw this movie title on a TV in Cortez, Colorado when my family and I went to Mesa Verde National Park (among other places) in 2018. When I saw that title, I got a bizarrely specific image of a woman in my head. Since Goldfinger was the name of the villain in the titular movie, I felt I should also give that title to the titular woman in this movie. She'd probably be one of the few attractive women in the Bond films not to be seduced by Bond himself.
The octopus part of her name would have two sources. First, she enjoys swimming and models her approach to it like an octopus. She's not the fastest swimmer, but she does well for herself. Second, she's the head of a worldwide conglomerate of machinery and computers. Whether it be radios, TVs, personal computers, tape decks, VHS players, video game cartridges (it is 1983 after all), or refrigerators, her company sells it. Her company's global reach is so enormous, she's been compared to an octopus. Of course, maybe I could just call it Octopus Electronics.
What about the suffix of that nickname though? Well, that would manifest in the outfits she wears. As it turns out, her standard business outfit is dominatrix gear. Granted, it would mostly be an aesthetic, she doesn't hurt her sexual partners that often and uses it to establish dominance both in the workplace and in bed. Most of the workers have said that her outfits take some getting used to, but Octopussy always insists that since it's her company, she can dress however she wants.
I'm not sure how much concept of women's rights the Bond franchise had in 1983. Regardless, the idea of portraying a strong independent woman as evil in this series might not be the best idea in terms of women's rights. I just looked up the names of the Bond Girls in Octopussy and the other one was named Magda. At first, she would just be a damsel in distress, but she feels embarrassed by this role. So saying, she convince's James Bond (played by Roger Moore) to teach her how to fight. Throughout the action scenes, Magda gets more and more competent and during the climax, she takes out more of Octopussy's mooks than Bond does.
Sadly, I'm almost certain that I'm wrong about everything here. This is just an image that came into my mind when I heard a title and the franchise it was attached to. Maybe you should try this someday as well. Think of some movie or TV show that's well known but you have little (if any) experience with and try to think of what it could be like. I remember seeing a similar idea from
in a picture he made of a Kubo and the Two Strings modern day AU. In that picture, Kubo comes up with a version of what he thinks happened in Detroit: Become Human after his mother doesn't let him buy the game due to swear words. From what I've heard on the internet, his version of the story is probably better than the actual story. Kubo and the Two Strings: Detroit
Super Bowl Halftime Show
Anyway, this game is going pretty well so far. Patrick Mahomes is having a good game, but not an amazing game. San Francisco's defense has helped them hang in there. Their running game has only been a problem for one drive. Here's to hoping the Chiefs get the win in the second half.
I could probably just watch the Halftime Show tomorrow on Youtube.