[CONTENT WARNING] [FE8] Black Dragon Arc 1: The Wolf and the Swan, Ver 1.0 (In progress)

[Bahamut]

Staff edit: The contents of this project may be considered objectionable. Play at your own risk.

A princess fighting to free her kingdom…
A ranger running from his past…
When their paths collide, the course of history will be changed forever…
This is the story of the Black Dragon.

Download:
[Temporarily redacted by the staff]

Story

One thousand years ago, the continent of Rhoden suffered a terrible Cataclysm that devastated the land. Mankind would have perished then, if not for the valor of the bishop Altair, who led the people through the crisis and restored the ruined land. With catastrophe averted, Rhoden entered a golden age of peace, and its people prospered. Altair’s followers founded the Church of Valkyrion to spread his teachings to the people. From this church rose a great nation, the Holy Empire of Damaria, which would soon come to dominate the northern half of the continent. But the Damarian Empire’s expansion would sow the seeds of conflict on Rhoden once again, for on the southern half of Rhoden, the Republic Kingdom of Maridia would soon grow to rival the power of the empire. These two great powers of Rhoden would become locked in a ceaseless battle for power known as the Hundred Years War, which continues to rage on to this day.
Ranger Zean O’Drake has spent the past ten years of his life trying to put his sordid past behind him. Once a respected warrior of the Damarian Empire, his world was turned upside down after he was framed for the murder of his adoptive father and exiled to Maridia. But when a chance encounter with a Damarian noblewoman forces him to confront the past he thought he’d left behind, Zean, along with a ragtag band of close friends, embark on a dangerous journey with the goal of bringing the Hundred Years War to an end. The quest will force Zean to make new allies, confront an old friend, and uncover a plot that threatens to unleash a second Cataclysm that will destroy Rhoden. It is a tale of love and hatred, despair and hope, of loss and redemption. This is the story of the Black Dragon.

Gameplay

Features that are implemented:
-Character and class skills
-A variety of new and returning classes, including female fighters, nomads, and a special playable wolf character.
-Three lords, each one specializing in a different part of the classic weapon triangle (though the axe lord doesn’t appear in this build of the game)
-Weapon triangle grants bonuses of 20 hit/avoid
-Staff of Ages-style character conversations to give characters little nuggets of extra development, as well as giving players the option to choose whether or not they want to view tutorials and gameplay tips.
-Ability to see character growths on the status screen by pressing the Select Button/Backspace key
-HP bars and dangerous enemy graphics
-Bloodlines-style interlude chapters to allow players to explore in-universe towns, giving the characters room to express themselves while allowing for worldbuilding opportunities.

Features I want to implement:
-A bunch more classes, ranging from playable soldiers and brigands to dark fliers and mounted mage units.
-Other quality of life fixes, like being able to highlight enemy attack range
-New weapon types like knives to give swords a non-magicsword ranged option
-Good level design lol
-Brand-new world map that is fully traversable with skirmishes and optional chapters
-proper support conversations
-A bunch more magic spells (hot damn is importing magic animations into FEBuilder a pain in the dingdong)
-Proper character designs
-map sprites (apparently they exist on this website, but I could not find them to save my life…)

Features I would implement if I had infinite resources to do so:
-Three-tier class promotion system
-Morality system based around actions you take in the game
-Capture system that interacts with morality system to make players consider how they approach battles
-Support convos taking place in the Base rather than on the battlefield (don’t know if people have made this already)

Screenshots

Known Bugs

-The Aircalibur tome may freeze the game if it doesn’t kill the enemy you engage when using it.
-Certain bugs occur when skipping scenes with Enter, use the B button to skip cutscenes
-A handful of typos dotted across certain text
-Grey’s fang is supposed to be effective against nomads, but isn’t because I forgot to add that feature in.

Credits

-Hack assembled using FEBuilder GBA, made by 7743 (thank you very much for making this program, it’s the only reason I was able to make this hack at all)
-ROMHack assembled by Bahamut (Me)
-All mugs are pulled from free-to-use sources, either used as they are or palette edits of the original creation
-Mugs used in this hack made by: Imperial, SacredStones, HyperGammaSpaces, Flasuban, Ereshkigal, AmBrosiac, GabrielKnight, Laurent_Lecroix, Nuramon, Tchyrimi, Der, BatimaTheBat, BorsDeep, Ganondorf, Yang Kai, Atey, SmokeyGuy77, FireEmblemier, Beccarte
-Battle animations used in this hack made by: Pikmin1211, Maiser6, Skitty, GabrielKnight, flasuban, Nuramon, Leo_link, Alusq, MK404, Team SALVAGED, IS, ltranc, Genocike, Kao, DerTheVaporeon, Primefusion, Mikey Seregon, Alfred Kamon, PrincessKilvas, Spud, Blue Druid, Yazuki, ZoramineFae, Maiser6, Raiden, Jeorge_Reds, Lisandra_Brave, TBA, Teraspark, Aruka, Kenpuhu, Seal, Retrogamer

I’ll say right now that this hack is very, VERY rough. This is my first attempt at making my own fangame, and there are definitely places where my inexperience shows. Then again, I assembled this entirely on my own in just over a month, so I guess it’s not that surprising that certain parts of it (especially the level design) aren’t so hot. My focus here is on telling a good story(hopefully I succeeded and making the game fun; I’m not really looking to do anything especially innovative with the gameplay, outside of adding in a handful of QoL fixes from newer FE titles. I know that I have a lot of room for improvement as a game designer, and I hope that spending time hanging around this website will help me do just that.
I will drop a quick warning that the story is a good deal darker in tone and more mature in its subject matter than typical Fire Emblem; something more in line with what you’d see in Berserk, Game of Thrones or The Witcher. Be aware of that if you are sensitive to certain mature themes.

The plan for this hack is to get through the first quarter of the overall story. This first arc will be somewhat more intimate and small in scale, though later arcs will ramp up the scale and stakes significantly.

OBLIGATORY RECRUITMENT CALL: As you can probably guess, I would very much appreciate having other people to help me with creating this hack going forward. I would like to therefore put the call out for people interested in this project to please send me a message, because I’d love to work with people. Examples of people I’d like to have on board:
-Graphics people to make mugs and possibly new battle animations
-People to read my story/support scripts to help me improve them
-People to help with map design, because I am noooot good at it lol
-People to help me with designing the world map, making it function in the game, and helping me figure out how to do world map exposition scenes (because god damn did trying to do them on my own make my brain hurt)
-Experienced hackers whose brains I can pick for general advice
-People to maybe help me implement new skills into the game

If you want to follow updates on the project, give me a follow on my Twitter here:
https://twitter.com/TheKingBahamut

If you’re feeling lazy and don’t want to play through the game, you can watch me play through my hack on my YouTube; the first episode will go live tomorrow morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lqIP6hHglg

And finally, if you’d like to support this project, consider hopping over to my Patreon and donating. Even a single dollar helps:
https://www.patreon.com/TheKingBahamut

Thank you so very much, hope you enjoy the hack!

[ChrobinCormillaLover]

Interesting. I’ll have to try it out sometime.

[MakoQueenofAdrestia]

Will there be beast units?

[RandomWizard]

-map sprites (apparently they exist on this website, but I could not find them to save my life…)

Go to The Ultimate FEGBA Asset Repo and the Google Drive, and Graphics → Map Sprites. There’s a pretty big collection.

[Cresscobalt]

If you were seeking on telling a good story, then you did a great job on it. Your writing style sure had drawn me into that world.

Looking forward to its completion!

[Rivian]

So I was having a bit of fun streaming the hack to some pals, and I wrote up my thoughts on what I’ve played, and my suggestions for improvement.

Story

I can see that story is a heavy focus here, and I’m not an experienced creative writer, so I can’t really give any detailed feedback regarding script beyond general impressions.

First of all, I do like the idea of the older experienced lord and the younger more naïve lord. (However, I do think it is odd that he’s already this huge deal with significant reputation, yet starts at level 1 as a growth unit. I feel like there’s a missed opportunity for a more Jeigan-like lord here.)

However, I found it hard to take the story seriously when the characters are throwing around modern profanity every second line. As someone in my server said, ‘This hack has had more profanity in an hour than I’ve said aloud in my entire life.’ I think at this point this just detracts from the atmosphere of the story.

To be frank, I think the on screen ‘sex scene’ is incredibly unnecessary. Call me a prude but I didn’t think this added anything besides the fact ‘Zean is mature!!!’ which has already been established, and watching this with gba sprites is just uncomfortable. I believe the script benefits from either cutting it or only giving implication of such.

I feel like I can live with less frequent reference to rape and sexual assault. I feel like at the moment there’s too heavy a reliance upon more elaborate description of the implications of kidnapping women for the idea of this ‘more mature’ world, there are other potentially interesting ways to touch this that would make this world interesting.

I enjoy a good story as much as the next person, but between the end of chapter 4, start of 5x, a whole 14 talk conversations, end of 5x, then start of chapter 6, that’s an insane amount of reading for the format of FEGBA. I think more eventing and pushing back certain character developments (with the players having barely met the character) would make it flow better. Furthermore, having things to do in 5x besides just talking over and over again would also make the interlude less tiresome, perhaps an opportunity to shop. Having some rewards for the talks did help though.

Having interactions between other party members is nice, but the lord doesn’t need 10 conversations at this point in time to develop.

There are a few scenes, such as beginning of 5, which I feel is overly long for little gain.

Unit balance

Unit design and chapter design go hand in hand, but I just want to address some things about the units first.

Biggest elephant in the room is skills. How people like its implementation varies greatly, but I myself do not enjoy having so many skills on each player unit. I’ve always felt having 1-2 impactful skills at max is sufficient and that anymore than that creates unneeded tedium, but that’s simply how I see it.

However, if going for the many skills approach, I believe skills available to units should be given more room for progression, such as unlocking the last skill at level 10 promoted. For reference, Zean caps out his 6 skill at level 10 unpromoted and a lot of units starts with 3 skills or more. I think these units should perhaps get their skills more spread out.

There are a lot of skills which seem odd, some cases being:

-Ignis on Camber when he kills anything in a hit

-Rally luck on Camber instead of doing anything else more productive

-Similarly to Camber, triangle adept of Alphonse doesn’t achieve much

-Florette has darting blow yet she has 9 more speed at base than the fastest generic

I’m not a fan of heavy use of stance skills on generic enemies or bosses, since this encourages the enemy phase grind.

The lord Zean is too high on the strong end even for a growth unit. Extremely reliable 1-2 range, an unbreakable high damage prf with no downside to use, and similar bases and growths than the rookie units who join at 2-4 levels higher than he does, in combination with a whole low deploy three chapters to grind exp turns him into an absolute powerhouse. By the end of chapter 5 he made it to level 14, not because I was deliberately grinding him, but the fact that snowballs so hard and is simply the best man for the job in practically every circumstance, boasting high durability, reliable 1-2 range and fantastic matchup against the powerful axe foes.

Regarding ‘Jeigan design’ I think both Camber and Alphonse fulfil the ‘delete problem’ aspect of the Jeigan to an excess, yet they cannot perform the other aspect which is helping weaker units grow. Their base stats can smash through the enemy with little consequence as they can barely be damaged, and seem comparable to fully trained growth units in the late game. I believe a good Jeigan should usually have low enough stats to be able to weaken an enemy to be killed with a bad weapon, and to have certain exploitable weaknesses such as effective weaponry (Alphonse’s defence is so high hit barely takes damage from effective weapons) or being weak to magic (Alphonse has high res and there are very little mages.)

I have very little to say about the villager squad who all seem pretty decent, except the fact that Horatio outclasses all of them by a wide margin due to his comparable bases but far superior move and canto+.

Chapter Design

A quick note on aesthetics, there seems to be a lot of tilespam with grass and tree tiles, in that the exact same tile is used in each instance. Mixing grass patterns up a bit does help, and there are mapping guides on feuniverse that explains how using the different forms of forest tiles work. Similarly, the use of cliff tiles as a straight line with the same tile looks uncomfortable.

Prologue

A lot of what I have to say here is targetted towards 2 unit prologues in general. I believe there is very little room for strategy or ‘fun’ with 2 units. This is amplified by the optimal play being camping in a corner forest and grinding each enemy down as the enemies can easily take down player units on advance.

While most of the enemies amplifies the threat which the player is under, in this circumstance with 2 units this makes enemy phasing the go to strategy and it just becomes a ‘stand on forest to dodgetank’ maneuver.

Steel dagger is pointless as it is weaker than the unbreakable prf in everyway. I assume this is some flavour thing, but I believe it should at least get some niche than looking pretty.

As I found out, routing on low health can cause a situation where the boss is able to one round Zean regardless of whether he uses a vulnerary. Realistically he only has a 10% chance of hitting against WTA and forest, but its still a chance of instant death out of player control.

Chapter 1

Most of the issue I have with this chapter is that the generic enemy stats are so low that they pose only a threat to the lord, and everyone else even the pegasus knight can effortlessly wipe them out. Apart from that, fairly straight forward escape map.

I do want to discuss stance skills again on the boss. A boss is a tough foe usually designed for a team effort to take down, so why have a skill that prevents exactly that and encourages pressing wait? Fortunately Camber can one round with no effort but that’s op Jeigen problem.

Chapter 2

I don’t have much to add here apart from what I’ve said earlier about prologue, similar issues with an unenagaging map where forest enemy phasing is the go to strategy.

Chapter 3

This is a fairly linear map. The anti-turtle thieves as a way to speed players up doesn’t really work because the player units start so close to the point, and that the first thief approaches from behind while the second through the chokepoint means that instead of the anti-turtle encouraging player to advance, it does the opposite. 3 units is better than 2, but it still feels a bit lacking for stragetic decisions.

I assume the Amelias are using class bases because they are completely worthless as an enemy unit.

Chapter 4

Boy was I glad to see more than 3 units. This map beats out other maps by having an actual incentive to move and actual units. However, as someone in the server pointed out, this seems like a slight redecoration of vanilla chapter 4. This isn’t an actual issue in anyway, its just people are likely to think less of the hack if they can make that connection. I’ve arrived at the point where no enemy on the map was even remotely a threat to Zean anymore, which with the help of Alphonse turned the chapter into a cakewalk. The new units have their niches but are victims of being outclassed by a snowballing lord.

Chapter 5

A very linear escape map with a slight incentive to move. There was more room for the other units to here. The anti-turtle brigade seems counter intuitive, their purpose is supposedly to push the player forward yet the hefty rewards they carry encourages actually staying behind to take them on. For whatever reason defeating the bosses and routing didn’t end the map and instead ending the turn was needed to end the map. I’m unsure if killing the boss before the anti-turtle brigade showed up should have ended the map early.

Bugs

The fang weapon doesn’t have effective damage against raiders, I checked in builder and the effectiveness doesn’t include raiders.

There’s a lot of textboxes that either extend into off the screen, or the line break is such that certain small bits of text get skipped. I would have recorded where this occurred but I was streaming at the time, so I suggest giving the dialogue another run through.

The chapter titles are still very much vanilla despite the changes to titles I saw in builder.

In 5x there is no convoy which causes the awkward moment when getting an item from conversation requires discarding an item. This is likely due to vanilla 5x no convoy settings which can be changed through patches.

I hope that what I wrote here may be helpful in some way.

[Bahamut]

As in shifters? No, Grey is just a wolf.

[Star-Lord]

Hello and Happy Holidays! I ended up playing this last night on a whim and wanted to share my feedback so much I made an account lol. I’ll be pretty honest and say I’m not a really good Fire Emblem player so things like level design/unit balance aren’t really my forte but I’m always on the lookout for new stories to read so my thoughts may help? Rivian already touched up on some good points that I want to echo in some cases. I only played through it once so my notes aren’t super detailed with screenshots etc.

Story

So I appreciate that you’re trying to bring a darker atmosphere in the Fire Emblem format. I always felt that a lot of Fire Emblem titles have missed opportunities for being more mature and gritty. The thing is that the only mature and darkness that I got from your worldbuilding is that people swear a lot and that there’s a lot of mention of sex.

Swearing

Nearly everybody swears for the sake of swearing. I think of playable characters Nathalie is the only one who didn’t swear (Maybe Mikyla too?). I can be a bit of a potty mouth offline so I have no real issues with swearing but I have to agree with Rivian and say that it’s hard to take the dialogue seriously. You can tell that this is supposed to be story that’s more serious in tone but it doesn’t feel very serious when Zean talks about how he just wants to sit on his arse multiple times. Or when that one retainer of Mikyla talks about how his sister has a stick up her arse (I’m more lenient on this one though because his description says that he is a buffoon). Or when the innkeeper and his friends talk about how the one dude barely has sex with his wife. The tone reads more frat-house than serious.

References to Sexual Assault

There’s so many references to rape and sexual assault that it starts to veer into being uncomfortable. I understand that there’s a warning for mature content but there’s no way I could have expected the sheer volume of it. It pretty much feels like any villager woman exists in game just to make a note on how a bandit could attack them and/or rape them. The most egregious example of this was during Chapter 5 when you save the village Brida’s aunt(?) is at. This woman has just been impaled with a spear and wants to make sure Brida gets the hammer but she also felt the need to say that they didn’t want to bother raping her? I mean, sure I guess she could have a really dark sense of humor but I feel like it didn’t really add anything to the scene. It was sad enough knowing they impaled her.

I also wanted to suggest a potential edit for the first chapter with the little girl who is saved. I forgot the name of the bandit but he makes it clear that he’s kidnapping the villager’s daughter if the demands aren’t met. As players we can pretty much infer what the bandit would do to her. So I found it unnecessary later on when he went “Spread your legs!”. The intent of this scene is to show that both father/daughter are in danger and then Zean saves them, right? Why not do something like “Come here!”, show the girl getting dragged across screen and her screaming “No!!!”? It has the same effect but without reference to raping a little girl for edge points. Zean still saves the day.

Zean and Mikyla

I adore Mikyla. I find her very compelling and imo she’s the best written character in the hack. She’s very rootable and I think you do a good job using her as a tool to explore your worldbuilding. I really enjoyed her conversations with Nathalie and Brida. When I was playing the hack I was pretty much going “What will Mikyla do or say next”, so definitely keep up the good work with her.

Zean right now is just kind of there for me. I wasn’t very sympathetic to him in the first few chapters but I think that’s supposed to be the point. A warrior with a tragic past is a pretty common trope but I feel like I need to reserve my judgement until I see more. Also going to wait until I see more to judge whether or not I like the fact Zean figured out who Mikyla is so quickly.

Other Notes

• There’s a quip where the bandit asks if Zean and the innkeeper are lovers. This is low hanging fruit imo and not really funny. I’ll be transparent about it and say that I do happen to be a gay man so I’m probably more sensitive about this than others.
• Pretty much same deal later on when the bandit makes a joke about bringing the boy to the church. I assume that the church is going to play a big part of your worldbuilding due to the emphasis on the schism and the north/south churches, so I don’t understand the need for this line. I have confidence in your storytelling in being able to explore more interesting themes with the clergy/religion in your hack. The joke just doesn’t add any enjoyment for me.
• The whole scene where the innkeeper’s wife gives birth after getting rescued came out of left field for me. I honestly had to re-read some of the dialogue because I had no idea she was pregnant. I think the only line that references it beforehand is that the bandit will cut the whelp out of her belly in chapter 2? Please correct me if I was wrong. The childbirth scene feels a little extra/unnecessary in the grand scheme of things imo but if you want to keep it I would probably remind the player that she’s pregnant when Her/the duaghters/Mikyla are locked up. Naming the child Wolfgang is corny and cute and I actually kind of like it for Zean lol. Maybe a mention as they leave that she’ll name the child Wolfgang after him?
• Re: the sex scene - I’m not a prude like Mr. (Ms.?) Rivion above me, but I’m not a big fan of the scene either. The thing is that GBAFE format isn’t a good format for that kind of scene imo. TV shows like Game of Thrones involve live actors which makes it more compelling. Video games like Mass Effect/Dragon Age have 3D character models alongside voice acting. Visual novels have more explicit imagery alongside explicit prose. GBAFE doesn’t really have any of that so it just ends up being a lot of mindless clicking. – What I would do if you want to keep the scene is probably begin it with the prostitute going “YES” and then following it up with the quip about how it’ll be half off if he wants another go. I kind of question if the scene is all that necessary though because Zean has a similar dream flashback that shows people he couldn’t save when he’s at the village.

Finally I’m going to agree with Rivion and say that there’s too much reading and the script could benefit from some edits. I like the story so far but I think it’s easy to lose details when there’s so much to read through (See: Me forgetting the woman was pregnant lol).

Units

• Skills: I’m also of the camp that fewer skills the better. I personally find it hard to keep track of so many but opinions on this differ wildly so I’ll just kind of leave it there. I like Rivion’s idea of spreading out when units get their skills to make it feel a little more balanced.
• Zean: I also had no reason to use his dagger. I don’t think I used it a single time. I did use the crossbow a few times however. It’s really easy to feed him a few kills and let him take control of the entire map. I had to really force myself to use some of the other units because the man dodges everything and kills everything. If you can manage to find a way to make us want to use the dagger that would be cool.

Like I said I’m not really a good FE player so as far as chapter design goes Rivian seems to have some good thoughts. I defeated both bosses on chapter 5 and assumed that was where the hack was done as the chapter didn’t finish for me. I’ll have to give it another go later. I suggest taking a look at the bugs Rivian pointed out. Especially the textboxes! The textboxes were really distracting imo and could benefit from some cleaner presentation.

That’s a lot of notes but I liked it more than I disliked it. I do think that you have some interesting worldbuilding and that you put a lot of effort into the backstory (even though we as players don’t even know all of it yet!) so I’m interested in seeing where it goes. The presentation right now just feels very dark for the sake of being dark and edgy and nothing else. Best of luck and congrats on making your first hack!

[Bahamut]

Thanks for the feedback. I would encourage holding off judgements on Zean because there’s a bunch of character development he has yet to go through.

[dancer_A]

the hell is this
no seriously what is the point of writing this, i’m just
why
i don’t desire to continue

[Zmr]

That’s a very good reason not to continue.

[anon98251803]

That’s some pretty cancerous writing (alongside a weak tile spam map). What is this? DGE?

[Zmr]

I can’t imagine changing this one line in particular however, would impede on any of your hopes & dreams. You can still get a sense of the cruelty of the bad guys with less concerning lines. As far as I’m aware this hack is still in fresh stages and star-lord has more or less already described the issues in sufficient detail that need resolving for this hack to be more palatable for others to play.

[Arch]

You could always try not writing about child rape?

Nobody’s suggesting that you should give up on your hopes or dreams.

[Bahamut]

If that’s what people want, how about just saying “Don’t put this in?” instead of calling my writing “cancerous”? and dismissing it because I acknowledged that the medieval era was pretty god damn brutal? What people are doing here is not criticism, it’s abuse. Then again, maybe I was naive to expect better from the FE community.

[StreetHero]

It’s way too dark.
I mean i am no ray of sunshine myself, but damn.

[daffodil]

don’t you go and guilt trip others by threatening self harm and suicide. chair’s reply may not have been appropriately worded and was pretty charged, but given what they had to look at, i can understand where it’s coming from. nor is gaslighting others for their reactions going to help you in any way.

what, did you expect people to take it well when you throw around sensitive and traumatizing problems like child rape as if it’s nothing? you could’ve added a content warning, at the very least. it’s one thing to be edgy and/or explicit and heavy with the writing, it’s another to irresponsibly mess with that. don’t try victimizing yourself here.

i can only repeat that it isn’t going to help anybody in this discourse, least of all yourself. you threw this at us, and so you have to expect being replied to, even if it isn’t what you may have wished for. i don’t think you’d have gotten much different reactions in other communities.

[Zmr]

If it was a personal attack on your own character then yes it’d be comparable to abuse but only the writing itself was ever discussed in unfavourable terms. By no means did anyone remark on you as a person when discussing that line.

[ToGY]

It sounds like you’re attacking his hack and suggesting people shouldn’t play it because the plot has child rape and that’s not something I can accept. People should be able to write about whatever they want, because I believe in free speech, and should be allowed to cause shock and offense for effect. It’s easy to cause shock and offense, but hard to do it in a way that isn’t out of place and fits with the tone of the story. Maybe you could introduce it later into the story after some almost as dark stuff happens so people acclimate to the tone of the story and it seems believable. Of course maybe you are an experienced writer and have already done this, and Dancer is just more squeamish than the average person, but considering this is a fan hack I think it’s more likely this dialogue takes place in the first chapter or something. Maybe you included this because you knew anything less wouldn’t be enough to shock FE4 players, I think you’d be right in that case. I think Terrible Writing Advice’s video on Grimdark would be helpful, as well as everything they make because they are just the best.
You should highlight front and centre at the start of your topic that THIS HACK HAS MATURE THEMES!! IF YOU ARE A CHILD OR EASILY DISTURBED SKIP THE STORY! And then don’t have essential gameplay information in the story that wouldn’t be so good.

For the record I don’t agree with him lashing out and threatening suicide but agree with the idea behind the message which is that his creative ambitions shouldn’t be stifled or censored

[LaurentLacroix]

I mean if that’s the case people should also be allowed to criticize it and be “shocked and offended”, especially if that was the intent. Free speech works both ways, and it’s not an excuse to share whatever you want without considering the sensibilities of others.