#''all this shit'' being storylines for different games and some of the story arcs in the world war z book

[tyran-the-tyranical]

That one line from Raphael's Second Diary will never cease to get me 🥺 LIKE MIGHT I ADD- these are his private thoughts, separate from his manipulation attempts and so he, with his full chest, admits so much in his second diary, like when he says "never have I been so attracted to mortals as I am to those infested by the tadpole." AHH, (my delusions are so real, trust)

BUT WHEN HE SAYS "They gestured to the melting hooks, suddenly glanced my way, and in their face I saw they had the best of me." look, I get the subtext behind all these quotes, but a girl can just ignore all that media literacy and take it for face value, OK? 💅 but also reading into it, he does admire Tav to a certain extent, and I have to wonder, why? Tav isn't an origin character and Tav's actions and character basically changes with every playthrough (Same with Durge, as they can change too) So I have to wonder if it's because Tav is controlled by the player, since, Raphael does end up breaking the fourth wall in his epilogue speech, so perhaps that's what he sees.

Another way to look at it is, either way, no matter what the playthrough, he sees something in Tav, something that makes them stand out much brighter than their companions (For some reason???)

To further that statement, what is the best of Raphael? I mean, if its an evil playthrough, that would be obvious, but if you're playing a good playthrough, what then? perhaps what he sees is someone he can finally use to get the crown, that's also very likely. Still though that's a very to the point (IMO) not as interesting of a reading since it's literally just his end goal for us, BUT STILL A VALID ONE, because, it is true, that's what he wants from us the most.

Also his third diary where he just straight up admits that he's being so honest with us so he can manipulate us, love that for him, "I am master here. A prince of bargains cloaked like scarlet satin. All that hidden under sublimely obvious truths that cannot be discounted." Which also makes me wonder, is Raphael actually an honest person? I mean, Korilla thinks he's at least decent, but honest? outside of helping us, if we look at Yurgir, he really fucked him over lol. Obviously, Raphael isn't what he seems, even if he's honest with us, to what extent? he says it himself, he's honest about "...sublimely obvious truths..." but what about when he says he's grown quite fond of us in his own way, HMMMM?

I wish this man got a proper story arc in the game, outside of the whole deal for the hammer and House of Hope, that's all plot related for the hammer, but a storyline about Raphael as a character? I mean yea, maybe that would whisk away some of his mystery, his intrigue, but I'm sorry- you cant just end it with him fucking himself (poorly) and trying to break Hope (making her a metaphorical symbol of hope anyway, I think....) AND LEAVE IT THERE?!?!? at the same time, I do like the ambiguity of his character, you could think of him as a cruel bastard after seeing what he's done in the House Of Hope to his debtors and Hope herself or perhaps just a Pathetic lil guy who's shit in bed lol, or maybe even soft, if you go off Korillas words and what he does for us in game he can come across as quite nice, especially after we've interacted with Mizora who's is the only other Cambion example we can go off of.

I also just think it's interesting that he sees anything in Tav/Durge at all. Ofc he says he sees the best of him (Always gotta relate back to himself lol) but that especially a mortal is what he could see himself, the best of himself, but then again he does see potential and ambition as admirable (?) or just something he appreciates, you can see that with Mol and Gortash to some extent anyway, But what ambitions does Tav have outside of just trying to survive? Like, the obvious answer is he wants us to give him the crown and we're the underdog in the story but then why does he refer to Tav so differently then? I fear this has turned into another rant again, lol.

Just a final thought here, but, if he did ever get a story arc, similar to the companions, would they give you multiple directions to take his character? i mean with Shadowheart for example, you could help her break from shar or have her fully convert into shars chosen, but even then, if you free her from shar theres the point of saving her family or freeing her from Shars (curse?) there's multiple ways for her story to end. Though, Raphael isnt a companion, so would he have something similar to idk a minor companion like Halsin or Minthara, who don't really have that much of a diversion (I think) in their endings, they don't really have the option, only really if the player decides to be evil or not, they kinda just follow them either way, it doesn't really impact their own stories. Obviously, I would prefer something with nuance but also, HE ISN'T A COMPANION 😭 and pressingly some of the companions need more work done than he does atm lol. Maybe that's me just projecting lol, once again, me wanting to have my cake and eat it too, anyway, that's me done... for now lol

[swordfright]

https://www.tumblr.com/swordfright/756502816281018368/what-do-you-think-is-your-most-controversial-dsmp?source=share

I remember sending this to a bunch of dsmp blogs (starting with elmhat I think ?) bc I like when people share ideas/opinions who diverge from the main consensus because I find it the most efficient way for people to stick to canon and not fanon since people can have different interpretations of event

And it was super interesting to see the one about the experimentation being after prison rather than before (loved the two LN and Q ones too but as you said they were a bit more common. Would love to see your take on c!slime though now)

(And I wouldn't have a problem with you giving unpopular opinion about the fandom either but to be clear I was not trying to start anything with my first question, I just like seeing uncommon takes)

Don't worry lol I didn't assume you were trying to start shit. Ok, so c!Slime is pretty interesting in that he's the closest thing we have to an NPC in what is otherwise a roleplay, which implies certain things about how he can be used in the narrative.

A little bit of quick background: I spent a LOT of time as a kid doing RP online (it was an original story set in the Death Note universe and it happened on a website that went bankrupt in like 2017 and no longer exists lmfao don't worry about it) and idk what RP etiquette is like in other communities, but in the community I was a part of, it was sort of frowned upon for players to outsource heavy plot/character development material to NPCs. It was allowed and people did it, but it was seen as sort of a cop-out. The underlying idea being that if you're gonna bother to do RP, your character's most important interactions should be with other PCs, in part because it helps build/strengthen the RP community and in part because it better entrenches your character's storyline in the storylines of other PCs, which in turn encourages other players to keep RPing and keeps the story going. Again, creating NPCs was very common, but players were discouraged from having entire arcs or character trajectories be highly dependent on NPCs. It was seen as sort of a cheap, low-effort way of progressing your character's development without having to coordinate plot beats with other players, and doing it too often was seen as sort of antithetical to what RP is trying to achieve as a form of gaming-storytelling. To me, c!Slime is a classic example of when an RPer outsources a little too much narrative weight onto an NPC.

First of all, I wanna clarify that it's kinda difficult to define what an NPC is or isn't on this server, but I'd say c!Slime is more of an NPC because even though he's played by a CC with some degree of improv, we know that cc!Quackity specifically wrote c!Slime's character to fulfill a narrative role and asked cc!Slime to play that character - as opposed to alternate characters played by CCs of their own accord (Sam Nook, Dream XD, Sam Bucket, Mexican Dream, etc.) So, for example, I don't see Sam Bucket as an NPC but I do see c!Slime as an NPC. c!Slime wasn't an original creation on the part of the player, he's a narrative tool (which is fine, but it does mean that what he can and can't do in the story is limited to what cc!Q needed him to do.)

There are some things I think the addition of c!Slime did accomplish. For one, Q's interactions with him provide a platform for more introspective character work on Q's part. And while I that character work could've been done by having Q interact with a PC instead, I do think Slime is better positioned to act as an apprentice figure because he had almost no lore prior to Las Nevadas and didn't enter the story with baggage or ties to any other major characters. He's a blank slate, which makes him really easy to use as a narrative device. Q voices thoughts and ideas to Slime that he can't voice to other characters (usually because it would be OOC for him to do so, or wouldn't make sense in context), which means that Slime is sort of a vehicle for delivering Q characterization to the audience.

This is all fine and I think a lot of it was done fairly well. I like cc!Slime's acting and I think the character is a fun addition to the LN crew. That said, I don't think the payoff was great. Slime being an NPC really undermined what I assume cc!Q was going for with End of Las Nevadas, in large part because he doesn't have well-established relationships with other characters. Aside from Q, Slime basically only ever interacts with Tommy, Foolish and Ranboo, and even those interactions are limited to a really tiny handful of streams. Punz capturing and manipulating him, Slime helping c!Dream confront Quackity...all that stuff could have been a lot more interesting if it had more time to marinate. Like, I love the IDEA of Slime and c!Dream interacting, but we don't really get any meaningful interactions between them outside of Slime's function as a storytelling tool. He's there when he needs to be, and only ever when he needs to be.

For instance, I would've loved to see what Slime thinks about Q's slime army. It's really weird to model your mindlessly obedient slave army after your friend. That was a weird ass thing for Q to do, and it would've been cool to see Slime react to that. But because he's more NPC than PC, and because highly scripted lore like the LN series doesn't really encourage deviation, we never get to find that out. Slime doesn't ever really get to be his own character, which in the end kinda undermines a lot of the character development he triggers for c!Quackity because at the end of the day, it's really transparent that Slime only exists to be a prop. It's a kind of one-sided relationship that's unique to RP.

I think End of Las Nevadas was weak for other reasons too, but uhhhh yeah the Slime stuff bothered me a bit. Would've liked to see him do more. And he disappears after pushing Q off the ledge and, to my knowledge, we never see him again! If he had been more PC and less storytelling tool, presumably other characters would've had opportunities to react to Slime's role in the events of that stream, or notice that he's missing/back again/missing. But instead, he's able to just vanish from the story after he's fulfilled his role because that's all he was ever supposed to do.

[greenerteacups]

i humbly write to beseech you to pummel me with your thoughts on rhaenicent

I loooove Rhaenicent conceptually it's so much better than the estranged stepdaughter arc in the books. I also think they have some of the best dialogue in the show because the writers love them so so much. Does the dialogue make sense in the context of the plot happening immediately before and after the scenes they have together? No! Does the bitterly-tender-lesbian-divorcées plotline seem to be taking place in a different show from the rest of HOTD, which is about their two families actively trying to kill each other and often succeeding — deaths that they should technically be attributing to each other by dent of the way war works? Yeah! Do I care? Not that much! And even if I did, would I let it get in the way of a nice nasty friends-to-lovers-to-enemies arc? Like, I've read fic where Hermione Granger and Tom Riddle fuck. Who am I to harp on whether the characters on the R-rated Dragon Tales show are exhibiting literary realism?

Anyway I can't waaaaaaaait for S3 to go whole hog on the "Rhaenyra the Cruel" storyline so that she can complete her evolution into Fantasy Paul Atreides and Alicent can have a total crisis about which of the two tyrants that she's brought into the world — both of whom she loves dearly — she has to kill. The whole story is centrally about mothers sacrificing their children, with the idea that political leadership and parenthood are intrinsically incompatible (Viserys is trying to be a good father but fails in his pursuit of being a good king, Alicent tries to be a good mother but fails in her pursuit of being a good queen, Rhaenyra tries to — you see where I'm going. Ironically the only one who doesn't seem subject to this is Daemon, whose daughters have 0 scenes with him and hence can't object one way or another to his parenting style, but who seems to have escaped the dynastic curse by not trying to be a dad OR a king. Failhusbands #FTW.) And I think it would be the coup de grace on Alicent's storyline if she did betray Aegon for Rhaenyra, in an effort to escape the machinations of politics, only for it to backfire catastrophically. Because:

(1) Rhaenyra is no longer the girl who would have helped Alicent run away from all this. She was lost to Alicent and Cole (who is Alicent's foil and their affair is so obviously an awful wonderful voyeuristic attempt for them both to fuck Past Rhaenyra) the moment Viserys told her she was fucking Dragon Paul Atreides. That's it, game over. You can't love a Messiah without ending up on the altar or the stake. And:

(2) Alicent and Rhaenyra are both arrogant and entitled women, but they're arrogant in different ways; Rhaenyra thinks she's entitled to rule a continent because of her noble parentage and quasi-magic bloodline, and Alicent thinks that she's entitled to rule a continent because she's morally superior to everyone else at court. They are both wrong about this, but they can't let go of that idea without dissolving what's been the basis of their identity for the past 20 years. These girls were raised by the Red Keep. Even when Alicent goes on her spiritual journey to realize that Politics Is Bad, she has staggering gall to talk about being "free," as if it isn't slightly fucked-up that she can just start a war that kills thousands of peasants and fuck off to Essos once she's not having fun anymore. Like. Sorry? Aemond is successfully executing a war that started the moment you crowned Aegon, knowing damn well Rhaenyra (and Daemon, moreover) were not going quietly, and you're blaming Aemond for the fact that people are dying? Baby girl, you did not give a stone cold shit that Aemond was a bit of a maniac until he removed you from the small council (which I honestly didn't think you cared about, since you haven't made a political move all season). And then you wrote him off to Gwayne as like "bro :( look at my horrible awful bloodthirsty son," but BABY YOUUUUUU STARTED THE WAR!!

(Also: youuuuuuu went full Cersei and demanded to carve one of the Velaryons' eyes out when they hurt Aemond by accident, plus also tried to carve out Rhaenyra's eye with a knife in full view of the court when that didn't work, so like — maybe we can think about where Aemond might have learned to use violence as a first resort?)

All this to say that both of them have been poisoned by the Red Keep and I don't think they would know how to interact with each other outside of that circumstance. They've been doing politics since they were teenagers, and their identities have been built around that fact. And even when Alicent realizes this, it still isn't enough to change her into someone different! She is Alicent Targaryen, née Hightower, and Targaryen women do not fucking let go. They are doomed to fight each other forever until one or both of them die. Which is sexy and awesome and I personally look forward to watching.

[thegreatmelodrama]

I talk a lot about the many features of the CW’s Nancy Drew that make it so good, and this post is no different…so let’s talk about filler episodes and Nancy Drew.

I began watching the show in 2021 right after the promo for season 3 dropped and people on tumblr were losing their shit (which having watched season 3 is so real, which is an important point that will make sense later. The mystery immediately drew me in (combined with it being reminiscent of Buffy and Veronica Mars), however, there was also something about the show that felt nostalgic and yet oddly refreshing. Looking back at it now, that something is the fact that the show, especially the early seasons, had the structure of shows prior to streaming—20-ish 30-40 minute episodes. This is largely due to the fact that, due to some miracle that I will forever be grateful for show ran prior to and post COVID.

This structure lends itself to having a season long story arc as well as minor arcs and “filler” episodes. I put filler episodes in quotations because to me filler episodes don’t just “take up spaces” but actually serve to strengthen the show’s interpersonal relationships one hand while also allowing an exploration of each individual character on the other. Such happens by the very fact that the episode takes place away from (and sometimes adjacent to) the central storyline. All of this is to say that filler episodes play (in my opinion at least) an important role in making a show (its story and characters) that much more compelling in which it actually resonates with its viewers (well that and also a weekly release schedule which is a whole other post).

Most shows today follow the same 8-10 episode format (with some episodes being nearly an hour long), in which writers have to fit in an entire story-line (or at least part of it) while also trying to introduce and develop their characters individually and as a group. This structure gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “it’s the small things in life” because in the context of these shows, audiences have to rely to a large extent on these small interactions or moments between characters. This format works for some shows, but for others, many would benefit from at the very least an extra episode or two. Nancy Drew doesn’t just tell us that these people became friends family, it shows us. Even in season four when the writers were hard pressed to wrap up this story and the characters, we were still treated to Drew crew bonding with the Reaping of Oak Hollow (aka the board game from hell episode). Shows these days don’t have the time to shows the steady development of group dynamics, frankly because they don’t have the time, especially since another season isn’t guaranteed (in fact these days renewal seems like a rarity). There are some great exceptions, but such is no longer the norm.

[n0-1r]

i have a love hate relationship with the young justice show

on one hand it's a great introduction into dc with (mostly) fun and (kinda) likable characters

I've already made a post about how this show is not really beginner friendly but anyways, on the other hand the plot doesn't really let you enjoy the main cast as a whole and instead has 50 different plotlines at the same time and even veers off the main characters in the third season.

wait let me list my gripes with this show

1. mischaracterisation or a lack of characterisation

yj is infamous for not caring at all for it's main cast in the most recent seasons, all while tripling and even quadrupling the size of the cast. Of course there's bound to be some mischaracterisation but when the main cast is a mismash of various teen heroes from various eras of dc their character arcs get completely thrown off and even rewritten to be such unlikeable people (cough cough super boy cough cough miss martian) i mean how are you going to make a show and have your main characters be completely unlikable and even hated by the fandom.

2. lack of focus on the main cast

ooough young justice season 3 oooooh 👻

such an infamous season. i guess the character arcs of all our main characters being completed makes it slightly more okay but having this season focus on two more completely new casts of characters, one of which is very hated by the community, and having them go through two very different storylines, well the plot is vaguely the same but the character arcs are so different. And if that wasn't enough season two is a mess of yj throwing a band of characters at you and expecting you to immediately know who these people are, which leads me to my next point but first,

I must confess, i watched this show for two particular duos (cough cough birdflash cough cough timkon) well you know how well both of those went so im probably just salty about that.

3. the timeskips.

5 YEARS. 5 WHOLE YEARS BETWEEN SEASON 1 AND 2

oh my goodness so much happens in those 5 years, people are introduced, people leave and people DIE and so, so many plot holes that are just summed up to 'eh something must have happened off screen'

don't even get me started on that mess of a game that was supposed to patch the gap between these two seasons (ok i haven't actually played but have you seen those reviews, i must just read the fandom wiki)

another one of young justice's most 'iconic' features is it's perfectly linear storyline and continuous progression with absolutely no outrageous timeskips. we have characters popping out of nowhere i mean who the hell is spoiler- WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIRD ROBIN oh and miss martian changing her appearance every season, honestly i think shes getting uglier and i didn't even know that was possible (ok i guess she looks fine in the last season)

so you see, i dont really need to explain how bad the timeskips in this show are.

ok wait this has been just a post of me shitting on young justice uhhh guysss yj is sooo good you should totallyyyy watch

ok wait if you're just getting into dc young justice is a good watch but take the characterisation with a grain of salt okay, please trust me when superboy and miss martian are not like that. and kal is great but garth was actually the first aqualad and i hate to break it to you but artemis does not exist and spitfire is not real

so moral of the story, watch teen titans instead 🔥🔥🔥

[elbdot]

just saw your opinions on the champs, So what's your opinions on the rivals you know?

I played all mainline games from Gen 6 to Gen 9 except for the Diamond/Pearl remakes, so we have the XY-Gang, Brendan, Hau, Gladion, the 3 Galar rivals and Nemona.

Obviously I am very biased and love Hau and Gladion the most out of the bunch, but when it comes to the ROLE of being an ACTUAL Rival, I'd say Nemona's the most competent out of the bunch. I like that she's already a Champion-class trainer when you start out and that she's just incredibly eager to watch you grow, sensing a worthy opponent in you. She's so obsessed with battles and your progress as a trainer that you can't tell if she's crushing on you or if she is just THAT obsessed with finally getting a rival on her skill-level.

Brendan I don't really have an opinion on, the XY-Gang I think we all agree on is the most forgettable set of rivals, but I don't hate them either. They're just there.

I know y'all gonna behead me for this but I'm not a huge fan of the Gen 8 rivals. Hop just makes me SAD. I wish they would've handled his story differently, because his decision to become a Professor in the end feels like a sad plan B rather than him actually discovering a PASSION for the profession, there was no build-up for it. He keeps losing battles and you feel sorry for him because YOU are the cause of him basically giving up his dream of becoming Champion. Him changing course to become a Professor doesn't feel like a happy conclusion and more like him having no other option but to give up his original goal.

Bede is a PIECE OF SHIT but in a GOOD WAY. But the most frustrating part about him is that he HAS an interesting story going on - but you're just not a part of that. SWSH constantly manages to make you feel like an NPC. You are not involved in the conflicts of the characters. Bede fucks up all on his own and pays the price and you're just kind of a bystander. His story keeps unfolding OFF-SCREEN and we just get to see tiny scraps of it and it made me SO FREAKING FRUSTRATED, you're not really a part of his story so you don't even feel like you're his rival at all! And lastly...Marnie. OOF...here we go...I'M SO SORRY YOU GUYS, BUT- Marnie is probably the most boring rival out of them all. There's just nothing to her. I CANNOT for the life of me understand why people love her so much. I've seen arguments of her having a "great storyline" but that's like saying "oh I REALLY enjoyed THIS particular crumb of salted cracker" that is the entire storyline of SWSH. It's paperthin. It holds NO substance. She wants to bring attention to her hometown, good for her. But her ambition didn't grab me, her popularity ingame surrounding Team Yell didn't really make sense to me and her highlight of her arc is...cheering for you. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW Not to mention her outfit is just as much of a clash of concepts as her character. It's like they couldn't make up their mind if she should be the next cute Lillie in a sweet pink dress or the next edgy Gladion in a leather jacket, so they did BOTH but WITHOUT IT ACTUALLY BEING REFLECTED IN HER PERSONALITY or it being INTERESTING SHE'S JUST CUTE-LOOKING AND THAT'S IT THERE I SAID IT

Oh my god everybody's gonna hate me SO MUCH for this opinion oH GOD - I've been holding these thoughts in for TOO LONG, I HAVE to let them out now Like NO OFFENSE to anyone liking her - SWSH definitely has some of the best character designs in terms of trainers and despite having almost NOTHING to offer story-wise, these designs still managed to carry the entire generation somehow, even with the majority of characters showing little to no personality due to the poor writing. I think people are just attached to an IDEA of what she COULD have been rather than what she actually is ingame.

And the same goes for me with Guzma tbh because I'm more attached to the version I made up rather than what is actually reflected in the game LMAO I took the crumbs I got and RAN WITH THEM

[artemisjpotter]

Penacony 2.3 spoiler ramblings

____________________

WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK STOP LEAVING FUCKING CLIFFHANGERS WHAT THE FUCK

Other random thoughts:

- Thank you for finally giving Acheron’s full backstory to us. I feel so bad for her. I went to give her all the hugs. Please visit the Express. You deserve all the happiness babe

-I do like Firefly as a character don’t get me wrong but I’m not a huge fan of them pushing this faux ship between her and the trailblazer. Like it feels forced. I feel like we got attached to her way too quickly in 2.0 and now we’re acting like we’re basically dating. There was even the bridal carry! I think I would like it better if it had more gradual development. I think it has potential, it just needs to happen more organically.

-WHY DID YOU SKIP THE SCENE WITH AVENTURINE AND BOOTHILL STANDOFF AT THE END OF 2.2??? Like how did they reach an agreement? Since when did the marketing dept have beef with the SID? Did everyone know this and that’s why Boothill approaches Aventurine in the first place? WHY DIDN’T YOU SHOW US THEIR CONVO HOYO??? You did both my boys so dirty this patch. They’d better give them an epic buddy cop showdown against Oswaldo in a companion mission or the interlude. Also: show us Boothill’s backstory in game so I can properly sob like a baby and we give him a proper character arc. Also also: make Nihility = depression so we can finally have the Aventurine depression arc we deserve and maybe get that boy some happiness and will to live at some point.

-Speaking of the IPC: wtf is up with Jade??? Topaz looked gay AF when she first showed up, and Jade kept infantilizing her, calling her “little Jelena” and such. And when she went to more harsher “negotiations” with the family she ended up being more manipulative and cutthroat like we saw when she first met Aventurine. She’s clearly manipulative and I think she groomed Topaz and acts like a different person around her. That would also explain Topaz’s brainwashing that the IPC is great and all. God I hate them so much. LET BOOTHILL SHUT THEM DOWN I’M BEGGING YOU 🙏🏾 🙏🏾 🙏🏾

-Speaking of the family, WHERE WAS MY BOY SUNDAY??? We know he’s on trial but he only shows up at the end, and Jade is just like, “explore different paths.” So like what is the future for Sunday now? Are they just letting him go? What’s going to happen to him? And why didn’t we get to properly explore Robin’s grief over her brother’s actions and subsequent imprisonment? Again WE WERE ROBBED

-Ngl I started crying like a baby inside when the Express said their goodbyes to the Nameless. That story makes me so sad 😭 and March’s question about morality AHH I LOVE THE EXPRESS CREW FOUND FAMILY SO MUCH

-And going off of that, I love how the Stellaron Hunters are like found family. It’s so sweet, like how Firefly told Jade Silver Wolf would fuck the IPC up if they messed with her. We love our criminal found family in this house (also love how Kafka asked Firefly to buy her some stuff.)

-Why the fuck did Elio hire Sparkle? I don’t understand that. I don’t understand the point of her or any of the masked fools tbh. Sometimes I imagine Elio is just writing things in the script for shits and giggles and it kinda makes me laugh but also scratch my head 😂

I think that’s all for now but I reserve the right to add to this. I did enjoy 2.3 overall, but they left way too many loose ends imo (and I wanted more fan service for my faves, ngl). I do hope they resolve them in the interlude and/or companion missions. Penacony has sooo many interesting storylines that it would be a shame if they didn’t wrap them all up.

ETA: WHY IS ARGENTI’S ENGLISH VOICE STILL BROKEN I WANT TO HEAR THAT MAN’S ELEGANT VOICE AGAIN 😭 😭 😭

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 7 Minagoroshi pt. Final

“Read the entire series over again.” I wonder how many people actually did that between chapters as they were coming out?

So, since there was that one spoiler I saw from the manga version of events, and this is otherworldly voice is in fact Frederica Bernkastel I guess that does a serious number on the theory that Rika and Bernkastel are the same character. Or so it would seem to me, there’s still all of Matsuribayashi to go through to confirm or kill that particular theory. I admit that I may be operating from a faulty premise. After all, the manga came out how long after the visual novels?

This is kind of an unrelated thought, but I don’t know if I ever shared aloud the way I thought you were meant to read Umineko. Before I started that series I had the thought in my head that you were meant to read the first chapter, then jump to the first chapter of the Answer Arcs. And then proceed that way through the rest of the series, 2 then 6, and so on. Now I know this is a very silly way to think the series was meant to be done, and I admit that this particular line of reasoning didn’t live past its formation for very long. But at the time I thought that’s how it was meant to be read. I am curious though to wonder how long he had originally wanted the mystery to hang until this one came out. Ha, could you imagine if he did that? Release the first game in a series and then not release the second part for four years, despite it apparently being done a while ago?

Where's literally any information on Silent Hill F Konami?

It’s the journey not the destination. He said sarcastically. Also this reminds me of something I had read somewhere along the way that Ryukishi07 was saddened by the less than positive reception that Tsumihoroboshi received. I kind of wonder how different angry Japanese gamers are in comparison to American ones, same shit, different language?

Yeah, you didn’t exactly paint them in the most flattering light there Ryukishi. I don’t know where I read it, but I do recall reading somewhere along the line that at one point he had considered releasing this as just one singular story. Which makes me wonder what that would’ve been like. Would people have been willing to sit through the entire hundred plus hour long storyline for the entire length of it? Or was splitting it up the smarter option? For whatever my opinion’s worth on the matter of this visual novel series that was written twenty years ago, I think splitting it up was the better option. Although a part of me does wonder what the story would’ve been like as one continuous narrative. Just going from one chapter to the next, how would that have played out?

I’ve mentioned it elsewhere but there was an entirely new Higurashi storyline released about four months after Matsuribayashi. Higurashi Hou Rei. I’m given to understand that one’s not exactly the best around. Then again from what little I’ve heard, apparently chapter eight didn’t exactly delight the fan base either.

Just for funsies, around the time I was writing this part I looked at some of the later events of Minagoroshi in the manga version.

I didn’t read the whole thing, but here are some pages of Hanyuu that I thought were interesting. Primarily because I thought it was a nice change of pace seeing her with facial expressions that aren’t just sad creature.

I thought it was interesting how the manga just spells it out plainly that Ooishi had found out that Takano was alive. Whereas the visual novel kept Rika in the dark about what Ooishi had found out in Gifu. It hinted at her fate, but it never just said point blank “yeah she’s alive” like it does here in the manga.

I don’t wish to drag this out for much longer (I have over fifty screencaps from the manga saved in a folder on my desktop), but there are a couple of ones I think are worth sharing.

Kumagai still gets taken out by the Mountain Dogs sniper, but I thought this was an interesting variation, however slight, of Ooishi’s death scene.

I didn’t know this little mini-comic existed, but I’m delighted it does.

It’s canon.

Also canon.

I hope I don’t seem too hyperbolic in my praise of Minagoroshi. But this is genuinely the best written, and so far the absolute best chapter of this entire series so far. Even though I mentioned that I found the section regarding Satoko’s life with her uncle to be an absolute slog to go through. With a mention that the segments regarding this pretty firmly slammed on the brakes grinding the story to a halt I’m willing to tolerate that because the sheer strength of writing for the rest of the chapter more than makes up for it. Much as I disliked that entire section I don’t know what I would cut from it to make it a more palatable read, because despite my complaining it is rather vital to the overall narrative.

I enjoyed this chapter a lot more than I did any of the others because this chapter more than the rest started giving me what I want from the narrative. It started explaining some of the more mystical elements of the overarching plot. Much as it started doubling down on the parasites explanation it started doing so in a way that is better than just a handwave of “alien magic.” The explanation of Oyashiro, Rika in the timeloop (even though I have the theory it’s actually Hanyuu in the timeloop, and Rika’s just an unfortunate passenger to this fate), the very existence of Hanyuu herself. It handles it all extremely better than it did during the entirety of Tsumihoroboshi.

This chapter was a much-needed shot in the arm to improve the trajectory of the entire series. It’s all too easy to imagine a hypothetical scenario where it just continued its downward spiral, and just kept being worse than Tsumihoroboshi. But despite the odds it completely averted that, and came out much stronger for it. You could probably argue that my high opinion of the chapter is only because I went into it with such low expectations. I don’t think that’s the case however. I grant you that I didn’t go in to Minagoroshi with high hopes, but I don’t think I went in expecting it to be an actively miserable time.

In terms of it as a mystery I don’t know if it’s an exceptionally good one. Despite my enjoyment of mystery novels, games, and so on, I don’t feel that I have a good handle on what makes one good or not. Maybe it would’ve been a better mystery if it didn’t immediately cut to Takano injecting Tomitake with H173 and setting up all the stuff for Operation Doomsday. If we just stuck with Rika up until the reveal about Ooishi’s investigation in Gifu, or hell even later with Keiichi’s death.

As it is, however I think that Minagoroshi is far and away the absolute strongest of all of the chapters so far in the Answer Arcs. Possibly even the series as a whole. There was such a wide variety of interesting things happening that except for the plotline about Satoko it kept the story moving at a very brisk pace. I’m very excited to see if the final chapter* Matsuribayashi can keep the streak going.

I love these silly comics.

[blood-mocha-latte]

hbowar ask game is sooooo good my girl. hard to narrow it down but let's go with b, d, f, i, m, o, w!!

thank you bestieeee it nearly killed me <3 <3

hbo war ask game

b. between all four shows, which one do you think did the best job of creating a storyline?

the pacific all the way. three intersecting stories, all individually devastating, all with wonderful character work. MWAH

d. what was a character arc in any of the shows that left you unsatisfied?

i said harry crosby here, but i also feel like the tuskegee airmen were Greatly Wronged in the sense that they just sort of. vibed. after their initial ep. which i get that the miniseries wasn't about them but Still. it made me sad

f. rank all four shows in order of favorite to least and explain why.

1 - the pacific: personal connections to the marine corps as well as robert leckie as well as the Actual And Realistic showing of war is just. so good. i hate media that begins to drift into not showing the Horrific sides of war and i feel the pacific is able to negate this the least. also with the old breed my beloved

2 - band of brothers: good ol' classic!! the besties the bros. do i even need to go into depth with this one.

3 - generation kill: the only reason this one isn't higher is because of Personal Connections that make it a really hard rewatch lol. but as with my reasoning with the pacific, the same applies here

4 - masters of the air: though parts of the series were still really good and well thought out, overall i felt the show tended to be more rushed and struggle more with characterization (through no fault of their own, due to the episode cut and struggles of covid filming) which led to it being my least favorite

i. tag some of your closest mutuals and choose a show portrayal from any of the miniseries' that reminds you of them.

and here we go to the read more, because this shit gonna get LONG.

~ @disastrouscanasta - arthur my partner in luztoye yapping crimes truly. you have luz energy and i say this NOT as a luztoye nor luz expert but based on the simple mathematic equation of a) my Favorite People b) Film Intersections and c) wonderful understanding of joe toye. thank you for your time

~ @ep6bastogne - bel i love you SO dearly and that is why i crown you leckie. YES web vibes also but i think that it's important to reflect upon the motivations of these men as writers and when i say the leckie energy differs GREATLY from the web energy and That Is What You Possess i mean it 100000%

~ @ewipandora - ewi my beloved ewi another partner in luztoye yapping crimes. among other crimes. i name you a delightful cross between luz and perconte, based on the simple and true and beloved fact of Bestie Behavior honestly <3

~ @gorgeousundertow - although we have not known each other for Long nikki i feel it important to acknowledge now that you are a bit like my guide. for i have seen the ever after light. much like i have been cured of a temporary blindness. much like dick winters can also do

~ @lamialamia - the strangest blend of ray person and doc bryan i have literally ever met. linh you go from ray levels of slapstick insanity to severe solemnity in like 2 seconds. and truly. iconique

~ @youcalledmebabe - gigi truly you have webster energy to me. those Web Vibes. WeVibes. genuinely though do you think webster would watch grey's anatomy

m. what do you think is the best quote of each show?

answered here <33

o. say something nice about a ship that you don't understand.

answered here <33

w. what's an hbo war url that you like/would change to? if you have an hbo war url, why did you choose it?

i said it in another ask but i will SAY IT AGAIN. boyetoye is a fucking hilarious url

[ponett]

I saw in your FFXVI review that you'd played Tears of the Kingdom. What were your thoughts on Zelda's role in the game and story?

it was okay. i'll put this below a read more for spoilers. this will also talk more about the stories in general, because i feel like i can't say much about zelda's storylines without doing that

generally, i think i liked the execution a little better than how botw told its story. i loved botw, but it felt like the entire story was already 99% finished by the time link woke up. i didn't feel like i was developing a relationship to those characters as the player, i felt like i was being told about things that just kind of happened around link 100 years before i took control of him - things that he barely reacts to because of how little this version of link emotes in cutscenes. zelda was pretty fun at times, but her arc is really just "she's under immense pressure from her father to live up to her destiny as the reincarnation of hylia and save everyone... and then she does it, the end"

so i preferred the execution in totk, where it felt more like link and zelda had parallel adventures occurring in the present and the ancient past. zelda sets up a lot of things for you in the past, but you also have all the stories of the sages. they're not amazing or anything, but like, those are characters that YOU, the player, met and helped as part of YOUR adventures in the previous game, and now you'll continue to work alongside them and help them save their home regions. those storylines are built upon YOUR actions as the player, making you an active participant, as opposed to being told about link's relationships with the champions. and because link is completely absent from zelda's storyline, you're on the same page as him as you piece together what zelda was up to on her own, so i found that more engaging

the actual content of zelda's storyline in totk is, like... fine. she admittedly feels like kind of a passive observer for a lot of it, a mere point of view character for us to see what rauru was doing, until she finally has the idea to become a dragon and repair the master sword. but i thought that was a cool narrative move. that sacrifice feels like more of an interesting act of agency on her part than her living up to her father's expectations in botw

of course, yes, in the end zelda has to turn back to normal. she can't stay a dragon. it's cheap, but i dunno. did we really expect anything different? to me the only part that REALLY feels like a cop out is the fact that the tens of thousands of years she spent as a dragon are written off as feeling "like a dream" to her, rather than leaning into zelda waiting so many millennia to reunite with link. embrace that drama! but, like. it's a zelda game. they were always going to give us that happy ending where link and zelda are reunited and everything's back to normal

i think the thing to me is that, like. at this point in my life, at the ripe old age of 29, i accept that the stories in most zelda games are nothing to write home about. games like link's awakening and majora's mask are the exception, not the rule. zelda games have fun worlds and characters, they have occasional moments of brilliance, but they're straightforward hero's journey stories made to support the gameplay first and foremost. and most of the 3d zelda games at this point have some sort of ass pull in the final act - shit like zant being pushed aside for you to fight ganondorf, or tetra getting whitewashed and turned into a completely different character the second they reveal she's a zelda

i go to other games when i want a really nuanced, emotional story with a bittersweet ending. i'm not waiting up for zelda writing to blow me away like that, in the same way that i'm just playing other games with female protagonists instead of waiting up for them to make a game where you play as zelda

[skydigiblogs]

honestly thought i would have a lot more to say about adventure 02 but like

i just finished episode 50 and the jist of my thoughts really are "yeah this is better than i remembered it being"

overall, an extremely ambitious follow up to digimon adventure, balancing a lot of plot points and an attempt at having a more cohesive storyline than "bad guy of the arc but suddenly it's apocalymon." in 02, most of the bad guys lead from one to another, in a way that seems much more intentionally thought-out than everything up until the dark master's arc in 01. even the one-off antagonists (dark ocean and demon's crew) played into the larger narrative, and weren't necessarily treated as one-offs so much as chances to expand the scope of the lore and use it to the narrative's benefit.

(although i do think it's a bit sad we never saw follow up on demon going "oh, you all are going to regret sending me to dagomon's ocean SOOOOO much")

also a lot of lore. so much lore. 01 introduced the fact that homeostasis has a bunch of agents that look like gennai, but a2 kept suggesting they're all copies (put a pin in that for my tri rewatch, much as i am loathe to rewatch that one). there wasn't any elaboration, but it is an interesting idea, and unfortunately i understand why it was kind of hastily noted and dismissed (the world tour arc had a lot to get to).

also the dimensional makeup of the digimon franchise got a lot more fascinating in 02. in 01 gennai mentioned that the gate could lead to all kinds of different places, but 02 actually takes that a step further in the lore, showing us the dark ocean and the dimension of dreams (even mentioning that the latter is pulled from by the digital world).

but it does maintain some of the problems i had with the original adventure in that i do wish more of the kids got to see their mega forms. :/

(i know tamers fixes that somewhat, then frontiers backpedals, but. you can't get me to rewatch frontiers lmao.)

furthermore, it does kind of suck that we're still left to wonder about ken's adventures in the digital world. we see ryo and millenniumon in his flashbacks to the adventures, but for audience members who missed out entirely on the wonderswan games, it makes it so we have to trust wormmon's word that ken was a kind person in the past. it's shown to an effective degree in the show, especially with his flashbacks to his childhood after the chimeramon arc.

it also makes narrative sense that they didn't feel the need to go over a story that's already happened, because that likely would have taken too long for 02, which already had so much going on. but maaaaaan. i do not want to play the wonderswan games, frfr (though i know there are fan translations out there for 'em).

i do love ken's arc though, as frustrating as him struggling with self-doubt is to watch. i'm glad the writers didn't make it seem too easy for him to forgive himself, because that's hard even if you weren't the vessel for like. All That Shit. i'm giving this boy a weighted blanket and hot tea.

tl;dr: compared to the oftentimes fever-dream like qualities of 01, 02 feels a lot more narratively focused in its story, and i think that really works to its favor. not a flawless season, but none of the digimon seasons are. a successful sequel to 01, much more so than i remembered from my last rewatch of the dub in 2020.

[zoloteh-volossya]

Hello @lemonwoodwrites, your recent response to a post I reblogged inspired some thoughts. To avoid derailing tavtime's post with a drawn out Gale discussion, I am making this separate post. (I am still acquainting myself with tumblr etiquette - if this is not how to go about things, please do let me know.)

The relevant portions of tavtime's original post:

do you ever think about how the afterlife situation in Faerûn is utterly without mercy? [...] do you ever get suspicious that Mystra can't be trusted with Gale's afterlife any more than she could be trusted with his life?

And your response:

Stuff like this makes me mad that they give Gale exactly zero strong arguments for his ascension and then make it the objectively wrong decision (and flatten his motivations in retrospect!) if he does go through with it. Like how much harder would that storyline hit if he could make an actual persuasive systemic critique of the gods instead of just giving you a bunch of weak shit about how wouldn't it be nice if a god had a mortal's conscience? And could convince you to do it not for the power but because the two of you were going to tear the system down? And then when you went through with it, it turned out that godhood is inherently corrupting? And the moral of the story is that the master's tools can't dismantle the master's house? The seeds of this are there. I think they wanted some of it to come across. They just also wanted it to be a story about Gale being overly ambitious and needing to learn that he's fine as he is and doesn't need power. And so it becomes an inherently conservative story that props up an oppressive system. There's no way you can make a serious critique of the power structure of Forgotten Realms gods if the moral of the story is 'your attempt to change the system was actually just hubris and the authorially endorsed Happy Ending is you accepting your place in it'.

I think this doesn't work for a number of reasons.

On a characterization level, a Gale who is leveling systemic critiques is quite frankly a completely different character than the man in the game. Gale does not think particularly systematically and the well being of other people / the world in general is not anything close to his first priority. He does care to some extent - the moment where I began to come around on him was when he was willing to walk off and die alone to prevent anyone else from dying to his orb. But his primary motivation in finding that orb wasn't to protect the world from it - he found it to increase his prestige in Mystra's eyes in hopes that she would let him command yet more powerful magic.

Gale is, fundamentally, a deeply insecure man who is trying to prove his worth through his magical skill and power. His stated goals of becoming a god to 'do better' are both arrogant (there are many good aligned gods - if all of them are not doing anything to help there is a mechanism at play to explain why, he is not special enough to avoid that) and read, to me, as very much a post-hoc rationalization of what he already wants to do. Becoming a god, he thinks, will finally rid him of his insecurities.

It doesn't, of course, which leads me to my next point. Each origin character has an arc where they pursue something that they think will fulfill them but doesn't actually address their underlying problems. In the case of Astarion, Minthara, Wyll (in a somewhat roundabout way), and Gale, that is power. In the case of Lae'zel, Shadowheart, the Dark Urge, and Gale, that is recognition. This is a consistent theme throughout the work - that what people think they need (as a result of their past/environment) can trap them in the cycle that created them, and that they need to look deeper and actually address their root issues if they want to be truly happy. For God Gale to not be objectively the wrong decision would be as thematically incongruous as Ascended Astarion not being his worst ending - it's giving in to the flaw that drives them.

The thing is, Baldur's Gate 3 is an intensely personal game - it is laser focused on individual stories of abuse and trauma and recovery (or corruption) of the main case. It presents the world of Faerun as it has been written in the lore and then lets the audience sit with the implications of that, the effects of this state of affairs on the lives of our main characters.

What kind of change will Orpheus bring to the gith? This isn't relevant - what the story focuses on is that Lae'zel has broken free of Vlaakith's cult . Shadowheart could embark on a quest to try and deradicalize Sharrans or interfere with their recruitment mechanisms, but she doesn't because the story is primarily interested in what brings her fulfillment. Spawn Astarion can help with the other spawns in the Underdark, but that's a sidenote - the story focuses entirely on him overcoming his fear.

It isn't conservative of the game to say that God Gale is an abjectly horrible idea because the game is not trying to make a serious critique of the power structure of Faerun. It is presenting members of a bunch of typically evil factions (warlocks, Blood War soldiers, Sharrans, Gith, vampire spawn, hubristic wizards, drow), showing how they got there, investigating the effects of that on them, and (typically) offering them a way out and a way to embody their villainous trope. Along the way it definitely does show how flawed the entire cosmology is, but that's not a narrative or thematic focus. The only force attempting systemic change are the Dead Three, who are aiming at the mechanism that undergirds the whole system.

Gale suddenly haring off to enact structural change for the betterment of the world would be incongruous both with his character arc as presented and with the greater themes of the work. It would also not really fit in the narrative structure. If the failure is the process of being corrupted by godhood then from a writing perspective you would want to see that. Watch him try and use the master's tools against the master and warp himself. But that involves following god!Gale for some time - it doesn't work with the narrative structure of the game at all. The in-game arc works because the failure point is in choosing to become a god, a pivotal moment that we see and participate in. The glimpse of God!Gale we see in the epilogue is just the aftermath, the proof of the magnitude of his mistake.

It sounds like you really want a story that tackles systemic critiques and structural problems, and personally I think that BG3 is not really a game that focuses on that. If you want a story that is very much interested in those issues, I would highly recommend playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I have spent five years discussing that story's approach to systemic critique with friends - it definitely has a focus on structural issues that BG3 does not.

Fanfiction works too, though to my understanding you're already doing that. :)

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 27/12/2023

Mr. Rental [B Side] ~ Out of Options

Season 1 No Album Release (Read More) Options - Mr Rental: The Video Game

Ripped by NBGMusic

Yeah, I missed yesterday's post. My bad - you're getting two posts today instead. For such an occasion, I wanted to feature two rips of vastly different sides of the SiIvaGunner spectrum. And, well, I feel like it's been a while since we've covered something truly deranged and out-there, hasn't it? Excluding Your Rip's Shit, Mr. Grinch, which arguably does count, the last time we truly went into the trenches of SiIvaGunner's absurdity was, like...waterwraith pokos from a month ago? Regardless, its time we drop all this Christmas spirit for just a second and reminisce upon the true best SiIvaGunner story arc - the Mashup Crusaders arc.

The strange name of today's rip, Mr. Rental [B Side] ~ Out of Options, is one that I promise does make sense in the storyline's context. Though Season 1 is many things good and bad, one thing it will always have over the channel's later years is that air of surprise and experimentation, with tons of independent ripper-driven passion projects and shitposts coexisting with few things actually planned for the channel's long-term future. That's part of how I've been able to feature so many memorable rips from the Season despite its short 9-month run and often underwhelming rip quality, how we got excellent rips like Collision Chaos Good Future JP [CD Beta Mix] and Can't Say Goodbye to Yesterday - as performed by Bob Dylan, and indeed how we eventually arrived at the Mashup Crusaders arc. Born from the mind of one NBGMusic and based loosely on the meme-happy qualities of the Mr. Rental Facebook page of 2016, it was a series of rips follow two different incarnations of the aforementioned character across two different games. And while one was a lighthearted spoof of the Looney Tunes series, of what I'm going to unofficially label the "A-Side" of the story, it was the B-Side that immediately grabbed people's attention.

Indeed, though the Mr. Rental seen within the A-Side story was a kind soul, with his rips depicting him helping SiIvaGunner's memes good form and aids in ripping, the B-Side depicted a destructive, chaotic force of nature, in a fully animated and "voice acted" MS Paint-drawn world. Mind, this was long before the Christmas Comeback Crisis, and just after The Reboot had ended - the "Mr. Rental: The Video Game" rips were some of the only times we'd be seeing full-on animated depictions on what we presumed was the continuing story of the SiIvaGunner channel.

In the end, the Mashup Crusaders arc was moreso just NBGMusic's little playground to express his opinions and sense of humor as a ripper more than an actual continuation of the core storyline of the channel. But the popularity of the character he'd created was undeniable - through the sheer force of repeated shitposting, Mr. Rental had become a somewhat core cast member of the SiIvaGunner story. And I feel like Mr. Rental [B Side] ~ Out of Options was the moment where that status was wholly cemented - the episode where, after hearing one too many low-effort mashups (Snowball Park - Super Mario 3D World, anyone?), Mr. Rental goes on a killing spree and declares his intentions to wholly eradicate mashups from existence.

Beyond being just a genuinely really funny series of rips, it was with this episode that things really began to get interesting. Because from time to time, this crazed Mr. Rental would begin appearing in other rips on the channel, proudly declaring his intentions - most famously in a simple mashup of Super Mario 3D Land's theme and Chip tha Ripper, with him literally shooting the rip to death eleven seconds in. From this silly side project, the community suddenly had a sort of villain character present within the channel's inner workings - and this was long before the concept of Figments and the in-canon inner workings of SiIvaGunner would become clarified within the lore later in Season 2 and Season 3.

Though the Mashup Crusaders arc sadly didn't get the proper wrap-up it deserved, all of the excitement and surprise that surrounded it will forever be some of my fondest memories with Season 1 of SiIvaGunner. Before the Christmas Comeback Crisis, before Wood Man, before Haltmann, before the King for a Day and King for Another Day Tournaments, and before the SiIva AI - when all we had was SiIvaGunner, Chad Warden and The Voice Inside Your Head, it was such an exciting time to learn that the wheels inside of the SiIvaGunner storyline might still be spinning. Even if it took the form of an Australian rental service mascot declaring war upon low-quality rips.

[zemnian-newcomer]

It's late in the evening, I'm tired, I have work early tomorrow, this will not be coherent, but I have Thoughts about the beginnings of C2 and C3 and how they differ structurally that will not be contained so here I go.

(This got long so I'm putting it under a read more)

Obligatory disclaimer that this is not a judgement of the quality of either campaign in any way, I absolutely loved the Mighty Nein and am liking Bell's Hells a lot so far (I'm up to episode 30, so no spoilers past that please)

So right from the start, C3 felt much more fast-paced and more... densely plotted, I guess, than C2.

The Mighty Nein in their early days travelled together, but felt like they could have fallen apart at any time. It took until around the 20 episode mark for me to feel like they had grown together enough for it to hold. (Ironically, that was immediately put to the test with the Iron Shepherds arc.) Contrast that with Bell's Hells, who felt like a much more cohesive group from the single digits.

A lot of it, of course, comes down to the characters. While Bell's Hells as a group are a bunch of weirdos, there aren't actually that many "strong" personalities among them, which the Mighty Nein were full of. Think about Beau clashing with both Molly and Caleb, Nott/Veth stealing from Fjord, Fjord holding a sword to Caleb's throat, Caleb acting without communicating, Molly generally being more of a shit-stirrer - with Yasha not being there most of the time, one of the best team players they had was Jester. Meanwhile Bell's Hells generally get along pretty well. The closest thing to actual conflict within the party so far was probably Chetney not liking Dorian, and even that got better within a few episodes.

On the other hand, the plot (as far as I can see it) of C3 involves the characters a lot more than the starting plot of C2. The early Mighty Nein took quests/assignments, but they didn't have much to do with them personally until the Iron Shepherds (and, well, the guy they got some of the assignments from turned out to be Jester's father, but they didn't know that at the time). What eventually turned into one of the bigger plots was nearly just one encounter in the sewers of Zadash. It didn't involve them, they involved themselves. The plot of C3 so far (and from what spoilers I've seen, also going forward) involves several of the characters on a very personal level.

There is also a very big difference in character drives and motivations. Several of Bell's Hells have a mystery or problem they're either curious about or actively trying to figure out, which means they're very likely to bite on plot hooks that seem to be related to that mystery or problem. Meanwhile most of the Mighty Nein were actually running away from their shit, and it took months of in game time for them to grow enough to face it. (Molly being the exception in that he, in a way, successfully ran away from his shit and left everyone else to deal with it.)

Which is what leads me to why I actually made this post, the way different characters' backstories and motivations get weaved together and into the bigger picture. As of episode 30, Orym, Imogen, and Fearne all have an immediate connection to the Ruidus storyline, with Orym and Imogen having followed this thread together for a long time since figuring out that their individual quests led them on the same path.

I don't really have a point to this, it's just cool to see the different ways a story can be built in DND, with C3 so far being a really elegant way of tying character motivations together and using them to further the plot, while C2 was more of a lesson in having the characters lead the way and building the story off of their actions.

[americascomic]

I thought I'd talk about my tiktok channel (Amber Flannery Field, the trans "only good tour guide in New York") since a few of you all know me through tiktok and I wanna get my thoughts out.

For videos, I think to help root and organize my thoughts I kinda think myself as doing an HBO-style prestige TV show and letting my emotional and intellectual growth over a course of a year being my "story arc." And I kinda especially like the idea of collecting all my videos at the end of a year and posting on YouTube it as a compliation of a "season," and that kinda structure I think helps motivate me and think of ideas and where to take the next video.

And TV structure is this kinda thing that's shared with TikTok, where I'll always have a large audience of people watching me for the first time but then loyal viewers following me every episode. So, as a TV show, I'll have "filler episodes" where I'll either do a silly shitpost or just a general fun "fast fact" video, but then I have "continuity episodes" where I do video essays, some of which actually have an internal stand-alone story structure to it and slowly little by little reveal my weird backstory (I haven't even begun on the reveals) that also advances the "plot" or shows my growth and reveals information about myself to the point where you can see a lot of growth between my first couple of videos and my most recent ones.

I have like three more videos I want to do and then I'd hit a year on TikTok and I kinda want my final video to be a "season finale" of sorts. The video I'm probably most known for is on White People Jazz, and the season finale will be a sequel to that one (and a less popular one, on Game of Thrones/transmisogny) - specifically again revisiting the subject of appropriation through the word "Slay," and it'll have it end with what I think would be a very dramatic mic drop to leave viewers hanging on.

And then coming back, kinda thinking of prestige television, the first episodes of a new season sets up new problems and new motivations for a character based on what happened in the previous year, and I think a fun semi-fictional motivation to come back to is "my New Years resolution is to get more enemies."

I think it's especially a fun contrast to the previous "season" where a lot of it was about my survival and search for community, and then I sorta cleave into tiktok etiquette and start trying to (lightly) start shit with random tiktokers.

And after a couple of "filler" episodes (it takes the algorithm to catch back up after hiatuses) I wanna do this series of three video essays - effectively a story arc - on "transtagonism" and basically my relationship with negative feelings towards people; competitiveness, pettiness, envy, jealousy and so on.

And I don't know where to go from there. I mentioned HBO Prestige shows as being the sorta structure of my videos, but another structure I borrow from is professional wrestling. There, they do long-term storytelling but they can't really plot everything out because wrestling is so unpredictable that they basically make it up on the fly; you can't plan a long-term storyline if a wrestler gets injured.

So you kinda have to rely on strong motivations and improvise, which I think is one of the things I do with my videos. A lot of them are like 40% improvised, where I'll go in with an essay already written but then completely throw it out and arrive to a different conclusion or location on the day of shooting.

Anyways, this is all pretentious nonsense, but it's fun.

Thanks for following me and thanks to the two or three people who read this.

[starlight-time-machine]

Week in Review

12/15/2024 – 12/21/2024

Sunday

Week 45 of missing Cipher Academy

What’d I say about Drama Queen. I’m not even going to dignify this shit with going into my records, get the fuck out of here. This really is just Chainsaw Man for people with no reading comprehension.

Undead Unluck is so good…I’m going to be so sad when it ends… Everyone’s come so far…

True to my word, I finished Piczle Cross fairly quickly. It was a really solid picross game, and the Story of Seasons theming was a nice little cherry on top. I do wish there was more Trio of Towns music (since that’s my favourite Story of Seasons game of all time), and some of the pixel art left a little to be desired, but overall I had a fun time. I love the changing season mechanic – the different color palette always comes just when you’ve gotten sick of staring at the same thing for like three hours straight. (I do wish the farm had anything on it in the wintertime, but I guess it wouldn’t really make sense). As always, I wish there were more puzzles, but I had a lot of fun regardless. 8/10.

Monday

Read Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls in the dead of night and on some dark bus rides today, and it really added to the spooky vibes of this instalment. Compared to the previous Sammy Keyes book set around Halloween, this one really turns the horror energy up to eleven – we’ve got graveyards, grave robbers, funeral parlors, morgues, and a whole thematic arc about death. Van Draanen has really got things down to a science at this point in the series, and the way the mystery and Sammy’s personal life and growth moments intertwine is always entertaining to watch. The mystery itself was fun, though maybe a little all over the place – the motives were weak and we just never really get closure with one of the red herrings, but overall it was still pretty solid. I also appreciate the adults in Sammy’s life who really do care about and look out for her in their own ways like Borsch and André…it’s so sweet. I’ll give this one an 8/10.

Tuesday

Started playing Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and…hmm. For background, my first entry into the Paper Mario series was Origami King, and I absolutely loved it (so much so that it’s in the STM Awards). I’m almost certainly going to replay it in 2025 (which is something I rarely ever do) (and it’s because Thousand-Year Door has left me a little wanting…) so I’ll go more in-depth about my thoughts on it then, but I’ve watched playthroughs of the original Paper Mario on the N64 and heard about how the Paper Mario franchise has “fallen off” for years and years, to the point where it was just something I took as fact. So when news about the Thousand-Year Door remake came out, I was excited to finally play what people call one of the best games in the series. But…not gonna lie…so far…I’m not having as much fun with it as I did with Origami King… People complain that the newer instalments don’t have as many unique characters, and I get where they’re coming from, but I feel like Origami King still had amazing writing despite their restrictions. What they lacked for in a bigger cast with their own lives and stories, they made up for by focusing in on the few partners that you did have and creating much more cinematic moments. And while the former has its merits, I can’t help but prefer the latter since the Olivia and Bobby plotlines were so moving and memorable for me. Like, what other Paper Mario partner storyline has its characters actually sacrificing their lives and learning to deal with grief? Even small stuff like Bowser mentioning his worries about being a good dad still stick with me to this day…

Characters and story aside, I also love the world in Origami King a lot more… I can’t begrudge Thousand-Year Door too much for this, of course, since it’s about twenty years older than Origami King and had way more technical limitations, but it’s hard not to compare the two when they’re my only points of reference. In Thousand-Year Door, I really feel the sense that I’m just going from room to room, and each room will have its own puzzles to solve or secrets to find…the openness of Origami King allowed for the puzzles and secrets to feel more organically built into the world, I suppose, rather feeling like they were purposely put there as a challenge for me, the player. I also just can’t really wrap my head around the Thousand-Year Door dungeons thus far – because most of them are just similarly themed rooms connected randomly by door or pipe, I have a hard time remembering what connects to what…and this gets especially bad in the sewers where everything looks the same. And then there’s the fact that once the puzzles have been solved, a lot of the rooms are just empty halls for me to walk through if I get lost or have to backtrack for a secret. I think this element of dungeon design is something that has been objectively improved over the years – I think about places in Origami King like Shogun Studios or the final castle, where the rooms have personality and worldbuilding and flow into each other like a real lived in space while also holding puzzles for me to solve. But going from that to Thousand-Year Door makes its lacking areas really apparent…especially when I have to backtrack…

Here’s my big confession: I don’t really like having so many partners. I mean, the different moves are cool in battle, and it’s fun to have a little party going on an adventure together, but the way they’ve locked things behind partner ability checks kind of annoys me… Like, I hate when I’m going through a dungeon and I see something that I can’t reach because I don’t have the right partner yet, and I know I’m going to have to come back later and comb through every room again just to find a Star Piece or whatever. (Not to mention how Flurrie’s ability in particular has been pretty badly indicated thus far…why did no one tell me about blowing those Punis off the ledge…or how she can randomly blow away stuff that doesn’t have the dog-eared edge indicator sometimes…) And all of that is especially annoying when, like mentioned earlier, backtracking itself is a boring task because most of it is just going through empty rooms with their puzzles already solved.

One last gripe I have with Thousand-Year Door is…I don’t really care for the Peach and Bowser scenes. They’re fun bits of extra story, I suppose, but I wish they’d built up the TEC stuff instead of immediately being like oh you fell in love at first sight with Peach. If we had seen them build up a rapport and a genuine connection over the course of the chapters before TEC had its realization, it would’ve felt like a stronger arc in my opinion… But now it just seems like TEC likes Peach for her looks, which is a little lame. Bowser’s scenes are just for comedic relief – which is fine – but because they don’t contribute much to the story, I find myself wanting to get them over with so that I can get back to actual gameplay…the little platformer part was pretty cute and funny, though. That’s been like the one time Thousand-Year Door has surprised me with actually “going there” with a concept. (As opposed to Origami King’s non-stop barrage of those types of moments, but I digress…)

(Sorry, I just remembered one last gripe for real this time. I don’t like the plane mechanic because I’m bad at it and I don’t like the timing on the attacks, it doesn’t feel as intuitive as the attacks in like the Mario & Luigi RPGs.)

Anyway. All of my complaints aside, I’m having a decent amount of fun…just not as much as I’d hoped, I suppose.

I read the latest chapter of Takatora-kun, and I like the complicated relationship dynamics that Asada is exploring here with the unique challenges that an ABO society would have to contend with (especially in terms of consent). Pheromones turning otherwise rational people into sex pests had always seemed silly to me (and eye-rolly because it’s usually just a convenient vehicle for sex scenes), but the way Asada is engaging with it on a realistic level is really interesting.

Wednesday

I realized that the end of the year was quickly approaching, and so far I’ve only watched like, seven movies this year? If I don’t do something to rectify that, my Favorite Things of 2024 list is going to look pretty barren on that front, so I finally pulled myself together and started up Movie Roulette again! For the uninitiated, Movie Roulette is where I run a random number generator that picks a movie from my “to watch” list and watch it – it’s an extremely simple concept, but it helps me actually work up the energy to sit down and watch a movie. So today’s pick was Ocean’s Eleven, which I’d been looking forward to because I actually really like heist movies, and this is the quintessential heist movie…and I’m glad to report that it didn’t disappoint. Everything’s quick and snappy and clever, and everything that gets set up gets beautiful resolved later. It’s just a superbly tight script and I had a fun time, so I’ll give it a 8/10.

Thursday

Conceptually, I really like the setup of Chapter 3 of Thousand-Year Door: since the previous dungeons’ puzzles weren’t that fun for me, trying to rise through the ranks of a wrestling org was immediately a lot more compelling. Or at least it was, in theory. In practice…it’s a little repetitive. And while the rumblings of shady business going on around the arena are juicy, the area itself is a little boring to explore, and having to unlock things on X’s timeline is a bit of a drag. I do enjoy the worldbuilding being done with the other wrestlers and the growing sense of mystery, which was something that I felt was sorely lacking from the previous two chapters, but other than that it was just marginally better than the previous chapters.

Friday

Read the latest Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 2 chapter and it was fine.

Saturday

I got some puzzles and so I’ve been in my cave doing nothing but puzzling for like ten hours straight