#( but the trailers kinda disproved that Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[somnisweet]

God put them in diffrent franchises beacuse they would be unstopabble together

[captainchocolatechicken-fluffles]

The Dark Watch is Whisper

There are quite a few reasons why I think the Dark Watch is the Kuroi Watch’s version of Whisper.

It’s very long, and I kind of ramble a bit, but if you don’t mind that, here it is!

Also, if you have anything disproving this theory, I’d love to hear! (I’m a sucker for Yokai Watch content, so any that I haven’t seen is a blessing. Even if it destroys my theories.)

(Note: I’m calling the universe ‘Kuroi’ and the character ‘Dark Watch’ to avoid confusion between the two.)

Here’s the commercial with English subtitles done by Tyrest on Youtube, since I’ll be referring to it from time to time, it also has some other things that are good examples for my points:

1. In the commercial first announcing Kuroi Watch (the video above), when the Dark Watch stretches out to eat someone, it looks very similar to Whisper.

2. Though the original design for the Dark Watch when he’s stretching out has changed, he still looks a bit like Whisper, though with a much more menacing look.

3. Whisper and the Dark Watch have the same voice actor. I know sometimes voice actors/actresses voice multiple characters in a show, but Tomokazu Seki didn’t even do a different voice, which I doubt would be hard for him because he certainly has the vocal range to give the Dark Watch a different voice. You can hear it in the commercial, as well as the TV segments.

4. The main characters for Kuroi Watch are Jibanyan, Komasan, Keita/Nate, and the Dark Watch. All of the big main characters (except for Whisper) are named, and given a Kuroi Watch design, as shown in the trailer.

Why wouldn’t Whisper be a part of this AU series? He doesn’t have a canon Kuroi Watch design (I’ve looked), so where else would he be?

5. The Dark Watch is a yokai, and it’s entirely possible that he was a yokai that was sealed inside the watch. And since Whisper is sort of connected to the Yokai Watch, at least by association, it would make sense that if any yokai were to be sealed inside a watch, it would be him.

6. During the second Kuroi Watch event in Puni Puni, Whisper doesn’t appear at the start, instead it’s the Dark Watch, Rinne, and Goku Snartle/Namahage. This usually happens when another version of himself, or someone with a similar role (if Usuda-san isn’t Whisper using a disguise or something), is present.

Another part included with this is that the Dark Watch is the one giving you information about fighting Jet Black Orcanos. Admittedly, it’s in a “This guy’s gonna kick your ass, and this is how he’s gonna do it!” kinda way, but he did pretty much hire him to fight you, so yeah.

That’s it, for now. I might update this post if there’s any more connections I can make between these two, or if any more information comes to light.

If anyone has anything to add, or if you want to prove me absolutely wrong, go right ahead!

Have a good day!

[ninja-limabean]

the got damned ninjago movie

not really any spoilers? maybe if you’re super super picky

- anyway the beginning is shit and if it gets bad ratings its probably because of the intro. it seems like they’re struggling to shove a bunch of shit in there to set the scene for the rest of the movie and they don’t do it too well. they don’t really introduce the characters well and it seems awkwardly rushed - they reuse some scenes in a way that’s supposed to be humorous but really it’s just boring because ‘i already saw this why do i have to see it again’ - kinda did like the Emoji Movie and acted super super proud of itself most of the time; tried to awkwardly sneak in feminist values a few times in ways that didn’t make sense - warning: everything that happened in the first trailer either doesn’t happen or is in a news report. all those cool scenes you’re hyped to see? They’ve either changed it, or those scenes don’t actually happen or those EXACT clips only appear in a news report. i don’t really consider this a spoiler as much as just a warning, do NOT get hyped for ANYTHING that was in the first trailer. - they hide jokes & references to the show which are fucking hilarious half the time but sometimes don’t make sense (next point) - they introduce a lot of concepts that are never built upon or explained? you can just TELL that the script writers were throwing around a lot of ideas that they didn’t know how to fit together and there’s a lot of plotholes or blatantly unexplained things. I know lego movies don’t really have coherent lore but you’ll see what i mean - not a lot of time is given to the other characters? they focus on lloyd and garmadon and no one else gets any development they’re just supporting roles - they don’t say ‘garma-darn it’ but they DO say ‘garma-dork’ - the beginning seems like shit and at first I was bored and thinking “oh god. is it gonna be like this the whole time’ and it’s not. it gets better like 1/3 of the way through - my headcanon that lore differences can be explained by saying it’s a little kid making fanfiction with his lego toys was canonically disproved. in fact they go out of their way to make the lore differences make even LESS sense, and it doesn't even make sense in the situation the story's being told in - clearly trying to appeal to kids whose parents are divorced - the animation is fucking great. they do a lot more dynamic/ninja-movies for stiff lego bodies and you can tell the animators have fun with it - a LOT more intense and real and soul-punching than the previous movies

[cheesedoodlesurprise]

Dragon Age 2 Rant

Someone brought it up in some random Facebook Group and it got me thinking that I should finally just put it down in words.  

Dragon Age 2 is so horribly underrated that it hurts.  

The game gets so much hate that people didn’t understand what it did right

–BUT let’s get this out of the way fast: The below rant does NOT include the Level Design.  The same 4 locations used over and over.  There is no excuse for that.  It is bad and it should feel bad for it.  However much the points i will make can also be transferred over to this failure as well, that is just warping a point to excuse lazy or rushed design.

The people I have spoken to tend to cite one main example of its failure as a Role Playing Game(barring the above shit level design) and that is simply that it fails due to its action-style gameplay when compared to the original Dragon Age:Origins.  And I understand that.  There’s two radian wheels(unless you have a computer) and you’re running around and there’s not really much Party Maintenance like it had in the original.  It is not what a traditional RPG should be, and the party direction system was not the best(it reminded me way too much of Kingdom Hearts and Donald’s proclivity to use mega-elixers every time he loses one bar of mp unless you jump in there and hit him with the no-no can) especially when you realize that capitalizing on Condition Statuses is a main feature in felling your enemies.  It is just a gross departure from what a Role Playing Game should be, compounded by the fact that this was the Second Installment and it was already deviating so much from the turn based-lite party management norm.

The answer to this is simple.  Think back to the beginning of the game.  What happens?

The Hawke family gets attacked by a big fuck-off dragon and the story immediately cuts to Cassandra giving Varric shit for telling her something as stupid as “A Dragon Appeared” and you see that this whole game is now a narrative work; a retelling of events by someone being interrogated.  

Not just anyone, A FUCKMOTHERING BARD!!!!

Have YOU ever played a tabletop with someone rolling a bard?

You can’t believe a word they say, because the truth is boring and never makes for a good story.  So when asked what they did when separated from the party, instead of ‘Oh, there was a goblin so i stabbed it in the back” you’re told of a daring battle with a Bugbear King, where after felling the horrid beast, you found the princess he was holding prisoner and after releasing her from her bonds, she then had you free her from another trapping: that of virginity.

The point is this: Bards Lie.

If you take nothing else out of not just this long, badly punctuated, rant, take that.  Bards Lie about everything and anything.  It is who they are.  The story is all that matters.  So what is a Bard to do when being tortured by a bunch of Zealots, demanding knowledge on what to expect when they track down and try to kill one of your best friends?

Punch. That. Story. Up!

You make what originally is just a standard-if not slightly above average-fighter look like a whirling dervish of death to any who would cross him.

That’s what makes the story so well, this isn’t just an unreliable narrator, it is THE MOST unreliable of narrators.  One that tells you, right off the bat, that a lot of this never even happened.  You never know what really happened to Hawke and his Band of Merry Murder.  So, yes, the gameplay is a lot more action-oriented and you don’t have nearly as many combat options(especially if you are a mage) but it’s punched up to 11 the whole time because the person conveying the story is giving it all a nice sheen of ‘this is what happens when people cross them.”  You are not watching the Story of Hawke in this game.  You are watching VARRIC’S story of Hawke.

But that only answers the main issue people have with the game.  The change in controls.

What I never got is this: How can you rip on an RPG about its controls?  They are just mechanics, nothing more, and I have to say Bioware games always kinda sucked at their Turn-Based-But-Not-Really Mechanics.  KOTOR had a lot of issues and the crux of it was the clunky interface and squad controls.  I would love to have a party on a set it and forget it mechanic and not having to constantly pause the gameplay to switch over to one of the characters because they chose to not move out of fire.  How is that better than a little bit of AI that will give your party even SOME autonomy?  Because if you wanna talk about immersion, a character who is, in the narrative of the story, talked up as the quickest cutpurse on this continent and can never be caught by anyone but for some reason can not even fathom the idea of moving away from a giant spike pile he can see on the ground and instead walks right through the damn thing and kills himself is example 1:3 under the definition of Ludonarrative Dissonance.

….My point is this: Combat in Traditional RPGs is kinda trash to begin with and the main reason you play them is not combat.  It’s story.  The story is the big pull.  And this game has story falling out its ass.  It suffers in some places, sure, with what you can tell is rushed design and you are pigeon holed in a lot of places.  Case in point:I was a Mage who hated Blood Magic but put a lot of faith in the Apostates, so when every time you choose to help runaway mages and they come back and, whelp, looks like they are Blood Mages now I was so VERY angry at the game.  Livid.  I honestly don’t think people who played Rogues or Warriors and got DEEP into their characters(@meonlyred, I’m looking at you) can really match that level of anger and disappointment in the story of a game.  No matter what I try, these people just kept failing me.  

But that is the point.  I got so invested into this story that I was disappointed in 1s and 0s.  Here I was, trying to change the whole of Kirkwall by action alone: proving that having Magic does not mean you will become a monster(and, yes, i HATED the goddamn teaser trailer because in it, HAWKE USES GODDAMN BLOOD MAGIC JUST BECAUSE THE FUCKING BULL MAN WAS TOO MUCH FOR HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and yet every one I was putting faith and and having others trust my judgement on have been utterly betraying that faith and trust.

Because this land never functioned on the same as me.  I was the outsider.  The Fereldan immigrant, assuming that this world will function the same as the one I left.  Granted the land I left also had a jihadist attitude to my way of life, this new one in Kirkwall had a civil and social structure completely Foreign to me.  There was no way to change the way they viewed the world because I was just one person.  One Outsider, no matter my lineage, who couldn’t change anything.  This land was going to burn itself no matter what I did.  

And that was the point of Varric’s Story.  Hawke wasn’t the cause of the things that doomed Kirkwall.  The Expedition, the one that found the artifact that corrupted everyone?  Hawke just helped with the last leg of its setup.  They would have got it together eventually.  They would have found it.  Bartrand would have found it regardless.  And Anders still would have…. You know what, let’s save that shit til the end because I don’t want to upset myself early.

Anyway…. All of this would have happened no matter what(maybe a few things would have changed slightly, but not by much) Hawke did, but he was still in the middle of it all.  I know a lot of people like their stories to be centered around them, but those can get boring. Let’s use Fallout as an example: The Sole Survivor, wandering the wastes of The Commonwealth? When you spend your first 100 hours farming Duct Tape instead of finding your son, you come out to be an asshat.  But The Courier?  NOPE!  He was just a guy living in this world.  He isn’t the center of any story, really.  He is just a guy out for revenge, but he has no idea where to get it so him wondering around and dealing with random crap isn’t nearly as a disconnect as the game before or after it.  They are really fun and enjoyable protagonists.  Heck, one of my favorite Final Fantasys is 12: the one where you are NOT the main character of the story.  Thats the Sky Pirate and the Princess.  You are just tagging along for the ride, experiencing their story like a good audience surrogate.  

The only reason you are always being thrust into the middle of everything is because the Powers of this Town are throwing you at them.  The Qunari menace?  You are asked(told) to go deal with it, and it all blows up in your face because of someone else.  Hell you even tried to STOP the hellscape to be with Anders(that motherfucker) by being a good person and talking to him.  But nope.  He had his crappy agenda and nothing you could do would stop it.

….you know what, sure let’s talk about it now. That whole ending arc just pissed me off to no end.  There is Anders killing the ONE person in this whole city trying to hold everything together and treated people with even an ounce of trust and faith JUST TO PROVE A POINT THAT SIMPLY BY DOING IT DISPROVED HIS GODDAMN POINT!  

“Mages aren’t evil so I’m going to kill the beacon of peace in this whole shitty city which will lead to EVERY GODDAMN MAGE to just flipping a ‘whelp guess i’m an abomination now, time to murder everyone, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee blood magic is fuuuuuuuun!’ switch and I guess completely dismantle my entire point.  It’s a good thing Hawke stabbed me for being a fucking idiot” and then you come across the Mages who are holed up to protect themselves but, wouldn’t you know it, their leader turned himself into a Tentacle Death Monster and now you have to kill the one mage who had your back and was a beacon of not being a dickhole.  

All of this just constant “Mages are all evil dicks, lets torch them all’ just upset me so much.  I was playing the entire last part of the game with a giant grimace.  Angry at this whole damn city and making me kill all these people I tried to make better.

Yes, me.  I got so deep into this game(if you read up, I dropped the possessive pronoun a bit when talking about the story) that I was upset that they were betraying MY expectations of them as people.  Not Hawke.  By this time I got way into the game and imprinted.  

No matter what faults it has, in the end its story caused me to become so engrossed with it that even when it took a turn I did not like, I was so invested I was still hooked and responding to it as if it were happening to me.

I know it was a long rant that just sort of cut off, but Anders will do that to me.  Hell, I hated what he did so much, I even tried making a toon to romance him so I could see if there was more dialogue options or how it would shape with him actually having a loving relationship and nope! He still acted the same.  Just pleaded more for me to understand.  

I STILL had to gut him.  I was still so damn pissed off at him I had to kill him even as a character romancing him!

[nothe: wrote this up at work when I was bored so there is a very good chance I have odd stops and idea changes due to the nature of writing something while also having to work  on projects so it may be updated frequently]