#AM I AN APOLOGIST? SHIT MAYBE! BUT FUCK! I HAVE TO BAT FOR THE CHILD IN THE CHILD ABUSE GAME

[devouraes]

if it were not for the sequel's final act, six's devouring of a nome ── one of the skittish little creatures she's had an otherwise mutually friendly relationship with, up until this point ── would easily be her most divisive action over the course of the series. and i by no means intend to downplay the horror of it, it's a disturbing scene that does exactly what it intended to, but i also feel like it's lead to many bad faith readings of six as a character and my intentions here are to try and dig past the surface level of it ; the consumption of the nome is framed as a bait and switch of sorts, with it offering her a sausage most likely smuggled from a guest's plate, unaware that it will be the target of her hunger instead. so first things first, why not eat the sausage ?

initially i read this as her hunger becoming more ravenous as it progresses, and this does seem to fit thematically with all that she eats over the course of the first game. first bread, then meat, then a rat, then the nome ; a sapient creature, and finally, the lady of the maw. however, this interpretation as a more literal reading of her actions has been debunked by tarsier in a post we'll get to in a second. i'm only bringing it up despite this because i believe that, while not being the actual textual events of the story, it still symbolically fits the narrative. now, for tarsier's post:

this tweet frames what many have interpreted as an act of senseless violence to actually be an attempt on six's part to escape the food chain the maw has built itself on. but that being said, the secrets of the maw chapters the hideaway and the residence come with the reveal that nomes are children under a spell. this is a piece of the story often used to further paint six in a malicious light, but the dlc put an emphasis on secrets ── it's in the title ── and the lady, the one responsible for the nomes, is defined by her mystery. nomes are one of the many little lost things in the nowhere, and six has no way of knowing of this. meaning, upon recognizing the food to be made from human meat, six made an ultimately futile attempt to keep herself separated from the guests and workers of the maw. to me, this strikes a balance between her nature as a survivalist and the fact that she is still a child, far from a normal one, but still one that refused to eat another to live, even if it was all for naught.

what follows this is six literally eating from the lady and also eating from the maw's guests in a more vampiric way as well. how does this fit into her previously trying to avoid consuming what she knows to be human meat ?

there's a lot of ways you can spin it, but my personal interpretation is that while her encounter with the lady is ── again ── a literal act, it's also invoking a lot of symbolism commonly tied to cannibalism in writing. cannibalism is often used to represent power over another, and when six takes a bite straight from her neck, she is imbued with the lady's magic. she's no longer just another runaway, now holding all of the strength and ability of the maw's ruler. but that said, i do not subscribe to the theory that she becomes the lady or even a lady, as stated in my rules page. when i say this, i don't mean she in any way gains power aboard the maw, personally i believe she leaves it behind, but she does sit at the top of that food chain now. this is one of the many ways the world of the nowhere is cyclical in nature, and it's worth noting how it fits into real world concepts such as the cycles of violence and abuse ; six devouring the lady was, to me, a defiant act, but one that showcases how children can often not escape these cycles on their own. six can ascend through the maw and leave it to rust, but not without taking a bite, not without shifting the power dynamic in place of escaping it. after all, what can she do to escape it ? she's only a child, one with a deeply supernatural hunger that's left her sick. she doesn't even begin to show signs of such hunger until the broadcaster, an adult, ripped something vital out of her ; violence left her empty, and she has to enact violence of her own to not only fill that void but to ensure she won't be abused again.

the feeding off of the guest's lifeforce further compounds this, reading less as an act driven by hunger and more of an eye for an eye, something displayed in LN2 as well, with her clobbering one of the bullies. these same guests previously tried to devour her, and so, she does the same to them. an unloved child will burn down the village to feel it's warmth, or however that quote goes. or as an achievementin the sequel asks, is it murder if they're bad people ? i'm not here to answer that, only to say that six is not the villain of this story, the adults who created this cycle she falls prey to are.

[nocturnalgemstones]

Nobody Cares

tw: mentions of abuse, neglect potentially 

(also a lot of swearing)

This is a long post.

Nobody fucking cares about these children and I cannot get over it. I’ve been sitting on this for far too long.

Tommyinnit is a child soldier. Tommy was recruited by his older fucking brother to fight a war. Tommy volunteered to duel against an adult and no one stepped in for him. Tommy gave up his most prized possessions for his country. A child shouldn’t have to do that. Yes, it’s great that the other day he told Tubbo to give his last disc to Dream because he realized his friendship was more important, but as a child Tommy should not have to chose. Why did no one look back on this and say “hey, that was kind of fucked up?”

Tommyinnit burned down George’s house accidentally, and Dream took the opportunity to punish Tommy so he would be out of the way. Tommy realized this and told everyone. Barely anyone cared. So many people have grief things on purpose, but Tommy is the only one that Dream decided to punish. It was so obvious. Tommy is surrounded by people who start fights and wars over minor infractions, and are surprised when Tommy copies the adults around him Everyone shits on Tommy for being destructive, but how should he know better. Everyone reacts the ways he did when they feel wronged. Niki, Tommy’s biggest criticizer just burned down L’Mantree. Rules for thee but not for me amirite?

When Dream accused Tommy of destroying the Community House most believed him without hesitation. Are you fucking kidding me? Why? He had no evidence! Even after Dream admits to being to manipulating everyone, they still believe him. Tommy, though he didn’t go into detail, said that Dream “did something to him”. No one batted an eye. I couldn’t believe it. Technoblade, the man who blew up the country and sided with Tommy’s abuser was technically more supportive. Not because he was great or anything, but because everyone was so much worse. 

Tubbo is a child soldier. His is also a child president. What happened to L’Manburg is not his fault because he is a traumatized child doing the best he can. Dream called him an idiot and the worst presdient L’Manburg has ever see. No one stood up for him. Not a single one. Tubbo is a child, why is everyone with just blaming their problems on him? Nobody cares

Ranboo isn’t a child soldier (yet, I can’t believe I have to say that), but he sure is getting a lot of shit for just having friends. Dream, an known manipulator and dictator accused Ranboo of being a traitor, and no one thought, “hmm, somethings up with that. Maybe dream had an ulterior motive for doing that.” I don’t quite agree with everything he said, but I do agree that everyone is put way too much value in their factions. The purpose of a faction is to protect the people with in it. L’Manburg is becoming less and les of a country and more of a golden calf. A god that can only be appeased with the sacrifices of the mental health of their children. This is toxic patriotism. They’re too worried about protecting their home and not worried enough about the people that make that place home. If this keeps up, the country will tear itself apart. Dream, somehow, got his hands on Ranboo’s book. His sense of security must be so broken. It sounded like he was about to tear up when he said “I don’t know how he got it” and nobody cares. Fuck making this kid feel safe, fuck preparing to fight for the country we claim to care so much about, let’s entertain the accusations of someone who’s proven to be untrustworthy! Nobody fucking cares!

I am not a Tommy, Tubbo or Ranboo apologist. It’s impossible. Not because they did nothing wrong, but because they’re fucking children. 

They are children, and nobody cares.

[something-very-special]

Impressions

I know I’m way behind on progression through Replicant (insofar as anybody can be ‘way behind’ in the sense of playing a video game for personal entertainment), buuuut I figured I’d share a few thoughts.

Presently I’m doing sidequest mop-up post-Barren Temple, for reference:

So just to get this overall out of the way, I am legitimately fascinated by the differences between NIER and Replicant. This is something I picked up on when I played RepliCant to grab footage for my LP, but given my extremely limited understanding of Japanese all I could get was the tone between characters and to my unpracticed ear they sounded pretty different. I always assumed that Weiss was somehow even more condescending to Brother and hah hah, wow. Even kind of expecting the dialogue and delivery differences I was not prepared for some of the dialogue and delivery differences. Weiss just straight-up insulting BroNier on the regular, not even doing sarcastic eye-rolls like he does with Papa. I don’t remember the exact line that set me off but somewhere in the Barren Temple I was just laughing my ass off at how much of a dick Weiss is.

Thought the ‘miracles’ conversation in the Junk Heap was interesting, too. I remember Papa Nier telling Weiss to stuff it because ‘those kids need a miracle’ and Weiss kind of backs down-- obviously doesn’t believe it, but he knows better than to push. And Brother tries but Weiss is just not having this optimism bullshit. Little things, but the tenor of the relationship is definitely different.

One of the more interesting aspects early on is the way the Lunar Tear is treated. Obviously I don’t know if this was part of the original game or a script adjustment, but Brother talking about the Tear as a source of money as opposed to Father saying it can grant wishes was interesting. Maybe it was to justify that Kaine just has a whole necklace of the damn things and therefore it’s rare but not literally magic, but it always sounded like it was just meant to be taken as a myth to me anyway. Then again, it’s established in the Grimoire that Brother has a fixation specifically on making money so he can support himself and Yonah (versus Papa Nier, who has obviously already established himself as an adult rather than a kid still figuring things out and hoping that enough money will solve all their problems).

Where the dialogue doesn’t diverge is interesting, too. Mostly I’m talking about the scene after defeating Hook. I always found Papa Nier exclaiming “You’re going to live, Kaine!” and “Yes, we’re friends now!” to be obvious holdovers from a younger protagonist just goddamn hilarious when Papa Nier is saying them. They’re still really funny with Brother Nier but just remembering Papa Nier doing the exact same delivery in his deep, manly voice just re-elevated the whole scene into comedy gold.

All of that is really why I was interested in getting the game so already my money is well spent. But there’s some other stuff:

They butchered the OST! ...or so people keep telling me on Youtube. I admit I do think the re-orchestrations is largely inferior to the original (although there are some that are at least as good in a different way, and whatever they did to The Lost Forest -- which was one of my least favorite tracks in the original -- I really enjoy) but I wouldn’t call it a butchering and I highly suspect that if I didn’t have the eleven years of the original OST and its association within the game itself I wouldn’t bat an eye, it still all sounds great.

Also, a weird observation, but I found that the soundtrack sounds much better coming out of the TV speakers than through headphones. I’m not sure if somehow it was optimized for play through external speakers, or maybe just not hearing the added orchestration right up against my eardrums, but when I went to the Lost Shrine with headphones on I was admittedly disappointed, but going to it again and listening through the TV it worked significantly better.

(I’m not sure if this is necessarily a factor, but the booklet in the White Snow edition mentions that the new soundtrack was all studio mixed rather than having the individual tracks layered. While I don’t think that would have an impact on music quality it almost definitely makes a difference in the way it’s produced.)

I miss chest-thrusting to double jump Movement overall feels much more refined and polished. It’s not as slick as Automata, but it definitely feels like a natural evolution of the original game, and as an apologist for NIER’s combat I can appreciate that. A little more responsive, I appreciate being able to move while casting magic, and it still has a bit of a crunch behind weapon impact (although I wish it felt a bit heavier).

But goodness I miss the stupid animation for double-jumping. I mean sure, an aerial somersault is a classic indication of a double jump, but I just loved that Nier would chest-thrust so hard he would break the laws of physics and ascend higher.

It also feels a bit like the aerial dodge was nerfed for movement purposes? I really don’t feel as much horizontal thrust to get a running start after diving off the Library balcony.

Fully voiced? Fully voiced?! I knew this was happening but I totally forgot until the NPC villagers started talking to me! Some of the incidental deliveries are a bit awkward, but as somebody whose glasses prescription is a decade out of date I appreciate this immensely.

The item guy in Seafront just being from the goddamn Bronx is a thing of beauty.

BroNier does fit into the Village better. One of the little details I love in the game is that each bit of civilization has its own style. The maps aren’t large enough to really convey how long travel takes, but the different styles between the Village and Seafront just kind of helped to ‘place’ the characters in a really neat, subtle way (Emil’s sash identifies him as ‘belonging to’ Seafront, which is actually pertinent when you get that sidequest where you find the letter from his science-mom in town! I assume she always wore a kicky sash when she went to work in the underground child torture bunker.)

Facade obviously also has their own style, but it’s... hard not to appreciate.

Papa Nier’s dress doesn’t really ‘place’ him anywhere, which doesn’t feel weird for the main character, and I feel like it’s implied that he isn’t really from the Village in a meaningful way anyway and kind of drifted in at some point after Yonah had been born. But younger Brother Nier is actually wearing the local fashion and it’s a neat little detail that I didn’t appreciate back when I played PS3 RepliCant. (Probably because I didn’t bother talking to any NPCs what with not being able to read the dialogue, so I never really had him standing next to anybody for long enough to process.) Older Brother Nier takes on a very different outfit that winds up displacing him from the rest of the Village (and any other towns), which is a pretty nice visual metaphor, too.

I have a confession to make. I still enjoy fishing in this game.

Yeah I said it. I’ll say it again too-- I like the fishing minigame. I happily blitzed through the Fisherman’s available Gambits, and then just caught five sharks while I was hanging out, and then also caught the sandfish ahead of time, and also wound up with a half-ton giant catfish (??!?) trying to remember where the black bass are located.

Cart me away.

Related but I laughed far too hard when the fisherman says “the WESTERN beach”. I wonder why they changed that line. I just can’t imagine.

And those seals. Always a delight to go to early Seafront and just plant yourself between a couple of seals. Watch the ocean. Listen to the music and the waves. Watch the seals lazily roll around and make cute seal barks.

The most depressing thing about the timeskip is losing those seals.

My garden--! The gardening timeskip exploit was fixed due to a difference in PS4 architecture. :/ I know there’s still an exploit involving time zones but I didn’t go in knowing that and I was horrified when I adjusted the system clock only to find my crops weren’t growing. Is Legendary Gardener still a trophy? Fffffuuuuu

My BARREN TEMPLE. The Barren Temple is, to me, a legitimately funny dungeon, between Sechs getting himself abducted, Kaine getting herself abducted and Nier and Weiss just sighing in resignation, and the whole concept of the rules-based challenges. And the adjustment they made to the Prince’s dialogue before you meet him is so good-- the original felt a little disjointed and felt like it ended with the Prince being confused. It was still funny, but here Weiss just gives zero fucks about insulting the Prince (and presumably knows that’s exactly who he’s talking to) and it’s just great.

And I say all of that because I just died laughing when I got to the infamous Racing Wolf room and saw they outlawed evasion.

Evasion works differently in this game anyway so you wouldn’t have really been able to do the same trick before (dodge roll; in the original release you would dodge roll forward by tapping the button, but a default evasion has you backstep. Of course you could arrange BroNier to face away from the trap and then evade, but it would be significantly dicier, and I feel like the pattern on the shots was awkward enough that you wouldn’t have an opening in the second row (and probably would’ve have dodged your ass right into the bullets anyway). But just that they acknowledged the trick and then flipped you off with it was amazing. Aggravating? My amusement far outweighed my frustration since the Defend trick was still solid.

It also felt like more rooms outlawed jumping? That I can’t corroborate (I was really focusing on whether they did something to Racing Wolf, which is of course the most traumatic of the rooms) but I feel like it wasn’t as easy to cheese some of those rooms as it had been previously.

Dark Blast is amazing. Cheesed the shit out of the actual ‘Evasive Mouse’ room, though. I remember having some difficulties when the miniboss shows up since you can’t dodge out of the way of his lava pillar attack, but I just circle-strafed with Dark Blast and he died comically quickly.

This is actually more relevant to the magic as a whole, but in the time since I first played NIER (so... probably the time I fifth played NIER) I learned more about the little intracacies of the magic system. Like, really little intricacies, like how you can use magic with just a button tap and it actually has different effects... like Dark Blast dealing significantly more damage. It’s not as easy as just holding down the button and getting the multi-shot off the charge, but for a single enemy like that just rapid-fire tapping the button chews through the lifebar.

This tap strategy is really appreciated for Dark Hand (forward thrust punch) and Dark Lance (which is even better thanks to the game’s lock-assist-- a much appreciated quality-of-life adjustment), and I look forward to getting Dark Execution because of its fast activation feature (spreading the lances in a forward cone in front of you, extremely useful for crowd control when you can’t afford to wait for Execution to charge up).

Fragile Delivery still sucks. I don’t know why I had such a terrible time with the first Fragile Delivery but I broke that... Ming vase or whatever you’re delivering half a dozen times. Send that guy a steel rug instead, Guard #3, he is not worth whatever piece of art you had me destroy six times.

And the game still holds up. This is probably a ‘needless to say’ thing but yeah, this is still a great game. I always have a little bit of apprehension going back to something I loved just in case there’s a rose-colored effect going on. Not that I really expected that to happen with this game (I’ve played NIER recently enough that I didn’t think nostalgia would blind me) but, you know, always a possibility.

(That and that the remaster would be... perhaps of dubious quality. It happens.)

Nope! Still engaging. Still charming. I’m always impressed to go back to this game with all the knowledge of its inevitable misery and remember that it’s also just plain funny. NIER is one of those games that’s just like I remember it but better every time I go back to it.

I’m so glad that Automata did well enough to spur greater interest in this game. It really didn’t get the chance it deserved back in 2010 and now it’s topping some of the sales charts. That’s fantastic.

Just... fantastic.

[horrorsteve]

ok i lied before when i said i was done replying to these racist dumbshits but this comment is actually really ticking me off lmao.

1. i blocked you because i don’t enjoy seeing abuse apologists in my notes or interacting with my posts but tumblr’s blocking system is shit, as we are all well aware

2. this isn’t criticism, it’s you not being able to stand someone saying that billy is an abuser and a racist, along with just being a dick, and only one of those things can be excused with his poor sad tragic backstory (hint: it’s not the abuse or the racism, sorry to burst your bubble). there are multiple other characters with dead relatives and abusive fathers that DON’T behave the way billy does. 

3. billy is an antagonist but even if you were supposed to root for him, i wouldn’t. somehow i seem to understand that the way he treats max is disgusting. not to mention trying to attack a black child is an actually abhorrent thing to do?? and no one owes it to him to forgive him, certainly not lucas or max. and it is not up to you to issue that forgiveness. luckily the duffers acknowledge his bullshit and that max is terrified by him and that he is actually racist, but if they tried to write an actual redemption for him that would be shit. because they’re white and it’s not their place to forgive him for his racism

4. you are only redeemed if you show that you have actually changed. dead people can’t do that :)

5. once again i am reminding people that characters are never just “people”. they exist and do things for a reason that the writer intends, and billy is an antagonist. he is the real world evil that won’t go away when the gate is closed and all the other monsters are dead. he is the monster max cannot escape, until she does and she doesn’t know how to deal with the complicated feelings she has towards him. he is a plot device to further her character going into s4. maybe put your energy towards her feelings and trauma since you care about the effects of trauma so much. or is that bullshit?

and the reason that i really felt the need to reply to your bullshit:

6. do not fucking speak to me like i am 12 years old. i don’t need to be infantilized by a racist piece of shit like you with a poor grasp of media literacy. at your big age you’re really spending your time fighting with people on the internet over a post that really said very little?? you are 29 years old. get a fucking life. and before you try to call me out for hypocrisy or something: acknowledging the irresponsibility of brushing billy’s abuse under the rug to a fanbase including lots of (unfortunately for you, it seems) children is not the same as going to bat to cry over a dead fictional character. he’s not going to fuck you

the new recap claiming that billy was a “total jerk” since we met him but that he “totally redeemed himself” and is so “complex” like none of that is accurate. not a word.