mamepwrites

[mamepwrites]

A (kind of) review on Dragon Ball Super, and DBS: Broly

Let me start this by stating that, like many people, I've been a fan of Dragon Ball since childhood. So when the Battle of Gods movie and Dragon Ball Super were announced, I was ecstatic in getting to enjoy more Dragon Ball.

Long story short, while I enjoyed Super during its run, I started to realize its flaws more and more in hindsight. Inevitably it must be compared to its predecessor Dragon Ball Z, as Z is arguably the defining work of the franchise. After all, if Z wasn't so popular, reshaping the series from its adventure roots in the original Dragon Ball into being much more focused on fights constantly increasing in scale, then we wouldn't have had the continuations that were GT and Super. Nearly all of the franchise's derivative works in film, video games, merchandise, et cetera come from Z more than anything else.

Anyway, I came off of Super disappointed that the show felt so underwhelming. I felt like so much of it lacked the drama that Z had. Super succeeded Z on a surface level with its exciting battles and new transformations. They're what you immediately think of when you think of the Dragon Ball franchise, after all. But I can say with complete confidence that Super, for the most part, lacked the character drama that made these fights and transformations constantly increasing in scale so engaging. My one exception to this is the Future Trunks and Zamasu arc. With the overt introduction to the world of higher gods in the Dragon Ball universe(s), Zamasu was the optimal response to the changing scale of setting as a villain and antagonist, showing how these gods and supposed overseers of their places in the multiverse could go wrong and how the lines between good and evil, right and wrong, and justice and oppression can be so thin that you might not even notice when you've crossed them.

The Universe Survival arc forming the latter chunk of the show takes a much greater presence, having been alluded to since the show's early Tournament of Destroyers arc, and the idea of it reminded to the viewers in the Future Trunks and Zamasu arc. With eighty contenders representing eight universes, grandiose battles are a given, with the fights featuring big name contenders being the most anticipated. All of this would lead to an impressive final fight between our protagonist Goku and his greatest enemy thus far, Jiren, who is rumored to be even stronger than a God of Destruction. It's natural that the show would reach this point, seeing as its first new primary character to the franchise Beerus be the new standard for the heights of strength, and then have the show culminate in his power levels being surpassed in some way. Dragon Ball Super carried that theme fairly well, if nothing else. However, the focus on this theme of ever-growing power and having fights take center stage really took away from some important things, and that's character and soul. It's what I felt Dragon Ball Z had that Super lacked. Behind characters like Frieza and Cell were legitimate malicious threats to peace and life. Frieza was a galactic emperor whose freely showed off his talents as an oppressor and genocider. Dragon Ball Z's introduction of the Saiyan race immediately led to the revelation that their people were destroyed, and following the introduction of the Saiyans came Frieza, who directly caused the end of their race. So while we have character goals and motivations in the Namek saga that have nothing to do with dealing with Frieza (Krillin, Bulma, and Gohan travel to Namek to revive their friends killed by Nappa and Vegeta, while Frieza wants the Dragon Balls for immortality), it's the clash of motivations involving the Dragon Balls themselves that ultimately lead to the fight between Goku and Frieza. And to have Goku, a lower-class Saiyan runt sent away from the destruction of his planet, become the strongest Saiyan of legend and be the one to defeat Frieza... you have to admit, there's some poetic quality in that. Goku doesn't defeat Frieza to avenge his species, he only becomes a Super Saiyan through pure rage after Frieza kills his best friend. The Namek saga of Dragon Ball Z features some of the best fights in the series -- not solely because of how cool and powerful everyone looks and is chalked up to be, but because of the drama behind each fight. The Android/Cell saga continues to carry this torch, with the Z Fighters trying to prevent their world from ending up like Future Trunks's timeline, and eventually a worse threat in the shape of Cell, whose threat constantly takes humanity and Earth mere inches from extinction and destruction.

And it's this drama that Super sorely lacks, and part of it can be blamed on Super taking place in the time of peace between the end of the Buu saga and the finale World Tournament. By then, Vegeta has already completed his redemption arc, a slow-bake that occurs through the passage of time and his marriage with Bulma and rearing of Trunks (both the ones from the future and the present). Goku returns to Earth as its first line of defense out of necessity after having willfully remained dead after the Cell saga, in his third lease on life. Beerus wanting to destroy Earth out of either lack of pudding or a Super Saiyan God is an incident that carries no weight or genuine malicious intent behind it. Frieza's revival is put to an end just as quickly as he came back. The Tournament of Power's erasure of most of the universes is quickly reversed -- and depending on whether you keep up with the television serial or the comic, this was expected by the tournament's holders. To summarize, Super has lacked a true major villain (aside from Zamasu), and in its stead keeps gods who hold the threat of destruction and erasure over the heads of universal populations, solely because it's easily expected of those in the positions of gods.

Now, onto Dragon Ball Super's first official film: Broly. I have to admit, they did wonders for Broly's character in giving him a backstory that's more than just him getting angry at another baby crying. Broly and Paragus have motivation in revenging upon Vegeta, for his king father's exiling of them. Frieza, this time around, is reduced to standing on the sidelines, serving as the catalyst for bringing Broly, Paragus, and Vegeta together, and only wanting the Dragon Balls for a frivolous wish. The first half of the movie was great for showcasing the new Broly and quickly garnering the viewer's affection for him as the story's (sort of) main character. However, after Broly and company land on Earth, the movie quickly defuses into a series of fights for the sake of fights. (Kinda like Goku, I guess.)

Vegeta responds to Broly and Paragus's hate for him with his fists in kind, as is natural. However, none of this issue is resolved in any way. No one ever brings up King Vegeta's exiling of Broly again, and Paragus never gets the chance because he's promptly killed by Frieza to push Broly into becoming a Super Saiyan. The blind rage of the Legendary Super Saiyan form is a weakness for his character, and not just in the way of Super detailing it to eventually destroy the user the more they fight and well up with power. This blind rage prevents Broly from being a character with motivation behind his punches, and makes him more of a walking power level like Jiren and his flimsy backstory. I should say that Jiren's motivation in getting a wish through Dragon Balls (however ambiguous said wish was kept in the television serial) is at least something of a motivator, however irrelevant it was to the conflict of the Tournament of Power itself. Broly on the other hand loses any rational thought and only wants to destroy anyone he sees.

Next up comes the issue of Gogeta's introduction to the canon of the main Dragon Ball timeline. I was looking forward to this as any Gogeta fan was, and was excited for a fight between Gogeta and Broly ever since the opening animation to Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3. However, while the fight itself felt great, I thought there was little in the way of justification for Goku and Vegeta to fuse aside from Broly's overwhelming strength. For characters like Goku and Vegeta who dislike fusing because they want to rely on their own strength, the amount of time given between their transformations into Super Saiyan Blue and when they flee and later become Gogeta was very short. Seeing as Super Saiyan Blue became the relative standard for fights in Dragon Ball Super, not seeing Goku and Vegeta being pushed to use the Kaioken technique and Blue Evolution form respectively to attempt to contend with Broly was a letdown. It could have really cemented just how strong Broly was, likely even stronger than Jiren, who bested both Goku and Vegeta together in said forms. Still, in a film you have to abridge some things. Maybe I'm overreacting for this one bit. After all, it did take a while for Goku and Vegeta to agree on and successfully perform the fusion. Still, it felt like glorified fanservice. Gogeta didn't get much in the way of defining personality traits to distinguish him from his Potara counterpart Vegito. Previous iterations of the character did better. Gogeta in Z's 12th movie, Fusion Reborn, was shown to be about business, immediately becoming a Super Saiyan before the viewers could even see his base form and taking down the film's antagonist Janemba in well under a minute of onscreen action, only cracking a smirk at the demon kid who causes the incident in the first place. The brevity of the fight is dissatisfying, but was enough to showcase his differences from Vegito, who joked and played around during his fight with Super Buu, and purposefully acting the fool. Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta in Dragon Ball GT had much more screen time, and played around more (to his detriment), showing off the hubris of an ultra-powerful character. This time around in Super: Broly, all we saw in regards to personality for Gogeta was him wanting to seem cooler with a name, and is arguably similar to his Fusion Reborn incarnation, only spread out over several minutes.

In the end, I feel like Dragon Ball Super: Broly was did a fair job at introducing new things, but failed in filling up those things with proper narrative substance. I don't think this movie stands up on its own as a film I'd go out of my way to see if I wasn't a Dragon Ball fan. But in regards to Dragon Ball films in general, Dragon Ball Super: Broly likely stands as the best among them.

[mamepwrites]

Ebb and Flow

Below is a short story I wrote for a creative writing class last year. Inspired in part by southern gothic/film noir.

(This has since been rewritten and expanded.)

Ebb and Flow, by Mesba Bhuiya

The sun was too goddamn hot today. I could’ve sworn the surface of the bayou was boiling with the way it steamed, or something like that. I’m no weatherman.

“You there yet?” buzzed the radio.

“Just about, chief,” I said back. “I’ll be done soon enough.”

“Way out there in the middle of hicksville nowhere. Watch out for the river.”

The worst had passed, but would come again: the fens upriver kept reaching for the road, like tendrils. Every glance I got of them made the hair on my neck stand on end. Along with that, the drive was a good forty minutes already. I couldn’t take the 333 here, not on this side of the river. And the dirt roads down here were nameless. No signs, no nothing. I should have been used to this by now.

I saw a man in the distance, wearing a red cap and a plaid shirt which bursted open from his pot belly as he ran out of his house, flagging me down.

“You came, sheriff,” he said, breathless.

“I’m not the sheriff, just Deputy Serrafib. Are you Mr. Fora–Foret, was it?”

“Foret. Bill Foret.” The T wasn’t silent, I thought, making the correction on my index card. We went inside his home.

“I was told you called about a missing child. Is that right?”

“Missing? He might as well be...My boy, yeah. Mason’s been gone since yesterday, around the afternoon. Shit, he took my car too.” He lowered to a mumble. “I’mma beat his ass when I find him.”

“Now, Mr. Foret, why’d you call us directly? 911 is fine for missing persons.”

“I did. Twice. Something must have been wrong with the line, or they hung up. I went to Beth Dufrene down the road to try again, but she said I should call you, that the folks up in Esther don’t do jack for us.”

Someone down the road, in this phantom town. I shifted slightly, peeking behind Bill’s head. The heat of the zenith covered the rest of the “town” in a highway mirage, but I knew what those huts were. Drug dens. A dark mist began to cover my eyes and the huts. I shook it out.

“Did you see which way he took the car, sir?”

“He went thataway,” he said, pointing behind me. Figured the dens could be ruled out. Thank God.

“Well, it’s a hell of the trip from Abbeville to here, Mr. Foret. Can you tell me about your son?”

Bill gestured to the stairs, and we walked. “It’s not the first time he’s taken off in my car, I can tell you that. But he’d always come back by midnight.”

“I mean physical details, sir.”

“Oh. Well he’s tall for his age, over six feet now. What was he again, seventeen, nineteen?”

I gave him a blank stare at the turn of the staircase.

“Nineteen,” he said. “His hair’s like sand, and on his arm he’s got a tattoo of...Sky—of...well...”

“A tattoo of what, Mr. Foret?”

“A tattoo of a woman, deputy. Curly blonde with a small nose, head in the clouds.”

***

“Come on, you can go—un—slower, sha. I wanna enjoy this too.”

“Shut your mouth.” I pushed. I wasn’t here to enjoy things, though her bouncing curls were fun to watch. But I thought of the tendrils again. So I closed my eyes and pushed.

I threw the rubber in the trash, where the others were. Lying back on the bed, I lit a joe while she grabbed me with a bit of spit, pulling up and down.

“How come we never talk no more, Tony? You always had so many things to say to me about your cases, Mr. Poe Leese.”

I glanced at her from the side of my eye.

“You ain’t ploughing me no more, least you can do is speak.” She pulled harder.

“Alright, alright.” I gave her a few cigs. The place already smelled like rot and cancer anyway. “You know anything about a Mason Foret? Tall, sandy hair. He come to you?”

“Oh, he comes to me every weekend,” she said, chuckling. “He’s a big guy.” She squeezed at the top.

“Cut the shit, Skylar.”

“I’m serious! Every Saturday at nine o’clock.” She giggled. “Oh, the whispers he gives in my ear...Say, what’s your time this week? Six minutes? You could learn a thing or two from him about technique. He tips well, too. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he loves me.”

“That don’t sound like love, Skylar. I’m here every Sunday and you don’t hear me whispering jack to you.”

“Well you should. A lady like me wants more...worthwhile friends. Ones who can reciprocate.” She moved my hand over her breast and made me squeeze and play with the nipple.

“Skylar.”

“Fine then.” She dropped my hand, but kept pulling with her other. I felt like I was going to burst.

“What can you tell me about Mason?”

“Well, he came here last night with his boys. He’s been bringing his camera a lot lately. It’s the instant kind, he’s a bit old fashioned. Sometimes I don’t know whether he’s paying more attention to me or the viewfinder.”

“Do you study photography or something? Whatever, Skylar, his room’s covered in your pictures.”

“As a matter of fact, I majored in pho—hold on, did you say covered?”

“The kid’s dad went batshit when he first saw it. So he said.”

“For real, Tony? I was just joking, I didn’t think he was that obsessed…”

“That, and missing. We’ve got patrols going around for him, posters  and all. Have you any idea where he is?”

“Hmm...before his boys left him last night, he said something about some junkyard...in New Iberia, I think. They were gonna shoot up or smoke. I don’t know.”

I swung my legs off the bed and pulled my pants up. There was difficulty in buckling the belt, so I let her finish me off and clean up.

“You stay safe, now,” she said. “He’s a rowdy one.”

“It’s not like I’m mowing his lawn.” I scoffed. “Before I go, how much was it for the Percocet?”

“For you? Ten a pop.”

***

Now, New Iberia was out of the Vermilion Parish, and so it was outside of my jurisdiction, but I checked it anyway. Going plainclothes saved me trouble, since sheriffs around here had a nasty tendency to get pissy about their territory, and my boss up in Abbeville was no exception. Yet here at the junkyard, it felt like no man’s land. By the time I came closer to the bonfires, already I saw three people tussling, with rusted knives, brass knuckles, and whatever else they scrounge up from the trash heaps. A tire was thrown somewhere. The only law enforcement here was whoever was still standing by the end of it.

The shadow of the bonfire crawled along the ground, entangling those teens laying limp on the ground with vomit crusting at their cheeks. For a moment the fire went dim and damp like a shrouded sun, and all I saw were the kids floating on the surface of the junkyard. All I could think to do was finger my gun, but step by step I made it out. Mason Foret was not here.

It’d been a few days since the kid’s dad called, and with all of my other leads snapped from the strings they hung from, I made the drive back the next day, and in uniform again. I still hated these goddamn fens. I should never have come to Louisiana.

The Forets’ front door was wide open, creaking in the wind. The house was otherwise quiet. Rain was about to fall soon. I drew my M1911 and went in. The house was dead as a dodo, and so was Bill Foret. Body at least two days old, leaking everywhere. Bled out from his gut and groin, long dried. Weapon missing. The kid’s room was now devoid of all features except for one.

COME FIND ME

It didn’t smell like paint. The red was dry on the wall, mostly covering up the spots where Skylar’s pictures once were, but you could still see some of the dust lines. The window was wide open, and through it I saw the huts in the distance, stealing my eyes. I radioed the chief for backup and drove off, deeper into the shades of this once-town. Deeper into the mist’s maw.

Ruins of old homes hit by years of storms dotted this edge of land, and in them were the dregs of the parish. I should have checked here sooner. The gun quavered in my hand just as the the black mist’s writhing fingertips probed my skull. Trigger control, trigger control. Behind the door was a wide room where the air felt...cracked, disjointed. Teenagers lay on one side of the room with crusted vomit on their mouths and eyes wobbling, trying to lock onto me. Middle-aged men lay on the other side, sprawled out wide, clothes stained black. Some even had skin falling off. They were all floating on the surface like a mass fish death. There was another room to the side, its wood splitting and salt-worn. I heard bated laughing.

“Hands behind your head!” Finger off the trigger.

He splashed in the depth of his polaroids, faded blue.

“I said hands behind your head, now!”

“Oh, Tony...Tony!” You’re the cop that’s been haunting me?” He shook his sandy hair back into the pile of photos. “Well I’ve been hunting you, but honest to God am I surprised it’s you. All I could get from Skylar was that it was a cop. She wouldn’t tell me your name.” He grasped the knife at his side, bloodied back.

“Mason, let go of the knife.”

“Alright. Alright. You just answer me one thing, Tony. One thing.”

I said nothing.

“Why’d you dirty her like that, Tony?” His voice scratched. “She’s my woman!” He started crawling, clawing at the floor with his cracking fingernails to pull himself forward. The black tendrils came slithering behind him.

“You stay the fuck back, boy!” I heard sirens in the distance.

“I’ll gut you and paint the walls with you, Tony. All the others did it with her once, maybe a few times. You and me, though?” He shook his head. “No way I’m letting you leave.” He grasped his knife again. I heard rumbling in the other room, but the bodies were still. My vision became muddled. Mason reached across the waters made up of the woman, pulling himself closer and closer to my feet. His eyes looked bulging and bulbous, and his skin scaly and pasty.  He grabbed the knife again, sticking it in the floorboards to pull on. The rusty thing broke and cut his face.

“You won’t take me from my Sky, nor my Sky from me.”

He kept screaming that as we dragged him out, handcuffed and wriggling.

“You doing okay there, Serrafib?” the sheriff said, arriving shortly after. I was on the threshold of the deep, with its dark arms reaching and pulling for me.

Ebb and flow.

Thousands of fish lay dead on the water.

[mamepwrites]

My thoughts on Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

Warning, some spoilers for the game’s story are below.

Dark Souls II was the first Souls game I really decided to sit through and play. I’d touched DS1 when the craze reached my ears, and when it came on Steam as the Prepare to Die edition. I probably would have kept playing if it wasn’t running on Games for Windows Live. I didn’t really do much past the Taurus Demon. Considering that, when Dark Souls II was released, I got it instantly. I didn’t even know it was coming out. I hooked up my 360 controller and had a grand time in the tutorial. When I got to Majula, I was so lost. I found my way to Heide’s Tower of Flame and I ended up learning the basics of gameplay from the first Old Knight there. I didn’t even know about the area’s first bonfire. And then I stopped playing the game. When I learned of Bloodborne, I watched the Game Grumps playthrough of it and I wanted to feel that. I still had DS2 in my steam library, so I decided to stick with it. And I beat it! Granted, I wasn’t good at rolling, and I protected myself with a shield most of the time. But I was pretty okay by the end. I then got a PS4 and Bloodborne the summer after, and my experience in Souls helped me play through it with ease. I love hunting, even to this day. Then I got DS3 on release, and played the heck out of that. And then I decided it was time to play through DS1, and I did, defeating all of the bosses except for Priscilla, because so ~moe~. But with DS2 being my first real Souls game, I always wanted to play it again. I’ll put the cutoff here, because this’ll be a long post.

So, the Scholar of the First Sin edition was on sale on PSN a few weeks ago. I got it and I played the HECK out of it. But when Scholar of the First Sin was first announced, I believe it was advertised as being much harder than the base game, considering changes in enemy placement. But having played it, I really can’t say they did much to that end. Maybe it was just easy for me because I’m an experienced Souls player now. But let’s talk a little bit about the changes to difficulty.

The tutorial Things Betwixt has its entire third section blocked off, and for a fair reason. It seems the devs wanted players to not farm on the Ogres that were in that section. So they blocked it off with a statue that you’re able to unpetrify later in the game, and they make the Ogres non-respawning. Sheesh. However, the first real level of the game, Forest of Fallen Giants, has its first available enemy an Ogre. I thought that was unreasonable, so I skipped it entirely. Sadly, later in the level, the Heide Knight was missing, so no lightning sword. The rest of the level was fairly unchanged. I was playing it with a friend, and so we took down the Pursuer fairly easily. It would have been a little tough doing it solo, but I love playing Souls with friends in any case. Anyways, I found that the Scholar edition featured updated item descriptions, particularly in the text for the Soul of the Last Giant. It pretty much said it was formerly the Giant Lord, a boss you fight much later in the game through enjoyable time travel.

The next area, Heide’s Tower of Flame, suffered a terrible change in enemy placement in my opinion. The original DS2 featured Heide Knights as docile-until-attacked non-respawning tough enemies you would find around the world, and they would drop their weapons or armor. But in the Scholar update, practically all of them are in Heide’s Tower of Flame, and they respawn, which is fair for farming their item drops because they’re no longer guaranteed. But once you beat the area’s main boss, all of the Heide Knights are no longer docile and they actively run up and attack you. Coupled with the Old Knights that are still in the area, traversing around is tough. You don’t have to fight them, though, unless you want to fight the level’s other boss, who is optional. But it’s a fun fight, so why should I say no?

Anyways, No Man’s Wharf wasn’t as scary as I remembered, but it seems that they never really fixed the durability issue in the game. Basically, the original game ran at 30 FPS on consoles, and at 60 FPS on PC and in its Scholar edition, but a bug in the game made weapons and armor degrade twice as fast when playing the game at 60 FPS. Considering No Man’s Wharf has no bonfires except the one at the beginning, this was annoying.

Sinner’s Rise is the stage of the Lost Sinner boss. Dark Souls games tend to have a “Big Four” set of bosses relevant to the overarching plot of the game, and the Lost Sinner is often the first in DS2 that players fight. The fight is cool in the way that it’s fought in near pitch darkness, unless the player has the foresight to find a key in a side-branch earlier in the previous level. With the  key, the player can light lamps in the boss room beforehand, so they can fight it more comfortably. I did that. But the stage itself was underwhelming. In the original DS2, many enemies called ‘Enhanced Undeads’ were available to fight. They were big green masses of flesh vaguely resembling dragons, and they were beefy. But in this Scholar edition, they were all replaced by a single weakened Flexile Sentry, which was the boss of No Man’s Wharf. While it made getting to the boss a lot easier, I felt sad that they didn’t even leave even one Enhanced Undead. 

The next area, Huntsman’s Copse, is one of my dreaded areas. Mostly because of the six Torturers that lie in ambush before the bridge to Undead Purgatory. In my first DS2 playthrough, I depleted their respawns. This time I just killed them one by one and went to Undead Purgatory and bam done with the stage. The Skeleton Lords boss of Huntsman’s Copse proper was also much easier than I remembered. The next level, Harvest Valley, was also decreased and increased in difficulty. There aren’t as many Undead Steelworkers (big greed dudes with big hammers), but there is an increase in the Desert Sorceresses encountered. However, I had more trouble with the Old Iron King boss battle this time around. Fricking lava hole. 

I also hate the Gutter and Black Gulch with a fervent passion. There’s a respawning NPC invader. Some forest child or whatever. Screw him. 

I enjoyed how Dark Souls II flips Dark Souls I’s structure on its head. DS1 had you fight a bunch of bosses (while ringing two big bells) until you get to Anor Londo and retrieve the Lordvessel, at which point you go to kill four bosses to acquire their Lord Souls. The bosses are Gravelord Nito, the Bed of Chaos, Seath the Scaleless, and the Four Kings of New Londo. The former two (the Bed of Chaos being the Witch of Izalith) were holders of full Lord Souls, and the closest allies to Lord Gwyn, who also held a full Lord Soul. Seath the Scaleless and the Four Kings all have shards of a Lord Soul, though they still count towards satiating the Lordvessel. This allows access to the final area of the game, the Kiln of the First Flame, and the last boss, Gwyn, Lord of Cinders.

However acquiring ‘the souls of four’ is the player’s first objective in DS2, aside from being told that they may become the next monarch of Drangleic (a plot goal). Upon meeting the Emerald Herald, the effective Fire Keeper of Majula, she instructs the player to seek greater souls, to seek the Old Ones. Embracing these souls allow the player to reach Drangleic Castle, where they expect to encounter King Vendrick, former monarch of Drangleic. After playing the first game, the player may assume that Vendrick is the final boss as Gwyn was in the first game, but the game does a nice subversion in this. Vendrick isn’t at Drangleic Castle. Nor is he the final boss. Nor is he a mandatory boss, for that matter. Instead of Vendrick you find Nashandra, his queen, apparently ruling what remains of Drangleic in his stead. She charges you to find Vendrick. And so from Drangleic Castle we go to the Shrine of Amana (a terrible area by the way, it’s so long and open but filled with pits you can barely see because of the water agh) and from here we gain entry to the Undead Crypt. It is in the Undead Crypt that we discover Vendrick himself, having long gone hollow.

(If you’re unfamiliar with Dark Souls lore, many people are afflicted with the curse of the undead, and continually revive upon death, until they die so many times, losing sight of their goals and becoming a mindless zombo. This is a hollow.)

We don’t have to fight Vendrick at this point in time, and it’s even recommended against doing so, as he has absurdly high defenses. The only thing we need from here is the King’s Ring, a ‘symbol of the king’. This grants us access to Aldia’s Keep (note that Aldia was Vendrick’s sciencey brother), then the Dragon Aerie and Dragon Shrine. They changed up Dragon Shrine a lot. There’s two main types of enemies in Dragon Shrine, the Dragon Knights and the Drakekeepers. The Drakekeepers are practically suped up versions of the Old Knights in Heide’s Tower, so they’re easy. In the original DS2, the ultra challenging Dragon Knights only appeared in the latter half of the level, where you’re climbing a grand staircase. So color me surprised when I start Dragon Shrine and see at least two Dragon Knights standing beside the first Drakekeeper. Turns out they don’t attack you as long as you only attack the Drakekeepers, and you fight the sole Dragon Knight (colored gold instead of black) who attacks you on the stairs. This one’s like a challenge to see if you’re worthy of meeting the one awaiting you at the very end, the Ancient Dragon. So far, the ‘dragons’ you see in Dragon Aerie are all actually wyverns. Fortunately so, because in DS1′s backstory, the dragon population dwindled. However, this Ancient Dragon is a true dragon, at least in appearance. *snicker* 

It gives you the Ashen Mist Heart, which allows you to traverse memories of certain beings. 

You’re meant to use this item to access the memories of the four Giant corpses found throughout the Forest of Fallen Giants. Though, instead of perusing their memories, you’re whisked away body and all, far into the past where you find yourself fighting the very Giants that razed Drangleic in an infernal fury. As it turns out, you end up fighting and defeating the Giant Lord, who becomes the Last Giant in the present time that you fight in the beginning of the game, that itself attacks you in rage. It’s so GOOD. Anyways, the defeat of the Giant Lord awards you a non-physical item called the Giant’s Kinship, or the Resonance with Giants in the Japanese version. This item intrigues me to this very day.

Its description reads: "Each king has his rightful throne. And when he sits upon it, he sees what he chooses to see. Or perhaps, it is the throne, which shows the king only what he wants. The flames roar, but will soon begin to fade, and only a worthy heir might burnish their light. What is it, truly, a claimant of the throne could desire?"

The whole story of Vendrick (the backstory of the whole game, really) is something I find much more compelling than the story of Gwyn in the first game. From what I can make out (with help from VaatiVidya’s interpretation), Vendrick was once like us in that he vanquished old ones and acquired their Great Souls, and with their power he built his new kingdom of Drangleic. He became seduced by a woman named Nashandra, who convinced him that the Giants to the north were a threat, and so he crossed the sea and raided their lands. To please his now wife and queen, he stole something of great importance from the Giants, which is presumably the power to manipulate souls to power golems, which he used to build his Drangleic Castle. It appears it was built above the Kiln of the First Flame, becoming known as the Throne of Want. However, the curse of the undead appears in Drangleic, and Vendrick and his brother Aldia search for a cure to the curse. Aldia made his manor in the east, close to the Dragon Aerie. As dragons were immortal, Aldia may have assumed their properties could help in curing the curse of undeath. Yet, the dragons are long dead, so Aldia made his own, with a soul of a Giant. This is the Ancient Dragon you meet in the Dragon Shrine. And from Aldia and this false dragon, the Emerald Herald Shanalotte is made. They appear to have not found and made use of any answers in time, as the curse reached even Vendrick. He also realized that his wife Nashandra was in truth a shard of Manus, progenitor of the Abyss, the darkness in humankind, and that she lusted for power, lusted for the First Flame, the kiln of which was deep below the castle. However, the pathway to the Kiln (or, the Throne of Want, as it became known) could only be opened by Vendrick. And so he sealed himself away in the Undead Crypt, guarded by his knights, left to rot in the curse’s grip. Long after this, it is the player that finds him completely hollowed, mostly naked aside from his crown, a loincloth, and a massive sword he lugs around. The player is only able to reasonably fight the towering hollow by possessing Souls of Giants, which lower his defenses. I forget where I heard this from, but what this is meant to represent is that while Vendrick is unfathomably strong (having vanquished four Old Ones while still totally human, and therefore with the risk of a very permanent death), the Giant Souls radiate the hate that was borne for Vendrick in stealing...whatever it was he stole, even long after the Giants have died, and by their hate they can weaken Vendrick, or strengthen the player enough to be a match for this king.

SO. With the King’s Ring, the Ashen Mist Heart, and the Giant’s Kinship, the player returns to Drangleic Castle. They venture deep below to the Throne of Want, where they do battle with its last line of defense that Vendrick installed, the Throne Watcher and the Throne Defender. Then, they fight Nashandra, who has cast off her veil and revealed herself as a grotesque figure, of deep black flesh and a skeletal face. She wanted the player to get rid of the Throne’s (and the First Flame’s) defenses so she could sit it herself. 

It’s a nice plot for a Souls game, in my opinion. 

What I particularly like about DS2 in comparison to DS1 is that the player character has their own intial and personal motivations. In DS1 the player is freed from their cell in the Undead Asylum and are told by Oscar of Astora to ring the two Bells of Awakening. They do so, and find that they may be the Chosen Undead, one who would link the First Flame to their very soul, bolstering its blaze and stretching the gods’ Age of Fire once more, as Gwyn did. DS2′s protagonist simply wants to be rid of the curse, to find a cure for it, and are then told that others come to Drangleic seeking the same, and that to find it they must acquire the four Great Souls, they must become the next monarch. DS1′s character is driven by the plot, while DS2′s character’s motivation goes hand in hand with the plot. 

Another thing I like about Dark Souls II is the relation between the player character, and Vendrick and Aldia. They both sought answers to curing the undead curse. Vendrick peered into the very essence of the soul, and Aldia was a scholar of the First Sin, which is Gwyn linking the flame to his soul while he should have let it die out. While upon completion of the DLC, a still-sentient version of Vendrick (encountered in a memory-past through the Ashen Mist Heart) awards the player with a means to stave off the effects of the curse upon completion of the DLC trilogy, a power in crowns, the symbol of a monarch. While wearing one of the kings’ crowns, the player can die indefinitely with no risk of hollowing. However, this is no true cure, but a treatment for symptoms. But still, it’s something. (Helps a lot in the final boss battle against Nashandra, too.) Vendrick tells the player to seek adversities, to seek strength. He tells the player that by letting the flame die, humankind will become part of the Dark again, as is their true nature. This is clearly the choice between linking the First Flame to one’s soul and extending its time, and letting the flame die out to cast the world in an Age of Dark, an Age of Man. However, Vendrick questions whether this is our only choice, whether these are our only options. We learn that to link the fire and to let it die are effectively the same choice, as it is in a cycle. Let the flame die and eventually it will spark again. Link the flame and another Undead will eventually rise to make their choice. What of this third option Vendrick alludes to?

Aldia styles the player character ‘conqueror of adversities’, and if a certain ending is chosen, accompanies the player in their path to find a way to break the wheel, to shatter this cycle of endless linkings and snuffings of the First Flame.

I dunno I really like Dark Souls II.

Oh right this is supposed to be on my thoughts.

I think Scholar of the First Sin could have done more to fiddle with the game’s difficulty, but there’s a point to that that shouldn’t be crossed. Change too much and you don’t have Dark Souls II anymore. Some changes in the Scholar edition were good, some were bad, but I enjoyed my time. 

I may replay Dark Souls III again. I can’t wait for The Ringed City DLC to come out.

[mamepwrites]

The problem of an intense moment in the middle of a story, and a bit about my project

(This is an edited version of a piece I originally wrote in January 2017.)

I ended 2016 finishing up a turning-point chapter in my fantasy novel “The Farthest Land”, which marked the approximate halfway point in the story. A little backstory: “The Farthest Land” is a story of a strained friendship against the backdrop story of an ages-ancient war now revived. A side note: I’ve struggled for so long to sum up what the story is about. This one line is the culmination of years of awkward descriptions. A little more about it is that the setting of the story is based on the question I asked myself once: “What would the Renaissance be like if instead of being the ‘rebirth’ of ancient culture, it was the rebirth of ancient magick in the world?” I realize there must be dozens of other stories with this premise, but ironically I don’t read as much as a writer should to base it off of anything else in that regard.

So at the beginning of 2017, I resolved to work as much as I could on completing the latter half of the story, and within the first half of January I’d finished the next chapter, which turned out to be the longest one I’ve written. And what a chapter it turned out to be. In it came what I thought was likely the most supernatural thing I would show outright within the story, and TFL is a story that already includes magic, fairies, and demons. (Oh my.) And I’m thankful that it’s likely the most supernatural thing in the story, since the supernatural isn’t the main focus of the story. However, following that event came a moment of such intensity. It was only natural that the chapter ended at the point it ended on. I knew the moment was going to happen, just when I actually got down to write it, it came out so…grave.

I’m not going to detail what occured, ’cause, y’know, spoilers, but I can say it involves one character believing their friend had died, and that it was their fault. Aaaaand I’ve said too much already.

Anyways, what the scene turned out to be was something that must have been so utterly confusing and overwhelming for the character suffering it. And because I’m of the opinion that a writer must feel at least a bit of what they’re trying to write for it to be genuine (I was a bit of a method actor in high school drama), I believe I made the scene properly overwhelming both in content supplanted by form, throwing things at the reader in short bursts without stop. Like a semi-automatic rifle that fires…in bursts. Yeah, that. Short statements, short bits of dialogue, few details for the prose.

Now, the problem that sprouted from this is that it was such an intense moment to write that it left me shocked for two days, and after that I could barely find it in me to write. In my mind, I kept thinking back to that moment and asked myself, “How do I come off of that? How do I continue?” I mean, there’s the rest of the story to write, but I felt as if it was akin to finding out someone close to you had died. Close enough for you to feel melancholy for some time, but not close enough for you to wail and sob yourself to sleep. Where you try to sit down and work, but what happened still weighs on your mind. It’s not a distraction, not some fly to be waved away, but like heavier clothing. Like wearing a thick coat on a mild spring day.

Since moments of great intensity tend to mark a shift or major point in the plot’s progression, events following that should be easy, right? What follows is somewhat reactionary, a response to the change that has occurred. Yet this intense moment marked more of a great development in character, rather than a development in the plot. Starting and continuing the next chapter was tough. I had been able to start it, but I found it tough to write substantial amounts without my mind returning to the ending of the previous chapter, that ‘big moment’ I’ve been talking about. I felt like, instead of driving on a road in the night with my headlights only revealing just what’s closely ahead of me and no further (which I believe is something Stephen King said), that I was driving on an open field in the night, with no headlights and only the moon to dimly light the way, headed in God knows what direction.

I believed that was my first time writing such a compressed intense moment, so brief in just one scene. Now that I’ve since finished the first draft of the story, many more intense moments have happened that I feel more accustomed to it. Is that a good thing? Should I become more desensitized to such hurtful moments in a story? Wouldn’t that make my feelings less genuine when I’m writing? With the rest of my writing career ahead of me, I suppose I can only tackle this problem head-on.

[mamepwrites]

‘Unbreakable’, an M. Night Shyamalan film, is pretty neat

(This is an edited version of a piece I originally wrote in January 2017.)

I’ve been a fan of “Unbreakable” since I was a young child, and I watched it again some time ago. It was one of the driving reasons behind me starting to write about stuff of this sort, in all honesty. It had been such a long time since I last saw it, and it was only watching it this time around that I noticed how fantastic it was in its cinematography and its script.

Though, of course, spoilers ahoy if you haven’t seen it. With the recent film “Split” (2016) having been a secret sequel to “Unbreakable”, and with the third film in the series, “Glass”, coming in soon, you probably should see it. But if you read this and think I’m over analyzing, then know that I majored in English literature. It’s my job to over-analyze!

One of the most striking things one can notice even in the first few scenes of the movie is that several scenes capture the actors in mirrors or other frames to, well, frame the subjects. The opening scene starts with several people in a doorway, which is at first actually a mirror, revealed when they actually come into the doorway at a different angle than what we first saw. The group includes a couple of women, some police officers, and soon a doctor. We see them from a low eye level, and with the sounds of a crying baby being heard, we figure that the camera is from wherever the baby is. Then as the camera lowers, we find that the baby is in the arms of his mother, and that the doctor, women, and cops were all seen in another mirror behind the mother. It’s quite clever, in that we see both the mother and the doctor conversing with minimal camera work. It’s all done in one shot, so no cuts. The camera merely ascends and descends to shift between the mother and the doctor. However, when the doctor becomes alarmed to a problem, the camera moves right this time to show his face directly. When he asks the midwives if they dropped the baby, he looks to the mirror, but now the camera shifts right again to the midwives, who exclaim “Jesus Christ, no.” Then, the camera focuses directly on the doctor and the mother when he says he’s never seen anything like this, and that the baby Elijah appears to have suffered multiple fractures to his limbs while in the womb. This is when the main music theme of the film begins playing more apparently, as it could be faintly heard before. With the viewer being forced to accommodate for these multiple shifts in their perception of the scene, these differing factors of what they thought was how the visuals are actually laid out, the viewer slowly becomes confused, and at the same time, awed. (At least this was the case for me.) Of course, there isn’t enough space to focus on both the doctor and the mother at the same time, so when the doctor reveals this, we hear the crying of the mother all of a sudden, and then the camera shifts to her, and then we actually see her crying. But it’s not any simple crying: it’s different from the baby crying, and it’s no wail either: it’s a tearful messy sobbing of a mother who is now facing the reality of there being something dangerously wrong with her baby. Hearing the sound of her crying coming in suddenly without seeing it first is another surprise factor to account for in the mind of the viewer. This attacking of the senses on multiple fronts, I believe, is meant to overwhelm the viewer in their expectations of the scene. What I believe is so great about the usage of mirrors here is the partially-clear theme of ‘things often not being as they seem’. At first this can be related to the mystery surrounding the existence of superpowers, but more strongly it’s that Dunn’s mentor-of-sorts was his archenemy the entire time. Mirrors reflect the self, but in a scene like this, there must be some distinction between displaying the doctor and the midwives with the mirror and displaying them without it. Or rather, a distinction between what we see in mirrors — the subjective truth of what’s shown to us — and the objective truth of reality opposite the mirror’s surface. At first, all we see of the the doctor and the midwives are them in the mirror, and them in the mirror all we see of them are happy faces and expressions. It’s only when the doctor comes to the grave realization that this baby’s limbs are broken and the midwives are asked if they dropped the baby, that they reach a level of seriousness that they cannot hide behind smiles. We must see the true face with no mirror as the middleman.

I cannot think of a proper segue into this next idea, so I’ll say it outright: As Elijah Price’s moniker becomes Mr. Glass, what can we make of this scene’s mirrors not being adequate to show a person in truth? Is Mr. Glass something Elijah cannot hide behind? I’d like to point out that the mirror was used only to show Dr. Mathison and the others in the doorway, not Elijah nor his mother. We see Elijah’s mother the entire time without the mirror, and considering the angle, it can be said that what we see in the mirror is what Elijah also sees. I’d like to flip that previous idea of Elijah hiding behind his ‘villain name’ on its head. At the end of the film, Elijah reveals he knew being the villain was his fate, as the kids called him Mr. Glass. Elijah also speaks about opposites, being at one extreme end of the spectrum compared to the rest of people and David Dunn in particular, because of his fragility. So if we view Elijah as the opposite of these people then we should also view the claim in reverse over him: Elijah Price is not the true face, but rather, it is Mr. Glass. If the mirror shows Elijah Price, then it is an inadequate reflection of his self. The Elijah Price that Mrs. Price and David Dunn know is not his true reflection; they does not know him as a mass murderer. It is Mr. Glass who has performed these acts. I don’t want to portray this as a case of Jekyll and Hyde, but rather differing personas that, once melded, collectively become one ‘whole self’, but still one that can be split. And I don’t mean to reference Shyamalan’s “Split” either, though I figured the pun would be fun. Anyways, in short, the inadequate reflection of Mr. Glass is Elijah. This theme of ‘frames and mirrors’ greatly help to give a foundation to the character of Mr. Glass.

I really like the opening scene prologue and could sing its praises all day, here’s one little side-note on the usage of frames. The movie actually opens with a little set of factoids on the statistics on comics, how much they cost, how many people read them, how much time the average reader will spend reading them out of their entire lives. In hindsight, I didn’t really care for this set of statistics, and still don’t. But it places foundations for the comic book theme, since this is a superhero movie, after all. The various kinds of frames surrounding various characters give their respective scenes the kind of feeling you’d get from a comic book, as we view comic books in frames surrounding their characters. Though this might not be apparent to the average viewer on their first time watching the film. I’d watched this movie multiple times before realizing myself.

The very next scene after the title card (beautiful choice in typeface, by the way) opens with Bruce Willis’s character, David Dunn leaning against a train window. Nearly half of the shot is taken up by the seat in front of him. Then, as Dunn sits up straight, the camera shifts. It’s still on the other side of the seat in front of him, though now we’re seeing him (and the sports agent he talks to) through the space in between the seats in front. The view comes from, we find out, a young child. The view shifts between both Dunn and Kelly (we never find out her surname, even in the ending credits), though not necessarily when it’s either’s turn to speak. The shifting in angle was great for keeping the scene mostly one shot, with as minimal cuts to other views (such as seeing the young girl from Dunn’s eyes, on the other side of the seats). The framing is that the seats still take up a majority of the shot, so we have ample focus on the character, with minimal distraction from other parts of the setting. We can clearly notice Kelly’s tattoo, we can clearly see Dunn taking off his wedding ring, and we can clearly see him putting it back on. Part of me wants to say this is pretentious or something, but it’s such a neat way to grab the viewer’s attention that it prevents me from saying it. I really do like this. There are several other instances of this doorway framing, like Dunn with his boss’s secretary, and later the boss himself, Dunn talking to his wife Audrey (where it’s her in the doorway frame, and the camera is mostly focused on her the entire time, we only see the side of Dunn’s head). While I applaud the consistency in this interesting presentation, I can’t talk about all of them. You get the idea.

The use of color in various characters is also something handsomely lifted from comic books, as you don’t often see color-coded characters in many films in the past couple of decades. For example, Dunn is associated with the green of his security jacket and his raincoat. Elijah Price is often seen in purple (or dark colors like black and blue). The various criminals and evildoers Dunn encounters, mostly in the last act of the film: the stadium gunman is seen in camo dress, the jewel thief is in a vivid red, and most obviously the janitor man (who so happens to be Dunn’s ‘establishing villain’ is in orange.

I wish I made a list of times I thought the cinematography was top notch, but there’s one scene I think is the absolute best in the movie in terms of how it’s presented, and that is when Dunn wakes up in the hospital, recovering from the train disaster. We see the doctor asking him questions in the background (once again framed, this time by curtains) while in the foreground we see an out-of-focus body that others are operating on. I didn’t even notice the body at first, only when there were little movements and when the tiny bit of blood slowly grew into a blotch while the operating doctors stop, making it clear the only other known survivor just died. But since the body is out of focus, the viewer doesn’t focus on it until they notice the blood slowly growing, at which point, it’s too hard to not look at. I’ll say it again, it’s real clever.

There’s a lot of themes in I really like “Unbreakable”, and I don’t expect I’ll ever get tired of watching it. Personally, I like this over “The Sixth Sense” (2009), commonly considered M. Night Shyamalan’s greatest film. “Split” itself was a great movie, so I have nothing but high hopes for “Glass”.

[mamepwrites]

An introduction, out of sorts.

Hi! I’m Mesba, and as you might have seen in the headers above, I’m a writer, and I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. Though I started writing ‘seriously’ from when I was about 12.

I’m primarily a fantasy writer, though I have dabbled in other genres. Most recently I’ve tried Southern Gothic and film noir-esque, and I plan on branching out more.

This blog is meant for me to talk about my writing and writing in general. (Though, forgive my biases, but I’m probably going to stick closer to talking about fantasy. So much potential there.) I also want to talk about other forms of media, like movies and books. By this, I don’t necessarily mean I want to review movies and books, but rather talk about the things in certain movies and books that make them so good.

As for other things I am, I’m a college student. As for other interests, I like photographing things (most of these I post on my instagram), playing video games (might talk about these too), among other things. My current work is the TFL project, which is short for The Farthest Land, a fantasy story about a strained friendship. The project started around mid-late 2012, but I didn’t start working on the story proper until March of 2013.

Anyways, that’s that. I hope to make this blog as best and full-of-content as I can make it.