#(i know it's more likely they had filler dialogue for her and sam bc they were on screen solely to promote gen v.

[homielander]

on homelander and ryan

well first let me just say that the confrontation with bonnie and adam filled me with unspeakable dread. exploitation of inequitable power dynamics in the workplace at the expense of a female subordinate... yeah, surely that won't come up later! 😃 but i tried to ignore that context so i could enjoy them sipping sinisterly on their chocolate milkshakes which was very fun

anyway. i really enjoyed the homelander and ryan scenes in this episode because it finally felt like we were watching two people who had been living together for a few months... there was a real ease and familiarity to their interactions. (their scenes from eps 1-3 were a bit expository for my taste, i guess.) and i loved that there was no dramatic acknowledgement of homelander's breakdown in their last scene together (even though an apology would have been warranted on homelander's end) because sometimes that's just the way things go. their conspiratorial rapport during the bonnie and adam bit was also kind of adorable, sorry. homelander is being as corny as ever and ryan actually entertains it because he loves his lame dad!!!

i was so gratified seeing homelander ask ryan what he wants... everyone jumped on him for saying "i've given you everything that i ever wanted!" in 4.03 but if you were horrifically abused as a child and then had to care for a child of your own, ensuring said child has everything you longed for is a pretty important consideration (which extends to the freedom to make one's own choices, as we see here. we just needed to give him a minute he was literally working on it!)

the other element to asking ryan what he wants is that homelander doesn't know what to do with this newfound freedom either. yes, he did say at the onset of the season that his goal is to leave behind a world that is "pure" and "cleansed" (supe-led) for ryan, so that ryan never feels the need to bend to public opinion or corporate interests. but what does homelander want for himself now that he's free from the constraints of seeking public adoration??? he has no idea, so he gets his son to choose for him instead. and in a very real sense, "cleansing" the world for ryan is healing for him too, because they are one entity... i love codependence

that doesn't mean homelander doesn't put his own disturbing twist on ryan's wish to "help people". ryan's enjoyment admittedly felt pretty jarring but my take on it is that bonnie's immediate readiness to slap that director made him feel as if he was empowering someone. that's what he wants! while homelander is just glad that a human (it helps that it's the annoying guy who works for him) is experiencing pain. homelander is no longer motivated by winning anyone's approval either so there's even less overlap with ryan's genuine desire to save others. i imagine that this disconnect will come to a head soon... excited to see where things go next!

[ac-liveblogs]

I really don't enjoy Penacony, but I think its structure is kind of shooting it in the foot too.

HYV is having a lot of fun with perspective changes, but I don't think it works very well in a story that wants you to get invested in 'everyone playing their own angle'. Rather than playing as a Trailblazer that's investigating these characters and getting to know them/develop a rapport with them as a player, the game will POV switch to the characters just outright explaining, or partially explaining, their goals to you or to each other.

I couldn't get invested in the Trailblazer's relationship with Aventurine despite 2.1's patch finale really wanting you to think they're cool, and absolutely no effort was made to build up Aventurine and Acheron's final conflict. You suspect Aventurine as a suspect for murder/a liar, he says he's not, and before you can investigate that you switch POV to Aventurine and learn exactly what he's up to because he walks you through it step by step. What did the Trailblazer do last patch? Talk to Gallagher? Why were they not bonding with Aventurine so that his death really hits hard?

Acheron is accused of murder, and before you get to investigate that yourself and try to figure out her motives we get a POV switch to Sam and Acheron promising they're not murderers and context for why Acheron Did A Murder.

Switching back to Sunday and Gallagher and having them just... rendezvous with the crew (via Firefly) instead of having us investigate Gallagher ourselves is also really boring.

I wouldn't accept this in a book or an anime, but I definitely don't accept it in an interactive medium.

It's especially disappointing when Penacony provides you so many options to investigate these characters that are usually unavailable to detectives - you can enter people's dreamscapes and muddle with their emotions, but that's never a factor. Why is a ghost Aventurine telling present!Aventurine (and therefore the player) about Aventurine's inferiority complex and how terrified he is? Couldn't I figure that out by trying to use my Emotion Dial thing to trigger an emotional response in him to get information and see first-hand how good his poker face really is?

It's not helped by HSR using expository dialogue as a crutch for the fact that they don't want to build too many maps, make cutscenes that are too fancy or put in fights they don't have to. It just turns the whole 'mystery' into an explain-a-thon with very little gameplay that actually ties into the mystery we're 'solving'. (we're about to get another one with gallagher and sunday. the 4th since this patch started and it's been like 20 minutes.)

Why did Acheron have to exposit about 'the dark side of Penacony' instead of us visiting it and seeing the differences first hand? Bc this map had to be saved for its own patch? Why did we not get to see the effects of what Sunday tried to do to Aventurine til this patch? Bc they thought expository dialogue would spook me?

Maybe if HSR didn't blatantly theme this around famous crime fiction novels and movies it wouldn't annoy me so much, but when 'solving the mystery' involves almost no actual investigation and the answers are just 'POV switch to the appropriate NPC and they'll explain it".... they've got some fucking nerve, right?

Anyway, I would've had Robin and the Trailblazer team up from the start of Penacony instead of Firefly (for their respective investigations), and had her die in front of them. Aventurine, Acheron and Sam are all present as witnesses so you investigate them for more information using various gameplay modes.

Then the player can see Sparkle-as-Robin and give a shit about that mystery either as a ??? what happened and/or !!! outrage, our friend, and we might give a shit about the fact we think Robin actually died.

also, did we seriously wait 12 weeks to learn the memory meme is a taxi? last patch was such filler bs. did aventurine actually accidentally kill himself.