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crusherthedoctor · 4 years ago

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Can we have some unpopular Sonic opinions?

I tried to cram in a lot, so I hope this satisfies you. :P I tried to stick to the ones that I haven't brought up quite as often, since by this point, we all know that I think IDW's storytelling is dire, SA2's story is overrated, X Eggman is an embarrassing portrayal (at least from season 2 onwards), Blaze shouldn't be handcuffed to Silver, Shadow's backstory had issues with or without the Black Arms, Neo Metal Sonic looks silly, etc. But anyway, here we go:

- Knuckles may be tricky to incorporate into plots that don't relate to Angel Island, but making him obsessed with his duties is no better than having him forget about Angel Island entirely.

- I like Marine, and never found her annoying. Oh, I understood what they were trying to do with her, but I honestly wasn't put off by her, and found her Aussie lingo more endearing if anything. Since her debut was during the period in my life where where I couldn't stand Sonic himself, I instead thought he was irritating (and hypocritical) for getting annoyed with her for doing shit he would often be guilty of.

- Silver is just as guilty of being shoehorned into games and plots as the Deadly Six are. Having more fans than the latter is irrelevant, since we're still talking about a character who constantly has to time travel in order to be present.

- Speaking of Silver, if he has to stick around, please do something different with him. They've pulled the doomed future routine multiple times now, and it's been boring every single time. I wasn't interested when it involved Iblis. I wasn't interested when it involved Knuckles drinking the edgy Kool Aid. I wasn't interested when it involved a council of dumbasses... give it a rest already.

- The Tails Doll can work as a mildly creepy thing, with maybe more to it than meets the eye when it's time for a boss fight or what have you. But the memes about him stealing your soul are just dumb, and I thought it was dumb even back in my teenage youth.

- “Eggman is supposed to be clownish!” Yeah, well he's also meant to be a genuine villain with a 300 IQ. These qualities don't have to be mutually exclusive.

- “Sonic is supposed to have attitude!” Yeah, well that's not the same thing as being an absolute cunt. Sonic was only ever meant to come off as having an edge compared to Mario. He was never meant to be a GTA-tier protagonist.

- Rouge is not a villain, and never was a villain. Literally the whole point of her role in SA2 was to reveal that she was working against Eggman and Shadow the whole time, albeit using sneakier tactics to do so. You'd think all those people who exult SA2's story would remember this, but apparently not. She barely even qualifies as an anti-hero, since aside from stealing the Master Emerald, she rarely does anything morally questionable otherwise. She's got a lot more good in her than people give her credit for.

- Captain Whisker is a better Eggman Nega than the actual Eggman Nega. And as far as robot characters in this franchise go, Johnny's design is pretty underrated.

- I don't like Iblis or Mephiles, but I DO like Solaris, and it annoys me that it was out of focus for most of the story due to all the time spent on its less interesting halves. Had they kept the backstory with the Duke and his experiments, and worked from there, I think they could have provided an interesting contrast with Chaos (since Solaris can also qualify as a monster with a sympathetic backstory) instead of recycling the surface level schtick.

- Black Doom may technically be just as bad as Mephiles, Nega, Scourge, Mimic, etc, since he's yet another villain with one-note characterization and fucked over Eggman. But because he never gained a disproportionate fandom, he doesn't annoy me to the same extent. It's easier to ignore him by comparison, and his Dr. Claw voice and face shaped like a lady's delicate part make him enjoyable to mock.

- Likewise, while Lyric is also on the same level as these other villains, it's easier to dismiss him because I was never invested in the Boom games anyway, and being an obvious alternate universe (compared to Sonic X or IDW, which retain the Modern designs and plot elements), it never had an effect on the main series. I also unironically like his design, and if nothing else, at least this snake didn't start a hypnotism fetish across the internet.

- Sally - and the rest of the Freedom Fighters for that matter - have had their importance in the franchise severely inflated. They may have been lucky to be the face of popular media (SatAM and Archie), but they're not these magnificent entities that the game characters are but a speck of dust in comparison to. Having a “legacy” doesn't make them more entitled to shit than any other character, old or new.

- Conceptually, the treasure hunting gameplay is one of the better alternate gameplay styles IMO. But it was let down in SA2 by its one track minded radar (the levels may have been big, but I don't think that would have been an issue on its own if the radar was better). If they brought it back and made it more like SA1's treasure hunting, I'd be all for it, although it would probably be better suited for a spinoff title.

- This goes for a lot of games, but when it comes to 2D, I prefer sprites over models. Not that the Rush models are bad (though the ones in Chronicles sure as fuck are), but the sprites in Mania and the Advance trilogy are just so charming and full of character.

- I actually like Marble Zone. Yeah, the level design is a bit blocky, but I love the concept of an underground temple prison, mixed with lava elements in a zone that otherwise isn't a traditional volcano level.

- I also like Sandopolis Zone. Again, completely understand why it's not the most popular zone around, but I've been a sucker for the Ancient Egyptian aesthetic since childhood (you can thank Crash 3 for that), and Act 1 is visually stunning.

- I prefer the JP soundtrack for Sonic CD over the US version overall... but I also prefer Sonic Boom over You Can Do Anything.

- SA2's soundtrack isn't bad by any means - I love Rouge's tracks, and The Last Scene is one of my favourite pieces of music - but as far as variety goes, it's a step down from SA1's soundtrack.

- If Sonic X-Treme had been released, it probably would have been unenjoyable and confusing. Whatever your thoughts on SA1, it was probably the better option between the two as far as Sonic's first legitimate translation into 3D goes.

- I have no qualms with Modern Sonic and the other Modern designs and characters, but I also fully acknowledge that changing gears from Adventure onwards - and doing it with a great amount of fanfare - was always going to create one of the biggest divides in the fandom, and fans shouldn't act surprised that this happened. The fact that they felt the need to hype up a new design and direction in the first place (compared to Mario, who has mostly been the same since the beginning, with only the occasional minor change with little fanfare) also indicates that they weren't confident enough in Sonic and his universe being the way it was, which often gets ignored by all the “SEGA have no confidence!!!” complaints you see with their recent games.

- Unleashed did not deserve the incredibly harsh reviews it received back in the day... but it doesn't deserve its current sacred cow status either. It had more effort put into it than '06 to be sure, and I can respect that, but much of it was misguided effort, and even if you like the Werehog, you have to admit that the idea came at the absolute worst time. The intro cutscene may be awesome, as is the Egg Dragoon fight, but 2% doesn't make up the entire game. Chip was also quite annoying, and I wasn't particularly sad when he pressed F in the chat at the end.

- On the other hand, while Colours definitely has its shortcomings, and people have every right to criticse those shortcomings, a lot of its most vocal detractors tend to have a stick up their arse about the game because people actually enjoyed it, and it had a gimmick that people actually liked. Yes, it may have been the first game to have those writers everyone hates, but then SA1 was the first game to give the characters alternate gameplay styles and have other villains upstage Eggman, so...

- Forces is absolutely not on the level of '06. It's nowhere close. A game being flawed does not make it the next '06, clickbait YouTubers. Or should I say, the game they want to retroactively apply '06's reception to, since they've been trying hard to magically retcon '06's own quality...

- To echo @beevean, ALL of the 3D stories have their issues. SA1 is probably the most well-rounded of them on the whole, but even that one isn't perfect.

- To echo another opinion, although I do love SA1, I'm not crazy over the idea of a remake, and would prefer them to just take Sonic's gameplay from SA1 and work from there. Because with a remake, you're stuck in a hard spot: Do you keep it the way it is bar the expected graphical upgrades, and risk accusations of not doing anything to actually improve the experience? Or do you try to address past criticisms, and risk the wrath of the fans who will inevitably go on a #NotMyAdventure crusade about it? What people fail to consider is that the Crash and Spyro remakes were accepted gracefully because their original iterations were still unanimously beloved for the most part, whereas SA1 - and especially SA2 - have always been divisive, and have only gotten moreso over the years.

- People take their preferences for the character's voice actors too seriously. I have my own favourites like anyone else, but I don't make a big deal out of it.

- And with fandom voice actors, they usually focus too much on doing a basic impression of their preferred official voice actor, and not enough on the acting. So you end up getting a lot of fan voices who sound like decent impressions of Ryan Drummond or Jason Griffith on the surface, but they sound utterly empty beyond that impression, because there's no oomph or depth to the actual emotions. They think about the actor rather than the character, when it should really be the other way around.

- The thing with Ian Flynn is that he is capable of telling a decent story, and he can portray some characters well. But he's proven time and time again that everything will go off the rails if he's given too much freedom (ironic, given how quick he is to point the finger at mandates when something goes wrong).

- Ian Flynn and Shiro Maekawa are not the only people in the world who are allowed to write for Sonic. I understand that one should be cautious when seeking out new writing talent, but for all the fandom's accusations of playing it safe, they sure aren't in a rush to experiment outside of their own comfort zone.

- And of course, the big one: You don't fix the franchise's current problems by crawling back to its previous problems. It's much more helpful and constructive to discuss the good and bad alike with each of the games. Less “THIS GOOD, MODERN BAD”, and more “This could work, but maybe without that part...”

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog

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fostersffff · 3 years ago

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Robot Carnival Review

When I first started my blu-ray collecting kick, Discotek was hyping up their release of Memories, an anthology movie organized by Akira’s Katsuhiro Otomo. While doing research on it, I saw it was recommended in the company of Robot Carnival, another anthology movie Otomo was involved with, with more animators and thus individual shorts, and a unifying theme of “robots”. As a robot enjoyer, I figured I couldn’t go wrong with this, and I was right! This was a joy from start to finish, where even the weakest segment still had plenty to offer. If this sounds like it might be up your alley, it’s available to stream for free on RetroCrush and YouTube!

Additional note before I get into talking about each short individually: with the exception of Cloud, the music for every short was composed by Joe Hisaishi, who has way more range as a composer than I would’ve ever expected, considering I knew him exclusively as the Studio Ghibli composer. Additional additional note: I watched the anthology in the original Japanese order, the version on RetroCrush and YouTube uses an alternate order from the international release.

Opening/Ending (Katsuhiro Otomo, creator of Akira and Atsuko Fukushima, key animator on dozens of anime projects, including Akira) - A mobile fortress (literally the above Robot Carnival logo) traverses a post-apocalyptic wasteland, bringing death and destruction wherever it goes. The Opening sets the bar for what you should expect going forward in terms of production values, and the Ending is a nice send off for the whole thing, but I don’t really have much else to say about these shorts.

Franken’s Gears (Koji Morimoto, Director of Memories: Magnetic Rose) - A mad scientist attempts to bring their robot to life, succeeds horribly. I think of all the shorts in this movie, this one has the most impressive mechanical animation. The whole thing takes places in the scientist’s lab, and the emphasis really is on all of the ways the environment is struggling to bring the robot to life, to the point that once it does so, it begins to crumble and break apart. But the animation on the scientist himself is also really charming; the way he moves almost makes him look gooey, which is apt because my sister pointed out he was probably designed after a snail, what with the big orb on his back.

Deprive (Hidetoshi Omori, Animation Director for Char’s Counterattack) - A super android has to mamoru his imouto from an invading alien robot army. One of my favorite shorts in the anthology, this was an entire action movie expertly condensed down into not even ten minutes, complete with an awesome soundtrack. I’d actually go so far as to call this one perfect for what it is, but it’s not much more than that.

Presence (Yasuyomi Umetsu, Character Designer and Chief Animation Director of Megazone 23 Part II) - A man builds an android for companionship, and he gets more than he bargained for. Longest piece in the compilation by a mile, and the first one with voice acting. Despite enjoying some of the other shorts more, I think I would call Presence the “centerpiece” of this anthology, as it’s definitely the most story-rich. It even has some prescient worldbuilding: the people of this setting do not see robots as sentient beings, which is shown right at the start when a bunch of kids knock the head off of an android and play with it while absolutely no one in the crowded plaza reacts. This sets the tone for the main character’s interactions with his creation, and provide additional context for the things he does besides the obvious explanations.

This was also the first short where I noticed something off about the animation, where it seemed to animate too well in for certain movements. As it turns out I was right; the liner notes explain that the director was using this project to experiment, and he would animate different movements on different frame counts. It’s not terrible, but it is a little distracting to see how smoothly something like a simple head turn will animate while more complex motions look more standard. Also, unrelated but fun coincidence: the liner notes also explain a reference in the script to a story called Daddy Long Legs, about an orphan girl who receives funding from a wealthy philanthropist she never meets, which explains a reference that went over my head Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

Star Light Angel (Hiroyuki Kitazume, Character Designer and Animation Director for Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ and Char’s Counterattack) - What could have been the most effective piece of robosexual propaganda ever made: a girl and her friend are at Tokyo Disneyland ROBOT WANDERLAND and are having a wonderful time, until she discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her, at which point she retreat into the park and winds up on a virtual reality ride. Meanwhile, a robot performer attempts to find her and return the locket she dropped while she ran past him. This is tied for my favorite, alongside Deprive, because I’m a big sucker for romance and the main song for the short is so perfect for the content. I was also delighted to find the explanation for this short was that Kitazume, who’s work up to this point was all mecha anime like Aura Battler Dunbine and Zeta Gundam, really wanted to try to flex with character expressions, and it came through brilliantly as the range and level of facial expressions was the first thing I really took notice of in this. Funny enough, though, Kitazume also apparently said he considers this and Deprive to be the weakest pieces of the anthology, and I suppose he’s right in that they have the least meat on their bones and are also probably the least technically impressive, but still: my two favorites!

Cloud (Mao Lamdo, a prolific animator on many projects, but probably best known for this) - A robotic boy wanders past a series of ever-changing clouds. Cloud is definitely a stand-out short for a number of reasons, from the way its animated to the incredibly tangential connection to the “robot” theme, and to be perfectly honest I got a lot more out of it after I read the liner notes. The short was adapted from a self-published book Mao Lamdo had written years prior that had nothing to do with robots, and his interpretation of the short and the change to making the main character a robot was that it represented his frustration with the trend in the anime industry at the time trending towards a being obsessed with the mechanical world, while he still preferred to draw and animate nature. As I mentioned at the top, this is also the only short to not have music composed by Joe Hisaishi, instead the piece used is by Isaku Fujita, and as far as I can tell, this is his only credit. Still, it’s a good credit to have; Lamdo said the song evoked the idea of having a conversation with God and asking the big questions, which I can completely see.

Strange Tales of Meiji Machine Culture: “The Westerner’s Invasion” (Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Director of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA and Golden Boy) A terrible steampunk mech invades a Japanese town, and is warded off by a team of youths piloting their own terrible steampunk mech. I watched this one with the English dub first and then again in Japanese because it’s been a fuckin’ minute since I heard a dub this racist, complete with changing r’s to l’s and vice versa, only to be cracked across the skull by what I am certain was a Japanese man doing his very best to phonetically read English in the Japanese version. In spite of that, though, this is easily the funniest short for all the right reasons, and it kinda clicked once I found out that the director was also responsible for Golden Boy; it’s that exact kind of humor, complete with a protagonist who could very well be Kintaro Ue’s ancestor.

Chicken Man and Red Neck, a.k.a. Nightmare (Takeshi Nakamura, director of Catnapped! The Movie) - A robotic magician wreaks havoc on a city by transforming everything in sight into robotic monsters, and a vagrant gets caught up in the chaos. I initially wrote down “this one has the energy of a Don Bluth movie, particularly In the Dark of the Night from Anastasia”, although the liner notes say he actually was inspired by Night on Bald Mountain, which is definitely a more flattering inspiration and more accurate, to boot. I think of all the shorts in this anthology, this one gets the prizes for “best overall animation” and “best use of robots”, and it also has the most intense PS1 RPG sounding music, which once again speaks to Joe Hisaishi’s talent as a composer for doing that a full decade before the PS1 even existed. Also, fun trivia, the director turned down an offer from Hayao Miyazaki to be animation director on Castle in the Sky to make this, which… was maybe not the best career move, but still this was a terrific short and I’m glad to have it.

Again, the movie is easily accessible for free streaming, and I’d heartily recommend you check it out if you haven’t already. But if you’re into collecting physical media, the blu-ray is crammed full of tons of goodies, including the liner notes I’ve referenced, art galleries for each segment, and a lot of other production materials. Discotek also announced they’re doing a 4k UHD release of this soon, which won’t include all the extras due to the way UHD discs work, but I gotta be honest, this would be worth double dipping for if the resolution bump is noticeable enough.

#Robot Carnival #Katsuhiro Otomo #mecha #giant robot #robot #robots #anime #animation #blu-ray

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metalgearkong · 4 years ago

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Ghost of Tsushima - Review (PS4)

9/21/20

Developed by Sucker Punch Productions, released July 2020

Let’s not beat around the bush: Ghost of Tsushima may be my favorite game of this console generation, and one of my favorite games of all time. This is a massive samurai tale crammed with unforgettable moments, characters, and environments. After finishing this game, I felt like I had been through no less than the peak samurai experience in any entertainment medium. Never before have I stood up and given a standing ovation for a video game upon the credits rolling. While feeling complete and filled to the brim, there are small technical aspects that do have room for improvement in the potential sequel. Sucker Punch came out of nowhere and knocked the world on its ass with a fantastic stylized epic feudal Japanese journey, one I can never forget.

Ghost of Tushima is open-world, easily comparable to The Witcher 3 or a modern Ubisoft title. What Ghost of Tsushima brings to the table is its incredibly realized medieval Japanese world, to the same extent Red Dead Redemption brought the mythic American Wild West to life. Authenticity can be found in every corner, and I set the game for Japanese voices and English subtitles to extend the immersion (something I can’t recommend enough). The Mongols have invaded Japan, and their first stop is Tsushima island. The samurai here are all that stops the massive army from reaching the mainland. The details themselves might not be perfectly accurate to 1274 Japan, but the world itself is consistent, which is what’s most important.

The game begins with a huge battle, as we take control of our main character Jin Sakai (Daisuke Tsuji / Kazuya Tsuji) right away. An orphan raised to be a samurai by his uncle Lord Shimura (Eric Steinberg / Akio Otsuka), Jin holds guilt and shame for not being able to save his father in battle when he was young, and strives to be the best warrior possible. The explosive intro gives us a quick intro to the open combat, and leads in to a fairly typical tutorial, adding in brief lessons on stealth, and using evasive tactics & tools. I remember how panful the combat first felt, as each strike looked like something akin to a samurai film. The main villain and leader of the Mongols Khotun Khan (Patrick Gallagher / Tsutomu Isobe) establishes himself as a despicable person, and someone totally opposite to the samurai honor-bound code of combat. He wants to conquer Tushima by any means necessary, and Jin is the only one willing to adapt his fighting style to combat this new dishonorable and overwhelming threat.

Jin Sakai is closer to a Geralt, rather than a blank slate avatar character of a Fallout or Elder Scrolls game; He has a specific personality, background, and motivation. Part of the overarching story is Jin learning to rely on tactics he would normally frown upon in order to stand a change against the Mongol forces. This is something his uncle highly detests and forbids Jin to do, leading to a secondary conflict in the story. This is useful for also explaining in the gameplay why the player can either face enemies out in the open, or scurry around and stabbing them in the neck. Of course, most players will do a bit of both, and whatever suits the situation of how you’re feeling in the moment. The best part is, it’s not an binary dilemma, as open combat and stealth can be used completely intermixed at any time.

Personally, one of my favorite parts about the game was unlocking and finding new apparel and color schemes for my outfits. This game (eventually) allows you to dress anywhere from humble peasant, to shinobi of the night, to fully armored samurai warrior. My only nit pick is I wish the game gave you more cosmetic options to buy or find earlier in the game, as I felt limited to just a few outfits and accessories at first. There’s nothing more awesome than manually sheathing your sword after slicing up a dozen grunts, all the while your cape and robes aggressively blowing in the wind. The game allows you to manually bow and play a flute as well, adding the immersion of every moment of the game. You travel the huge island via horseback, and can summon your horse at any instance with the push of the button. I also love how quickly you pick up items, by merely pushing R2. No needless animations or time spend slowing the momentum for the sake or grit or realism.

One of the most unique aspects of the game is using the wind as your guide. If you really wanted to, you’d never have to open your map to know how to get to your current quest. Simply swipe up on the touch pad, and the wind blows in the direction you need to go (the game doesn’t even feature an in-game minimap or radar). This kicks up leaves, twigs, sand, and other particles which add greatly to the visual appeal of the game, and help make you feel closer to the environment itself. Adding to this is how foxes and birds can lead you to hidden secrets, upgrades, or new gear. With so few HUD elements, focus on paying attention to the environment, and the gorgeous lighting and scenery, Ghost of Tsushima gave me to many moments where I felt spiritually uplifted in its world. Despite not having the budget of a super high end Naughty Dog or Rockstar game, Ghost of Tsushima remains one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played, and much of that leans on the art style and environmental effects alone.

Missions are equally entertaining whether they come from a main character or minor character you happen upon. Most quests may involve (but aren’t limited to) tracking, fighting, sneaking, climbing, riding, and spying. I especially enjoyed quests with specific limitations, such as having to remain undetected and not to kill any guards. Eventually, however, due to the game’s long length, some of the missions do start to show their repetitiveness, and I don’t think it would have been horrible if the overall run time was 10-15% shorter. I also enjoyed the fact that so much effort was put into side activities that feel serene and peaceful, akin to the Buhddist and Shinto side of being a samurai. Composing haikus and bathing in hot springs to increase your total health felt very much in the spirit of a Bushido lifestyle; always a calm in between the storms of violence. The fact that not all side content is action oriented was a very neat and authentic detail.

Samurai duels were some of my favorite parts of the game. Occasionally Jin would come across an opponent or rival with legitimate swordsmanship skills, and has to face them in an arena. These locations where the duels would take place never failed to be more epic than the next. Duels act like boss fights in the game, and incorporate similar combat to the regular open world combat--only Jin can’t use secondary items such as kunai, his bow, or smoke bombs. These moments were ripe for the photo mode, something I used throughout this game constantly, as its packed with incredible environmental design and lighting effects to make almost every moment and location feel like a living painting. Samurai duels were usually never very difficult, including the ending boss fights, but they always looked awesome and felt damned satisfying.

The game does suffer from some minor technical glitches, but these small drawbacks mean next to nothing compared to how impressively the rest of the game was designed and executed. Frequently I would approach an enemy group and want to initiate a stand off (the samurai version of a high noon cowboy duel) but the game either didn’t give me the option or the option blinked on screen for only a moment and I was unable to do it. Something similar would happen for stealth kills, as sometimes instead of doing the assassination animation when prompted, Jin just did a regular slash attack instead, blowing my cover. Situations like this didn’t happen often, but were consistent enough to notice. I give Sucker Punch a huge pass on these small technical details, as they never ruined my experience of the game, remaining small frustrations on occasion.

Ghost of Tsushima is a greatest hits of iconic feudal Japanese visuals, sounds, tropes, settings, and themes. Countless details build upon this heightened version of Japanese history, making this game an all in one interactive Kurosawa film. Everything from the sword duel boss fights, to the multiple fighting stances, to the stealth, to the nature surrounding you, everything has been executed with extreme skill and thoughtfulness. It can have its small moments showing a lack of polish either in the visuals or mechanics, but Sucker Punch more than accomplished what they set out to do. Ghost of Tsushima is the best PlayStation 4 exclusive, and by far one of my favorite games of all time. If you have any interest in the open world genre, and love the Japanese culture and art style, Ghost of Tsushima likely won’t let you down. An amazing adventure wreathed in katanas, honor, blood, wind, and cute foxes.

9.5/10

#ghost of tsushima #ghostoftsushima #jin sakai #PS4 #exclusive #sony #Playstation #Playstation 4 #playstation4 #review #playstation exclusive #open world #feudal japan #samurai #ninja #shinobi #honor #betrayal

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bandyisdandy · 4 years ago

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Persona 4 Golden - The Rainbow Connection (2/10/21)

Anyone who knows me within the space of gaming knows that my favorite game of all time is arguably Persona 5 Royal. The game just oozes personality and fun from the get-go. It is easy enough to pick up and check out, but also deep enough to keep you engaged for hours upon hours, hungering for more even after the credits roll on your 80 to 120 hour experience. Saying this, I also have to admit that, while it is the fifth entry in the franchise, I had never played another Persona before vanilla 5. Whenever hardcore players of the series I met over the years heard this, they insisted I play 3 and/or 4 before I go on saying that 5/Royal is my favorite in the franchise. This past January, I decided to finally pull the trigger and check out Persona 4 Golden on Steam. After playing the game for about 70 hours, I defeated the true final boss and finally put the controller down for a bit. All I can say is... what a god damn magical experience this was.

Persona 4 is a JRPG (Japanese Role-playing Game) that puts you in control of Yu, a high schooler living in the middle of Tokyo who is moving in to the country with his police officer uncle and young cousin while his parents go away for a year on business. While there, you meet a young man named Yosuke and a girl named Chie who tell you about a mysterious phenomenon known as the Midnight Channel that shows up when a heavy fog rolls into town and the clock strikes midnight. One night, while viewing this phenomenon, a girl appears in the screen who looks an awful lot like a senior to the students at their school. The next day, her corpse is found strung up on a telephone pole, baffling the police due to the fact that a similar death took place around the time of Yu’s arrival. While investigating the murder of their senior, Yu and Yosuke discover they can enter a special television at a department store, where they meet Teddie, a living teddy bear who can lead them through the fog-dense world within the TV. Upon finding a space where their senior once was, they fight beings known as Shadows and awaken Persona, living embodiments of their fighting spirit as well as their own belief and acceptance of themselves in order to do combat with the Shadows. After their victory, they figure out that someone pushed the upperclassman into the world within the television and the Midnight Channel prophesizes the deaths of those who appear on it. Using this knowledge, Yu and Yosuke continue to make friends, investigate the case, and do their best to uncover the culprit before a year is up and Yu must return home.

... That seems like a lot, right? Well, crazily enough, that is probably the first 5 hours or so at most, and there is another 65+ to go in your first playthrough. Now, this game, at first, is a tough sell especially if you are like me and played 5/Royal first as those games have spoiled our perceptions of what the franchise is and can be. Persona 4 Golden is definitely a step down visually as well as design and music-wise in comparison to 5. It just does not have the same substance that game does and the gameplay, in comparison, feels a bit dated here. The Shadows you encounter in 5′s dungeons are also the enemies you actually fight this time around and the Tarot Card system makes collecting and recruiting Persona much more annoying than the way 5 handles it in combat. However, while it sounds like I am being quite harsh on the game, in reality, this is by and far one of the best JRPGs I have ever played and cannot be recommended by me more. Since I got all the negatives out of the way, let’s look at the heaps of praise I have for this triumph of a game.

First and foremost, what really sets this game above and beyond a lot of others, maybe even doing this better in many respects than Persona 5/Royal, is the characters. Every character is just so damn interesting, and really adds so much charm to what is already a rather charming game. They bring the story as well as the countryside town you now find yourself in that much brighter and bigger. Each one has goals, values, idealizations, and realizations that flesh them out more than most games I have played, all of them having incredibly satisfying conclusions to their stories. Some stand outs for me are your young cousin Nanako, who is lonely due to her father always working as a police officer and her mother passing away in a car accident a few years prior to the start of the game, Kanji Tatsumi, a punk who uses violence and fear to mask his incredibly soft, caring side that enjoys arts and crafting more than he would care to admit, and Naoto Shirogane, a young detective hiding her femininity in order to find power and prestige in the world of private investigation which, in Japan especially, is a male dominated field - these are just some of the memorable characters you will meet. I am currently doing a second playthrough and have already met two characters I never encountered in my first playthrough that are honestly becoming some of my favorites in the series! Building relationships (yes, even romantic ones with your female classmates) is key to not only finding out more about them, but also key to getting stronger, unlocking abilities and weapons for you to use in your playthrough that will seriously make the game not only easier but I would go as far as to say more fun in regards to what possibilities open up to you in combat. Growing the bond between you and your friends within your party is also the only way to strengthen and evolve their Persona to bigger and better forms, making combat flow easier but also giving one a true sense of power, purpose and meaning in the memories you create with Yosuke and the gang.

The other thing that really made me fall in love with Persona 4 Golden is its story and location. While the bustling cityscape of Tokyo and Shibuya really makes Persona 5 and Royal feel big and grandiose in its vision of what a modern JRPG can be, Persona 4 Golden, while feeling smaller in comparison, feels much more unique and, weirdly enough, nostalgic - at least for me. The town of Inaba is small with little to do at first, but it still has some beautiful and honestly quite intriguing sights to see (I’m looking at you, Greedy Shrine Fox). As you become more accustomed to the town and what it offers, it surprises you and opens up even more based on your time within the game, the weather outside, and even the time of the day you are out and about exploring. I grew up in a small town outside of Boston and while it’s not exactly like Inaba, the parts I spent most of my days remind me of it - areas covered in trees near streams with small restaurants and bars nearby, nature trails to walk, seeing mostly the same people each and every day - it really sent me back to life growing up when I was the age of the characters and truly made the game something memorable and instantly connected me to what was happening. As for the plot, I am a sucker for a murder mystery - I love true crime and have always loved police or detective shows growing up. Being able to work towards a case and have your decisions, investigations, and choices up to certain points have merit and weight behind them in regards to what ending you get is absolutely amazing and really sets the tone for a game that shrouds you in mystery and keeps you at the edge of your seat at all times, all the while still finding the time to help you enjoy the ride with laughter, tears, and dialogue that just really gets to you from beginning to end, sticking with you even after you’ve beaten it. Throw in some seriously fantastic boss fights, great music, and top notch voice acting for the time and it all adds up to a package with so much content and so much to tell you along the way that you just can’t help but keep playing until you absolutely have to put it down, only to continue for hours and hours later on.

All in all, Persona 4 Golden is a seriously fun game. While I still think Persona 5 Royal is a better game than it, I cannot stop thinking about the journey it took me on. The places I saw, the people I met and became friends with along the way - it’s a surreal, dream-like game that really gets you thinking right from the beginning and keeps you on your toes until the bitter end. I found myself engrossed in the lives of these characters, worried for them anytime something happened to them within the context of the game’s narrative and only hopes to see them come out on top, and thankfully this was usually the case in my playthrough thanks to the choices I made. I can only wonder what would have happened if I chose things differently - where would my characters have ended up at the end of all this? Would things have gotten worse for them? Who knows - all I know is that once the game was over, I had nothing but smiles and happiness going through my head as I saw my friends say goodbye and I loaded up my stuff onto the train. All those precious moments, etched into my mind forever; the hardships of the dungeons, the toughness of the Shadows, the mystery of the killer - that’s how you create a great game narrative, and finish it with an even greater, satisfying ending. Check out Persona 4 Golden on Steam TODAY if you liked this review! https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/1113000/

#persona #persona 4 #persona 4 golden #persona 5 #sega #atlus #smt #pc #pc gaming #gaming #steam #review #retrospective #video games #gaming blog #blog

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queen-of-bel · 4 years ago

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alright i finally finished death stranding, thoughts (and obviously spoilers) below

As usual, bad first before the good.

The gameplay. I’m usually not one to complain about gameplay (see the number of hours i’ve spend in 90s jrpg dungeon crawlers), but this was just... painful. Making deliveries stopped being fun after.... the fourth time. It was just far too repetitive. Yeah, we’d get like the leg skeletons or more PCC structures to make it easier, but it didn’t make it any more fun.

Combat was also incredibly uninspired. Sam is a porter, not a fighter, so I guess it makes sense that combat isn’t the focal point of the gameplay, but... come on. I feel like the enemies should be more than just bullet sponges. Combat against BTs in this game boiled down to “shoot the BT”, “get more blood”, “shoot the BT again”. The variety of weapons didn’t change this formula, it just changed the amount of damage you did.

Alright, onto my next gripe with the game, which is the voice acting.

Spoiler alert for what I think the game’s strength is, the story is incredible. However, it gets bogged down by some of the dullest voice acting I’ve heard in my life. Again, this isn’t something that I’m usually picky about (see p2ep), but the game prided itself on the choice of actors for this game, so I did have high expectations for the acting.

Like Sam. It makes sense that he would sound dull and lifeless at the beginning of the game, but as he met with more people and actually started connecting with them, he should have been more expressive. I just could never get invested in his character.

I talked about this before, but Mama/Lockne was another disappointment. I feel like their storyline had the potential to be the one of the most emotional ones in the game, but it just... fell flat.

Still, I have to give credit where credit is due. Higgs, Cliff, and Hardman had phenomenal performances. Bridget was pretty good, as well.

Okay, moving on to the good of the game.

The story is amazing. I definitely loved all the twists at the end, but it still didn’t feel like it was too much of an infodump. It was all phenomenal and I think the pacing of the story was just right. Cliff and Higgs were both great characters, and I really loved the explanation of Amelie/Bridget.

The atmosphere was also incredible. The choice of music, the environment and surroundings... Gameplay might not have been fun, but I can’t deny that it was nice to just stand around and take in the atmosphere of the game sometimes. I honestly love Ludvig Forssell, and he did not disappoint in this game, either.

The battlefields were absolutely the most fun part of the game hands down. It proved that it’s not like the game couldn’t have fun gameplay, but whatever. I absolutely looked forward to every time we’d go there to face off with Cliff.

The character and BT designs in the game were so cool. The lion BT is definitely one of my favorite enemy designs ever now, although every BT in this game looks amazing.

tldr, this is a good game. the story, atmosphere, and design are all 10/10, but taking into account the boring gameplay, i’d have to give it maybe an 8. Still a great game, though.

#been listening to flower of fingers on repeat #anyway i highly recommend that people at least experience this story once #either through a playthrough or getting the game itself #amelia plays death stranding

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theartofmedia · 6 years ago

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The Art of Review: YIIK: A Postmodern RPG

I have been sitting here for about two hours with this tab open, trying to find out how to properly introduce this. At the time of writing this (May 7, 2019, 10:02 PM), I have just finished watching YIIK several hours ago. However, I have been doing just about everything to avoid actually writing about it, because I have no idea how to ease the reader into this.

YIIK is so reprehensible that I created this segment--”The Art of Review”--because I needed to talk about this game. I needed to explain just why this game fails on every single account, and is so blatantly offensive. Initially, I was going to do a piece on something creator Andrew Allanson had said about games and his protagonist, Alex. It had to do with character development, and a common criticism was Alex’s sheer lack of it; naturally, I decided to watch a walkthrough online in order to see this for myself first-hand.

I was not prepared for what I saw. I have never had to take as many breaks from any media before due to sheer anger at what I was witnessing. I have never seen a game that fails in every single sense, that is regarded as such high art by its developers. Except maybe David Cage, but he’s a topic for another day.

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is one of the worst pieces of media I have ever had the displeasure of viewing... probably in my entire life. I wish I was exaggerating.

Before I go any further, I would like give immense credit to GrandmaParty and the others at the Something Awful forums for doing an LP of the game with commentary and cutting out the fights. GrandmaParty graciously linked the thread to me--which is full of sources that I will also be linking to throughout this piece--and made the entire game tolerable enough for me to power through. It wouldn’t have happened without you guys, so thank you very much for extending a hand to a small creator trying to get her footing in the world. <3

I will also be linking to the various episodes of GrandmaParty’s LP with timestamped links to show particular scenes or dialogue. I’ve heard that one Andrew Allanson likes to say that people doctored screenshots of his game to make him look bad. Sorry, but I don’t like being accused of forgery, so I’m going to just preemptively strike that claim down.

Now then. This is going to be a big, long review. Allow me to tell you how we’ll be separating this.

We’re going to have two main sections: a non-spoiler review, and a spoiler review. This is mainly due to the fact that a lot of the game’s issues come from its mess of a story, one that can only be understood fully if you’ve seen it through to the end (and its multiple endings).

But let me be clear here.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

Don’t buy it for a laugh. Don’t buy it to see how bad it is. It’s broken, it’s offensive, and the creators and proven themselves time and time again to be genuinely awful and prejudiced people. Do not give these people money.

The non-spoiler and spoiler sections will be divided into subsections, which may also have subsections of their own.

With that said... let’s begin my review of YIIK: A Postmodern RPG.

Non-Spoiler Review

Plot:

The plot of YIIK (it’s pronounced like Y2K, but I’m going to pronounce it as ‘yick’ personally) follows Alex, a freshly-graduated college student, and the strange events that begin to occur once he returns to his hometown of Frankton. He follows a cat to an old factory/hotel, where he meets Sammy, a young woman who appears to live there. When she is taken by some mysterious creatures in front of Alex, he begins a journey to try and find out what happened to her, and begins to make discoveries that could endanger the very fabric of the universe. In theory, at least. In reality, the story is an absolute clusterfuck of vague metaphysics, and the rules of the world were never clearly established, so everything just becomes an incoherent mess.

Characters:

The characters are bare-bones at best and absolutely insufferable at worst. Alex especially is infamous among critics and detractors of the game for his arrogance, ignorance, underlying racism/sexism we’ll get to that, and lack of properly-written development. I’m not going to go into full detail with Alex just yet--there will be an entirely separate post on him. Something also to keep in mind that general consensus appears to be that Alex is an author-insert for Andrew Allanson. Whether that is or isn’t true is frankly up to the viewer, but there’s no definitive proof of it.

(Oh!!! Quick thing!! This image here keeps circulating around--this person is not Andrew! That is someone named Cr33pyDude on both Twitter and Reddit! He just so happens to look like the main character. Don’t rag on this guy, everyone, he doesn’t have anything to do with this shitshow. <3)

Most of the other characters are bland and underdeveloped, but all have potential to be better (Rory especially, in my personal opinion) if they were in the hands of a better writer. The female characters, though... either they are fawning over Alex, being written as nagging and overbearing, or having so little significance that taking them out entirely would change nothing. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that. Other NPCs are forgettable, and enemies are out-of-place monsters that hold no consequence to the story.

Writing:

And the writing--dear god the writing. The writers don’t know the phrase “show, don’t tell.” So frequently would Alex monologue about nothing. Upon coming back from seeing a woman get taken by supernatural creatures, he goes home and reflects--only to go on a tangent about his mother. Immediately after that, he goes on a rant about p/o/r/n/ when sent an email and how girls that he used to go to school with wouldn’t be doing “particularly unladylike” things. And the entire game is like this. Alex will go on pseudo-philosophical rants to himself, and they reveal nothing about his character except that he thinks he’s better than everyone else. He’ll also frequently describe things as though talking to someone--while this does get explained later, it still is completely frustrating when the narrative says “I said this and she said that” instead of just having dialogue or actions between characters. A lot of the dialogue doesn’t exactly... sound like anything a human would say. It’s stilted and unnatural.

Graphics:

The graphics are... bad. Really bad. The style is supposed to be a throwback to old-school, very polygonal games, but environments lack any and all actual texture, making them incredibly flat and uninteresting at best and painful for the eyes at worst. Everything is extremely colorful, but in the sense of neon colors. Everything is so bright and vibrant, and there is barely a place where someone’s eyes can rest--it’s balance in art. Brightness like this needs to be contrasted with darker, more muted shades, or else it just hurts to look at. The viewer’s eyes need places to rest, and the muted shades allow them that reprieve. You don’t get that with YIIK. It’s just a constant bombardment of colors and lights, to the point where if you are sensitive to these kinds of things, you may not want to look even at game footage unless you’re prepared. The character portraits are fine, even if some expressions are odd, but the in-game chibi-esque models are... bad. Really bad. They’re so uncanny and unsettling, and their expressions almost never change. (Also Alex has detailed teeth and it’s just as horrifying as you might think.)

Music/Audio:

The music is. Awful? It’s awful. It’s genuinely really bad. Case in point: one of the boss battle themes. You can hear this poor guy trying so hard to put power behind his voice, but it just sounds unnatural and strained. (Also he clips the mic at some points, and the balancing in general is. Bad.) He’s out-of-tune and occasionally off-beat, and it just makes for a very unpleasant listening experience. And a lot of the music is like this, being just an assault on the ears. The one real exception to this is the track “Into the Mind” made by one Toby Fox, presumably before he made Undertale and was doing freelance work. (He has since deleted his tweet promoting it. Screenshot of the tweet here, courtesy of @GameTheoryRejects.) The audio in general is poor, with irritating sound effects, occasional distorted audio that’s supposed to be scary but is so poorly done that it just hurts to listen to, and voice acting that’s lackluster at best and utterly emotionless at worst.

Gameplay:

Full disclosure: I did not personally play the game. But just looking at it shows how irritating, slow, clunky, and repetitive it is. Each character has a minigame that you play in order to attack, defend, use special attacks, and even run away. These minigames, unlike in something like the Mario & Luigi series, are slow, drawn-out, and completely break up the flow of the fight. And none of the other characters matter then anyway, because turns out if you max out your LUK stat, you can use a particular move that hits all enemies and completely one-shot them from critical damage. (And this move can even glitch out the game in some cases!) The menus are crowded and visually uninteresting, making everything sort of meld together. (Another minor criticism: YIIK has a tendency to put the player in unwinnable fights. You are never aware of what fights are winnable and which fights are designed to kill you. More on this later.)

Speaking of gameplay, the leveling system is... bizarre and tedious. You get EXP, but you don’t gain the ability to level up (yes that is an ability you have to gain) until a couple hours into the game. Leveling up is done in the Mind Dungeon, which you access from save points, and you have to go through doors that increase the stats you assign it. There are four doors per floor, and when you go to the next floor, you and all of your teammates (even if you haven’t met them in-game) level up. Sounds simple, right? Well. It’s slow and repetitive, and NOTHING HAPPENS. You walk in a door. You walk out the door. Rinse and repeat for 70 floors. (280 doors, by the way.) Here’s GrandmaParty doing this for an hour to get an idea of the tedium that this induces. You get to play a minigame when you banish certain enemies, but that serves less as ‘spicing up the gameplay’ and more of ‘adding more steps to this already-boring section.’

So to recap: Flat characters, word-salad plot, painful prose flat-out ugly graphics, backwards gameplay and leveling system.

Tl;dr: Game bad. Don’t buy it.

... This ends the non-spoiler portion of the review. And also the section where we start to talk about some... sensitive topics.

As such, I am going to issue a legitimate trigger warning: the following pieces talk about suicide/depression in detail, as well as physical & domestic abuse situations.

And a small content warning for those who aren’t legitimately triggered by these subjects but still feel uncomfortable reading about the following: homophobia/transphobia; sexism; racism; and the actual use of a real-life woman’s death as a plot device. No I am not fucking kidding about that last one.

So. Let’s get into the real shit about YIIK.

Spoiler Review

Plot:

Let’s start with the plot. There isn’t really a driving force for this plot; initially, it’s finding Semi “Sammy” Pak (well, everyone except Rory says “Park,” even though all of the written lines say “Pak,” so that’s great) after she is taken by mysterious figures. However, as the game progresses, the search becomes less about finding Sammy until she’s just a footnote, and becomes more about... meandering around the world going from one goal to another while fighting things. (The game points this out, but self-awareness doesn’t excuse the fact that it happens. Especially considering the upcoming plot points...)

Then the metaphysics start--people have been trying to decipher this world’s rules for a while with little success, so bear with me, I’m going to try to make as much sense of what we’re given as possible.

There exists a “place between places“ known as the Soul Space. It exists between parallel realities. A person can actually will themself into the Soul Space via... depression? One character, Vella, says that another character, Rory, left his body when he “surrendered himself to his misery” following the death of his younger sister, and explained herself that she fell into a deep depression as well before entering the Soul Space... but it’s not dying? Or it can be? Here Rory asks The Essentia 2000 oh we’ll get to her don’t you worry if dying means you enter the Soul Space. She says that it’s complicated. Her explanation boils down to, “if you care only about material goods and not about your bonds, when you die, you will cease to exist. If you don’t care about materialistic goods when you die, then ehhhhh???”

Also, if your reality is destroyed but you go into the Soul Space, you can become a Soul Survivor (aka the not-Starmen, seen in the cutscene with Vella and Rory linked above) and get stuck in other’s realities as you try to find a physical body. Also, people share a Soul across parallel realities--meaning, parallel versions of yourself would share the same Soul. But they’re not the same people. They have different lives, races, genders, names, but they share the same “Soul.” Only one person with that “Soul” can exist in a reality at a time, hence the form that the Soul Survivors take if they enter a reality where another person with that “Soul” lives. If, however, that person with your “Soul” is no longer in that reality, you can retake physical form and essentially take their place--though not as them, but as you.

And if you go into the Soul Space you apparently understand the secrets of the universe and are beyond normal human follies.

Confused yet? Me too, and I wrote this damn thing. The worldbuilding is so vague, and the players aren’t given set rules that the world plays by. Even when the more surrealist elements of the game start to appear, there should still be rules. Perhaps nonsensical rules, but rules nonetheless. Instead we get talk about Souls and parallel realities, scenes of bright colors and strange imagery that never gets explained or really acknowledged (other than a mention of them being “breaks in reality” like, once), and some plot twists that imply... a lot.

Let’s talk about the characters before we get to the ending.

Characters

Besides Alex, there are five major characters in YIIK:

Michael, who is Alex’s childhood friend and who doesn’t really have much relevance between the beginning and the end of the game. No, really, for the middle portion of the game, he doesn’t really do anything. He hangs around, that’s about it. He gains relevance again during the end of the game where he goes into the Soul Space and becomes Proto-Michael, and that... happens, I guess. I think it contributes to the revelation later on about reality breaking.

Vella is... a strange character. A strange character forced to contradict herself because the plot demands it. She’s shown to be a character who takes no shit, but also bends at the first flimsy apology Alex gives her. She is compassionate to someone like Rory, but spends most of her time calling out Alex. (And yet, somehow, they fall in love???) These notes I took previously on Vella’s first appearance show how what kind of walking contradiction that Vella is as a character:

”Stop creeping on me while i’m at work”

”Okay I’ll go to the house of two strangers who i just accused of perving on me, in the middle of my work shift, to look at these pictures of me on this website i’ve never heard of that can’t go wrong”

”So let me tell you about this traumatizing experience i had with a supernatural creature, saying how emotional and painful it was without any emotion in my voice”

”also i’m not going to tell you how I got to where the supernatural creature was because it’s very personal and I don’t know you and revealing that would make me vulnerable”

”By the way I’m going to give you my number as well as this other number for a training dungeon basically because I like you two”

... yeah,

Rory is probably my favorite character out of this dreck, and he deserves so, so much better than being in this shit. He’s a quiet scene kid who initially gets roped into the plot with the disappearance of his 12-year-old sister--turns out, however, that she killed herself, and Rory struggles with the resulting grief, trauma, and depression that follows. He’s a sweet kid who’s a pacifist, is teaching himself how to make games, knows a lot of random bits of information about many things, and overall deserves so much better than this game. Sorry Allansons you’ve lost your Rory privileges he is My son now

Claudio and Chondra... are just kind of there? Claudio’s a stereotypical weeb. Chondra is the “sassy black girl”/little sister type (which is later revealed to be even stranger, because she’s apparently a graduate student). They don’t have much outside of that, and that’s a shame, since they had a lot of potential to be really good. However, they also seem a bit... tacked on and included for diversity’s sake, as both of them mention racism at some point, and... yeah. The game isn’t very graceful with that topic, as I’ll soon get into.

There is also the character of Panda, who appears out of nowhere in the factory/hotel and is never questioned. It becomes very clear that he’s a figment of Alex’s imagination, and is Alex personifying him as his sort of “conscious“ when he is, in reality, only a stuffed bear. He only talks when Alex is alone. A lot of people really don’t like him, but I will admit that I got mildly emotional when he drifted away in space near the end--but only because I myself make stuffed animals and dolls, so nearly any stuffed animal holds a place in my heart. However, I can very much see why people wouldn’t like him at all.

Anyway.

The Fucking Ending:

So everyone just kind of meanders around for the middle portion of the game until surprise! On New Years’ Eve the world is going to be destroyed. Not just the world--the entire reality. And it’s going to be Alex’s fault, somehow. Also Sammy--who Alex becomes obsessed with--Vella--who is an explicit love interest for Alex--and an android--the previously-mentioned The Essentia 2000, who Alex has a dream about and immediately becomes infatuated--with all turn out to be the same person! Why pick between love interests when they can all just turn out to be the same person?! Also, Sammy was taken by apparent demons because her Soul was in the process of going into the Soul Space, and the creatures the took her were actually the other 2/3rds of her Soul that had already gone into the Soul Space and they were just collecting the last piece. I think.

The game turns into a watered-down version of Persona 3, where you have about a month--from Thanksgiving until New Years’ Eve--to train and get strong enough to stop whatever is going to destroy reality. (The actual Y2K thing is mentioned about halfway through and serves little relevance other than to mark when the end of the world is, since Y2K isn’t actually the cause of the world ending). Then there are some weird plot twists about how reality has been breaking for a long while (this was briefly foreshadowed in Alex going to Michael’s house only to be told that Michael doesn’t live there, and then going to another house where Michael is) and it makes a lot of things really confusing?? And then New Years’ Eve comes where everything is really breaking. Turns out the end of this reality is caused by a meteor with Alex’s face on it a la the moon from Majora’s Mask, no I am not fucking kidding. And it moves around like an inflatable arm-flailing tube man, no I am not fucking kidding.

And then everyone dies. No, really, this is an unwinnable fight. You die. Your entire party dies. Their reality is destroyed.

Alex wanders around the Soul Space for a while until he finds other versions of himself, and various “dark versions” merge together to create the Proto-Comet (’proto’ being the suffix to describe the end product of parallel selves merging together to form one entity). Alex follows the comet around as it destroys reality after reality until...

He finds one that hasn’t been attacked.

And gueeeeeeess what?

You, the player, are a parallel version of Alex. So he enlists you and another party of parallels (using the names you were supposed to input in the beginning) to destroy Proto-Alex. Here, you meet a spectre who is very obviously Sammy Pak, and she says that she’s sorry that Essentia “used her to get to you,” and you hug her.

Eventually you do get to Proto-Alex, as well as a different form of Essentia. Turns out that Essentia lied to you about Sammy and Vella--turns out, Essentia IS you. Well, Essentia is part of Alex, and she tricked Alex into destroying Proto-Alex in order to free herself from the “Soul” that they share. So you can choose to fight Proto-Alex, and if you do, you lose. Again. The boss fight in unwinnable.

And then this... really weird section happens with the character of Roy from Two Brothers, Ackk Studios’ previous game that got pulled from Steam due to bugginess and crashing. Roy basically says that people were “trying to stop his quest” (aka critics) and that Alex shouldn’t give up. (Note that this is a complete non-sequitur to anyone who doesn’t know who Roy is, where he came from, or the story behind the game being pulled.)

After that, you control both the player avatar given and Alex in order to “unplug” Proto-Alex and Essentia, which will make them “whole”? It basically means that all the versions of Alex will merge together into you, the player.

Then the game ends.

At least. Kind of. There’s more than one ending.

But... we’ll get back to that in a bit.

There are many questions the game raises without answers. Why was Sammy bleeding and screaming for the Soul Survivors not to take her because “you promised you wouldn’t move me again!”? Who actually is Vella? Why did no one question Essentia and Vella being in the same space if it was already said that they couldn’t be? Who actually is Sammy? Why is she a ghost and not a Soul Survivor? Why were Proto-Alex and the other “dark Alex”-es trying to destroy realities? Why does Proto-Alex look different than the other Alex-es, who look relatively similar? Who actually was the voice on the phone--it was implied to be Proto-Michael, but he didn’t exist when those phone calls were made? Is Claudio and Chondra’s missing younger brother actually a version of Alex, as this clip implies (esp. w/ the anime shirt)?

Good luck getting answers, because we sure as hell don’t get any.

Also--glad to know that the entire month of training that you spent the latter half of the game doing was all for naught, since the last two major fights you’re in are unwinnable. There are four minibosses to fight, so it isn’t all for nothing, but still. You don’t even get the satisfaction of killing the final boss. You pull a lever and he and Essentia get weirdly electrocuted.

One more thing: the twist of “Essentia lied to you” made a metric fuckton of exposition in her Mind Dungeon utterly pointless, and also feels like a flimsy excuse to absolve Alex of blame for the shitty actions of his parallel selves--more on that later.

So let’s touch on some controversy now that we have gone over the rest of this incoherent mess of a plot.

Elisa Lam

One of the most famous controversies of YIIK is the use of Elisa Lam’s death to propel the story. This is true--the creator admits that he “was very moved” by Lam’s death.

For those not in the know, let me give you a brief summary of the case of Elisa Lam. (Yes this is going to be primarily from Wikipedia but it also has news sources cited for it.) Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old Chinese-Canadian student who was reported missing at the beginning of February 2013. On February 17th, the workers at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles (where Lam was visiting) discovered her nude body in one of the hotel’s water tanks after guests complained about the taste of the water. The police released footage of Lam, from the day of her disappearance, acting strangely in an elevator, appearing to be hiding from something, pressing elevator buttons, and gesturing and talking to no one. There was controversy surrounding her death, as people wondered how she could have locked herself in the water tank, and how the police could rule her death as accidental. People have suspected that it was due to paranormal activity that she was acting like that, or others said that she could have been having hallucinations (as Lam was diagnosed with bipolar and depression). Her death was quickly spread through internet circles as some paranormal myth.

YIIK incorporates this as a huge part of its starting plot.

Semi “Sammy” Pak is very clearly inspired by Elisa Lam. The two bear striking resemblance to one another, being young Asian women in their early twenties with straight black hair (even parted in the same place)--and this photo from the LA Times shows that Lam wore rounded glasses, like the ones Sammy wears. (Lam is Chinese-Canadian, while Sammy is stated to be Koren-American. Sammy is also 23 when Lam was 21.)

This photoset from JamJamJamJamuel shows the biggest criticism of YIIK: the recreation of the elevator video. It’s obvious by the angle and some of Sammy’s movements that this was, in fact, meant to emulate the elevator video of Lam. The game also shows that people are less concerned about Sammy as a person and more about the mystery of the elevator, like the internet stopped caring about Lam as a person and more of a supernatural myth.

However, there’s more than just this.

There’s a weird... almost fetishistic nature when the in-game protagonist talks about Sammy. Alex describes his meeting with her as “intimate” (they met for like. an hour), calls her “my Sammy” when comparing his story to the story of the news, says that he “misse[s] her. I didn’t know her really, but I felt like I did.” And the very next line is uh. “In the unreal twilight hours, in-between sleep and waking, she slipped into my dreams, got tangled in my thoughts, like the blankets tangled between my legs, her brain melting with mine.”

... Gross, to say the least.

And yes, by the way, Sammy basically becomes a love interest. That’s not completely disrespectful and disgusting to the actual human woman that the devs never met or anything at aaaaaaaall.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.

Rory basically goes on to describe a “creepy urban myth” about the water tower near his town. You can imagine what that leads to. It’s a beat-by-beat retelling of the finding of Elisa Lam’s body, except they make it a “nameless girl,” and the writers basically insert their opinions of how it was definitely a murder and the police called it an accident.

More tasteless than a fucking saltine.

OH BUT WAIT THERE’S EVEN MORE.

Near the end of the game, you find the ghost of Sammy Pak. Since she’s not a part of Essentia, it seems that Essentia used her form to get to Alex. She says that she’s sorry and that she’s going to go back ‘home’ now, and you hug her.

But that’s not even the worst of it.

Allow me to tell you about the second ending.

Second Ending:

YIIK has more than one ending--both are considered canon. Ending 1 is the one described above.

Ending 2, however...

Just before leaving the house for the last time, in order to get this second ending, you have to look at the computer in Alex’s house and read this post. It implies that you need to go find Sammy. (It also has some things to say about postmodernism but that’s for another day.)

You go outside... and she’s hiding behind a tree outside your house. No I’m not kidding. (Granted, this is the part of the game where reality is beginning to break apart, so.) She also says “I love you” which, given her “inspiration” by Elisa Lam... yeah. That’s not creepy and tasteless at all. And it also doesn’t make any FUCKING SENSE BECAUSE ALEX KNEW HER FOR AN HOUR AND NEVER SAW HER AGAIN.

Okay, okay, anyway, if you go back into the house and leave through the back entrance, you’ll be taken to the world map. Your destination is the KNN--the Korean News Network, where Sammy had been employed before she vanished. The faceless NPCs only refer to Alex as the name you put in at the beginning of the game, so presumably, everyone from this point forward is now talking to you, the player. (Also everything is pink. Really pink. For no real reason unless it’s “””symbolic””” of something?) You wander around for a bit, doing menial tasks, until you finally get to a pink version of the room you first met Sammy in. She calls you on a phone and tells you that she’s sorry for dragging you into this mess (because Alex/the player went looking for Sammy in the first place), and that she “has a solution” to prevent Essentia from using Alex any more.

You find yourself in front of an elevator, the same elevator that you rode with Sammy when she disappeared. She calls you on the phone again and says that if you go through the elevator doors, there’s no turning back. If you step through, you see the spectre of Sammy again, and she wants to show you where she’s been. You hug her, and she says that she’s so glad that she met you, “even if it was just a game. We’ll be together in your waking reality one day, I’m sure of it. For all I know, we may already be.”

... Roll credits!

No. Seriously. That’s the second ending. You, the player, (presumably) go into the Soul Space with Sammy for eternity, and Sammy basically gives you a love confession (after all she says “I love you” before anyway).

Need I remind you all that she is based off of a REAL-LIFE WOMAN WHO DIED THAT NEITHER OF THE ALLANSONS KNEW?!

Hi, yes, sorry, I’m fucking livid about this. Not just because of the disgusting use of a real-life woman’s death in your game, not just because they fetishized her and turned her into a love interest, not just one of the endings--which is a canon ending--had her telling you she loves you and having you go off with her...

... but because this game has been in development since 2013.

Elisa Lam wasn’t even dead for a fucking year.

Yes, other media has cropped up about Lam’s death, and I think it’s just as tacky and tasteless as this. But these guys had so much time to change it, to have someone say “hey maybe you shouldn’t do that,” and it happened anyway. The sheer lack of respect that the Allansons have for not just Lam but also her still-grieving family is astonishing, and it genuinely makes me sick. My thoughts and condolences to the family of Elisa Lam, having to deal with the press, internet conspirators, and people like this. I hope that they all can still find some sense of peace, even with all of this going on.

Racism:

So this game can be really, really fucking racist sometimes. Let’s start with the more explicit dialogue.

In the very beginning, Sammy calls Alex a ginger, and he says “that’s our word.” He’s equating “ginger” to a derogatory slur.

Here’s the next instance, with Alex referring to Vella--an Asian woman--as “vaguely ethnic” and “exotic.” (He doesn’t face consequences for this, either. Just a slap on the wrist of “don’t talk about race.”)

Later on, Chondra talks about race in an actually not that bad rant about how “I bet if [my brother] had been a beautiful white woman, everyone would have cared that he vanished.” This actually is somewhat insightful, as... well, it’s rather true. POC, when it comes to investigations, are often pushed aside, ignored, or given the least amount of effort. And then Chondra also calls out Alex’s lowkey racist fantasy of “being the white knight swooping in and saving the exotic Korean girl.” However... that’s it. Alex doesn’t get any insight from that, or rethink his reasons on why he wants to save Sammy.

And that’s where we get into Claudio and Chondra and the more implicit racism in the game. Neither of them have much in terms of personality--Claudio likes anime, Chondra is there for quips. Neither of them have any significant arcs, nor do they serve much story purpose beyond being extra party members and talking about race--which feels racist in and of itself, just to have characters of color there to talk about race. (Claudio even goes into an extensive rant about how it’d be racist to think that he knows how to pick locks, but he does know how to pick locks, just not the type that they need open. It comes out of nowhere, is utterly unwarranted, and is completely against the rather chill persona that Claudio has had up until then.) Their characters had a lot of potential to be good! However, much like every other character, they’re very underdeveloped.

(Also, if you have either Claudio or Chondra in your party when you get attacked by cop enemies, they will only shoot at either of them, you know, the only black characters in the main party, and my god I wish I was kidding.)

And then... the love interests.

Sammy is a Korean woman. Vella is an Asian woman of unknown descent. The Essentia 2000 has shown that many of her parallel lives are women of color. All of them are love interests for Alex, the white hero. Yeah. And the game calls it out, but no actual repercussions are given!

Speaking of these ladies...

Sexism

This game is really fucking sexist. Like, genuinely, it’s really sexist.

I think a lot of Vella’s contradictory character comes from this sexism and seeing her as a love interest rather than a character. Though she calls out Alex and is upset with him most of the time, she still accepts his weak apologies very easily--apologies that seem very manipulative and insincere when almost immediately after, Alex tries to convince her to let him into her Mind Dungeon, and if you take that as a metaphor than it gets even worse.

As well, Vella’s backstory includes her being used by a much-older man. What can you do after she tells this traumatic story about her being used by a man? Kiss her. And she doesn’t even get upset or angry with you; she just blushes and says to head back to the others. Because that’s not gross and manipulative or anything. That’s not taking advantage of a vulnerable woman at ALL.

The only female characters of importance that aren’t lusting after Alex are his mom and Chondra--I’ve already mentioned that Chondra has little story importance and personality, and Alex sees his mom as nagging for asking him to get groceries, gets angry at her when she says that she lost her job and asks him to get one to support the house (please note that she paid for his and his sister’s college educations in full, including semesters she didn’t plan for), and gets annoyed with her freaking out when he went missing for five days.

So yeah. The game doesn’t have the highest view of women.

But let’s talk specifically about Essentia. Essentia mentions that Alex has hurt her in parallel realities--but it’s okay, because they’re parallel versions, not actually him! And Essentia reveals that Alex’s parallel was the person who hurt Vella! But it’s okay, because she’ll love him unconditionally no matter how much he hurts her. It’s... really reminiscent of domestic abuse. And it frankly doesn’t matter that Essentia turns out to be a part of Alex and that any of the story of Vella or Sammy isn’t true; the game frames it as perfectly okay that it might have happened. It’s okay that parallel versions of Alex have hurt parallel versions of Essentia, because she loves him. It’s incredibly twisted, and it’s honestly a dangerous message to be sending.

(Also, in a very weird instance of sexism against men, out of all of the parallel selves that Essentia shows Alex, the only man is extremely hostile and violent towards Alex. It’s... kind of weird, honestly.)

Depression/Suicide:

Oh boy. Oh fucking boy.

A little background on myself.

I’m two years into my undergrad for a Psychology/Criminology double major. Classes I have taken include classes about pathologies of the mind and mental health (Psychopathology of Childhood, Developmental Psychology, Personality Psychology, Seminar on Positive Psychology, and of course Basic Psychology to be specific). I have also been clinically diagnosed with anxiety/depression, and both of these are genetically based, meaning that I have lived with them my whole life and will continue to live with them. (I am medicated, for anyone wondering. The meds are the only way I can function at a normal level.) I have felt suicidal before, I have had friends who have been suicidal before, and I have talked others down from self-harm or suicide. I’m not an expert, but I know a thing or two about mental health, depression, and suicide.

This game... this game doesn’t fucking get it at all.

(Just a quick thing: the game makes an OCD joke. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder jokes aren’t funny, folks, since people who have it are affected by it all the time to the point of it often being debilitating. Just wanted to mention it a) to give you an idea on how the game handles mental health and b) because it really doesn’t fit anywhere else.)

Most of this surrounds the character of Rory, as he clearly suffers from depression and suicidal thoughts, as well as feeling grief surrounding his sister’s own suicide. When this is revealed, you know what Vella says to “comfort” him? “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. I understand what you were feeling. 'This depression is unbearable.' 'I can't take it anymore.' The 'depression/pain' part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can overcome it is up to you. You decide if you're going to keep going. Your sister is dead. Nothing can change that. [...] You can't help but feel the pain, but you can get through the suffering. That will go away. Look, I understand that it's easy for me to say. I'm not the one whose sister is dead. But you have to understand that I am telling you the true reality of the situation. You're playing with some otherworldly dangers here!“

Let me break this down to show you why this is not something to say to someone who is traumatized and in a deep depression due to the loss of a loved one.

“[W]hether or not you can overcome it is up to you.” This puts full responsibility of overcoming grief and depression onto the person suffering from it, which is not okay, and not true. Rory lost his 12-year-old sister to suicide! Very recently in the game’s timeline, as well!

Vella is basically telling him “it’s your job to get over your grief and depression.” Putting full responsibility on someone for feeling depression and grief is disgusting. If someone is grieving, what they should do is reach out. If they aren’t, reach out to them. Don’t let them suffer alone. Suffering like this is not a choice. People don’t choose to suffer.

By saying that suffering is “optional,” it subtly blames the person suffering for their own suffering, which makes their chances of getting better plummet. So frequently will people suffering from mental disorders put the blame on themselves for “not trying hard enough” or “being broken” or “not being good enough” because they think that this is all their own fault, and they won’t seek help, because “it’s all my fault.”

Now, when someone is in recovery? Yes, they should definitely try--even if it’s in small bits at a time--to to learn to cope with their disorders in healthy ways. However, when in recovery, the person is assisted by therapists, friends, family, and possibly medications. They aren’t alone. They aren’t alone, and are often guided by those who know how to help them and want to help them. The responsibility isn’t pushed solely onto them. One doesn’t “get over” being depressed. They learn to cope. They learn to accept it as a part of them, rather than all of them, and learn that they are more than their depression. The suffering never truly goes away; it can lessen, though, and a person can learn to live with it.

Some people may defend this by saying that the Allansons lost their mother very recently, and this is how they handle their grief. I lost my father in February of last year. I know this type of grief. And just because that’s how they handle their grief, that doesn’t mean it’s a healthy way of coping, nor the type of coping mechanism you should promote in your game. (I will admit that my own methods of coping weren’t great, and that I’m trying to improve on that now.) There’s a quote that I heard somewhere that goes something like, “grief never really goes away. We just learn to live with it.” That suffering doesn’t ‘go away.’ It ebbs and flows, some days being bearable, and other days not.

But that’s not the end, friends. Oh, far from it.

At one point, you can flat-out tell Rory to “stop being depressed. Being depressed is a choice.” It is noted to be the “wrong” choice, however, Rory barely reacts to it, making it not seem like the wrong decision. I don’t feel like I need to explain why “depression is a choice” is a take colder than the depths of space. Depression’s not a choice, folks. Hell, I would love it if it was, I would love to stop the fatigue, the emptiness, the lethargy, the lack of motivation, the irritability, the messed-up appetite, the fucked-up sleep patterns, the fits of crying. That would be fucking great. But I can’t. BECAUSE IT’S NOT A CHOICE, YOU WALNUT.

Okay, okay, sorry, back on topic. So let’s say you’re mean to Rory. You wanna know what happens?

He kills himself. And according to this user, the story doesn’t change and barely acknowledges Rory after his death. (Obviously there’s not footage out there of the characters mentioning that Rory committed suicide. However, the developers themselves commented on the previously-linked Steam forum post confirming its legitimacy. This is so unbelievably fucked up. Suicide is already a topic that should be handled with care, but having a main character commit suicide and have that death have no impact on the story? I don’t even have words for how deplorable that is. (Doesn’t help that the game basically pushes whether Rory lives or dies onto the player, which is also disgusting, because I don’t think the developers had the insight into suicidal ideation to know that it’s a multitude of factors that lead to suicide, and not just one person being )

(Sidenote: here are the links to the National Suicide Prevention Line and the Crisis Text Line in case anyone needs them. Please take care, friends. <3)

[Addendum: as I was working on this review and listened to the podcast linked a little further down, Andrew Allanson had this to say at 2:08:47: "When you make an unlikable character, people expect Sherlock Holmes or Dr. House. They want flawed heroes, but only to the extent that they’re beautiful and intelligent and slightly Asperger-y."

Thank you for basically saying that having Asperger’s Syndrome is an unlikable trait or makes people unlikable.]

Anti-LGBTQ+

So let’s talk about the prejudice against non-straight and non-cis people!

Andrew Allanson has been rather fucking clear about his prejudice against trans people and non-straight people. In the “The Dick Show” podcast, starting at 1:45:45, Andrew Allanson was interviewed by the commentators. I will be providing timestamps of quotes since I can’t directly link to them.

(Sidenote: I was listening to this podcast and waiting for Andrew’s pa rt to start, and one of the commentators was talking about Women’s History Month, and saying “If a woman doesn’t have a man, she’s going to expect the government to be her man. That’s just the way they’re wired.” [1:44:24 - 1:44:31]. Yeah. That tells you the type of people who run this podcast and the type of people that Andrew decides to associate himself with.)

[1:52:15 - 1:52:] “... we made the mistake of asking the player, ‘what name did your parents give you?’ And it turns out that that is a very offensive question. Because some people, um, are trans, and don’t use the name their parents gave them. So immediately the game is targeted as being transphobic. [...] So we wanted to basically create a character off of the player in the game, the first thing we ask you ‘are you a boy or a girl,’ ‘what’s your name’, and people were so bent out of shape over this. Look, I’m sympathetic to trans people, I understand why it upset them. But the problem was when we apologized, that wasn’t good enough. People then took it and said ‘what else can we find in this game to prove that it’s offensive?’”

So here’s the thing: that... is lowkey transphobic? Because it’s like you said, these people don’t use the names that their parents gave them. You’re asking them, intentionally or not, to deadname themselves. There’s a reason they call it a “deadname.”

Later on they ask, “which of these do you identify with?” and show a male figure and a female figure. Which frankly, is alright.

And then they changed it in an update to “what do you look like?” which feels like a very direct jab at trans people, especially the ones who were upset by the initial question relating to names.

Oh, and then there’s this part (I only know DIck and Andrew’s voices, I’m afraid I don’t know the third, sorry m8).

[1:54:35 - 1:55:10]

Andrew: So you play as this guy, Alex, you just come home from [college, audio cut out here], you’re an entitled asshole--

Dick: You get points for stomping queers, as I understand it, that’s the game, right? You go around and--

Andrew: The goal is to establish the white ethnostate.

[unintelligible as others laugh and talk over each other]

Dick: --you have a little ‘gaydar’ in the corner and it points you to the nearest homosexual, and then you go, y‘know, “Hammer [X]”

Andrew: It’s - it’s - yeah, it’s a hack-and-slash.

Dick: If you buy the game they send you a special overlay you can put on your controller that turns all the buttons into ‘K.’ So it’s not ‘A’--

Andrew: Yes!

Dick: --Just ‘K,’ ‘K,’ and ‘K.’

Andrew: Just ‘K,’ ‘K’--yeah, exactly, exactly.

So we not only have the mockery of gay folk, but also mention of murdering them (whether in a joking fashion or not, this still isn’t fucking funny and not something to joke about, especially if you are not LGBTQ+ yourself. And to my knowledge, none of these men are).

And that’s just from the creator himself, as well as the first few minutes of the game.

Let’s talk bout The Scene.

What is The Scene? Well, it’s the scene where Alex and Rory talk, where you can tell Rory that “depression is a choice.” Should you be kind and supportive to him, you know what you can do? “Try to kiss [him.]” And there’s art for it. There is literally no reason for this to be here other than “haha it’s a guy trying to kiss another guy, gay people are funny!” It seems to be an attempt at humor, but it fails... rather miserably.

The Legendary Third Ending

I call it “legendary” because no one knows if it actually exists or not, because people can’t find it, regardless of the hints given by the developers.

Andrew, while doing “The Dick Show” interview, mentions that he put DIck Masterson (the host of the show) into the game in the third update [1:45:56] , and that you have to give Dick a pair of aviator glasses, where he will give you a red pill [1:47:15 - 1:47:33]. Dick is also found in Chapter 4 of the game [1:47:40].

The devs also tease it on Twitter, saying that it’s “sad and challenging to complete”, and they give vague and unclear hints that don’t seem to help even the fans of the game--after all, no one has found it, apparently. Even the YIIK Discord (though this is just hearsay) has been losing steam in trying to find this ending.

I think it’s a testament to the quality of the game when one of your major three endings is nigh-impossible to find. (For the record, I feel the same way about how PT went about its ending, and how arbitrary it felt to do these very specific things that the game barely tells you about.)

Miscellaneous Other Things That Don’t Fit In The Above

There are a couple other things that irk me about this game, so time for a rapid-fire round!

You can kiss Rory, who’s implied to be a senior in high school (due to this talk of college). So he’s, at best, 18. Alex had 5 and a half years of college (the game says “five and a quarter” but unless I’m mistaken colleges work in semesters not quarters,), so he’s probably 23-24. Yeah. (There’s also the issue of consent--when you kiss Vella she just blushes and acts more docile, while with Rory, he rather vehemently rejects it. So women just accept an unwanted kiss? Hm.)

You fight a flasher as a miniboss. Because sexual harassment is hilarious. (And if neither Michael nor Rory are 18 yet, then there’s the possibility of minors being involved. YEAH.)

The title card is intentionally glitchy af and it hurts the eyes, honestly.

If you go through New Game+ and go to the 70th floor of the Mind Dungeon, Alex will basically talk to himself about some things:

It mentions that “crows are ugly.” You fool. You absolute buffoon. Crows? Excellent. Very intelligent birbs.

This is basically “hey we suck, but so does everyone around us, it’s fine”

This game unironically uses Wonderwall lyrics in an emotional scene, like I know it was popular and not a meme in the 90s but my guy, you gotta think about the connotations with the audience you’re releasing this for,

“I sighed as the elevator began to shake, vibrating with motion.” Thank you for using three words to describe the elevator shaking,

The One Thing That I Liked

Surprisingly, there is something I liked about this game. Not solely in concept, not in its potential, but in its actual execution.

It starts on the day of New Years’ Eve. It’s dark outside and inside. Alex suddenly starts getting many random calls, some from people he knows, others he doesn’t. Some voices are distorted, some aren’t. Some are talking to him, some aren’t. And they’re quick little calls before they hang up, and Alex barely says a word. He can’t leave the house, and keeps getting phone calls that get more and more distorted as time goes on.

That? I think that actually really works.

It’s a more subtle way of showing reality breaking: getting calls from people, both friends and strangers, that are slowly getting more and more broken, and you can’t do anything. You’re trapped in your house, you can’t see outside, you don’t know what’s going on. You can’t help your friends, even when Michael screams for your help. The slowly deteriorating stability of the calls are your only indication of what’s going on outside.

And for me, that works. It was the one section of the game that I felt legitimately invested in. So, kudos to the devs for that one.

Conclusion

YIIK isn’t just bad. It’s offensive. It’s ignorant, it handles serious topics incredibly clumsily, and the worst of it is that Andrew Allanson considers it to be ‘art.’ (If you’re wondering why I didn’t talk about the “video games aren’t art” quote, don’t worry. That’s going to be its own essay.)

YIIK fails on every level, from technical to storytelling. Please, I beg of you, don’t give this game money. Just go watch the LP.

You may have noticed that I didn’t talk much about the “postmodern” aspect of the game, nor much about Alex as a protagonist.

Both of those are going to be their own separate essays.

This wild ride still ain’t over, folks. Hang on.

#yiik a postmodern rpg #yiik: a postmodern rpg #yiik #andrew allanson #yeehaw #holy shit this one is SO LONG but im so proud of it

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restlessmaknae · 7 years ago

Text

Let Fortuna mess with you (maybe she will do good in the end)

Dedicated to the lovely friend and the incredibly talented writer @gukyi for the OT7 Christmas collab! Merry Christmas, dear! 🎁

You never thought that you would be required to date three guys for a university course but you can’t do anything about it. A bet is a bet.

Pairing: Kim Taehyung x reader

Setting: university au; enemies to lovers au

Genre: fluff, comedy, maybe a bit of angst

Words: 5.5k

You couldn’t believe your luck.

If losing a bet to your dearest baby brother – Jimin – and being forced to sign up for a totally crazy, eccentric yet elective class as your punishment wasn’t enough, the course’s assignments definitely topped it all. You were slowly losing your sanity.

Let’s start by saying that dating was not your cup of tea. You were usually the shy, introverted type, so you had a hard time striking a conversation with anyone, let alone with boys. If you happened to ask a question or initiate a not-so-awkward conversation, you couldn’t keep it going. You weren’t designed to talk to boys, okay?

You were good with animals, you loved nothing more than your adorable little sugar gliders at home (you had three of them), you could totally get immersed into an enchanting book, romantic comedies and sentimental ballads were your absolute favourite but interacting with others weren’t your thing. Maybe it was because you spent most of your time studying or reading, others didn’t like to bother you when you went over your notes before an exam or when you sat by your favourite café shop’s window with one of Camus’ books in your hand – looking like one of those typical intelligent (and socially awkward) girls from Korean dramas.

No matter how much it hurt your pride to end up in Marriage and Family classes, you had to do it. A bet was a bet. You didn’t want Jimin to tease you for the rest of your life because you couldn’t attend half a year of useless and nonsense classes about relationships. On top of that, you needed those extra credit points and this particular course had one of the highest ones from this semester’s list.

In the end, you convinced yourself that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. In fact, you could learn something about relationships which were your weak points, so it would only do good, right?

Well, that was until you heard what you actually had to do for assignments.

“You got to be kidding me!” You snickered the moment you heard the professor telling you about the requirements.

“As I firmly believe that real life is experience is better than learning only from books, I want all of you to date three others by the end of the semester, go on dates and then write an essay highlighting both the good and the bad aspects of the relationship. Maybe you will even end up together and thank me one day for putting you two up.” The old man shrugged his shoulders and boosted a proud grin. “I can tell you that it happened multiple times before. Since the couples honestly shared with each other what problems arose from the very start, they could solve it only by doing their homework.”

Dating a totally random guy for a month for a university course was absolutely nonsense! You were sure that many people would have died to switch with you but you desperately needed those credits and dating someone was still better than sleeping with them. You were lucky you didn’t sign up for Sex Education and was asked to practice what you have learned. Though you assumed that a course like this wouldn’t even cross innocent little Jimin’s mind as he didn’t dare to mention sex if he were in the same room with you. He was too scared to talk about it so openly and maybe it was because you were his big sister, so you were older than him. Though it didn’t necessarily mean that you had more experience but you didn’t really know.

The first guy you were asked to date was Xu Minghao ‒ the brand new exchange student from China. Due to the fact that he had poor Korean skills, he didn’t even know that he was studying Marriage and Family. At least not until you explained it to him in English.

“My friend told me that it was Business Economics.” He pouted like your little brother when he was a toddler, his blonde, slightly curly hair giving him a prince-like look.

“Who was that friend?” You furrowed your eyebrows in question. You already assumed that it was a jokester and sadly you knew quite a lot of those guys. They were literally everywhere.

“Soonyoung.” Minghao admitted sheepishly and you couldn’t help but click your tongue.

“Small wonder why you ended up here.” You giggled childishly, thinking of the said boy who was seriously the most carefree person you’ve ever met. He was a notorious troublemaker and if you had been in high school, you were certain that he would have been in detention far too many times.

Poor Minghao was trying his best but taking up Korean classes – which weren’t focused on the vocabulary of dating – weren’t enough to keep your conversations going and your English wasn’t as good as his. So you were talking in a rather peculiar combination of Korean, English and Chinese (as he sometimes talked to himself in Chinese), it was almost like a whole new language. No matter what anyone said – language was definitely a barrier when it came to love.

Your second partner was even better with the definition of embarrassment aka shy bunny Mr. Jeon Jungkook. He was known to be a very talented and intelligent guy but he wasn’t very good at dating. Oh boy, he didn’t even look at you for two weeks! How were you supposed to date when he avoided eye-contact and conversations were as awkward as between you and your neighbour after he broke your door knob?

You had no absolute idea why Jeon Jungkook wanted to take up a course named Marriage and Family and he didn't want to share the reason with you either. You guessed that he merely lost a bet like you did because there was no way he would voluntarily date someone, to be precise a female. He looked like he was allergic to girls.

You were almost sure that nothing worse could come your way. Well... you were dead wrong. The worst possible scenario happened and you didn't even want to cover up your astonishment when your professor announced the name of your next - and therefore last - partner.

"Kim Taehyung? Kim I'm-the-best-and-let-everyone-know-it-too Taehyung? That asshole will be my partner?" You shrieked not caring if the said person was in the same room with you or not. Some of the students turned their head at your horrified exclamation that almost sounded like a cry.

You didn't want to believe that out of all people, you got Taehyung. The one whom you hated the most. The one who ruined your last year of high school. The one whom you didn't even want to see after that horrendous year yet it seemed that he attended the same university as you - although you never encountered him since you were at uni (Luckily though.) As a smartass he was, he probably wanted to get better knowledge about relationships and that’s why he attended Mr. Park’s classes.

He wasn't one of those typical popular, intelligent and rich womanizers you can see in cheesy kdramas. He was actually very real – with all his flaws and bad habits. Even though you didn't know about his family's status, it was obvious that he wasn't a womanizer. He may have wanted to flirt with anyone but he couldn't stand a chance. He was known to be especially inexperienced in dating, therefore he didn't know how to behave with a lady. He was too eccentric to girls. Not like you knew it from first-hand experience since you never gave him a chance and he never asked for one. You were enemies, not lovers.

"Maybe the girl who acts like this is more of an asshole than a boy who happens to be smart." A familiar voice spoke up from behind you, making the air freeze for a moment. The professor opened his mouth to say something but before he could manage a sentence out, you were quick to respond. You turned around in your chair and came in sight with the one and only Kim Taehyung who was boasting a grin that you wanted to swipe off his face as soon as possible.

"Admitting that you only happen to be smart without working for it makes me so delighted, you can't even imagine." You counter-attacked as memories crossed your mind.

The flashbacks were so hurtful that you had to bite your lip. He was an asshole then and an asshole now. Some things didn't change.

"Having stereotypes about a new student and not being bothered to change your mindset is where you’ve made a mistake. It's not my fault that you never wanted to get to know the real me." He shrugged as if it was nothing but his solemn features said otherwise. He was dead serious about his words.

"Excuse me?" Your voice was a pitch higher as you had to hold yourself back from strangling him. How dared he come up with such a lie?

"I really don’t want to interrupt anything…” Mr. Park cleared his throat, motioning you to turn back to see his expression. “But I would like to point out that I am certain that this lecture hall is not the best place for you to discuss your shared past.” He gently asked you to shut up and turn your attention to him but neither of you could give up. Not yet.

“However, I do encourage you to continue this conversation outside the lecture in five minutes’ time. It seems that it's your chance to change the misconceptions you had, maybe Fortuna wanted you to be each other's last partner." The professor tried his best to dissolve the tension in the air but to no avail. You were still huffing and puffing when he called it a day a couple of minutes later and bid his goodbye.

You snorted remembering his words. Maybe Fortuna wanted you to be each other's last partner? Oh please, what nonsense it was! You’ve never believed in fate and such things, so your Marriage and Family course wouldn’t be first to break this habit of yours.

"I must have angered Fortuna then. I don't think I deserve such punishment." You mumbled to yourself, already ready to leave the lecture hall.

However, Kim Taehyung happened to overhear your comment since he sat behind you during the past hour and couldn’t leave without saying anything.

"You say?” He furrowed his eyebrows in question, pity clearly written all over his face. You weren’t one to back off, so you stood there face-to-face, your arms crossed in front of you. You felt like you were on the opposite sides on a battlefield and both of you were ready to show what you got.

“I'm the one who's going to come out of the whole dating thing badly. You are not the one who has to act like a gentleman and buy you stuff just because we are dating."

"Wow, you've planned it all out so quickly!” You unconsciously started clapping like he came up with the idea of the century. He didn’t seem amused though. “What do you have in mind if you mind telling your precious girlfriend?" You teased him on purpose with an ironic edge to your voice.

"Well that's obviously not part of my plan, sweetie.” Taehyung emphasised the word, playing with the nickname as if it was his sort of pleasure. “You wouldn't get surprised if I told you everything." He said with a forced smile and cooed closer to your ears. You wanted nothing more than to get away from him as soon as possible but you couldn’t help a shiver running down your spine. There was something about his warm breath that made your heart leap.

"You are so bad." You took a step back, indicating that you weren’t up to such intimacy so early in your so-called relationship. Not even if he was your boyfriend for the month.

"Welcome to hell." He cooed like a silly evil character from a Disney movie. You immediately felt fury bubbling up inside of you and you had to clench your fists in frustration.

“You little‒”

“You are the little one in this relationship, honey.” He cut you off with a sly smirk as he towered over you with his height.

“Two can play this game, sugarplum.” You raised your eyebrows challengingly and your response earned a wry laugh from him.

Before he could counter-attack you, you turned on your heels and swiftly left the lecture hall. You couldn’t help but pant in disbelief while you were exiting the building. You were sure that it was only the beginning for you two yet Taehyung was already getting on your nerves.

The show must go on.

You said that every single time you had to put on a show and pretend like you were the happiest person on Earth to share your precious time with Kim Taehyung. Literally all occasions were a part of your big show because you couldn’t find a single thing you liked about him. If you happened to meet up because neither of you turned down the other’s offer, you were almost biting off each other’s heads. You wanted to strangle him so bad but you didn’t want to end up in jail for violence. That’s basically the only thing that stopped you from getting into trouble.

The shit show went on for two weeks. Whenever you two had a conversation, it was basically you dissing Taehyung for not taking anything seriously, being as odd as he was, putting out his tongue even if it was considered rude and unnecessary on your part, and him not getting why you were so judgemental when it came to him, teasing you because he saw that Youngjae from B.A.P was the wallpaper on your phone and smirking every time you moved an inch since the first time he saw you dancing.

One of his friends was attending the hip hop classes with you and he came in to watch him practice, only to notice that you were there as well. You swore that Fortuna must have hated you the most out of all humans.

After two weeks, not everything but a lot of things have changed. You two were finally going out for a date as if it was required for your assignment. You decided to have lunch at a restaurant and then maybe walk in the nearby park while watching the snowfall. However, you couldn’t get as far as that.

When you arrived, you already had a feeling that the date would turn out disastrous but you decided to give it a shot. It was university work after all.

You weren’t even surprised that Taehyung didn’t offer to help with your coat or comment on your choice of dress even if you secretly wanted him to say something. You finally wore something decent after years and he should have been grateful for that.

Yet, he decided to ask about something else.

“So now that we are officially dating, I think it’s only fair that you tell me why you hate me so much.” He cleared his throat after both of you had made your order, his fierce gaze never leaving your face.

That was one of the things you hated most about him – his big, chestnut-brown eyes always seemed to see through you. At least, it was like he wanted to break down your walls by looking at your reactions, trying to solve the mystery of your expressions and searching for your weakness.

Nonetheless, you were accustomed to hiding your feelings thanks to the years behind you. You never let your façade down and you didn’t intend to let it happen that day either.

“You wanna act like you suddenly care?” You elevated an eyebrow in question, doubting that he even took his own question seriously.

Taehyung’s features became solemn in an instant. His usual delicate, childish features turned rigid like castle walls. His eyes looked as if they were the onyx of the night; mysterious, heavy and cold.

“If you hadn’t been so obsessed with the idea of putting me down, maybe you would have noticed that I’ve tried my best to get to know you.” The boy confessed, his stare making you more than uncomfortable.

On the other hand, you could only snort in response. Getting to know you? Really? Why was he messing with you then? Why wasn’t he adamant enough to get answers?

“What? By teasing me?”

“Yeah.” He shook his head without hesitance. “Because teasing you seemed like the only way I could get to know you a bit better. If I asked gently, you would growl at me and tell me to go to Hell. If I told the same thing to you, you would get upset and say that you never wanted to see me. So by playing your game, at least I stood a chance.”

There was something in what he said. You were hyper aware of your shared past whenever you looked at me. But how couldn't you be reminded of the not so good old times? It may have been only two years ago but your memories were as vivid as ever. He was also right about the fact that you only blurted out something personal when he got you really pissed off. When he was trying to be gentle, you were cautious not to fall into his trap.

Frankly, you had to admit that he seemed sincere this time. Plus, it wouldn't hurt you if you told the truth. The past was the past after all. Neither of you could change it.

“If you really want to know, it’s because you ruined my last year of high school.” You admitted without a blink of an eye. Once it was out, you felt like an invisible weight was lifted off your shoulders. Of course, it was only part of the truth but at least it wasn't hidden deep inside your heart.

“How?" Taehyung could only furrow his eyebrows in question. He didn't seem hurt by your words, only a bit confused. "Did it really bother you that I was the first-ranked student and not you?”

“Yes, it did." You slammed your fists on the table, your sudden action earning suspicious glances from the people at the nearby tables. You suddenly forgot about the fact that you were in a restaurant. You felt like you were being put on a time machine which left you in your senior year.

"I was the smartest student before you came! Then you showed up with your carefree attitude and it seemed that everything was working out for you. You got all the right answers yet you went to concerts, arcade games and exhibitions every other day. While you were having fun, I studied my ass off and I could only come in second. You had your group of friends and I was there as the lonely wolf, hoping that studying could save me from being so lonely.” You erupted like a volcano, almost spitting the words like a lady shouldn't do because you couldn't hold yourself back.

Your voice came out raspy and you already felt your heart beating faster. You couldn't help though. Taehyung was in front of you, it was your chance to tell him the truth, so you reassured yourself that you were asked to confess, he should deal with the consequences.

On the other hand, the boy didn't seem to be hugely affected by your rage. You couldn't tell if he shrugged if off or he was waiting for something more but his calmness sure infuriated you even more.

“Okay, I get the part of studying but I can’t do anything about it. My memory is surprisingly good.”

“Then you shouldn’t have boasted about it!" You reprimanded him. "Studying isn’t so easy for some.”

Your words seemed to leave an impact on him. Finally, you thought to yourself. At first, he rolled his eyes but when he heard the continuation of your comment, he stopped dead in his tracks.

“I get that, okay?" His voice rose higher and if it hadn't been for such a hurtful and serious topic, you are sure you would have laughed at his high-pitched voice. He was sounding like a teenage girl at an EXO concert. "But it doesn’t mean that my life was perfect. Studying was the only thing that went well for me.” He grumbled out of frustration.

You couldn't believe your ears. He wanted to play the victim now?

“Oh really?" You acted like you were considering that what he was saying was true. When you were attending school together, he didn't even care about you, He was oblivious of everything that was around him. Nonetheless, when it came to him, he wanted everyone's attention. Or at least you thought so. "Don’t you say that you were broken-hearted because no girl wanted to date you?”

“Why do you have to act like that?" He yelled at you furiously, his deep, angry voice surprising both you and the people at the nearby tables. "Why didn’t you have friends then? I was the new student after all. You should have had your own group of friends by then.” He remarked with a curious edge to his tone. You could only shook your head in response.

“You were so oblivious to things that were happening around you.”

“What do you mean by that?” He finally asked the big question, the one that he should have already asked. Not just when you two met up after two years but when he decided to sit at a different table and not yours because his friends were encouraging him to leave you alone. That day, you got to know that Kim Taehyung wasn't only a smart ass who could achieve better results by ruining others' self-confidence but he was rude as well.

You couldn't hold yourself back. You didn't even think twice when the question reached you.

“Didn’t you see how everyone looked at me? How everyone left the table when I sat beside them at the canteen? How they laughed at me when I made a mistake? How my locker was always decorated with post-it notes?” You spitted as your voice trailed off at the end. The hurtful memories were as hurtful as always.

“I’m sure they weren’t serious.” Taehyung smiled half-heartedly, trying to belittle the worst traumas.

“If telling someone that they should kill themselves isn’t serious, I don’t know what is.”

“I-I-“

“Of course you didn’t notice any of it." You cut off the guy who was trying to find the right words to you. It was almost amusing as the always so talkative Taehyung didn't know how to voice out his feelings after you came clear to him. "You never wanted to pay attention to what was happening around you and I was already so good at hiding my real emotions. No one actually cared. For me, studying was really the only thing that mattered and I felt like you took that privilege from me. So are you happy now that you know why I hate you?” You asked furiously.

Your heart was beating like a drum, your blood rushing through your veins. You were never so angry all your life. Not even when you found those nasty messages on your locker. Then you were more like discouraged and empty. You felt numb.

Right now, your emotions were all over the place. That's why you couldn't play your part in his show anymore. You were sick and tired of pretending, of hiding your emotions and of hiding your true self. He was a nobody, so you shouldn't have cared about his comments. Now you made a promise that you wouldn't do anymore.

Your question was followed by long moments of silence. Deep inside, you were gloating at your victory. You won, he couldn't mutter a single word. Yet, you felt a bit guilty and bittersweet. Did he really deserve that all at once?

“That’s what I’ve thought.” You mumbled to yourself and rose from your seat, leaving the shocked Taehyung and the confused spectators of your little show behind.

Due to the fact that Marriage and Family courses were held only once a week, you could avoid bumping into Taehyung for week. At least, that’s what you initially thought.

The more time passed, the more you realised that Fortuna was definitely not on your side. If she had wanted to support you, she shouldn’t have let that week narrow down to three days. Your sudden yet definitely needed outburst required more time to heal and more compassion for the memories to lose their grip on you.

Yet, as cliché as it sounds, Taehyung was just right there in the library when you wanted to borrow a book for one of your group projects. He just happened to be at the row of shelves where you started to look for that specific book.

He was the first to notice you as you were reaching for a book, only to realise that it had the same author but it wasn’t the book you were looking for.

“Hey!” He greeted you with a timid half-smile, something that you knew you would never see on him unless it came to such circumstances. He was always so confident and straightforward; he never cared how others reacted to his peculiar antics.

This time, he could only manage a half-smile instead of his trademark cheeky grin and even this half-smile seemed a bit fake. You couldn’t deny that you felt a spike of guilt rushing through your veins because you were the one who made him feel so uneasy. You were sure that you stirred up an uncomfortable topic for him but you couldn’t hold yourself back. You had to tell him the truth face-to-face. After all, he was the one who asked for it.

God knows why but you couldn’t muster a single word now that he was in front of you. It was so easy to imagine acting calm around him the next time you see him but none of your imagines seemed appropriate as you looked into his chestnut-brown eyes.

Taehyung decided to save you and spoke up first.

“I want to apologise and I also want to say thank you.” He whispered, his deep voice sending shivers down your spine. You couldn’t deny the effect he had on you even if you wanted to shrug it off. He was an asshole, right? So why would an asshole apologise?

“I get the apology part but why on Earth would you like to thank me?” You tilted your head in confusion as thousands of question marks filled your head. Why? Why? Why? It was like a song in repeat; you never knew why Taehyung did what he did and said what he said. He was Kim Taehyung. He was as inexplicable as an expressionist painting.

“For being honest.” Taehyung admitted as he ruffled his sand-like hair. “I see the whole picture now and I can understand why you hate me. I think I would have hated myself under the same circumstances. You used your sarcasm and hatred because you wanted someone whom you can blame.” He continued without showing any signs of resentment. His chestnut-brown eyes were glistening joyfully even though what he said wasn’t joyful at all. You didn’t know if it was because he was only acting or because that’s what he really thought.

“The thing with you is that I never know if you are serious or not.” You pondered as you tried to decipher his expression.

“I’m serious.” He bobbed his head to prove that he was wrong.

“Well then…” You cleared your throat as you struggled to find the right words to say. Nothing seemed right. Yet nothing seemed wrong either. You were merely confused. It was your first time spending so much time with a boy (even though the majority of it was roasting each other), therefore you had no idea what you were supposed to do and how you were supposed to act after you exposed yourself to him. You felt vulnerable after the truth came to surface. Like you let him break down some walls. You couldn’t decide if you were glad because you did or it was actually the worst mistake of your life.

“Thanks for saying that. And I know hating you wasn’t the best coping mechanism but by putting the blame on you, I could feel like it wasn’t my fault.”

“It wasn’t.” The boy protested even before you could say one more sentence. “No one deserves to be bullied because they are different.”

“I wasn’t different. I was just studying well.”

“Exactly.” He clicked his tongue and ruffled his hair. Again. You could tell that it was an act out of hesitance but you didn’t know what to expect. You never know what to expect when it came to Taehyung.

No matter what, it would be an understatement to say that his sudden, honest and heartfelt confession took you by surprise. Your heart literally sank hearing his words.

“I got transferred to Yonsang because my grandfather had died. My parents were going through their divorce and they asked him to take care of me until things settle down. I was living with him for eight years because after they put an end to their marriage, they thought that it was easier for me to continue living with him than to be with my mum one week and with my dad the next week. When he died, I had to move back to Daegu and that’s how I ended up at Yonsang. Studying went well but other than that my life seemed like a crazy and wild ride.”

He made an attempt to stay calm and his usual bubbly self but he couldn’t hide the fact that his voice trailed off at the end. It came as no surprise though. Losing someone who was closer to you than your own parents must have been a trauma for an 18-year-old boy on the verge of adulthood. There must have been so many things that he couldn’t experience because he had only one person beside him. You were certain that you wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for the support of your mother, your father and Jimin alike. You needed all of them in order to live a full, delightful life.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” You stuttered as you averted your eyes elsewhere but his face. You couldn’t look at him. Not after what he had said.

You felt so guilty out of the blue. You were aware that people didn’t like to openly talk about the events that forever left them with scars because you did the exact same thing. Not until someone dig really deep or pissed you off, did you actually talk about the story of your bullying.

Taehyung had never shown a sign that he was struggling or that he wanted to share his pain with someone else. It finally dawned on you that it didn’t mean that there wasn’t something going on, you just thought that he was a shallow-minded boy who only cared about himself. Now that you heard his story, you started to understand why he didn’t want to pry into others’ business. He had enough going on in his own life, he didn’t need more drama.

“Just thought that you would want to know.” The boy mumbled like it didn’t matter but it certainly did. His confession changed everything.

“Look, we are all the same. We all got scars we try to hide. Now that I know yours, you don’t have to hide them anymore. It doesn’t mean that you can’t diss me because you can but maybe you can start to be nicer.”

“Me? Nice? In your dreams, sweetie pie. ” You teased with a smug smirk, sticking out your tongue like a little child. Your childish act didn’t bother Taehyung. In fact, he was still a kid at heart, so he voluntarily joined you in the little role play.

“Honey, I know you are a sweet person deep down. Just let me see it.” He put his hand on his heart like he was telling a poem, his words smooth like silk. You rolled your eyes at his choice of words. Oh boy, was he a writer in his previous life? Or was he the new Nicholas Sparks, you just didn’t know about it?

“Gosh, you are so cheesy!”

“I won’t stop if you don’t start being nice to me.” He gave you the puppy eyes look, melting your icy heart in only an instant. You didn’t know how his gaze could send chills all over your body but you found yourself shivering. Only in the pleasant way.

“Okay, you won!” You gave in with a carefree laugh because you didn’t want to hear such sentences from Taehyung’s mouth. You couldn’t stand cheesy boys. Period. On top of that, maybe it was a good idea to start acting nice around the guy. He deserved it.

In the end, you had to realise that maybe… just maybe… Fortuna didn’t hate you after all.

#sfwbangtan #bangtanbuds #kpopwritingnet #kkreationsnet #kreativewritersnet #bts scenario #taehyung scenario #v scenario #bts fluff #taehyung fluff #v fluff #bts comedy #v comedy #taehyung comedy #bts enemies to lovers #bts university #restless_maknae #my story #ot7 collab

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epochxp · 3 years ago

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‘Company of Heroes 2′: Historical Game Review

Arthipo

When bringing up the subject of World War II video games, many gamers may think of first-person shooters like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor. However, there also happens to be a few World War II real-time strategy games that really stand out, but often forgotten. And out of these games, by far the most impressive one of all has to be Company of Heroes 2 and its predecessor.

Company of Heroes 2 is a real-time strategy battle sim set during World War II. Unlike its predecessor, which followed two separate U.S. military units in the Western Front during the Battle of Normandy and the Allied liberation of France, Company of Heroes 2 is set during the Eastern Front. Players take on the role of the Soviet Army, controlling Russian troops as they face off against the Germans in battles such as the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Moscow. It should also be noted, however, that the Ardennes Assault DLC featured playable American forces.

Gameplay

As standard for real-time strategy games, Company of Heroes 2 features a top-down perspective of the battlefield, with the player controlling units of foot soldiers and vehicles. But unlike many RTS games, where the player has entire armies at their disposal, CoH2 has smaller-scale battles fought by only a handful of troops. Due to this gameplay style, players have to be constantly conscious of their units and strategically plan every move to ensure victory over the enemy. The player will need to pay close attention to things like environmental hazards, differences in terrain, and weather conditions, recognizing the advantages and disadvantages of each circumstance to adjust their strategy appropriately. Each mission feels different from the last, forcing the player to challenge themselves and implement new ideas and strategies as the campaign progresses. Mechanically, the game is an improvement over its predecessor and feels like an evolution of the RTS genre.

Graphics

Pocket Lint

Company of Heroes 2 was a technical marvel when it was released back in 2013, and honestly, the visuals continue to hold up miraculously well nearly a decade later. While it obviously has been outclassed graphically by newer games (the reveal trailer for Company of Heroes 3 shows just how far graphics have come in such a short amount of time), this game still looks fantastic. The game’s realistic graphics, clean user interface, and simple yet straightforward menus all hold up very well in 2021 and still feel very modern.

In-game animations also look great, with running and shooting animations looking top-notch. Even the environments feel alive as smoke rises from destroyed buildings. While in battle, I couldn’t help but notice how realistic the water looked and other terrain, such as flowing grass, looking particularly well detailed. Oftentimes, real-time strategy games that feature zoomed-out perspectives of battlefields lack in the graphical departments, but Company of Heroes 2 is not one of those instances.

Sound Design

PC Gamer

But perhaps even more impressive is the game’s audio, both in-game voice acting and sound effects. Company of Heroes 2 features full voice-acting, and it seems that Relic Entertainment went above and beyond in this department. Character voices sound authentic, with commanders and enemy troopers heard on the battlefield yelling commands to their fellow soldiers. Not only does this add to the game’s level of immersion, but it also helps the player decipher the situation and aids them in their battle strategy.

The game’s sound effects here are also peak. Sounds of machine-gun fire, tank engines accelerating across the battlefield, and bullets piercing enemy units all sound incredibly accurate and realistic. This excellent sound design further adds to the game’s feeling of authenticity and helps to immerse the player within the game world.

How Does It Hold Up?

PC Gamer

So with the game approaching its tenth anniversary, we now must ask, how does it hold up today? Surprisingly well, as it turns out! As previously stated, this game still looks and sounds great even when compared to newer titles. But one of the aspects of this game that has actually improved through the years is its available content, thanks to the game’s overwhelming amount of user-created material. One quick look through this game’s Steam Workshop shows that this game still has a very active modding community, with over 12,000 mods available directly through Steam. Available mods include character and item skins, custom maps, and game-changing additions such as a Zombie mode. Even if you’ve already played the heck out of Company of Heroes 2, it might be worth revisiting just for the community mods alone.

Verdict

Moby Games

All-in-all, Company of Heroes 2 is still just as great as it first was when it was first released. Gamers who loved it then will still enjoy it today, but those who have never been fans of the RTS gaming genre likely won’t be swayed by this game. But if you are a big fan of World War II games or classic real-time strategy titles and have never tried the series before, then I strongly recommend checking out this game. With Company of Heroes 3 just getting announced earlier this month, now is the perfect time to try the first two games in the series.

At Epoch XP, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse Epoch XP's service on our parent site, SJR Research.

(This article is credited to Ben Price. For as long as he can remember, Ben has always loved playing, discussing, and writing about video games. Since receiving his B.A. in English, he now writes about them for a living.)

#Video Game Reviews #Company of Heroes 2

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andthisisthewonder · 7 years ago

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Amendments

I wanted to try my hand at a trope I enjoy but have never written before. Let’s see how it worked out, lol. Rated M for sexy reasons.

As the applause for Peeta’s speech died down, Mr. Mellark lifted up his drink to toast his son. There had to be over three hundred people in the room, but Peeta’s voice and hands were steady. Winning over a crowd was what he excelled at.

“Thank you for trusting me to take over as CEO,” Peeta said into the microphone. “I promise to give everything I have to this company. While we will miss your dedication, passion, and leadership, I promise there are only bright days ahead for Mellark Tech.”

More applause. A few whistles, probably from his closest friends Finnick and Johanna.

“Now I need to take a moment to thank the most important person in my life: my beautiful fiancée, Katniss.”

Katniss smiled and ducked her head as everyone swiveled in their seats to find her table.

“She has been nothing but patient and encouraging these past two months as I worked nights and weekends to prepare for my new role. She knows how often I lose track of time when I’m in the middle of a project, so thank you for always making sure I ate dinner. While she may not know her way around the kitchen, there’s no one better at ordering takeout.” The audience laughed, and he flashed them a charming smile. “I’m so proud to have you by my side as I take this next step. I promise to make time for you, for us, even as I continue to work hard to support your shopping habit.”

More laughter. A few men in the room elbowed their wives.

“Thank you for coming out this evening to celebrate my father’s retirement. Enjoy dinner! And don’t forget, it’s open bar.” He winked and walked back to his table to thunderous applause.

Katniss stood when he reached his chair. She leaned in for a hug, pressed her mouth against his cheek, and whispered, “I’m going to stab you with the salad fork.”

“I doubt you know which fork that is,” he said under his breath as they sat down.

“Any sharp object will due at this point.”

Moments later, the first course was served. Katniss picked up the wrong fork, winked at him, and dug into her garden salad.

This was going to be a long night.

He had brought this upon himself with the jabs he had made during his speech. The audience viewed it as a little teasing between a man and his soon-to-be wife, but Katniss saw it for what it was. He had cut her down in front of everyone, remade her into the wife he wanted: harmless and silly. Insubstantial.

The truth was Katniss knew how to cook quite well. He had never tasted her cooking due to the personal chef he employed, but on more than one occasion he had come home from work to find Katniss making herself dinner. His plate, prepared to his specifications by his chef Sae, always waited in the oven.

Katniss didn’t have a shopping habit either, although he suspected she might develop one out of sheer boredom. She spent most days reading, practicing archery at the country club, or volunteering at a variety of charities around the city. There wasn’t much else to do. He wouldn’t let her work.

By the time the main course arrived, Katniss had downed two glasses of wine and had barely said a word. Clove Arlington, seated on her other side, tried to strike up a conversation several times, but Katniss either offered one word answers or deferred to Peeta.

He should have known she’d crack sooner or later.

Halfway through the filet mignon, Clove turned to Katniss and said, “I meant to tell you sooner. Your dress is absolutely stunning. Who designed it?”

“Six thousand dollars,” Katniss said without missing a beat. She stabbed a piece of steak and shoved it in her mouth.

“Excuse me?” Clove asked.

Peeta touched Katniss’s arm, but it was too late. The words came tumbling out.

“The dress cost six thousand dollars,” Katniss repeated. “That’s what you meant, right? You ask for the designer, look up the cost, and the next time I see you, you’re wearing something that cost an extra thousand.”

The other men and women at the table fell silent. Katniss raised her eyebrows and took a healthy gulp of wine.

“Honey, we talked about this,” Peeta said with a sheepish what-can-you-do glance around the table. “She’s not good at taking compliments.”

“It’s by Cinna.” Katniss tapped her chandelier earrings. “You want to know how much these cost too? I’ll give you a hint. They could feed a family of four for a year.”

“I’m sorry,” Peeta said. He rested his hand on her knee and squeezed. “Katniss grew up in a...different environment. She’s still learning what qualifies as an appropriate topic of conversation.”

“My apologies,” Katniss said. “I forgot we’re not supposed to discuss money out loud. We just quietly compare our networths based on what everyone wears and drives.”

His chair screeched against the ballroom floor as he stood. He yanked Katniss upright, much too brusquely to be considered polite, but anger clouded his judgment.

“If you’ll excuse us,” he said.

As they made their way across the ballroom, Peeta shot everyone who made eye contact a smile to reassure them there was nothing wrong. For all they knew, he was headed into the bathroom for a quickie with his fiancée.

Like he’d ever sleep with her. Like she’d ever let him.

They had almost reached the exit, when Cashmere fucking Laughlin stepped in front of them. Peeta cursed whatever deity had it out for him and came to an abrupt halt.

“Peeta!” She threw her arms around him, forcing him to let go of Katniss. “I feel like it’s been forever. You haven’t introduced me to your fiancée yet.”

“Of course,” Peeta said, switching on the charm. “Cashmere, this is Katniss. Katniss, this is Cashmere.”

“We go way back,” Cashmere said, sticking out her hand. “Friends since elementary school.”

Katniss looked from Cashmere’s face down to her hand and back up again. She shot Peeta a look as if to ask, Really? Normally, Peeta would call her out on her rudeness, but in this situation, he’d let the niceties slide.

Cashmere dropped her arm back to her side and returned her attention to Peeta.

“My computer has been giving me such trouble the past few days. You must come over and take a look at it.”

Katniss stiffened. Peeta drew her into his side, and for once, she didn’t fight him on the physical contact.

“I’m sure you could hire someone to fix it,” he said.

“Do you have any idea how much they charge?” Cashmere asked, as if she couldn’t afford to simply throw out the defective computer and buy ten brand new ones. “Besides, who better to take a look than the new CEO of Mellark Tech?”

Peeta gritted his teeth. “I’ll have to check my schedule.”

“I’m free this Wednesday,” Cashmere said. “Maybe you could stop by after work?”

“Like I said, I’ll have to check if I’m available.”

“If you’re planning on fucking her, could you let me know ahead of time? I’d hate to let your dinner get cold,” Katniss said in the sweetest voice she could muster. She almost sounded like the doting fiancée he billed her as.

Peeta shut his eyes and let out a breath. He opened them just in time to find Katniss pressing her cheek against Cashmere’s.

“It was wonderful to meet you,” Katniss said, before sweeping past Cashmere and out the exit.

Cashmere looked over her shoulder. “What the fuck?”

Peeta walked as calmly as he could, but as soon as he reached the lobby, he picked up his pace and caught Katniss by the arm. “We need to have a conversation. Now.”

The second ballroom was empty, so he tugged her through there into the attached bridal suite. He slammed the door behind them and locked it.

“Are you trying to make me look like an idiot?” he demanded.

She came to a stop in front of the large oak table in the center of the room and spun around to face him. “You don’t need my help with that.”

“You’re embarrassing me.”

She shrugged. “You embarrassed me.”

“No one gives a shit about what I said.”

“I care!” She kicked off her heels. He dove to the left to avoid being struck. “Those heels are the most painful shoes I have ever worn. God forbid I wear something practical.”

“We’re at my father’s retirement party,” he reminded her. “You couldn’t exactly wear your hiking boots.”

She glared at him. “I know what I’m expected to wear. I read the contract.”

She probably had it memorized. When he had approached her with this arrangement, she had disappeared with the contract for a full twenty-four hours. He had half expected to find it leaked online, but she finally resurfaced with a list of amendments.

The section about her physical appearance had been too broad. She worried what he’d make her do if she didn’t get specific. No surgical alterations. No cutting or dying her hair. She had complied with the rest of it though: high heels, a new wardrobe of skirts and dresses, make-up everyday, manicured nails. When they met, her nails had been short and unpolished. He had made her grow them out.

She went through an entire afternoon of waxing, plucking, and exfoliating. He should have sprung for a full body massage to end the day, but it hadn’t occurred to him until she’d come home with a scowl carved into her face. Red and raw, she disappeared into her room where she took her dinner.

None of the changes she made to the contract had bothered him, although he had fought her on nearly every single one. While her stubbornness impressed him, it also pissed him off. He was offering her an incredible amount of money for a six month engagement and two years of marriage. Not only did she get a weekly allowance and have access to his credit cards, but she’d also receive a large lump sum upon the finalization of their divorce.

Strangely enough, the money was the only part of the contract she had never complained about. Guess she was content with the number of zeroes.

“You’re acting like an insufferable asshole,” she said. At his stony face, she amended, “More so than usual.”

“You’re too sensitive. It was just a quick speech. They thought it was funny.”

“I don’t want to be a joke,” she snapped. “I have to coexist with these people for the next two years. Half of them believe I’m some simpleton from Hicksville, USA while the other half think I’m a gold-digging slut you picked up off a stripper pole.”

He smirked. “I did find you at a strip club.”

“I was the bartender!” she yelled.

He stepped in front of her, and she scowled at the invasion of her personal space.

“I’m sorry I embarrassed you,” he said, annoyed that he actually meant it. There was something about her that he couldn’t avoid when he got close like this. He had kissed her a hundred times and held her close, but it was all for the public eye. When they were alone, when he looked at her for too long, his skin felt hot and prickly. She really was quite pretty, even without makeup. But tonight, god, tonight she looked fucking amazing. It didn’t help that Cinna’s dress put her breasts on display. He ached to touch him.

Fuck. He hated when he fell into this train of thought.

“No, you’re not,” she said. “You think I’m your pet. You think you can dress me up and treat me however you want so long as you’re paying me. It makes me sick.”

His jaw dropped. “I don’t think that.”

“If you want to fuck half the women in this city, fine, but don’t parade them around in front of me. It’s insulting.”

“That wasn’t my fault.”

“Are you going to fix her computer this week?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “Take a look at her hardware?”

The truth was Cashmere hadn’t been lying when she said she hadn’t seen him. It had been over a month since he’d slept with her. Or anyone else for that matter. He wanted to blame the long hours he had put in at the office, but he had a nagging suspicion it was something else entirely.

“You’re just pissed that the landscapers finish on Sunday,” he said, anger making him too hot in his suit jacket. That was the real reason he had added those insults to his speech tonight. That fucking landscaper who somehow always ended up working with his shirt off.

Katniss frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Your lover won’t be around the house anymore. Will you start meeting him at hotels?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“That asshole. Gale Hawthorne.”

“Oh.” Her smile was smug. She held up her hand at least six inches above Peeta’s head. “Tall, dark, and handsome.”

He grabbed her wrist and crushed it between their bodies. “Are you sleeping with him?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not!” She tried to pull away, but she had nowhere to go. He had her trapped between his body and the table.

“So that massage he gave you was just part of their services? Will I find it on the final bill?”

The corner of her lip curled up. He couldn’t tell if it was the start of a sneer or a smile. “I knew that made you jealous.”

“It didn’t make me jealous. It pissed me off.”

Yesterday, a strange urge to spend time with her had sent him home during lunch. He knew how bored she was when she had no volunteering scheduled. When he’d arrived, he’d found her in front of the pool, lounging on her stomach in the tiny orange bikini he had picked out for her to wear on their honeymoon. Gale knelt at her side, an open bottle of sunblock on the ground. Peeta couldn’t find a streak of sunblock on his fiancée’s back. Gale had rubbed it in well.

As soon as he cleared his throat, Gale sprang to his feet, but Katniss had merely looked up and greeted Peeta as if another man’s hands hadn’t just been all over her.

“You know the contract states--”

She cut him off. “Yes. I know the contract says you can continue fucking whoever you want while I have to live like a goddamn nun for two and a half years.”

It was unfair to expect her to remain faithful when he saw whomever he pleased, but this was the world he lived in. The wife stayed home, pretended not to notice, while the men did whatever they liked. He didn’t want to get married. He was only twenty-eight, and he enjoyed being a bachelor.

“I liked flirting with him,” she said. “And he liked staring at me in a bikini. We never did anything more than that massage.”

“Would you have if I hadn’t come home?”

“No, Peeta. I’m not going to break that contract. No matter how much of an asshole you are.”

This wasn’t a new insult. Hell, she had called him that a few minutes ago when they first came into the room. But for some reason, in that moment, it stung. He had given her everything, but she couldn’t stand him.

“Why do you stay if you’re so miserable?” he asked.

“Because you sign my sister’s tuition checks.”

Finally, he let go of her wrist, but instead of backing away, he placed his hands on the table, one on either side of her.

Her gaze dropped down to his lips then back up so quickly, he wondered if he imagined it.

“Right. I forgot about the whole martyr older sister thing.”

“You wouldn’t understand. You hate your brothers.”

He didn’t mind Graham who had zero interest in the company. Rye was a different story. It was actually his fault that Peeta was in this mess in the first place. Peeta was more intelligent, more capable, and infinitely more charming, but their father had originally tapped Rye to take over as CEO. Mr. Mellark claimed Rye was “more stable.” Peeta liked to party, liked to go out with a different woman every week, and Mr. Mellark worried he wouldn’t take the position seriously.

Enter Katniss Everdeen, the bartender Peeta had met while on vacation in California. It wasn’t enough to have a steady girlfriend or even a fiancée. He had to marry her and prove to his father and the rest of his family that he was capable of commitment. Rye still sat on the Board of Directors, and he was less than thrilled with their father’s decision. If he found out that Katniss was a fake, if he suspected anything was amiss, Peeta could lose everything.

To be fair, Katniss had never said or done anything to risk Peeta’s position. Yeah, she was rude and sarcastic, but everyone knew she didn’t come from money. No one expected her to fit in.

“So you’re doing all this for your sister?” Peeta asked. “Such a sacrifice.”

“I spent half my childhood in unwashed clothes that barely fit. I spent it hungry and angry, and I did everything I could to shield Prim from the worst of it. Now that I have the chance for a lifetime of financial security for me, Prim, and her future family, of course I’m going to take it.”

Peeta didn’t know what to say. Katniss had alluded to a rough childhood, but she had never given him any details.

“Prim’s future family?” he asked, deciding to ignore the rest for now. “Not yours?”

“I’m never getting married. Not for a second time, at least.”

He wanted to ask why, but he knew she wouldn’t say. When they first met, she had brushed off his attempts at conversation, uninterested in a guy that frequented a strip club. But as the night wore on, he paid less attention to the stage and more attention to the gorgeous brunette who kept supplying him with Jack and Cokes. When he returned the next night, she had been happy to see him.

That was the worst part. She had liked him in the beginning. Everything changed when he gave her that contract. She’d been closed off ever since.

“I’m not going to Cashmere’s,” he said. “This week or any week.”

“Maybe Glimmer then?” she asked. “Clove’s been eyeing you too.”

He narrowed his eyes, annoyed that he was trying to be honest with her, and she was acting like a brat.

“You’re jealous,” he said.

“Of those women? Not a chance.”

“No, you’re jealous that I can have fun and you can’t.” He slid his knee between her legs. For whatever reason, she let him. “Is this why you’re so cranky? No one to get you off?”

“I bought a hundred and fifty dollar vibrator with your credit card,” she said with a smug smile. “I’m all set.”

“Get on the table.”

“Is that a command?”

He squeezed her hip and she hopped up onto the table, her dress riding up her thighs. He yanked her forward until she was pressed against him.

“What are you doing?” She tried to look annoyed, but she had already hooked her foot around his leg.

“I thought I could help.”

“Sorry. Rich, blond assholes aren’t my type.”

“Weird. Brunettes with smart mouths are mine.”

He hiked her right leg up around his waist. She watched his hand disappear beneath her dress.

“Oh.” The noise escaped his mouth involuntarily. “You’re not wearing underwear.”

“Can’t have pantylines,” she said. “My fiancé’s the new CEO. I don’t want to embarrass him.”

He ran a finger over her lips, surprised at how wet she was. She had an amazing poker face. He never would have guessed she was as turned on as him.

When he reached her clit, she gasped and closed her eyes, her head falling back. He leaned into the table, his pants growing uncomfortably tight, and kissed her neck.

“Do you want this?” he asked.

He slid a finger inside her and bit down her earlobe.

“Katniss, tell me what you want.”

When she remained silent, he yanked his hand away. She squeezed her legs around his waist to keep him from walking away.

“Touch me,” she said.

He grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her into a fierce kiss, their first without an audience. She tasted like the red wine she’d been nursing all night, sweet and bitter all at once. She shoved his suit jacket off his shoulders and wrapped her arms around him. When he yanked on her hair to force her head up, she bucked against him. He kissed a trail along her neck as he pulled the straps of her dress down. With one final tug on the bodice, the dress slipped down her stomach, revealing a tiny strapless bra.

She unhooked it herself and dropped it on the ground. It was all the permission he needed. He cupped the back of her head before lowering her onto the table. Finally, after an entire night of staring at her chest, after months of wondering how they’d feel in his hands, he palmed her left breast and lowered his mouth over the other.

She moaned as he sucked on her nipple, his teeth just grazing the sensitive bud. The back of her feet dug into his ass as she tried to pull him closer. He was two seconds away from climbing on top of her when she abruptly sat up. Her cheeks flushed, her updo ruined, he couldn’t remember a moment when she’d been more beautiful.

She unbuckled his belt and slid it out of the first loop of his dress pants. He grabbed her wrist, and she stopped.

“This is what I want,” she said.

His mouth was back on hers, his belt halfway off, when someone knocked on the door. She froze. Peeta turned around.

“Mr. Mellark?” asked an unfamiliar voice. “Are you in there?”

Peeta cleared his throat. “Is there something you need?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but your father’s been looking for you.”

“Thank you. Let him know I’ll be right there.”

He plucked Katniss’s bra off the floor and handed it to her. Using a little more force than necessary, she pushed him away with her foot. She slid off the table and hooked her bra back into place.

He could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she adjusted her dress. He couldn’t tell what’d she decide, what she’d regret.

“I’m not putting those heels back on,” she said.

“Fine. Walk around barefoot. Everyone knows you have no manners.”

She narrowed her eyes. “But I’d hate to embarrass you in front of your mistresses. That wouldn’t be very classy of me.”

They stared at each other. Something important had shifted between them, but he couldn’t read her expression.

“Let’s make a deal,” he said. “You be a good girl for the rest of the night, and I’ll use my mouth when we get home.”

She yanked on her heels and curtsied. “I hate you,” she said with a wide, fake smile.

He took the chance and kissed her. Instead of pushing him away as he feared she would, she leaned into him and kissed him back. He nearly sighed with relief.

“I know,” he said, letting her go. “Fix your hair before you come back out. You’re a mess.”

She swept past him in her disheveled state, right out the door and into the ballroom. He wanted to be annoyed, but he was too turned on. As he pulled on his suit jacket and fixed his belt, he imagined her in his bed, fisting the sheets as he went down on her. He wanted to watch her fall apart, hear the two syllables of his name break on her tongue.

Then, he wanted to bury himself inside of her.

He thought he had been prepared for this. He had been so careful when he drew up that contract, certain he’d get to maintain his bachelor lifestyle while finally taking control of his father’s company.

He wasn’t certain of anything anymore. The only thing he knew for sure was that for better or for worse, he and Katniss were stuck with each other for the next two years.

He looked forward to it.

#everlark #i wrote this

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hetmusic · 8 years ago

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Women in Music | HumanHuman

It’s time again to celebrate International Women’s Day with our annual review of what it means to identify as a woman within the music industry right now.

In 2015, we invited influentials within music to talk about their work, what changes they have seen in the industry regarding the attitudes of and towards women, and also addressed the issues yet to be solved that consider to hinder greater equality across the business. In 2016, we celebrated a year of activism and progression, a year that saw many mainstream musicians taking full ownership of their womanhood, but not without a reminder that giant leaps for some might only translate into small steps for others, especially when we consider the demographic of the top tiers. Here we find ourselves in 2017, and well, there’s a tendency to feel a tad dubious. We’ve entered into a new year where presidential candidates openly degrade women and yet still end up in office, where the only obstacle between an actor charged with sexual harassment and an Oscar is settlement fees, where there is still an unfair discrepancy between wages for men and women in the same or similar job roles.

As already conveyed, the potential undervaluation of human rights across the political and cultural spectrum is a real threat to everyone, especially women. In Ireland, there’s protests to repeal the ban on abortion; in Jakarta, women join together to raise key gender equality issues; around the world, people continue to march in a show of solidarity in the global phenomenon of Women’s Marches. 2017 has been a truly special year for feminism in action and the music world is an essential part of the movement. Let’s take the example of MILCK’s self-named one woman riot, the single “Quiet”, which was transformed into a defiant group anthem thanks to two choirs and surrounding individuals at the Women’s March on Washington D.C.. Speaking with Billboard, the 30-year-old songwriter Connie Lim passionately asserts that “once the [US presidential] election happened nobody could keep quiet. The words of violence towards women… We need to step up and protect people and make them feel safe and loved again.”

We’ve certainly seen the resurgence of protest music touting various social justice causes recently, and yet it’s a trend that goes beyond the marches. One artist synonymous with creating music with purpose is Sevdaliza, whose 2015 single “That Other Girl” tackled the ways that consumerist culture affects personal relationships. Later came “That Damaged Girl”, featuring A$AP Ferg, which displayed strength in womanhood and independent musicianship. Most recently, the songwriter spoke out against Trump’s immigration ban with “Bebin”. The legislation directly affected the Dutch-Iranian artist who no longer was able to enter the US, but this song was not to be taken as a personal affront. Sevdaliza released this statement: “In protest of the inhumane political climate, I could not rest my head in privilege. I wrote “Bebin” in Farsi, to solidify. I stand strong with love. In this case I choose to avoid mainstream media, because I have no interest in part taking in a victimized concept. As I will not be able to travel to the United States for indefinite duration, take this message without lights, camera, action. I am solely a messenger. In the act of love, there is no place for racism nor bigotry.” To further the impact beyond a listening experience, all sales of the song will be donated to victims of racial exclusion. Further examples of artists working outside of mainstream media come via the recommendation of Noisey and Paste Magazine music journalist Emily Reiley who passionately told us about two of her contemporary heroes - Grindmother and Saltland. Both of these Canadian musicians utilise their art to bring awareness to issues close to their hearts. For Grindmother, the 67-year-old grindcore singer decided that her extreme vocal talents would be used to call attention to the environmental and political discourse of her home country. Similarly, the classically-trained cellist and post-punk experimentalist Saltland, aka Rebecca Foon, “seeks to bring awareness to the fight against climate change with her moody, strings-driven album,” as Reily explains.

“I think that we're at a really exciting time in music where women have a platform to talk about more than what has traditionally been acceptable for us. It's important that we take that space now and use it to turn things around.”— Ayelle

Using music as a platform for change is something that singer-songwriter Ayelle also demonstrates with single “Machine”. Featured in our Best Music Video Debuts of 2016, the song is an exploration of “women's role as sex objects within the patriarchy and our institutionalised servitude to the male gaze.” Through writing the song, Ayelle realised traits in herself that subconsciously pandered to others desires and expectations. Left unaddressed, this cycle of approval-seeking behaviour is bound to continue, which is why it’s vital to keep “creating art that inspires those important conversations.” Now, simply because art and music strives to destroy societal misconceptions of women as sexual objects, it doesn’t mean that their bodies should be left outside of the discussion. As actress Emma Watson recently expressed in an reaction to the criticism of her Vanity Fair cover photo, “Feminism is about giving women choice. Feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women with. It’s about freedom, it’s about liberation, it’s about equality,” and so those who suggested that one “couldn’t be a feminist and have boobs” are ignoring basic biology. Voicing her opinion on the matter, Louise Pétrouchka (a producer, radio presenter and webzine curator) uses the example of the unfair criticism of artist Ariana Grande, arguing that “Being sexy, sexual even, is her choice, and because she's sexy in a video clip doesn't mean that she is an object and that you shouldn't treat her as a person who deserves respect.” One such artist whose forthcoming EP, The Body, fearlessly celebrates the female physicality is Starling. Her music, videos and even an online photo collection explore the relationship between outer beauty and inner darkness. In EP tracks “No Rest For The Wicked” and “Large It”, Starling is a woman of the city with all the human complexity, desires and physical awareness that historical propaganda of her home country Britain has wrongly painted as simply not existing in the female gender. When we questioned Starling about the expression of identity through her music, she responded that true ownership is “genderless,” because “Art is the thing not image.”

“I would love to encourage women to believe in their voice - metaphorical and literal - on their output of creation and to focus less on image.”— Starling

While for some countries, women have reached a level of equality, others are yet to see such a correction, and once again music proves to be an inexhaustible tool in raising awareness. What we’re talking about here is the viral sensation, Majed Alesa-directed “Hwages”. The incredible arabian-pop music video sees women wearing full niqab and subverting all societal expectations with colourful clothes, scooters, skateboards, basketball games, awesome dance routines and trips to the carnival. The video has gained huge popularity across the Middle East and beyond, with praise for the fun choreography and tongue-in-cheek lyrics that calls out the insanity of the deeply entrenched patriarchal legal and rights systems in Saudi Arabia. The use of skateboards and breaking stereotypes are themes we also see in the video for Wild Beasts’ Sasha Rainbow. Through this visual, the director pulls apart the song title to find out what ‘alpha female’ really means. Through her work, she emphasises the importance of women within the creative industries to make their own platform

“... to celebrate women boldly going against the grain through affirmative, inspiring action, by following their passions.”— Sasha Rainbow

The rising wave of conferences centered on women in the music industry is also a clear signifier of the inspiring action happening at all levels of the business, not purely as a final product in songs and music videos. At the end of last year, nonprofit organization Women in Music held their 31st annual party at New York’s famous Webster Hall, to celebrate success and host an all inclusive conversation surrounding women’s rights and the movement for greater equality. In January, the Association of Independent Music gathered in London’s City Hall to hear key figures discuss the next generation of women in music. At the end of this month, the inaugural Sound Industry event will be held in Bristol to showcase unique journeys of survival in the creative industries, questioning gender roles in music, examining mental resilience in the all too often cut-throat music world and wondering how much weight privilege carries these days. This year will also see the first International Conference on Women’s Work in Music over a weekend in September at Bangor University. This is merely a snapshot of the recognition that women in music quite rightly deserve, but of course, the future ideal is that we won’t need separate female-focussed conferences to celebrate women in music, because we should all be able to share that stage of credit where due, whatever a person’s gender may be. It’s a feeling perfectly summed up by previously introduced contributor Emily Reily:

“Women have been there for decades; it’s just that sometimes, they were behind the scenes, or simply not common enough to raise nationwide attention. It’s time to put that “girl” designation aside and focus strictly on the talent and creative goals of a band, regardless of their genders.”— Emily Reily

Awards nights provide one such arena where we’re able to praise achievements in music through a medium that’s directly in the public gaze. Recently, it’s become an optimum forum to set the record straight as to what being a woman in the music industry means today. Our contributor Starling singled out “Titled” songwriter Christine and the Queens for setting the example of “owning your weirdness regardless of gender or sexuality.” That’s the exact sentiment that Heloise Letissier was keen to share at this year’s NME Awards, where she took home four awards in total. In her first acceptance speech of the night, the French artist put forward this moving declaration: “All the females that are nominated with me are amazing and present a really strong way to exist as a woman in today’s world and my way is a bit twisted and a bit awkward.” Then there was the powerful challenge to the male dominated top tier from Head of Global Consumer Marketing at iTunes and Apple, Bozoma Saint John, who picked up the award for Executive of the Year at Billboard's Women in Music 2016, with this girl-power punch: “People might tell you that you have to wait your turn, but I'm here to tell you to say no. We're knocking these dudes out of the way to make room for you.” Another feature of that event was of course, Madonna, who candidly portrayed herself as a “bad feminist” for refusing to deny her sexuality, her age, her body, even at the chagrin of acclaimed feminist writer Camille Paglia. She also aligned herself to Ann Friedman’s Shine Theory, calling out the female viewers “to start appreciating our own worth and each other’s worth, seek out strong women to befriend, to align yourself with, to learn from, to be inspired by, to collaborate with, to support, to be enlightened by.” Reclaiming one’s identity and empowerment of women is also the driving force behind Zohra, Afghanistan’s first and only all-female orchestra and now winner of this year’s Freemuse Award in recognition of their determination to become the first women in their families, their community, their country to openly learn and play music in over thirty years.

We are all witnesses to to the increasing appraisal of women’s contributions and influence in music. In many areas, you could argue that equality has been found. Yet, there still exists many failings to truly represent women within the music world. Let’s look to a returning topic of our Women in Music articles - festival line-ups. In 2015, Crack in the Road editor Josh Dalton released an edited version of the Reading & Leeds Festival poster that revealed of the one hundred acts booked to play over weekend, there were only nine with at least one female member. Despite widespread criticism for the blatant gender bias, Republic boss Melvin Benn dismissed the need for change, telling The Guardian that “We put on bands that people want to buy tickets to watch,” and therefore implying that the public don’t want to see female musicians perform. Over the past two years, this ridiculous and frankly prehistoric attitude has not wavered, and this year’s first announcement consists of fifty-seven men and one woman. The line-up editor Dalton explains that this isn’t a vendetta against Reading & Leeds Festival, but as a way to highlight “the underlying and often unspoken issues regarding representation and visibility within the music industry,” which he explains further:

“This is still at times an industry that still has a certain level of exploitation of women at it's core when it suits, be it in music videos, artwork, or even just being the focal point of songs - yet when women rightfully want to take part in these spaces, they aren't given the same opportunities or respect.”— Josh Dalton

A dismal lack of equal representation also extends to the easily-digestible, widely popularized article format of the list. This year’s Billboard Power 100 was brought to our attention by industry commentator and blogger Mike Schreder, aka Oblivious Pop, as a list which only recognised seven women as being “powerful” enough. If you’re yet to be convinced that this list is biased towards men, then take a look at their Billboard News round-up video, introduced by a clip from Kanye West’s “Power”, where you’ll clearly pick out the line “no one man should have all that power.” Perhaps, they were being ironic. It’s a similar story over at DJ Magazine with their Top 100, the most recent published in April last year, which listed just two female DJ acts, Nervo at #45 and Miss K8 at #88. While lists like Red Bull’s 25 Best Producers Under 25, with a 16% female presence as opposed to Billboard’s 7% and DJ Mag’s 2%, and Forbes’ Hip-Hop Cash Princes, which despite it’s name featured Young M.A. and Noname in an exclusive crew of twelve, there’s still an obvious gender gap in play here. As Schreder quite rightly suggests “The music industry is filled with powerful women that are entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders of stellar teams that succeed to the highest degree, but these women rarely receive the acknowledgement they deserve. There needs to be calls for equality among lists like The Billboard Power 100 to include more women in this male dominated list.”

This call to action is already in steady progression, as we have seen throughout this article with musicians and industry leaders speaking up, stepping out and encouraging others to do the same. Returning to Shine Theory, we shouldn’t be intimidated by these strong figureheads or feel that our efforts will fail to match up to their example, an issue raised by Microcultures producer Louise Pétrouchka with what she refers to as the “imposter syndrome.”

“We tend to feel less secure, even if we have experiences, even if we “want to”, it's always fighting our impostor syndrome to push through.”— Louise Pétrouchka

However, we’re not without a remedy to this mindset, what we need is encouragement from all parties, from all areas of the music industry to become even just “one link in the chain that could help starring women in music.” Pigeons & Planes recently published the article Music Industry Advice For Women, By Women, in which it called on veterans of the music world to share their indispensable wisdom resulting in six key strategies: do your research, find mentors, demand respect, speak up, work harder than the rest, and trust your instincts. It’s advice that a person of any gender could follow in their attempts to access the business, but for writer Adrienne Black, this is essential to combat a world where “women have a harder time earning the success or respect they deserve without being subjected to gender stereotypes or consistently being objectified for their image.” We have another four-point plan system from Sarah Thompson, the owner of Charmfactory PR, whose own career began in 1996 as an early adopter of online music promotion and over that time she’s seen major moves towards equality in the industry. As she tells us, “I think it could always be better but compared to when I started back in the mid ‘90s we have come along way!” Her experienced outlook proves that straightforward steps to “be smart and choose your friends carefully,” “always respond to help,” get involved in social media groups and be active in the real world to, for example by attending gigs, can lead to dramatic change, on a personal and career level, but can also lead to a ripple effect throughout the industry. Further sage also comes from our contributor Lisa Murgatroyd, leader of Sofar Sounds Manchester, who advocates a community mentality, with a reminder than we can learn from our peers’ failures as much as from their successes.

“We need to collaborate and share our experiences, best practice and tips to help each other across all types of roles.”— Lisa Murgatroyd

What’s become clear throughout this article is that we all possess the ability to have an impact on the established system, to mold it in our own image and to delineate the idea of separation between different genders, and by extension between all various forms of identity. We need to collaborate, congratulate, challenge and inform. As Ayelle conveys, “There are still so many things about the music industry that remain largely unchallenged because we've internalised this environment and adapted to it in order to survive in it, but more and more women are starting to break that pattern and I hope it continues in 2017.” It’s also an optimistic viewpoint shared by the Head of Music at The Most Radicalist Black Sheep Music, the music division of BBH, who notes that sexism exists within many industries, not as a vacuum in the music world, but it’s a trend on the decline. “If the music business is indeed a mirror to societal trends at large, then I have more hope for the eradication of misogyny and sexism now than ever before.” As with many of our contributors whose ultimate goal is to disband with this conversation of gender altogether, because Owen envisions

“... a world for young women looking to enter the music business where it’s no longer necessary to talk about being a ‘female leader’. We are simply leaders.”— Ayla Owen

Whether it’s through songwriting, directing a music video, optimizing each and every platform, pointing out social, political and cultural injustices or by simply being more conscious of our own attitudes towards gender. As MILCK’s protest song shows, we can’t keep quiet, and it's why music (and art) for that matter can help to solve this issue. It allows us to understand and celebrate one another: which is beautifully portrayed in the Rupi Kaur's debut collection, Milk and Honey:

“our struggle to celebrate each other is what’s proven most difficult in being human”— Rupi Kaur

https://humanhuman.com/articles/women-in-music-2017

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dweemeister · 7 years ago

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Movie Odyssey Retrospective

Dracula (1931 English-language version)

The 1920s had been an ideal breeding ground for horror films in the West. As cinematic technology improved and daring directors unleashed their magic on nitrate film, audiences found themselves terrorized by titles like Nosferatu (1922, Germany), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and The Unknown (1927). With the introduction of synchronized sound, it was only a matter of time before someone took the genre to the talkies. Tod Browning (frequent collaborator with Lon Chaney, Sr., including The Unknown) would be that director, and the first horror masterpiece after the silent era would be Dracula, based on the 1924 stage play Dracula (itself based on the classic Bram Stoker novel of the same name). Universal Studios – a major studio but not yet considered in the same class of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. at that time – had been considered specialists in horror and further burnished that reputation here. Hungarian-American Béla Lugosi became an overnight sensation, and since 1931 he has always been associated with black flowing capes, a badass accent, and blood-sucking.

Before a brief synopsis, it should be noted that there is a Spanish-language version of this film, Drácula, directed by George Melford and starring Carlos Villarías as the title character. That film, also released by Universal, came at a time when – during the early years of synchronized sound movies – studios frequently released non-English language versions of their movies (almost always European languages like French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Swedish; a burgeoning, but bankruptcy-prone market for films catering to the United States’ numerous ethnicities existed, too). Thought lost to time, Drácula resurfaced in the 1970s and has been restored for public consumption. A third version – a silent film – was released to theaters that had not updated their technology yet. As should be obvious, this write-up on Dracula will be on the English-language version with synchronized sound.

On Walpurgis Night somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania (present-day Romania), Englishman Renfield (Dwight Frye) is traveling by carriage to reach his client, Count Dracula’s (Lugosi) estate. Count Dracula has expressed his interest in an abbey outside of London. Villagers, warning of the spirit of Nosferatu, are fearful that the Count is a vampire, but Renfield dismisses those concerns. Renfield arrives at the castle, stunned at the immensity of the place and the appearance of a cloaked, slick-haired figure gracefully, slowly making his way down an immense, cobwebbed staircase. After bidding Renfield welcome, something can be heard howling outside.

“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.”

Renfield becomes Dracula’s first victim and servant – groveling, maniacal, and violent – as the plot shifts to England and characters like Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), sanitarium Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston), his daughter Mina (Helen Chandler), Mina’s fiancée John Harker (David Manners), and Mina’s friend Lucy Weston (Frances Dade) begin investigating their newest acquaintance.

As the vampire Count Orlok in Nosferatu (itself an unauthorized version of Dracula), Max Schreck relied on his physical acting and makeup to frighten audiences. As Count Dracula in this film, Lugosi has a powerful weapon not afforded to Schreck: the sound of his voice. Born in 1882, Lugosi, having appeared in 1927 as Count Dracula in the stage play this movie is based on, arrived in the United States from Hungary in 1920. In that interim, Lugosi became fluent in English (this is disputed, but even if he had to learn his lines phonetically, the results were worth it) yet retained a thick Hungarian accent that prevented him from having a more prolific, diverse movie career. Nevertheless, in Dracula, his dialogue delivery – deliberate, deceptive, sometimes pausing for no apparent reason near the end of sentences – is incredible. Where Schreck’s Orlok angled for removing any semblance of humanity, Lugosi’s Dracula (which, on the basis of subsequent cultural references, has become the preferred prototype on which to create a vampiric character) is sophisticated, in touch with his humanity, all while retaining a threatening sexuality – “I never drink… wine,” he says. To put that in terms of a scenario, meeting Lugosi’s Dracula for dinner in any place outside of his castle might leave you charmed by the Count and just comfortable enough to eat and drink in his presence. That is, until Dracula feeds on you.

Universal did not see Lugosi as their first-choice Dracula; instead, that went to the senior Lon Chaney (1924′s He Who Gets Slapped, The Phantom of the Opera). Chaney died prior to production and, despite Universal’s preference for Paul Muni, relented when Lugosi lobbied relentlessly and said he was willing to accept an exiguous salary of $3,500 (~$56,000 in 2017′s USD). Lugosi declared bankruptcy the year after the film’s release. Having turned down the title role in Frankenstein (1931), Lugosi plodded through years of typecasting as suave horror villains and a British ban on horror films in the mid-1930s. He never became as established a movie star as fellow Universal Monsters star Boris Karloff, and played Count Dracula only twice – the second time in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

Alongside a bevy of forgettable performers, only one other actor stands out. That is Dwight Frye (who would also play Fritz in Frankenstein later that year) as the realtor-turned-slave Renfield. His performance, nowadays, might be dismissed as a relic of the worst of silent-era filmmaking that seems anachronistic even in 1931, but it works. Whether Frye swings into entertaining campiness or unmitigated insanity, he serves the film wonderfully. With eyes wide, veins pulsing from his neck, and not giving a shit about what people think of his behavior, Frye’s Renfield is unpredictable, unstable, and possesses an unsettling laugh – it is not the stereotypical villainous belly/diaphragm laugh – halfway between a sneer and a chuckle. It is not exactly something you want to hear in the darkness.

Director Tod Browning – an expert in horror films – assembles a team of craftspersons of envying pedigree. Production designers Herman Rosse and John Hoffman and art director Charles D. Hall (1930′s All Quiet on the Western Front, Frankenstein) outdo themselves with Dracula’s castle. It is everything you want from a decrepit fortress – cobwebs (one eighteen-foot spiderweb was created by rubber cement shot out of a rotary machine gun), an enormous fireplace (one fire made so much noise that the primitive microphones then being used picked up that sound rather than the dialogue; production halted as the fire winded down) ruined windows and columns, and tangled vines intruding from the outside. The enormity of the set lands with chilling impact, assisted with the costume design by Ed Ware and Vera West and cinematography by Karl Freund (1927′s Metropolis, 1937′s The Good Earth, I Love Lucy) inspired by German expressionism – a silent film-era movement which emphasized exaggerated geometries, shadows, and high-contrast lights and darks. Freund’s camera is often static but, unlike many films the early 1930s, slowly floats across the set when needed. This creates an impending sense of terror, lending Dracula a thick atmosphere that has kept it watchable even though the movie itself may no longer be scary to most. However, this focus on the production design is mostly abandoned after twenty-five minutes as Dracula finds himself in London. Lugosi and Frye’s performances grab the film by the scruff, and further solidified themselves into Hollywood lore.

The sets themselves impressed Universal’s art department and directorial contractees so much that they remained standing for at least a decade longer for subsequent films for the studio; the finale of Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) holding its finale within what used to be Dracula’s walls, for example. These same sets also appeared in the Spanish-language Drácula –when the English-language production completed its shooting during the daytime, the Spanish-language production commenced at night using much of the same resources. The cast and crew of the Spanish-language production might even have had an advantage, as they had access to the English-language Dracula’s dailies/rushes (raw, unedited footage of the day’s shooting on a movie), to tinker with their own performances and handiwork.

Other than Tchaikovsky’s most famous theme from his ballet Swan Lake playing over the opening credits and a brief snippet of Wagner and Schubert, there is zero music in Dracula. In scenes as Dracula is approaching someone with ill intentions, this increases the dread. In transition scenes where the audience is reading the text of some publication or when characters are traveling, this might not work with impatient viewers. This almost-complete lack of music is because – with synchronized sound introduced just four years earlier – filmmakers believed that movie audiences could not accept music in a film unless there was a source of music within the film (diegetic music; one of those instances is when an orchestral performance is featured in Dracula). Considering that silent films were never truly silent – movie theaters during the time had resident musicians (typically pianists, organists, or small ensembles) – and that movie music has become a genre all its own, that idea might seem quaint to modern audiences. Watch enough post-Jazz Singer 1920s and early 1930s movies and one will notice that lack of music is widespread.

In other aural developments, depending on the quality of the print that you watch, a crackling image noise may be heard throughout the film. That is due to the age of the film print and the quality of the sound recording available in 1931; the newest restorations of Dracula should minimize the sound.

Though a relic of early Hollywood horror, it is a film energized by a star-making performance from Lugosi, which has since altered audience conceptions of what a vampire looks like, talks like, moves like. Okay, we never see Dracula’s blood-sucking fangs, but credit Lugosi, Browning, and screenwriter Garrett Fort for devising a character that is essentially the origin of anything that even references vampirism.

Dracula shows its age as it approaches its ninetieth anniversary. Wooden acting from almost all of the supporting cast, its rough editing, and pacing issues may not be accommodating for those accustomed to older movies and are watching the film without knowing the limits of cinematic technology in 1931 (again, Dracula may have terrified viewers upon release, but it is no longer “scary” in the modern sense). It is an essential piece of the horror genre, as well as cinema. The dedication to which those behind the camera applied to this film is remarkable, diffusing a frightful feeling that could only have been produced in its own time.

My rating: 9/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

This is the tenth Movie Odyssey Retrospective. Movie Odyssey Retrospectives are write-ups on films I had seen in their entirety before this blog’s creation or films I failed to give a full-length write-up to following the blog’s creation. Previous Retrospectives include A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), and The Wizard of Oz (1939).

#Dracula #Tod Browning #Bela Lugosi #Helen Chandler #David Manners #Dwight Frye #Edward Van Sloan #Herbert Bunston #Frances Dade #Carla Laemmle #Garrett Fort #Karl Freund #Charles D. Hall #Herman Rosse #John Hoffman #Ed Ware #Vera West #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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fuckyeahcatdog · 7 years ago

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Interview with Lisa Kossey Casting Coordinator/Supervisor of CatDog

Explain what you did exactly as a Casting Coordinator and Supervisor, to those reading that are unsure of what that includes.

In a previous email, you mentioned a few abbreviations- (EMR, SAG, ADR, etc) What do they mean?

"Basically a Casting Coordinator job is to assist in all duties related to the cast.

Pre-Production duties:

Assist the shows Casting Director (usually a freelancer)

Call actors agents to arrange time and location of the records

Reserve studio time for record sessions

Send cast scripts via mail (CatDog NEVER did that- cast didn’t need them early)

Complete all paperwork related to that record, SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and payroll time sheets and contracts and have actors sign necessary documents.

Brought copies of scripts and storyboards to the record sessions.

Circle Takes (track all lines recorded during session by number)

Responsible for getting the session tapes (everything that was recorded) and circle takes (tells us what lines we want to save) to the editor so he could create a EMR (Edited Master Record) EMR’s are the dialogue tracks of the show put in order as they appear in the script (no sound effects or music).

Make copies of EMR and distributes to the artist, and they draw what they hear.

Track all pick-up lines (any lines that may be added or revised during the storyboarding process).

My job on CatDog was different then most Casting Coordinators at Nick, I did a lot of Post Production too.

Post-Production duties:

· Kept track of the Show credits (who did what on what show- 1st season only)

· Typed & Tracked animation retakes (when the cartoon has mistakes in animation, backgrounds, color, or creative changes and has to be fixed)

· Spotted for ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement- is when the actor see's the animation while he is recording dialogue, not just recording from script) when the dialogue track and animation would be put together sometimes words would not fit, or mistakes would be made, or Peter would change his mind about something and we would call actors back in to re-record while they watch their character on screen and followed animation.

· Sat in with Peter during 1st looks and playbacks (to make sure all the ADR notes were incorporated in the show.

· Sent music notes and changes to Denis Hannigan.

· (and CatDog party planner- we had lots of parties!!)"

What are your fondest and craziest memories working on CatDog?

"There are so many! I loved Tuesdays at 2:00 PM- that was record day. (Thanks Horta!!)

The best day working on CatDog had to have been when we hosted a “Make a Wish” day for a little boy who wanted to meet CatDog. Peter, Jim, Tom and Carlos were great. It was so nice to be able to make someone’s wish come true. What a great family.

The staff and cast of CatDog were the best!

We worked very hard many days and many long nights at the office, but we had lots of fun and parties too. Halloween, St. Patty’s Day, Christmas, birthdays, or just because- we didn't need a reason.

Dave Warden days (Yadda Yadda!) Beer and Cake? Why so many cakes? 3-hour lunches and office bowling (Laurel Canyon). Remembering Nikki Gayle crying in previews of new shows (only Nikki would cry in a CatDog episode). Free lunch Fridays. Jim’s Limo rides. Looking for Peter’s credit card, again."

Working so close to the cast, did you find yourself sometimes going home quoting Cat or Dog or any of the characters?

“What are ya, Nuts!” Of course, and still do… “Hi-ho-diggety”. I still find myself singing “Pretty Little Piece of Paradise” anytime I hear the word paradise. But I think Winslow had the most “behind the scenes” catch phrases of all. (Can’t tell ya those, Heh heh!). My favorite quote from a show is, “My name is Dog with a duh!”- It’s a Wonderful Half Life. My favorite recording studio quote, “My bad”.

Is most of the cast reading done separately, or do they do it together? To get the whole CatDog togetherness feeling, did Jim and Tom read and act together a lot?

"We would try to record as much of the show with as many of the actors together as possible. The CatDog cast are some of the busiest voice-over talent in the biz, so sometime we had to work around each others schedules.

I would read the script prior to scheduling the actors. If one actor only had a few lines in the show I would try to call them in first and just get that line out of the way then they would not have to sit through the 2-4 hour session.

Yes, we tried to always have Cat & Dog together (two heads are better than one!). Our cast worked extremely well together, we were able to record one 11-minute show in 2 hours, that was due to the magic of Jim and Tom playing off each other so well. It could take other cartoons almost 4 hours to complete an 11-minute show."

The cast of CatDog is absolutely incredible and talented, was there a lot of improvisation? Did the cast come up with any catch phrases? Or was that strictly the writers and Peter?

"It’s hard to remember who wrote what, and who made it up but Peter and the writers came up with most of the catch phrases, but the way they were said had a lot to do with the actors improvisation. Your right, the cast was incredibly talented and funny. The actors did instinctively ad-lib often and we did end up using a lot of what they said. You should have heard the ad-libs we couldn't use!! The writing never stopped during a record, the script was being revised up until the last take."

Which CatDog characters are your all time favorites and why? Is there one in particular you can relate to real well?

"That’s a hard one, I really liked Little Cat- from Dummy Dummy. I loved seeing Dog in his cowboy outfits (I like seeing anyone in a cowboy outfit!). I guess I would have to say Dog, his innocence is so loveable."

Which episodes did you enjoy the most during your CatDog experience?

"My favorite is “It’s a Wonder Half Life” I loved the style of the animation in that show along with the music. I also like “Do Wop Diggety”, “The Island”; my favorites change. I think more about the production process of the cartoon rather than the story- If I happen to catch a episode of CatDog on TV and remember what we were talking about during the recording session or how many changes the show had I don’t watch them as shows, but as little diaries that they bring back memories. At the time when ever I saw we had a song, I would dread record sessions, songs required a lot more time and preparation, but in the end those show are my favorite ones.

“Silence Please” had to have been the easiest! I think the script was less than 3 pages, only about 4-7 minutes of dialogue in the whole show- easy money!!"

Did you work with all episodes from season 1 on up to Season 3?

"Yeppers! I worked on every single show! No"t the original pilot- but we added a short to that one later."

The question everyone asks, which side of CatDog do you relate with most, and like better?

"I would like to say I am more like Dog, but I know I have some of Cat in me too! In the beginning I really liked the character of Dog better, but Cat’s charm started to grow on me."

When did you decide to get into the cartoon world? Do you also enjoy drawing and writing? What did you do before CatDog?

"I never aspired to be in animation at all, I rarely watched cartoons as a child. I was really lucky and my cousin (Dawn Hershey) that worked on Hey Arnold told me Nickelodeon was hiring a receptionist- had an interview, got the job. I don’t draw very well, and don’t enjoy writing, (I suck at writing-just ask Peter). Before CatDog I worked on Angry Beavers as the receptionist."

Besides the movie, which episodes seemed to take a lot time and effort to put together? Any episodes that were particularly difficult for any of the cast?

"“Canine Mutiny”- for some reason, I think I remember a lot of time spent on this one- it kept changing.

The cast was great, they would read a script 5 minutes before we started to record and hit every line almost perfect. It was absolutely amazing at times of how great the talent pool was sitting in a CatDog recording session.

Difficult shows for the cast where, the shows that had a lot of screaming (I know- like all of them!). Screaming is not hard for them, but you have to take into consideration that these actors work on anywhere from 2-10 different shows, commercials or promos a day and a lot of screaming can damage their voice for the rest of the day (or even week). We would try to save the BIG screams till the end of the session or try to use a scream that was previously recorded. (If you listen real close you might be able to hear the same scream in two different shows)."

Perhaps this is more a question for an animator, but were any of the characters inspired by some of the actors looks? (For example I saw Maria's hilarious standup on Comedy Central, and she's petite and blonde just like Shriek. Do cast looks inspire some of the characters features?

"Maria worked at Nickelodeon as a receptionist and an assistant before she was the voice of Shriek. Maybe Peter thought she resembled Shriek, but Maria’s voice was Shrieky- that’s how she got the part. All the main characters were basically designed before we cast-ed the show (but a few changes were made after “Dog Gone” the pilot”, Lube’s look changed a bit). When it comes to personalities; I would say Jim reminds me more of Cat, and Tom definitely is more Dog. Carlos is more Winslow than Lube, but Billy doesn’t remind me of Rancid, Randolph or Mr. Sunshine in person. Do cast looks inspire some character features? Kinda, I don’t think too much in the beginning, but as the show progress, I noticed some of the facial movements of the actors were reflected in their character, or maybe it was the actor becoming the character??

Tom “Dog” would always record in a booth inside the recording studio. We called it his doghouse. He read all his lines standing up and he would jump and wave his arms in the air, just like Dog while reading. Jim was more relaxed; he sat while reading his lines. He always had a pair of drumsticks with him and in-between takes would play make believe drums."

Steven mentioned that Ray Pointer inspired "The Amazing Ray", did the animators draw a character that looked like you too? Do you remember anyone from the staff that was drawn into the show?

"No, I don’t think I ever inspired anyone to draw me as a character (I tried!). We did use names of staff in shows, Princess Kitaen, - from “Spaced Out” (Kim Kitaen was our Production Manager) but the princess didn’t look like her (she is much prettier). We had a few Eric’s on our show (Evil Eric- won’t say which one was evil :) Angry Beavers did a bowling show based on their staff, I thought it was great. I tried to push the idea- I had no pull!"

Did you come up with any of the show's ideas, such as a character quark dialogue idea, or an episode idea?

"Nope! We would brain storm in record sessions over a phrase or something, but I don’t think any of my ideas made it past. (Good thing too!)"

Did you also assist with any script changes?

"In the beginning of 1st season I had to assist with script changes (just retyping and numbering of lines- no creative changes) until our (not so faithful- he quit 3rd season) Neil Martin joined the team as the script coordinator."

Did you or any other Nickelodeon staff members ever get to do voices that made it on the show?

"Yes, we would bring in a bunch of people that worked in the studio and do “Walla”. That is all the background noise you hear in a crowd. We found some hidden talents in many of the CatDog crew, Carolyn, Linda Barry, Vic Wilson, Steven Banks, Neil Martin, Don the Parking Guy, Peters Kids, Justin Brinsfield, Rob Porter and many more.

I hated having to go into the recording studio- but one day we had to finish ADR on “All About Cat” and we needed to fill a 3 second missing gap in one of Tallulah scenes. I was the only girl around and had to go in and TRY to sing “La, la, la, la la. After about 25 takes I was horrible, I did one that was so off and terrible that it made Peter laugh so hard he almost fell out of his chair. He kept it! (Proof that I’m not an aspiring singer!)"

Is there anything else you would like to add before closing?

"It just doesn’t get any better than CatDog”

Thanks for bringing back so many great memories of such a fun time in my life. Thanks for Peter for making it all happen, he was great to work with, I miss everyone so much. Kristen you are the biggest CatDog fan I have ever known!! Thanks for contacting me."

I'm glad to help you recall your incredible CatDog experience. Thank you very much for the interview and giving us a feel for what working on CatDog was like! :-)

Also Thank you for autograph,

and publicity booklet "CatDog Bible"

(source: http://catdog1st.tripod.com/LisaKossey.html)

#catdog #casting coordinator #catdog bible #lisa kossey #supervisor #interviews #behind the scenes #cat #dog #winslow #autographs #important

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nancydrew428 · 7 years ago

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Midnight in Salem

I decided to make this post about Midnight in Salem to compile the facts and help myself, and hopefully others, understand what’s taking so long (maybe) and just to see what we know right now. If anyone has any other information that they’d like to add, feel free to submit it/message it to me and I can put it in this post (and give you credit) or you can reblog this post and add your info. ☺

So what do we know so far?

We know the game is titled Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem (MID for short).

Her Interactive posted an update on Facebook on May 11th, 2017, that I found through this Youtube video.

The update reads:

“Despite our best attempts to answer everyone's emails, posts, tweets, blog posts, etc. about Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem...we admittedly do miss some. And hey, we’re only human, so sometimes we inadvertently miss responding to a post. Hence, we felt it would be appropriate to post the attached message. Our goal is to have a more substantial update for you very shortly. We appreciate your patience during this unprecedented shift at HeR Interactive. Please know that we are not ignoring you but we are a very lean team and simply can't respond to everything. We are doing the very best we can. Also, please know that just because we offer a new Nancy Drew puzzle or start a new Nancy Drew contest, that it has no impact on the development and progress of our next title. Our fans mean the world to us and we appreciate you sticking by us during this longer than usual wait time between titles. As always, we thank you for your support and stay sleuthy!”

And there was also this picture with it.

It may not be (in fact, it isn’t) the response that many of us wanted. but at least it’s some sort of a response.

The game has not been cancelled and they are still working on it.

They answered a couple of tweets saying:

Still working on it! #NancyDrew (June 12th, 2017)

MID has not been canceled, and we are still working on it. At this time we do not have any updates to share, sorry! (June 14th, 2017)

The release date is still TBD.

On Twitter, they’ve posted that they don’t have a release date.

Hello S, we can't say for sure [when the game will come out, or even if it’ll come out this year]. When we have an update, we wil share it on our site as well as on social media. (June 5th, 2017)

Hi! We don't have an estimated date set for MID just yet. When we do, we will be sure to announce it! (June 14th, 2017)

We don't have a release date set for MID yet. When we do, we will announce it! (June 16th, 2017)

MID is going to be Her Interactive’s 33rd (desktop) game.

You can watch the preview for it here.

It is not yet rated by the ESRB.

It is for ages 10 and up.

The operating system:

Windows® XP/Vista/7/8/10

OS X: OS X: 10.6.8 Snow Leopard/10.7 Lion/10.8 Mountain Lion/10.9 Mavericks/10.10 Yosemite or higher

The description/story of the game is:

“The Hathorne House was the former home of Judge John Hathorne, inquisitor of the infamous Salem witch trials and the final home to 102-year-old Frances Tuttle, his last direct descendant. When Tuttle passed away, the manor became city property and the mayor must find a manager to oversee the planned tourist attraction. Judge Steven Danforth is assigned to oversee the proceedings, but on the night of October 21st local police rescue his son Jason from the burning confines of the estate’s upstairs library. Investigators discover that the library was locked from the inside, but the young child remembers nothing about entering the room. The only thing he can recall was the frightening expressions from a ‘vile ghostly woman’ who watched him with burning eyes as she spoke from the fireplace flames. The police were quick to respond to the fire because neighbors already called them about the boy dancing in the dark street. Was the child bewitched? Acting on tips from concerned citizens, police arrest the eccentric Mei Parris and accuse her of witchcraft. Is Mei Parris truly a witch? Or is she the victim of townsfolk who are unsettled by her unique appearance?”

The game features listed are:

“Learn about the historical Salem Witch Trials

Explore an ancient crypt

Solve historical figure Ruth Hathorne’s puzzles

Take a tour of Salem and discern fiction from truth

Sleuth at Amateur or Master level and erase any mistakes without starting over”

According to the MID Wiki page, “The game will be the first in the series to allow full movement, but will still be point and click.”

So far there are 5 characters listed (there might be more characters in the game, but this might also be it).

All of these 5 characters are women.

The characters are named:

Mei Parris

Lauren Corey

Deirdre Shannon (a recurring character in the games)

Teegan Parris

Jenna Ravencraft.

“Mei Parris has spent her life pulled between two extremes due to her physical appearance: the near-crushing protective attention “lavished on her by her parents, and the unjustified fear of the local townsfolk.”

“Lauren Corey is a calm and slightly grouchy introvert with a bookworm streak. She loves to bake, and is beloved in the local community for her winning entries into cooking contests.”

“High-maintenance Deirdre Shannon has spent her life hovering in Nancy’s shadow, and lives with the knowledge that she is the “girl who would have become Nancy Drew” had circumstances turned out better for her.”

“Teegan Parris is easy to like: outgoing, cheerful, extremely fashionable and professional. But when Teegan’s stressed out, she has an incredibly short fuse before her temper ignites.”

“Constantly commanding the spotlight, Jenna Ravencraft runs a local paranormal tour company. It’s well-known locally that her tours are faked (or are they?) — full of rigged special effects designed to showcase spells and ghosts.”

What I found from the MID Wiki page, Jenna Ravencraft might be voiced by Kiki Penoyer. However, this may be false, because the website that says this also says that MID was going to come out in the fall of 2015. (That was supposed to be true, I believe, but then—obviously—it wasn’t, and that website hasn’t been updated, so I don’t know if the voice actress information is incorrect too.)

By looking at the MID Wiki page, I found a link to this video on the Her Interactive Youtube account where Ellie (it looks like she is someone who used to work for Her Interactive) answered questions that people sent in (back in July 2015). She said that she couldn’t really answer any questions about MID, however, she said that “I can mention that there may or may not be a certain dynamic, sleuthy [or sleuthing] duo, helping you out in this one.”

There’s a speculation that this means that the Hardy Boys might be featured in the game.

We have these 2 pictures (they’re essentially the same, though).

They fired the voice actress of Nancy Drew, Lani Minella, back in 2014.

Just look at this Twitter “thread” with Lani’s answers:

#NancyDrew fans. Sea of Darkness = my last game voicing Nancy. Luv u fans dearly. 15 yrs, 32 games. Hugs and thanks so much. Will miss u!

Well I am so fond of people like you, that's why I had to let peeps know I wasn't leaving on my own accord. Thanks hugely!

They won't [ask me to come back].

[It] was not my decision, but they're trying new things to gain a larger audience. Thanks for hanging in there and being so great

Lani Minella also admitted that Her Interactive fired a lot of their crew in that same Twitter “thread” .

I know, I used to read Nancy Drew books when I was a kid. I don't expect Her to last. Fired most of the crew

Hello Mary & thank you for your kindness. I'm not employee of Her, but they let go of many others as well. Happening a lot. Hugs!

Not only did she talk about Her Interactive firing a lot of their crew, but there was a post in the Her Interactive community that said there were 25 Her Interactive employees but then in April 2017, only 14 employees were listed.

Through Glassdoor, there was a review of Her Interactive that you can see without having an account on the Glassdoor website. This review was from a former employee, a 3D digital artist, who said that “It [Her Interactive] was a great company to work for,” they worked there for more than 3 years, and the people were fun and great to work with. HOWEVER, “Once [the] former CEO left, [the] company has changed.” Which yes, that’s often times what happens. When a CEO leaves, the company changes, however that ex-employee considered that to be a con and the person, who had worked there for over 3 years and obviously enjoyed their work, was fired. So maybe it wasn’t a good one? (at least not for the people who were fired.)

BizJournals had an article talking about some people who were fired from the Her Interactive community.

Geekwire did too. At least in May 2015, Jared Nieuwenhuis was the HeR marketing director and he said that the reason behind this cutback in staff was “changing market conditions in the game industry and shifting priorities at Her Interactive.”

Penny Millikin is the new CEO of Her Interactive. She was hired back in September of 2014 and has served on the Board of Directors since 2003. According to a Her Interactive newsletter, “Ms. Milliken has worked in the entertainment industry for more than 20 years with over 10 years of brand management and family marketing experience at The Walt Disney Company in the U.S. and Europe. … Her broad entertainment background includes theme parks, motion pictures, feature animation, television animation, home entertainment, new media and e-commerce. Penny has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from the University of Michigan.”

She believes that outsourcing is important (I found this link from here, and she starts speaking at around 45:45). (This might sound mean, idk, but I swear I’m not trying to be rude. I don’t know enough about her, about outsourcing, or about Her Interactive to be able to say whether Ms. Millikin is right or wrong or whatever else.)

So the new CEO, Ms. Millikin, thinks outsourcing is a good idea (idk how to word that without sounding disapproving—I mean, I guess I don’t approve of it, but I’m also not against it, because idk enough about it, if I’m being honest). So I’ve found whether MID is being outsourced and I also have done a little digging to get to know more about it (I still don’t really understand it, but at least I have a better idea than before!).

So first of all, according to Little Jackalope on the Her Interactive blog:

“Nearly ALL of our Nancy Drew games have had parts that had been outsourced. All games up until #16 ICE all the character designs and animation came from outside of our office and by another company (then we brought on our own character designer and animators). All of our games’ music has been outsourced as well, with our current composer working from Europe. Many voice actors and actresses have recorded characters for us, even some located in England! Outsourcing is very common in the game industry. Sounds, designs, animations, modeling, marketing content and more are sourced from multiple companies who specialize in what they do. Our game company is no different, and we are a small one! Rumors have spread about Midnight in Salem being outsourced, so to confirm a fact: yes, MID has elements outsourced, just like our past games. 🙂 That is all I can share on the story, for now. When I have news or details to share, I will!”

So Nancy Drew games in the past have had parts that have been outsourced and MID is no different. “MID has elements outsourced.”

Also, through this vlog on Youtube, I found these responses on the Her Interactive blog.

MESSAGE:

“Hi, I am a new software engineer and long time fan! I was curious to find out, do you guys have any woman programmers on your in-house programming team? And how big is your programming team overall? HER seems like such a small family company, but at the same time making a game probably requires lots of hands and a lot of work! Thanks!”

ANSWER:

“Hi Annalyn, we’ve had female programmers in the past and will continue to emphasize the importance of female programmers in the future as well.”

MESSAGE:

“Do you currently have any female in-house programmers? And what exactly do you mean by ‘emphasize the importance of female programmers in the future’?”

ANSWER:

“Our current programmers are outsourced with our art team at this time.”

The vlogger, Nancy Drew Walkthroughs, says that HeR is outsourcing both the art team and the programmers (that doesn’t mean music, writing, or voice acting, though). Basically, that means that the game is not actually being worked on at Her Interactive. which is kind of an update in and of itself. If they made a bigger post about how they’re outsourcing, and what outsourcing is, maybe people would be more understanding and patient of everything that’s been going on, because we might understand it more and we would actually be getting information from HeR.

Second of all, what even is outsourcing?

Outsourcing: The practice of having certain job functions done outside a company instead of having an in-house department or employee handle them; functions can be outsourced to either a company or an individual .

In-house: In-house refers to conducting an activity or operation within a company, instead of relying on outsourcing. A firm uses its own employees and time to keep a division or business activity, such as financing or brokering, in-house.

Third of all, what are the pros to outsourcing/reasons to outsource?

PracticalEcommerce says:

“Specialized skills. The task is highly specialized and requires expert skills or systems, such as graphic design, website development, payroll, PPC campaigns, human resource compliance.

Specialized equipment. The task requires a large facility, specialized equipment, or operational efficiencies. Fulfillment operations are frequently outsourced because of the need to stock large amounts inventory and manage it efficiently.”

And:

“For longer-term needs ... the benefit is that you gain operational efficiencies and skills that you would have a difficult time replicating in-house.”

The Journal of Accountancy says,

“Cost savings and quality. Fierce competition has led many businesses to restructure and downsize staffs in an effort to save money. As in the case of General Electric, even thriving companies do whatever possible to reduce staff and costs.”

And fourth of all, where are the cons to outsourcing?

Also through The Journal of Accountancy, I found this picture, which may explain why Her Interactive is outsourcing as much as they are (this is assuming that a major part of the delay is the actual outsourcing itself).

According to Flatworld Solutions, some cons are:

“- Possible loss of control over a company's business processes

- Problems related to quality and turnaround time

- Sluggish response times coupled with slow issue resolutions

- Lower than expected realization of benefits and results”

And according to The Balance, there are issues with:

“- Hidden Costs

- Threat to Security and Confidentiality

- Quality Problems

- Tied to the Financial Well-Being of Another Company

- Bad Publicity and Ill-Will”

And one thing that pops up in soooo many places is: communication issues.

Chron talks about communication issues here, and mentions:

“- Language or Dialect

- Cultural Nuances

- Communication Technology”

As well as timezone issues.

@katmurph31 posted this post, with these screenshots:

So it looks as though at least starting on May 3rd, 2017 (if not before), the art and development teams have been working on the game.

@jayne-penvellyn on Tumblr posted this with these screenshots to an email she got from Her Interactive which isn’t really an update (it’s the same kind of thing they keep saying, but still).

On top of that, @yancydrew posted this with this screenshot:

Which makes me wonder if HeR has barely done any work on this game, if they haven’t finished the voice overs, if they’ve even found all of the voice actors/actresses, if they’re just waiting on the voice acting before releasing the games, if they need to do the voice overs before they can even truly start on the game, if they are trying to tell us as little as possible so that they can surprise us soon (*crosses fingers*), or if it’s a mixture or any of those or something else completely.

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