#I have a really hard time getting worldbuilding lore out of my head and onto paper | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

twsted-kinks · 1 year

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Ok so I'm not sure if the mc in your writing is in the same situation as Yuu (Isekai/transmigrated) but I am curious about how beastmen/merfolk/fae would navigate a relationship with not only a human but a human that comes from a world where people like the don't exist 😳

In my head Yuu would be eager regardless of anatomy because generally they love their partner and that's that

This kinda got away from me djsndndnd so this is more of a rant on worldbuilding headcanons more than anything else.

As a lover of speculative biology and monster fucking my time has come. Fjdjd I adore biological and/or cultural differences between people and how they learn about these differences and learn about the other so they can be inclusive of their partner. I'm not gonna talk about each character but I can talk about some headcanons I have for each... idk if species is the right word or subspecies. It seems like all can mate and have children regardless of species/subspecies, but idk if that's biology or magic or both like... I like to think biology wise they're all very similar with the different species coming from magical and evolutionary intermingling. Anyway, to some headcanons: Yuu would have so much to learn about the biological and cultural differences.

Mer Headcanons

Biologically the differences are so obvious. There's a wide variety of mers that include invertebrates which just... has to have magical origins. I could go on about marine life and how there's so many different animals that seem to be all put together under mer. Some are hermaphroditic like sea slugs, and you've got ones that change their sex over their life like clown fish. Their concept of sex and gender must be so beyond what we got here.

The environmental differences are also so major. Breathing air vs breathing water. And don't get me started on how having a verbal language under the sea seems so weird and magic is the obvious go to to explain it away but my brain just goes "sign based languages make more sense with the humanlike upper anatomy and they probably gained a verbal language from interacting with land dwelling societies." But I'm not an expert on lore djdndn.

I do know culturally there's iffiness when it comes to mer people and land dwellers. The environment is so different so infrastructure, food, history, societal ideals an expectations has to be so different. It also seems mer people going onto land is more common than the reverse. I may be wrong cause the vignettes I read are for the cards I use and I have like 1 Jade card I've maxed out.

Being in a relationship with any of the mers would just have so many biological and cultural differences and Yuu has no baseline for anything and neither do the mers cause Yuu's from a completely different world. Communication is a must which is probably gonna be difficult cause the mer mafia just... the tweels would lie because funny and Azul is willing to educate about mer stuff in general but not about himself or his family really. Dating/courtship differences just... romantic gestures from both parties would be a disaster unless people are like "I am doing this because it is a romantic gesture where I am from." Oh and just idk is monogamy or polyamory if there's a social standard or not. Well with Disney monogamy but this is my writing I get to choose. I like to think in twst monogamy and polyamory are pretty chill no matter where you are. I think for mer people polyamory is probably common but there's so many different subspecies its hard to claim a majority. Hell, asexual reproduction is probably a thing too.

Either way, it's a must to go swimming from time to time with them in their mer form and just hanging out. Ooo the cuddles. I can see all three of the mer mafia ok with staying on land but if Yuu is willing to live in the ocean with them I think they'd be happy. They'd at least have Yuu visit their family which would be cute and embarrassing. So many eel and octo hugs shsbsbs.

Anyway, I see the most struggle with these differences in a relationship would be with the mers, but plenty of communication and a willingness to learn will be very rewarding and help make a healthy relationship.

Fae Headcanons

I like to think just about all fae, at least from Briar Valley, have a what we'd call a monstrous form (cause I got a thing for monsters). I mean, big buff lady with sharp teeth and covered in scales? I get it. Sebek's dad steps out of line, and I'm taking his place.

Anyway, the biggest difference biologically is the lifespan and I see that being the biggest difficulty. That's a lot to go over in a relationship and is a very dark and very real thing that would need to be discussed. I can see relationships ending specifically because of the difference in lifespan and I can't blame them. It's a lot. Other than that there is a physical biological differences that seem more minor in their more humanlike form. But their monster form.... I mean the cuddles gotta be awesome.

There are major cultural differences too. I assume most fae don't really use technology because magic is so intrinsic in their society and they all love long lives. There is no real need to advance when things work well and new generations take so long to develop and replace the previous ones. Another thing is with Yuu specifically having no magic. In a society where magic is everywhere and is needed to do so many things like at least at NRC there seems to be alternatives by using technology here and there but Yuu is so dependent on others and this would be exasperated in Briar Valley. I can see Malleus and/or Lilia be willing to get some technology for Yuu if they decide to live in Briar Valley. I like the idea of simply introducing radio to the Valley and Yuu just running a radio station idk just a thought I like.

Anyway, there are other cultural differences like I headcanon that dating isn't really a thing for most fae and instead they go the courtship route with so many rules and procedures that Yuu knows nothing about. Someone like Lilia would understand that Yuu has no idea and would try the dating route while Silver, Sebek, and Malleus would just do things and either have Yuu accidentally accept or reject them without knowing. At least with Silver, Lilia would give fatherly advice though how useful it is is up for debate. Again, a lot of communication would be needed between parties but everyone in Diasomnia would be willing to talk about these differences and work with you to have a healthy relationship.

The biggest struggle I think would be the difference in lifespan. Silver is a human so the lifespan thing wouldn't apply to him but the cultural differences would definitely be a thing.

Beastmen Headcanons

Out of the different species, beastmen are the most similar to humans. Theres no other form (except for Jack) but there are still considerable biological differences with ears, tails, and the better senses. I can't see any real problems with biological differences arising in a human and beastmen relationship. I mean Leona, Ruggie, and Jack would probably be chill with Yuu petting them and thats really the only thing I can see ever being an issue (unwanted touching I mean).

I do like to think marking is a beastmen thing but idk if they'd explain it to you. Jack would definitely explain it but only after he realizes you don't know that's what he's doing. Ruggie and Leona either wouldn't tell you or take forever before they explain it cause they like being able to mark you freely. Hell if Yuu's with Leona or Ruggue, Jack would be the one to tell them what marking is. And Yuu marking them in return would also make them very happy.

For cultural differences there are some like... for Jack I see things being more gender neutral and monogamy is very common while Leona and Ruggie got more of a matriarchy going on and I can see polyamory being common for the hyena beastmen. Ruggie and Leona would date Yuu no matter their gender identity but they will treat Yuu a bit different socially because of how their culture is.

I see dating being more common than courtship except for Leona but that's royalty related. And again, with communication the differences will be easy to handle and mean a healthy relationship.

I can also see heats and ruts being a thing but I'll save that for a more nfsw post specifically on that in the future or something.

#answers #twst writings #twst x reader

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reactionimagesdaily · 3 years

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I dont understand bionicles at all, so maybe a crash course into like. 1) what a bionicle is 2) general plot of the bionicle story? happy 5k btw <3 love ur page!

OH BOY OH BOY, this is a question I've been waiting for. Thank you so much for asking, and I’m glad you like my page!! <333

A couple of disclaimers, before I start: I'm going to focus mostly on the mainline plot, but let it be known that there WERE a bunch of serial stories and comics and games that added to the story overall. Bionicle was, I think, one of the first big instances of a plot that was consumed through a bunch of different mediums.

I'm also going to try and do a lot of streamlining - it's not that I DON'T want to talk about bionicle, but there's 10+ years of story to cover, so... yeah. :P

Also! Sorry in advance to anyone whose 'read more' function doesn't work, because this is gonna be a doozy

So, what is a bionicle? From a meta perspective, Bionicle is a Lego theme that ran from 2001-2010, and was briefly rebooted from 2015-2016. It's name is a mashup of biological chronicle, and it was hugely successful in its time, essentially helping to save the Lego company from bankruptcy. The idea is that you use finnicky technical pieces to build humanoid figures (and sometimes their vehicles!) and then. play with them

From a textual/lore perspective, I'm not sure Bionicle is an in-universe term lol. But the characters that we recognise as 'bionicles' are grouped into a bunch of different classifications - 'Toa', 'Matoran', 'Makuta', 'Glatorian', and so on. The characters are kinda like inverse cyborgs, where there's metal on the outside and flesh and muscle on the inside. They often function like robots (e.g. have removable and replaceable masks that they constantly wear over their faces) but are still essentially living creatures.

So, what's the general plot of the story?

...[inhales deeply] Okay

In the time before time, there's an island called Mata Nui that sits in the middle of the ocean. It's populated by these dinky lil' guys called 'Matoran' that live in six villages organised by elements - fire, water, ice, air, earth, and stone. They eke out a life as best they can, facing dangerous wild animals (collectively called 'Rahi') and worshipping the Great Spirit, who is confusingly also called Mata Nui. (They named the island after him.) The great spirit, they say, once watched over them all, but was long ago forced into an enchanted sleep by his evil brother.

(These are the matoran. Look at these cute little guys :3)

One day, six canisters wash ashore, on the island's golden beaches. And out of these canisters step six strange figures called Toa. Tall, strong, and heavily armed, there is one of these 'Toa' for each of the villages, and each of these guys have control over an element. They are the main 'heroes' of this story.

(These are the six Toa. Here's a fun game - spot the girl!)

Each of the six Toa are named characters - from left to right we have Onua (wise and grounded), Lewa (fun-loving and mischievous), Pohatu (friendly and confident), Tahu (hot-headed and impulsive), Kopaka (cold and quiet), and Gali (intelligent and compromising). Some of the Matoran are also named characters - there's Jaller, the captain of the guard at the fire village, Hahli, a sports player from the water village, Matoro, a translator from the ice village, and Takua, who's technically from the fire village but is also an 'outsider' who tends to wander the island. Takua is especially important because he becomes the Toa's 'chronicler', following them around on their adventures and writing everything down for posterity.

Without getting into too much detail, the Toa spend two real-life years getting into wacky highjinks. They hunt for masks (as aforementioned, the masks they wear can be removed and replaced) that grant them special powers, fight the Rahi, and also face up against a terrifying race of creatures with mind-control powers called the Bohrok that are determined to strip the island of all life. They also fight against a being called Makuta, a mysterious shadowy figure who claims to be the brother that forced Mata Nui into his slumber. When they first meet him, Makuta takes the form of a Matoran to throw them off, before turning into a nebulous black void and doing his best to murder them all to death.

(Makuta as he appears in 2001's 'Mata Nui Online Game'. As far as villain introductions go, marching out to meet all the heroes and then telling them "I bore you, for I am nothing. It is from nothing that you came, and it is into nothing you will go. The people of this world are builders, but look into their hearts, and you will find they also have the power to destroy. I am that power. I am destruction. And I will destroy you." is pretty fucking solid though I say so myself.)

There’s a lot of cool worldbuilding and mysterious details about the island. At one point, the earth Matoran note that they can only dig so far into the dirt before they come across some hard material - some type of metal - that they just can’t break through. Also, amidst the stars in the sky, there’s an ominous blood-red star that’s appropriately known as the Red Star. What’s it doing there? Nobody knows

Also at one point, the Toa also get mutated into new forms after falling into a liquid that's called 'energized protodermis' but should really be called 'McGuffin Sauce'. There's a lot of changing forms and characters being mutated in this series in general, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact that Lego always needed new figures to make into toys.

(This is how the Toa look after being mutated. In these forms, they're referred to as the Toa Nuva -and let me assure you that that distinction will soon become necessary. :P)

So, in 2003 in our world (I’m not sure about the timeline within the lore), Takua the chronicler finds a mysterious mask and brings it back to the Turaga, who are the wise old rulers of the Matoran (The most promiment of the Turaga is the Turaga of fire, who’s called Vakama. He’s an even-tempered and wise old man who’s not above hitting villains with his walking stick if they threaten his village.). It turns out that the mask is special - it’s the mask of Light, and it’s part of a prophecy that involves the arrival of a seventh Toa who’s destined to defeat Makuta. So Takua and Jaller go on an adventure to try and find the seventh Toa.

Meanwhile, Makuta isn’t just going to sit around and wait for the Toa who’s destined to defeat him to rock up: he unleashes his secret weapons, the Rahkshi, who are, in lore, suits of armour driven by slugs. Sounds corny - in practice, they’re hella intimidating.

(Look at these bad boys)

Some more adventures happen and, to make a long story short, the Rahkshi kill Jaller and Takua the chronicler puts the mask of light onto his own face, transforming into Takanuva, the Toa of Light. The audience surrogate and ‘weird’ character was the secret hero all along!! I love that honestly.

(Takua and Takanuva - before and after)

As someone with light powers, Takanuva is essentially the perfect counter to the big bad Makuta, who has shadow powers, so he finds Makuta’s lair intent on beating him. Makuta challenges him to a game that’s called ‘Kohlii’ but is basically this universe’s version of lacrosse - Takanuva accepts and proceeds to wipe the floor with him. During their fight, they fall into another conveniently-placed pool of energized protodermis and become merged, forming a new being called ‘Takutanuva’. Takutanuva doesn’t stick around very long, because he’s this weird contradictory being of both light and shadow, but before he fractures he opens a gate underneath Mata Nui and lets the Toa, the Turaga, and some named Matoran get through. Inside, they find a hidden city - a whole other world.

Takutanuva then manages to use his powers to hack the universe and bring Jaller back to life. Hooray! After that, he dies, and Takanuva is back. Makuta is nowhere to be found. [eyes emoji]

So now the Toa, the old Turaga, and a couple of Matoran are inside this whole new location, and they’re all wondering what the heck is going on. Well, not all of them are wondering. Vakama, the head Turaga, steps forward and admits that actually, the six (seven) Toa heros that we’ve come to know and love... aren’t actually the first Toa. Gasp!

The next two years of sets and story are essentially one giant flashback, as Vakama tells the current heroes about adventures past. It turns out that the hidden city they’ve found is called Metru Nui, and once upon a time, Vakama and the other Turaga were Toa themselves, fighting to keep the city and the matoran safe.

(New (old) Toa! The flying green one is Matau, who was a stunt-driving excitable madman, and then on the ground from left to right we have Whenua (nerdy chronicler), Nokama (schoolteacher-turned-superhero), Vakama (anxiety-ridden leader), Nuju (absent-minded stargazer), and Onewa (racist prick who needs (and gets) a character arc). To differentiate themselves from the Toa that we’ve come to know and love, these Toa are the Toa Metru)

They had a bunch of adventures of their own. They fought the Vahki (capture robots upholding an authoritarian police state) and the Morbuzakh (evil sentient vines), and they also had ‘arch enemies’ in the form of the Dark Hunters, who were mercenaries that hunted Toa.

Also, that story about Makuta putting Mata Nui to sleep? Not a story so much as a history lesson! Ultimately, the reason that the city of Metru Nui was abandoned was because Mata Nui WAS awake, watching over them all, but then Makuta forced him into slumber and essentially caused a cataclysm. The Matoran were rounded up and forced to sleep as well, and the Toa Metru had to flee the city. When they came back, it had been overrun with Visorak (basically giant spiders), and they had to fight hard to defeat the horde and its leaders and escape with all of the sleeping Matoran.

Once they left Metru Nui (and arrived on the island that would become Mata Nui), the Toa Metru sacrificed their powers to wake up all the Matoran - which is how they transformed into the wise old Turaga. Also, the Matoran woke up with no memories, which is how they’d never known about Metru Nui up until this point.

Anyways, after exploring Metru Nui and making plans to move back in, everyone does some digging around and discover something about Mata Nui: his spirit is fading. Whatever Makuta did to him, it not only put him to sleep, but it’s also slowly killing him. After presumably having an existential crisis, the gang come up with a solution: there’s another legendary mask, the Mask of Life, that should be able to resuscitate Mata Nui, or at the very least, keep him from kicking the bucket while he’s sleeping.

(The Mask of Life! If you look closely, you can see that the faceplate is shaped like a humanoid figure (because, yaknow, life) and if you think that’s not the tightest shit ever you can get out of my face)

So, the modern-day Toa (the Toa Nuva, if you guys remember the name) are like ‘okay, give us the location of the mask, we’ll go and find it’. So they get sent to another island, this one called Voya Nui, and they arrive and... get their asses handed to them? What?

A quick backtrack: a gang of thugs called the Piraka had already arrived on Voya Nui in search of the Mask of Life, wanting it so they can use its power to blackmail powerful organisations and generally get ahead in the criminal world. (From a Meta perspective, they’re,,, really interesting. Up until this point, the villains in Bionicle had either been wild animals, or villains with grand overarching plans. These guys are basically overpowered street thugs, complete with their own theme song - the ‘Piraka Rap’. Look it up on YouTube; it’s fucking hilarious, because the rest of Bionicle is generally timeless, but the Piraka Rap was basically dated as soon as it came out. I love it.)

(The Piraka themselves! Fun fact; in Bionicle lore, ‘Piraka’ is a slang term for ‘thief’ and ‘murderer’, and was also considered so vulgar that if a Matoran called another Matoran ‘Piraka’, war would be declared over it. These guys are really just going around calling themselves slurs. I have to respect that.)

So, yeah. The Piraka defeat and imprison the Toa Nuva when they get to the island. Now what?

Well, now it’s time for the Matoran to get involved! A group of named and previously-established Matoran set out to see if they can rescue the Toa. There’s Jaller, Hahli, and Matoro, who I’ve already mentioned, and then there’s Kongu, Nuparu, and Hewkii. And I need to take a break to say that all these characters have been with the story since 2001 (it’s now 2006), and they’ve all contributed to the plot before!! Kongu is a prominent Matoran from the air village who led a flight of giant bird-riders to save the day one time, and Nuparu is an engineer from the earth village who basically invented mechs to help the Matoran defend themselves against the Bohrok. These guys are BADASSES and I want to bring up how a really strong initial 3 years of storytelling laid a great foundation for so many small characters. It’s just neat! :D

Anyways, these Matoran travel to the island of Voya Nui in canisters (like how the original Toa landed on Mata Nui) and while they’re sailing the ocean blue, their canisters are struck by lighting from the mysterious Red Star. And that lighting, say it with me now, TRANSFORMS them! Specifically it transforms them into Toa. They end up calling themselves the Toa Inika, because they’re searching for the mask of life, which is also called the ‘Ignika’.

(The Toa Inika. Being transformed by a bolt of lighting means that in addition to their regular elemental powers, they also have electric/lighting abilities.)

Souped-up and ready for action, the Toa Inika manage to defeat the Piraka and rescue the Toa Nuva. However, through plot shenanagins, the Mask of Life ends up being sent to the bottom of the ocean around Voya Nui, and the Toa Inika learn that under the waves is a hidden city - Mahri Nui. As they descend, the Mask of Life does something odd; it sends out a wave of energy, transforming the Toa Inika so that they can breath underwater. So now, they’re the Toa Mahri. (Because they’re headed to Mahri Nui. You get me?)

Mahri Nui is ruled by the Barraki - ancient warlords who were imprisoned under the sea many thousands of years ago after they became powerful enough to threaten Mata Nui himself. They were put in a prison called The Pit, but during the cataclysm caused by Makuta putting Mata Nui to sleep, the city of Mahri Nui sunk into the water and slammed into the Pit. Many prisoners and Matoran died, but the Barraki were freed. Uh-oh, spaghetti-ohs.

Speaking of Makuta - guess who’s back! Thought dead after no-one could find him after Takutanuva died, it turns out that his spirit is possessing a robot body that had previously been a prison guard. He spends some time hanging out with one of the Toa Mahri, Matoro, basically playing mind games with him and trying to get him to turn to the dark side. Eventually, three different characters and factions smack the shit out of him, and he slips out of the robot body to go do... something else (watch this space).

This year of story was REALLY plot-heavy and I kinda can’t do it justice here. The important developments are that the Toa Mahri eventually manage to reclaim the Mask of Life, and Matoro yoinks it. While his teammates act as a big distraction, he swims away and puts on the mask. It basically grants him ultimate power, but it also fuckin’ kills him. His final acts are to teleport his friends to safety, and then release a massive burst of energy that burns him up and saves Mata Nui’s life. The Mask of Life, with no-one left to wear it, sinks into the ocean.

(“In his last moments, Matoro feels no fear. He know he has succeeded--the Toa Mahri are safe, able to resume their lives in Metru Nui. The Turaga and Matoran will know that they became true heroes. Matoro does not see himself as a hero. As a Matoran, a Toa Inika, and a Toa Mahri, all he ever tried to do was his duty. Now that duty has led him to his destiny.”- Bionicle Ignition 11: Death of a Hero)

[dries tears] Anyways, now that Mata Nui’s life has been saved, the only thing left to do is wake him back up. To do that, the Toa Nuva (the Toa that showed up at the very beginning of this story, if you recall) need to journey to the core of the universe, and a civilisation called Karda Nui. Three of the Toa Nuva - Lewa, Pohatu, and Kopaka - are sent to a village in the clouds, where they protect the local matoran and battle the forces of Makuta. Because, as it turns out, the big bad Makuta that we know? Makuta is actually the name of his species. The guy just wanted to feel special, apparently. The Makuta that the Toa have been fighting for over half a decade is technically called Makuta Teridax (or just Teridax), while the other Makuta have other names that I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Anyways, while those three Toa are figuring that out, the other three - Tahu, Gali, and Onua - journey to a place called the Swamp of Secrets in order to find a set of keystones that supposedly contain instructions on how to awaken Mata Nui. And it’s there that they find an unlikely ally: the Mask of Life itself.

See, the Mask of Life has always been a weird one - if you recall, it released an energy pulse for no reason that transformed the Toa Mahri and let them breath underwater. (It’s also done some other fucky stuff that I haven’t been able to mention - there’s a short story about how one time, a guy touched it, and it gave him the ability to involuntarily bring everything around him to life, which ultimately drove him mad. So. You know. That’s fun.) Well, it turns out that when the mask sank into the ocean after Matoro’s death, it ultimately ended up in the swamps of Karda Nui, and it senses the battles raging about it. More than that, but it remembers Matoro’s bravery as he donned the mask knowing it would kill him, and remembers how his final wish was to save his friends. Wanting to know what it means to be a hero, the Mask of Life creates a body for itself, and ventures out into the swamp to discover its destiny.

(The Mask of Life has a body now!! Good for him! Good for him.)

There’s some more shenanigans that I’m skipping over - at one point, Takanuva (Toa of light, remember him?) rocks up to help. Long story short, our eight heroes - Tahu, Gali, Onua, Lewa, Kopaka, Pohatu, Takanuva, and the Mask of Life - fight their way through the Makuta and into the very core of the universe - the Codrex. Inside, after yet more shenanigans, the Mask of Life figures that in order to wake Mata Nui up, it will have to sacrifice the body it’s built for itself. The moment is sad, but the mask remembers Matoro’s sacrifice, and is inspired to act. He sacrifices his dreams of becoming a hero, and in doing so, becomes a hero... ;_;

The mask flies deep into the Codrex, its body dissolving; when it reaches the bottom, it creates a massive energy storm that the other characters have to escape. (Our heroes make it out - most of the villains end up getting vaporized, big RIP.)

And just like that, the journey is over. After years of battle, the Toa Nuva have completed their purpose, and awakened the great spirit, thus bringing peace back to the land. Everyone meets back up in Metru Nui - the Toa Nuva, the Toa Mahri, the Turaga, the remaining Matoran. It’s a glorious day. And as they gather, something happens.

Deep, deep beneath the ocean, energy pulses through rock, and machines that have been dormant for millennia begin to whirr and move. The island of Mata Nui - long abandoned as the Matoran moved back down into Metru Nui - cracks open like a wallnut, each half sliding into the sea. From underneath where the island had been, a tremendous head rises out of the ocean, countless galleons of water pouring off of it. Titanic shoulders follow. Then the chest, and the limbs, and slowly, surely, Mata Nui rises.

Meta context: for years, the nature of Mata Nui has been a mystery. Is he a metaphysical being? Is he a real person? No-one was sure... but they know now. That solid material that the earth Matoran couldn’t mine through, all the way back in 2001? That was his skin. The mysterious red star that created the Toa Inika? That was a failsafe machine orbiting Mata Nui, poised to create new Toa as necessary. The island of Mata Nui was atop his head, Metru Nui was his brain, Karda Nui was deep in his guts. The Matoran were workers to keep him functioning, the Toa were basically his immune system (the canisters they arrive in are literally shaped like pills)... All this time, all these stories, all these characters, this entire world - they have all been inside a robot the size of continents.

(Fucking hell. Look at this. The clouds come up to his ankles.)

Celebrations ripple through Metru Nui as everyone realises what has happened. The great spirit is awake again! The Toa have won! But as the Turaga raise their voices to try and congratulate the Toa, a chill spreads over the spectators as the air grows cold. Everyone stops and looks around. What’s happening now? And then, from everywhere and nowhere, a voice rumbles. It’s a familiar voice. An unwelcome voice. A voice that most of the gathered heroes thought they’d never hear again.

It’s the voice of Makuta - the original Makuta. Makuta Teridax.

And what does he say?

“I AM EVERYWHERE. I AM EVERYTHING YOU SEE.”

Matoro’s sacrifice had ensured that Mata Nui’s body did not die, but before the great spirit’s consciousness could return, Makuta supplanted it with his own. After that, all he had to do was wait for the Toa Nuva to achieve their objective. And as they finished the fight and won the day, they handed victory to him on a silver platter. No longer does he need to strive to rule the universe - he is the universe.

(Meta perspective again but like: FUCK, man. I can’t emphasise enough how mind-breaking this was for the kids who were invested in the series. Think Thanos snapping his fingers in Infinity War, except probably more devastating, because there wasn’t a direct sequel lined up to give the heroes another chance, and there wasn’t a way to ‘undo’ it. This was a plot development that we all had to live with T_T)

(You can tell things are bad because his eyes changed from green to red.)

And what of Mata Nui? What about the spirit that the Toa were actually trying to wake up?

Oh, Makuta stuffed Mata Nui’s consciousness into the Mask of Life - and then blasted the Mask into space.

[inhales deeply]

man...

Okay, in all honesty, part of me wanted to end it there. But you know what? We’ve come this far. And there is more to the story. So I’m going to ignore my concern I won’t be able to do it justice and blunder on.

Bionicle’s last chapter (2009-2010) follows Mata Nui himself - no longer an abstract spiritual concept, but rather a concrete character. A god felled from his pedestal, struggling to find a way to save his people. And it’s AWESOME. Armed with only the Mask of Life and a sentient shield named Click, he wanders the shithole deserts of the planet he crash-lands on, bringing the disparate tribes together, uncovering secrets about who made him and what his ultimate purpose is, and learning what it means to be a regular person. Also, at one point, in a move very reminiscent of the god that he once was, he turns a guy into a snake. You know. As a ‘fuck you’.

(There’s something really cool to me about a main character being someone who essentially lost all the power of the cosmos. Mata Nui might just be my fave character in this whole story honestly.)

Eventually, Mata Nui discovers some crucial pieces of information. Firstly: the planet that he’s landed on, Bara Magna, is his ‘homeworld’ in that it’s where his giant god body was built. Secondly: the two moons orbiting Bara Magna (the jungle moon of Bota Magna and the ocean moon of Aqua Magna) were once part of the planet itself, and split off during a planet-destroying cataclysm, leaving behind a desert wasteland in their wake. Third: the function he was ultimately built for (his ‘destiny’) was to reunite the three celestial bodies into one planet, bringing life back to Bara Magna’s harsh desert environments. He was on his way to complete this task when Makuta crashed his systems with a computer virus - which was what forced him into the ‘slumber’ that he was in for most of the mainline story.

His fourth, and probably most important discovery, is that he’s essentially his makers’ second attempt at a world-fixing giant robot. Before creating him, his makers (the ‘Great Builders’) constructed a giant robot that malfunctioned and exploded. Long-deactivated, the pieces of it are still scattered through the deserts of Bara Magna - in fact, many of the villages on the planet are set up in or around these giant robot pieces. Mata Nui figures that if he can reconstruct this old robot, he can use it to complete his destiny, and maybe even save his people.

It isn’t easy. He has to convince the villagers he’s come to befriend (the Agori) to give up their homes and their safety, and he has to find an experimental power source that’ll actually get the giant metal body moving again. But eventually, he figures it all out. Powered by the experimental source, the Mask of Life, and probably also friendship, he inhabits this enormous form and rises once again. Without missing a beat, he reaches out and begins to pull the moons towards the main planet. As far as he’s concerned, he’s going to fix everything, or die trying.

(The power of skybeams)

However, it won’t be that simple. Makuta senses that Mata Nui’s spirit has inhabited a new form (and I don’t mean that in a metaphysical way, I mean that in a computer/technology way), and he quickly jets over to Bara Magna. Obviously, flinging the fucker into space wasn’t good enough. It’s time for him to destroy Mata Nui, mano y mano. Giant robot y giant robot.

(Makuta and Mata Nui, facing off. God I love this picture.)

It’s the final battle - for real this time. The two giant robots begin to punch each other, and Mata Nui is up against some obvious disadvantages. For one thing, he can’t risk attacking Makuta with all his might, because he doesn’t want to hurt his people, who are still inside the giant robot. (Inside, they’re fairing... poorly. It’s like facism, but if facism was being actively enforced by God.)

In the fight, a hole gets blasted in Makuta’s body, and out pour a whole LOAD of Rahkshi. (Remember those guys?) However, Tahu and Takanuva also manage to escape, and join a ground battle that’s breaking out between the Agori (and their protectors, the Glatorians), the Skrall (a tribe of warriors native to Bara Magna who are absolute dicks - I’ve had to gloss over them, unfortunately, but believe me when I say that they’ve been major antagonists for as long as the narrative has focused on Bara Magna), and a bunch of guys who are called ‘Piraka’ but aren’t the gang of thugs from Voya Nui. (I think they’re the same... species?) Long story short: large-scale shitfight is happening at the feet of the two robots that are slugging it out. Makuta, being a dick, decides to try and literally stamp on all of Mata Nui’s friends down below, and Mata Nui has to desperately hold him off.

Around this point, the Mask of Life (which is really the MVP of this whole story) uses its convenient energy bursts to imbue Tahu with a set of golden armour that allows him to release energy blasts of its own. (Why it singles out Tahu, I’m not sure, but I’m presuming it’s because Tahu was the first face of the series and it just makes thematic sense for him to be a major player in the final battle.) Tahu uses his new golden armour to disintegrate ALL of the Rahkshi - and there were a lot of them on the field of battle, let me assure you. Makuta feels the loss of so many creations at once, and falters, and Mata Nui seizes his chance. He’d done his work well before Makuta had arrived, and the jungle moon is now in low orbit above the planet. Pouring every last ounce of his strength into one more push, he surges forward and up, pushing Makuta up and making sure that his head is right in the path of the falling planet.

Crunch.

(Kudos to Makuta Teridax for being such a persistent antagonist that the only way to get rid of him for good was to drop an entire damn planet on his head.)

Mata Nui guides the falling body carefully to the ground, letting it open and freeing his people. The remaining Skrall and Piraka surrender. The Matoran and Toa meet and mingle with the Agori and Glatorian. Mata Nui raises his hands, and completes his purpose; aided one last time by the Mask of Life, as well as his body’s innate systems, he enacts a synthesis on the now-united celestial bodies. Lush forests and large bodies of water appear in the desert. Life flourishes. Birds probably start to sing. Mata Nui has completed his purpose, and vindicated all of the heroes who fought for him for so long.

He feels himself fading. He lets his spirit withdraw into the Mask of Life. A new slumber - this one, earned, and of his own volition.

Perhaps one day, he will return.

(“We will honour Mata Nui, and all those who fought for him, in our memories. But the time has come to move on. His destiny is fulfilled, and for many of us, it has yet to be written. My friends, it is time to go.”- Tahu, The Mata Nui Saga, chapter 34.)

And there we go! Very, VERY long, but that’s the general plot of bionicle. There are an absolute tone of details I’ve missed out or skipped over, and I encourage you to search them out for yourself if you’re interested. But them’s the basics! :D

#Also: love (as in romantic love) is 'not canon' in the Bionicle universe. Big win for the aromantics #(I couldn't find a place in my lore explanation to mention that but my friend Zacch insisted I mention it somewhere)#also... fuck me dead this is a long post. I spent literal hours writing all of this down. Was it worth it? probably.#not a pic #Someone asked me a thing!#Ask mood: Don't Get Me Started #bionicle #bionicle lore #bionicle story

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royalreef · 2 years

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Anonymous inquired: if you ever decide to release all your world building notes n stuff you have for miranda and the merkingdom i feel a lot of us would love to see it! just from what you show on the blog right now, you've put so much amazing work into the lore of this blog and the redesigns you've done

(( I might! Some day!

Right now the biggest thing holding me back is pretty simple, in that all of my lore is... very disorganized right now. I have some very outdated Google docs ( 12, to be exact... Most over 10 pages long, to give you a reference ), and all of my many, many lore posts on here, on my personal sideblog, and on the NSFT sideblog — but most of my lore, and my most up-to-date lore, is all on Discord in various conversations with friends, or it’s being kept in my head. I have also started a note-keeping journal on the go, and I have other notes on a personal server that I can just toss my junk into, but again, neither of these are in a share-able state.

Likewise, I would REALLY want to doublecheck all of it, making sure it’s internally consistent, and there’s a lot of stuff I STILL haven’t finished yet! I’ve been seriously putting off actually fully mapping out what the merfolk vocal organ looks like, which I need to do first before I move on into their languages, as I really do want to create several conlangs to reflect what they’re speaking. Language is incredibly important to merfolk, so having that is a cornerstone I still refuse to work on in this whole project, as I kind of... do NOT want to figure out grammar or sentence structure or anything. I’d also want to put some study into music for that too, since so much of their language is song and music ties heavily into how they think of the world, but, surprisingly, I am notoriously musically un-talented. My family are all big into music, but it skipped a generation for me. But I need all of this before I can start actually drawing out what their written language looks like, and similarly, I need to figure out how I want to handle the written/spoken/signed language divide, since merfolk senses are incredibly different to our own.

This is not even to mention more fully fleshing out the other merfolk species and cultures, which I’ve kind of also been dragging my feet on, since it’s just... A lot. And I only have so much spoons I can allocate to so much at a time.

Beyond even that too — I’ve long been thinking that I might, eventually, make my worldbuilding into its own independent project. It wouldn’t be hard to slice off the remaining threads of Monster Prom still holding onto it, and my work on the Redesign Universe has kind of been a result of this. That said, if I ever do fully make it its own project, I wouldn’t want to share all of my lore here, and might never share the lore bible in its entirety based on what I end up going with. It’s complicated, and while it might not occur for a LONG while, it’s still a thought and an impulse enough to make me hesitate.

And lastly, I just kinda like when people can discover the world and lore on their own! I like a decent exploratory aspect, and yeah of course I’ll share it OOC with someone if they just come up and ask me whatever they want to know, but I also think it’s just downright fun to have them learn things alongside their muse. I like to have that option for people! I know it’s not for everyone, but hey, that’s why I say over and over that you can just ask me and I’ll tell you, though I might doublecheck and make sure you’re okay with getting all the secrets long before they show up naturally.

Unfortunately, this aspect has ultimately kind of... died off, I suppose, since the RPC seems to be changing and leaning away from long-form and long-running continuities that grow and extrapolate on themselves, so I guess I worry sometimes about not being able to show it off at all anymore. It’s not supposed to be this obscure or hard to find, not really, not if you just keep at it, but you can’t really do that in shorter threads, shorter replies, less serious content, etc etc etc. More than anything, I guess I’m just used to showing off this information in a certain way, and that way is no longer a liable method to use.

#Most secret royal advisor || OOC #Dreaded rumors || Asks #The masked ball || Anonymous #(( its just kind of extra exhausting too because #(( if you know me. i hate shorter/lighter roleplays and LOVE longer/heavier stuff.#(( i am All Plot All The Time #(( but there's not been a lot of chances to dig into plot lately so like. yaknow.

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thethistlegirl · 3 years

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🍍 do you enjoy writing villains?

🍌 if you could live in one of your stories, which would it be and why?

🍑 what kind of fanfiction do you think people would write about your work? Would you read it?

🍒 what is another writblr that has an awesome story that you’d like to boost?

🍇 when did you come up with your WIP? Has it changed significantly since then?

🍍 do you enjoy writing villains?

Oh yes!! A great canon villain (or one with potential) can make the difference between me writing for something or just...tossing ideas around in my head. Villains are half the equation of a good fandom for me. If I have one who I can believably write tormenting my characters just because they CAN, I tend to write a lot more than I would without that factor!

🍌 if you could live in one of your stories, which would it be and why?

Pick the hard ones why don't you...At the moment I have to say I'd love to exist in my were-creatures 'verse because I would love to snuggle a large soft dangerous creature without getting eaten by it...

🍑 what kind of fanfiction do you think people would write about your work? Would you read it?

I've actually had the wild experience of people writing fanfiction of my fic universes a few times! I've really enjoyed it, sometimes it's adding onto a scene that I left open ended or just playing with the universe as a whole, with the concepts and worldbuilding I've done for it. I love seeing the ways people interact my stories and how they see my versions of the characters!

🍒 what is another writblr that has an awesome story that you’d like to boost?

AHHHH there's so many! Gotta admit that at the moment I'm pretty obsessed with your "Brother let me be your shelter"...I love your sibling OCs so much!!!

🍇 when did you come up with your WIP? Has it changed significantly since then?

Current WIP....*flips through files*...I think technically that's the were-tiger AU, so I came up with that last July, while randomly wondering what would happen if I inserted a new cast of characters into my overarching fae/vampire verse. It quickly became something else entirely, going more into traditional werecreature lore territory, and I'm really fond of how the worldbuilding is going in the sense of fleshing out the cultural shifts that the presence of weres would create!

#asks #writing

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dappersheep · 4 years

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Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (1/3)

So first things first, disclaimers! I do not claim nor pretend to know every nook and cranny, ins and outs of the history of FooFan's conception, existence and uncertain future. I do not own the game nor its characters, only the opinions and thoughts stated hereon out.

This was born to vent out my frustrations with how a game like this was abused poorly by its own developer and publisher instead of being nurtured to become its full potential that could have overshadowed and remained better than the likes of Tencent's Tales of Food --I could dream, but it honestly had the potential to be.

Out of respect for the main tag, I personally will not be tagging this post and the following two with the main tag. If you want to tag it yourself with it, that's your choice. Only followers of my blog will see this.

This analysis is divided into three parts: Funtoy, Elex, and the Community. It starts under the cut. Well let's get started.

Funtoy

Ah yes, the creator. The developer. You'd think that with their sudden rise to fame during their global launch, they'd have used the massive profits they earned within the first quarter of 2018 to improve certain things about the game and then trickled it down as quickly as possible towards Global, right? Yeah, I thought so too.

After playing the game since launch, I've seen and experienced way too many things that just hammer in the fact that this is one of the most unfair gacha I've played in years. Some reasons being the following:

(Note: These are experiences ONLY on Global's version, it may also apply to CN being the original server)

⦁ The game's gacha model is aimed towards maximum predation on its players. F2p are forced to either spend some money (and thus tempt them to keep spending after getting a taste of it), or risk not even getting a good ascension of the unit to be useful at all. Paying for the event packs also doesn't guarantee that you would be able to secure a spot in the ranks. In fact, if you can't comprehend how the battle mechanics work, you could even de-rank. Fun way to burn that 800$, huh? At least you have the skin from rebates.

⦁ A little less known thing and probably theoretical at worst, the long joked about spaghetti coding of the game along with an outdated spine technology for the sprites could very well be the reason why a 2D game like this experiences the shittiest lags. Also how easy it is to hack this game with the right know-how.

⦁ Speaking of bad gameplay mechanics, did you know you could spend over fifty Mirrors and not get that final enhancement from +9 to +10 simply because there's absolutely no tangible safety net before +10?

⦁ If you're F2P, this game is terrible in giving you resources to stockpile. Because Funtoy certainly doesn't have a lot of weekly/monthly or even friendly events wherein you can get resources without spending another kind of resource. The Hawthorne event's rewards are lackluster at best, Bingo is severely limited in what it gives, and Recall also doesn't give much for a big event that only happens (supposedly) every 6 months. Did I also mention that daily resource rewards also kinda suck compared to how much you burn in just one event?

⦁ Monthly subs are a scam. Yes, you heard that right. My point of comparison here is Arknights. A monthly in AK allows you to have enough to 10-pull after 30 days, on top of a bit of stamina to help you. In FooFan? You have two monthly subs that do different things and even then, you won't have enough to 10-pull by the end of 30 days, nor is the stamina you get enough to even stockpile and ease the pressure of your need to save for the Gates or that stamina event that suddenly popped up.

⦁ A conga line of 'Must procure this unit at a high ascension to do well in the following events!'. You missed the first Pizza event? Missed the first Turkey event? God forbid, you weren't able to 5* your Beer on his debut? Well sorry, that 5* Black Tea of yours isn't gonna do squat to give you good damage. No, your 2* B-52 also isn't going to do much of anything with his lackluster damage capabilities. If you want a chance to get those event URs again, you have to wait for their pool with laughably limited pulls... and a bloated price to even pull.

⦁ The events starting after the first iteration of Turkey event get even more paywalled. As far as I remember, by the time Minestrone rolled around, an F2P with ample crystal resources can only get 2* at best. 3* and above are paywalled.

⦁ The game has incompetent balancing. The devs themselves likely have little experience in gameplay design and balancing, especially for a game with a growing roster of characters . A prime example of them launching a character not knowing it would pretty much unbalance the game? Look no further than Beer. The guy had to have a couple of nerfs done to him because he was just too meta. You know what's sadder? Before the 'switch' to Brave meta, almost all meta units was built to benefit off the Beer meta.

⦁ Artifacts. Do I even have to explain how the introduction of such a game feature so early into the lifespan of this game essentially fucked over the balance even more? Not to mention, all the more reason you'd be crying with the Gates of Trials demanding so much out of your stamina and crystal resources. F2Ps are again, the ones that suffer in this part. What's their reason? Profit, of course.

⦁ The nerf of resto chests. This was the primary source for people who were saving up stamina for the Gates... until Funtoy decided they were being too generous to their playerbase and dropped the stamina probability rate to 1% or less.

⦁ Terrible UI layout and design. Come on, be honest now, you've lost several thousand of your hard earned crystals buying screws in the fishing shop because you didn't notice that shiny warning in small text and a green button with the crystal image slapped on it, didn't you?

⦁ Look at all these SRs! All of them! Wow, they even outnumber the Rs by at least 80! What's that? There's more URs now too compared to Rs and Ms combined? That can't be real. But seriously, you'd think Funtoy could make some of these SRs into Rs and add them to the perm pool/shard fusion so people aren't stuck pulling Macaron or Dorayaki every time. They could have also populated the Team Up rewards with SRs instead of Rs. But you know... that won't bring them profit. Haha... haha.... Oh and I haven't even told you about the SP class...!

⦁ Lore. Yes, I'm sure by now you're aware that the in-game lore is different from the ones in the non-SP Food Soul bios, in the SP Food Soul bios that sort of ties in with the New World story (that global will never be getting btw). At this point, Funtoy handwaves the confusion away by saying, 'they're all different timelines'. Yes yes, an easy and cliche move to explain how shitty the writing direction went after a while. I don't know what happened, all I know is that lore got weird(er) when they introduced SP Rice.

⦁ They. Keep. Adding. More. Characters! They fail to see that a lot of their earlier players have imprinted on the first few waves of Food Souls and they sadly also fail to properly give some of them more story expansion... or skins. At the moment, they're shelling out so many JP-centric Food Souls because... as I see it? They're pandering to the last bastion of whales they have.

⦁ Merchandise. And I mean a variety of merchandise that isn't using the same official art every time. Like they couldn't afford to commission a couple of artists one or two times to make unique merchandise that would sell. They started too late on that train, and they even made it too hard for anyone not in CN or JP to even procure what already exists. Not to mention, they keep using the same 'popular' set of characters for their merchandise and never really expanding out to making merch for other characters.

These are all the things I can list off at the top of my head why Funtoy as a developer sucks ass. They could sweeten their words all they want, it won't change the fact that they've certainly made way too many bad decisions and found out about it too late, and now they're desperate to keep Food Fantasy alive to keep their profits coming in to make whatever that cat girl game they have and that supposedly 'side-game' FF2 they announced.

There may have been problems out of their control that I or you do not see, but one thing is for sure, they were blinded by greed for the money they were raking in on all their servers at the start, and never actually bothered to invest in more manpower in the right places to improve the game, both gameplay-wise and worldbuilding wise. It's actually saddening that this game could have been so much more with several QoLs and a more fleshed out lore, perhaps even spacing out the number of new units they keep introducing while going back to giving their old units more attention.

That's it for Funtoy. We're moving onto Elex in the next part and boy is that also a trip.

#ravings of a madman #food fantasy but not tagged right

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nat-20s · 4 years

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i woke up at 4:30 in the morning with this messy meta about the comparative horror styles of welcome to nightvale vs the magnus archives and how i like them both very much this is not a one is better than the other post because they’re DIFFERENT but also why, personally, nightvale has freaked me out more than TMA (the magnus archives- im gonna use the abbreviation from now on and in scientific papers u gotta ESTABLISH the acronym and it’s actually kind of annoying bc they’ll establish it ONCE in the abstract and then never say what XJFEFJDOSM or whatever stands for again so if ur like wait WHAT was that again u gotta scroll all the way back up and it’s a whole thing but I digress) and it has to do with WORLDBUILDING and FRAMING DEVICES and USE OF SECOND PERSON and only a little bit how if a character unironically says “innit” i automatically can’t take them seriously. Anyway it’s stuck in my head so you know I had to make it your problem. Also I’m putting this under a read more bc fjsdjlks holy shit this is gonna get LONG and RAMBLY and D E E P L Y nerdy

WORLDBUILDING, FRAMING DEVICES, AND (THE USE OF) YOU IN MANGUS AND NIGHTVALE

Part A: whose universe is it anyway? Welcome to horror where the lore is made up and the logic doesnt matter

so I am not the first or last to compare (/maybe wanna crossover a little) the worlds of

wtnv (welcome to nightvale) and TMA and like for good reason bc in many ways they feel very similar but in TMA it’s like What the FUCK is going on with all of these horrors and nightmarish scenarios I am FREAKED out where as WTNV treats it’s horrors as typically mundane which

A: plays into why when WTNV is like “remember how we’re a horror :)” it’s like OH SHIT bc if Jon Archivist is scared you’re like well yeah it’s scary out there but if CECIL PALMER, general attitude of a peppy cheerleader when facing terrors beyond imagination, is scared, you KNOW shit is FUCKED

B: isn’t entirely accurate, because I don’t actually feel like they are set in the same world. here’s where things get sticky when it comes to realities and whatnot but I do wanna stress that yes I know WTNV and TMA are both works of fictions BUT I would personally say that

TMA is set in a parallel universe: a reality that’s similar to our own but also distinctly separate from anything that we, the audience, can witness but never participate in

WTNV is set in a hidden universe: it is set in our (the listeners) own reality, and is done in such a way that it feels like if you looked hard enough for it or if you just had a bout of bad luck or if you happen to drive down a certain road in a long stretch of US desert (side note: if there’s any real life place nightvale would be set in it’s definitely new mexico have you ever been in new mexico it’s called land of ENCHANTMENT for a reason if I drove into new mexico and drove back out a few days later and like THIRTY YEARS had passed I’d be like yeah that tracks) that you could end up in the reality of nightvale. Who’s to say there’s not a faceless old woman secretly living in your house? Are you sure there’s nothing odd in your mirror? Who can ever be sure time is working correctly?

Which brings me to

Part B: You(yes, you!)’ve Been Framed!

Listen. I fucking love a good framing device. Every time a podcast is like “here’s why the events of the story are recorded in the world of the story” I go bonkers in yonkers that shit SLAPS. TMA and WTNV both do this, but (at least up to ep 176 of TMA, this whole fuckin essay could still be blown out the water) TMA’s framing device doesn’t account for an audience, where as WTNV’s the audience is a core component

the framing device of TMA is that these spooky stories are being recorded by an archivist in order to have an audio version of written statements. Cool! It tells the audience why these recordings exist, and why they’re episodic. Later in the story, the tapes begin to spontaneously show up because of Spooky Reasons that have yet to be Fully Revealed, but it still isn’t for an audience. When Jon Archivist records these tapes, they’re basically being recorded for a Void. Yes, the tapes are originally for a potential researcher to listen to, but that ain’t you chief. You are not part of the narrative (so far at least! Again, maybe the audience will be brought into the story when it’s revealed What’s Up with the spontaneous tapes, but so far nah), there’s no in universe explanation for why you personally are listening to these stories. You aren’t present in the story, in the framing device, so you are not a part of that world.

The framing device of WTNV is that you are tuning into the community radio of a small desert town, Nightvale, that you are a part of. After all, if you are tuning into something local, you’re strongly implied to be local. Thus, we have a framing device that explains both why it’s recorded AND why you’re listening. The audience is absolutely involved in the narrative rather than a simple spectator. Cecil Palmer is not recording into a Void, he’s talking to listeners of which you are a part of. (side note: this makes nightvale liveshows SUPER fun if u get an opportunity to go to one I HIGHLY recommend it bc while there’s not ‘audience participation’ in the classic sense of like magic or comedy acts the narrative IS constructed in a way that you feel less like a witness of a story and more of a participant like the one I went to most of us pulled our legs onto out chair bc oh SHIT maybe there IS an escaped librarian under your chair making a grab for your feet SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF IS FUN AS HELL YALL)

These framing devices are enforced and enhanced upon by who the “you” in a narrative is.

In TMA, when there’s a “you” being referred to, when there’s a listener, it’s usually an in universe character. When there’s lines like “i’m sorry, that’s not what you came here to listen to” it’s not referring to you personally, it’s talking to Jon Archivist or Gertrude Archivist or Insert Archival Assistant. When TMA does use a more general “you”, it’s still in universe rather than the external listening to audience. You can include yourself as part of that general you, but it’s not inherently built into the narrative. If you want to distance yourself, you can also do that. You are not automatically in this world, even if much of it feels repeatable and/or similar

WTNV sometimes uses you to refer to an in universe character, because conversations do happen, but in the episodes where it’s like LMAO THIS IS A HORROR, the “you” and general second person is actively both discussing a known character and the listener personally. One of the most recent episodes, ep 171 “Go to the Mirror?” is a BRILLIANT example of this, where Cecil is simultaneously discussing himself and his experiences AND you as well. There’s something he can only see in the mirror, something with such sharp claws, on his shoulders, but it’s also something you personally can only see in the mirror, something on your shoulder. You are not exempt from the story, you can’t be exempt from the story, because you’ve always been a part of it. (Also side note go to the mirror is SO fuckign good it made my heart fuckin POUND the amount of times that despite knowing it was fiction I looked over my shoulder so many times. I know a shit ton of people listened to WTNV in like 2012/13 and dropped off and felt guilty and never caught up again but like. Catch up on nightvale it’s good for body and soul and also Cecilos just keep winning)

WAY too long; didn’t read: to me personally while I LOVE both TMA and WTNV, WTNV is scarier to be because TMA feels like a story that you’re bearing witness to (also thank god british people aren’t real and were made up for the Peppa Pig Cinematic Universe), WTNV feels not just like a story that you could be in but actively already are and that makes things SPOOKY

Also this isn’t related to the essay but shout out to whoever first decided that horror narrators should have nice even voices we really all be soothed by some grisly ass stories the amount of people that fall asleep to WTNV/TMA is WILD

#wtnv #tma #this essay is for me and me alone #and it's basically like go to the mirror? that wild sun of a gun sure is SCARY

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fistsoflightning · 4 years

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stories you want to write...

...but for some reason haven’t yet.

tagged by: @to-the-voiceless!!! thank you cyan for giving me the opportunity to dump out my slightly dusty idea doc onto everyone’s dash sdgsndfnsdfn

tagging: hmmm... @windupnamazu (double tag yes yes) @whitherliliesbloom @windup-dragoon @heirsofdiscord @ancientechos and you! as you can see, i like fic concepts >:3c

1) okay, so. there’s a section of my idea doc that’s labeled ‘azim steppe shenanigans’ because i Can and Will rewrite as much of the azim steppe MSQ as i please including characterization (yes i’m looking at magnai) ANYWAYS. top idea of the list, which is also the one i want to write The Most, is the naadam duty rewrite! catch me on the ‘why is the wol the khagan of a land they probably don’t even belong to’ train, more news on how zaya and oktai beat up hien at 11. or whenever i get around to writing it since it has Combat and i’m. not the best at it. honorable mentions to the pre-canon sadu, magnai, and zaya tearing through bardam’s mettle fic and the solar eclipse remix that i don’t currently have the energy for ;W; sorry oktai and magnai you’ll have to reside in “are we actually. dating.” hell for a bit longer

2) second on this list is the ‘ysayle lives’ fic!!! honestly there is a whole ass series sitting in my idea doc that also includes moenbryda, papalymo, and maaaybe bad-end flavored minfilia lives? but the ysayle one is like. 60% done but i need to trash and restart since i don’t. like it that much. highlights include: ysayle but a little more dragon flavored, separation of iceheart vs. ysayle, and gratuitous earth imagery versus the ice of coerthas

oh god okay im sticking the rest under a cut this got. Long

3) there is also a section of my doc labeled ‘angst elie isn’t allowed to have as a treat’ because at this point all of mom squad deserves to swing a bat straight for my head, buuut the idea i’m looking at is lightwarden au related! funtimes. ehsk al, anyone? (yes that means either promised love or love’s promise in dragonspeak. yes there’s a reason for this.) the line keeping this idea’s spot is: “ thancred climbs up mt. gulg one final time to meet the mourning dragon.” :)))

4) i want to go more into the various different cultures of my wols!!! i detest the lack of ala mhigan lore (monk lore too. i’m Salty about SB) which is why i haven’t gone into dewah’s family that much but i have an idea and some minor worldbuilding in the making? there’s also lumelle, whose emotions on ishgard are (as all emotions are) complicated, and zaya, who hasn’t been home in a literal decade give or take. i have to think real hard for it tho sdgnsdfsd that’s why they’ve been collecting dust for months.

4.1) the amount of hrothgar and viera lore is also criminal. don’t make me homebrew more lore squeenix give us Actual Lore. duscha and valdis deserve More.

5) okay i. i am very embarrassed by this but i have a longfic draft for a fic that at this point legally has to be tagged “slow burn, if by slow burn you mean 18 years” whenever i finish enough to be able to start posting it and YES ITS ZAYA AND THANCRED.

yeah. i know. this has been haunting me since ffxivwrite last year-ish. it is also very D U S T Y but it has about 15 different ideas i’ve just mass dumped into it and i despise it and myself. additionally some ardbert feelings slipped into the SHB bits and i’m. maybe unrequited ardbert/zaya.... mayhaps

6) i love carbuncles and i love dt’s writing about the carbuncles which may have led to the thought bunny “what if: black opal carbuncle for zaya’s nameday” and it has haunted me but since zaya’s nameday in real time was a day off from the 5.3 drop it promptly got buried under all the ideas i got from 5.3

7) SPEAKING OF 5.3 CONTENT: carmela predicted correctly that i would like the ‘you’re a long way from home, moogle’ interaction you get if you choose the option that has kupo when talking with thancred and i’m possessed. i want to write something surrounding zaya’s honorary postmoogle title and thancred finding out they spent three weeks delivering eorzea’s mail.... there’s a bunch of canon rewrites but for multiple WOLs i’d like to do but i’m Tired

8) rhmrhrr.... AU time! main street au is still haunting my bones and i want to write more because mom squad spent like. an hour talking about how it’s just like dime store romance fiction amassed into an entire au and there’s a certain flowershop romance i need to write >:3 there’s also the ol’ CHB AU hanging around Somewhere and a very small part of me that craves to keep writing hanahaki au which is just slowburn 2.0

9) OH WAIT. i have Exactly One idea that’s mostly npc-based which is just me having feelings about the going-ons of norvrandt before the WOL is summoned, mostly revolving around ryne/baby-filia which i think? will have four parts? it’s really just me worldbuilding with norvrandt and having a great time. i scribbled down a beginning to try and shake off some rust (it did not really work) but:

10) honorable mention goes to the ‘zaya, thancred, and co. give ryne a nameday celebration despite her not really having a nameday’ idea and to this, which never fails to give me a chuckle when i read it in my idea doc:

#tag meme #i. guess that works #yasshoi my dudes #i will reboot my queue sometime this week. i hope.#im really tired and the chaos i woke up to on sunday Really Didn't Help

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mogwaei · 4 years

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Wolf Statues and the Tower of Bone tinfoil!

A theory about wolf statues crossed my dash again which...got me thinking along a somewhat separate train of thought of all the different places we find them. I’ve seen the posts about the Dales/Exalted Plains, but not much about somewhere like Emprise du Lion. I’m not sure if this has already been talked about, but I’ve been searching and can’t find any posts elsewhere.

This is going to be a long and rambling post about Wolf statues and Emprise du Lion, so a two in one theory 😂. I’ve never actually written a meta and I generally hoard my theories and write them in fic...because I’m not good at writing anything that isn’t in story format. You’ve been warned lol

First, some really long and tangential exposition about statues.

There are a ton of Wolf statues across the game. We’ve got a whole pack of them across the Exalted Plains watching over various locations. But they’re also located in a lot of the elven temples we run across as well. @serial-chillr and I were talking about the possibility that, assuming the Wolves are all Fen’Harel statues (unless the ones in the Dales are Emerald Knight wolves, but I kinda doubt that), then what is the likelihood of Solas himself having built these statues?

We know from Solas himself that elvhen nobility used to mark their slaves to honour the ‘god’ that they subscribed to. Sooo, why wouldn’t the more zealous ones build great big monuments in addition to marking their slaves?

What I fail to see mentioned in a lot of fics and theories is much mention of these nobles or the politics of Elvhenan. I’m sure that higher ranking elves probably owned land within Evanuris territory, and they probably needed permission before doing so, but I’ll bet that if a kiss-ass noble came up to one of the gods asking to build a pretty statue (hoping for bonus points) the narcissistic bastard god was probably like “You want to build a statue of moi? BUT OF COURSE!!!” and maybe gave the noble a pat on the head and a cookie for kissing butt.

For posterity:

That being said, because I can’t help but mention my own worldbuilding fic, The Guardian, I’m assuming the statues were built of Fen’Harel, and while Solas might not have really approved (or maybe wasn’t even able to stop them from being constructed ‘nu stop I’m not a godddd‘) he would instead have found a way to use them to his advantage. I write that he begins placing statues where allies (both agents and freed slaves) can find them and follow them back to safe places marked for the Rebellion. I go into slightly more detail regarding these special wolves (how he would get statues into the temples/palaces of the Evanuris and how to distinguish them from regular ones) in a plot involving infiltration of a compound in Chapters 111-120. I can’t give away all my secrets!

Anyway, moving onto statues in specific locations:

The one in Emprise du Lion

hewwoh big boi

What I find fascinating about this one specifically is that it’s also located in the same region as Suledin Keep (which also has wolfies inside of it ofc). Because of the landmarks codex in Emprise I’m hedging that this land used to belong to Elgar’nan. Look at Pools of the Sun for reference - THAT’S ALL I GOT FOR NOW

Anyhow, floundering, but my attention was next drawn to the Tower of Bone

In this story, a blood mage summoned a greater pride demon, who then possessed the entire tower. When the mage died, his sons were unable to control the demon, so they commissioned eight monstrous iron chains intended to hold it. The touch of the cold iron chain is the only thing holding the stone abomination in place. Should they break, the tower will pull itself off its foundations and walk, destroying everything in its path.

I know that they found human bones in the tower, but bear with me. I’m tinfoiling hard and trying to read deeper and tie it all together but I’m just a humble apostate hobo.

Anyway, some blood mage summoned a greater pride demon who in turn possesses the tower - of the companions, Solas has the Tower tarot card. The next sequence in the story, the sons bind the tower with 8 chains. The only mention I could find of the number 8 is in the Draconis codex where it mentions there being a possible 8th Old God being stricken from records.

Should all the chains break, the Tower will destroy everything in its path.

The Tower tarot, as we’ve seen in a hundred other tin foils, is commonly interpreted as meaning danger, crisis, destruction, and liberation. It is also associated with sudden unforseen change. WHICH ISN’T NECESSARILY A BAD THING! (Look, despite everything, I’m hanging to that thread of hope that Solas will have a good ending).

So, again, I’m probably totally wrong but the symbolism here has some pretty interesting potential if it is referring at all to Solas and the Evanuris.

Recap:

>random thought (because I’m totally writing this on the fly) but IF the 8 chains symbolise something more, then maybe it’s possible that the 8th ‘God’ could be the Sun that is briefly mentioned in elven legend (referring to the codex I mentioned above). And the Sun could be symbolism for yet another thing we aren’t aware of. Whether that’s some sort of dragon or spirit or entity we haven’t been introduced to in game (yet).

>The chains themselves could also be representative of holding back...again, something we don’t know. Blight? Something worse? (thinking about the Dread Wolf Rises mural and the seals, but there are only 7 there. Maybe the 8th is the thing they’re holding prisoner if it isn’t free?) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>While I’m down this rabbit hole, maybe the 8th is part of this: “A final eluvian is situated in a peaceful bolt-hole where Solas has painted murals. Fen’Harel was here and wanted to make sure nobody ever found what the other gods were doing.” - this can be found in the game files under bolt_hole (in other words, maybe it has to do with whatever they found?)

>A big ass, greater Pride demon (more Sooooolllasss symbolism? looking at Tevinter Nights and some other cool theories on Dread Wolf - Pride demon connections)

>Reoccuring tower symbolism (does the little wolf Rook that Mark Darrah tweeted a while back count?)

>Breaking chains (liberation?)

>ALSO THE TOWER IS COVERED IN RED LYRIUM (AAAAAAAH)

>Someone’s gonna go wreak havoc when a Specific Thing Happens (*cough* Solas? *cough*)

I realise I flew off the handles here and I’m not sure if anyone is going to even be able to follow this tangent 😂

Anyway, that’s it for now until I think of something else. If you’re into a long winded fic of worldbuilding and lore weaving, check out The Guardian where I do a lot better job of putting my thoughts into words. I swear I’m not usually this scatterbrained and I spend a LOT of time weaving theories...that I then hoard like Smeagol. :3

As a closing message, I’d like to include this shot of my dear friend @schoute ‘s Piper Lavellan who doesn't know where the fuck she is.

Thanks for reading and I apologise if you’ve lost any braincells in this thought spaghetti orz

#dragon age #solas #the dread wolf rises #dragon age 4 #dragon age inquisition #fen'harel #Solas and Abelas tinfoil over tea

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fencesandfrogs · 4 years

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an abridged history/explanation of warrior cats if you didn’t read them as a kid and have questions (a primer)

welcome. i’m going to keep things to the point, this is not a plot summary, just, well, its a pandemic and people are seeking items of childhood comfort and its come to my attention that a lot of people didn’t read these books as kids and then they come up in conversation and they act shocked so! i felt compelled to write this.

[2.5k words, 10min read. section headers, no pictures. not a ton of helpful formatting. i don’t want to say don’t read this because obviously i wrote it and think it’s worth reading, but i’ll be honest, this is a lot.]

section one: about me

i was an avid reader as a child, most of which fits solidly into “stories for another time,” and some of which would necessitate me adding tags onto this post that are, well, not necessary. so i will skip over that backstory but for those aware of lexile scores, i had one that was too high for literally any book that was appropriate to give me. so reading in school was torture and reading for fun was excellent.

now because i was a first-ish grader and my mom was trying to keep the fifth harry potter out of my hands, she looked desperately for something else to pass to me. her friend, who had a daughter a year or two older than me, was into these cat books, and my mom was like “here honey you like cats” without thinking too much about it.

which is good, because as i’ll get into, it was a really good fit for me. but like a dozen books later she asked me about the plot and well. i think at that moment she realized that it might have been better to just let me read harry potter.

but yeah i continued to read them long past the recommended reading ages and still as a Young Adult will return to them for nostalgia, and also as i will get into, some really good books. (see a list of books for “morbidly curious but i don’t want to spend 56 to 168 hours reading this”)

i’m not fully caught up on the series but this is not a plot summary so that should not impact my ability to discuss this

section two: content warnings

these books (not this post) includes the following:

discussion of castration (1.1 series 1, book 1, i’m not including this on every item/discussion because this is a complicated series but i want to demo how up front some of this is)

teenage romance/sex/pregnancy (1.1ish-1.3 or 4, continues throughout the series quite a lot, comes up again in 3.4/5, 4.4-5, and a bit in 5)

death from childbirth (1.can’t remember which book, many others)

unwanted pregnancy (se super edition, or a longer one off novel, discussed in 4&5)

sex/implied, discussed, and very very very heavily hinted but never directly said/shown (1.1-3ish, se, other)

murder (constantly, 1.1, 1.4, literally every book, 3.5, i’m just listing the ones i remember off the top of my head that were particularly graphic)

disability/illness, esp. the debilitating and/or deadly nature of it (1.3-5ish, 3.1, but all of 3, 3.4ish)

dementia (1.3-5, i’ve heard in some of the later series?)

abuse (7/8 this is reported i haven’t read these books but based on what i know it’s def there)

child abandonment (1.4-5, 3.4/5, it’s also all over the place but i think those are the only major character incidents of it)

treason (1.3-5, all over the place)

the horror/tragedy of war (background, but pretty constant)

disagreeing with an integral religion/tradition (3, based on the series title, 8, and generally scattered)

the corrupting influence of power (1.4/5, possibly 7/8, others)

racism (1, 3-5, possibly others)

sexism (se, background)

patriarchal societies (se, seems to be somewhat softened based on what i’ve heard but i’m not entirely sure about this)

and more! but it starts to get stranger and this is enough to prove my point

basically everything that could go wrong does

oh yeah! child abuse also child abuse that’s a very major theme in the first series as well as during other points. and elder abuse in the first series.

okay i’ve made my point.

section three: the appeal

look. so. i think we’re kind of pastel-ify children’s literature based on movies. see, parents have to watch children’s movies with their kids, so they can’t be gritty and intense because a lot of parents will say “not for my nine year old! they can’t deal with treason!” and that seems to be bleeding into children’s literature.

but warriors is not that. it’s intense, it borders on “too gruesome for children,” and it’s from a time where kids books got to be serious and heavy and dark because they were about animals. which was great because i couldn’t find books at my reading level that weren’t too thematically difficult, so i got to read something below my reading level, but thematically too hard, so it kind of balanced out.

and then well. so. the series grows with the audience, but the books don’t grow in terms of like difficulty so new readers start deep into it and it’s a complicated thing, the fandom history is complex, but.

the appeal is that parents don’t usually read the books their kids read and so they see a book about cats and assume it’s fluff, and kids who are starved of complex content get to read hamlet-for-kids.

section four: worldbuilding/lore

oh yeah also there’s some really deep lore to explore. so there’s two bits of appeal.

i’m not doing a full world/plot summary, but i’ll explain some common elements here.

thunder/shadow/wind/riverclan: harry potter houses for cats (gryffindor, slytherin, hufflepuff, ravenclaw, except this doesn’t work for the last two but that’s fine because no one cares about them despite riverclan being pretty important in most of the books)

-kit/-paw/-star: naming conventions. everyone has a two part name. (we’ll use cinder as an example because i like the two cinders we know, even tho neither of them get to be cinderstar.) babies are -kit (cinderkit), then when they’re apprentices, which is like being a student, you know, elementary through high school, you’re paw, so cinderpaw. then you get an Official Name from ur clan leader (cinderheart). if you become clan leader, you get to be -star (cinderstar). i know i haven’t explained clan leaders bear with me. this is kind of important because i have the names burned into my memory so i cannot simply always call firestar firestar if he was firepaw at the time of the events i’m describing. it won’t be ambiguous, cinderheart/cinderpelt are a special case. if this is tricky for you it’s fine just only read the first part of the name.

clan (leader, deputy, medicine cat, elder): roles with in the clan. leaders literally have nine lives. deputies are next in line and chosen by the leader. leaders usually go through several deputies, because deputies don’t have nine lives. medicine cats are doctors. they also have an apprentice. those are all one per clan. elders are just retired cats. they’re not a special category per say, but i wanted to mention them.

warrior: adult.

warrior code: laws.

star clan: dead cats. this ties into the religion which is pretty important to the books but for the most part if you understand that dead cats get to give guidance and send their approval, you have the gist of it.

section five: so um, what the fuck

so we start with a cat named rusty who runs into the woods to join thunderclan and then his name is firepaw and we all forget that he’s named rusty except for like that one time it comes up again. bluestar is a great leader with some corrupt deputies but fireheart eventually takes care of it and becomes clan leader which is a big deal.

then a bunch of other shit happens and suddenly ashfur is possessing brackenstar and being (more) abusive to squirrelflight (who is on the outs with brackenstar anyway for lying about their kits jayfeather, hollyleaf, and lionheart because they’re actually the children of firestar’s other daughter leafpool who had them with crowfeather after she fell in love with him but he’s from windclan and she’s a medicine cat so that’s double illegal and apparently hollyleaf is alive even though she yeeted herself into a pit and died because she killed ashfur when he threatened to reveal this but couldn’t live with being the product of an illegal meeting and then it was all pointless because leafpool stopped being a medicine cat out of guilt anyway and jayfeather is just an ornery bitch about everything but especially all of this)

i’m not explaining any of that.

section six: i repeat: so um, what the fuck

so the thing about these books is they’re soap operas and dramas about cats and that means they get just as strange and chaotic as anything else in the genre. i think a lot of people like me, who read them as children, regard the series we knew as a child (usually either the first three or the first five, plus super editions) as something good and warm and comforting (despite being dark and gruesome) because they made us feel good.

they were also a breeding ground for young fandom because of all the the drama that exists and the nature of the books providing that.

section seven: super editions

the simple answer to what a super edition is has already been given (it’s a novel length one-off about a single character, and its usually either a side character - bluestar, crowfeather - or a event/perspective we don’t get to see - firestar, skyclan, greystripe - and they’re generally more mature)

my favorite super edition is bluestar’s prophecy. i read it at like 16, slinking into the children’s library with a stack of other ya fiction and a “children’s book” which dealt with unwanted pregnancy, grief, forbidden love, and more. still not sure why that’s in the children’s section.

section eight: about the drama

so there’s been a lot of fandom drama about these books. i can’t tell you about the nuances, because i am an old fan, so i watched but didn’t partake. the highlights reel that i can recall goes as follows (please note i will refer to characters by name without explanation. it’s fine. the point of this section is to convey the pettiness of this drama):

tigerstar: did he do anything wrong? (the answer is holy shit yes, this isn’t discourse, it’s okay to like a villain)

scourge: did he do anything wrong, also what color is his collar? (also yes, doesn’t matter)

was the new prophecy (2)/omen of the stars (3)/etc good? (yes, eh, no, yes, no comment, no comment)

should jaypaw or hollypaw be medicine cat apprentice (neither of them, but jaypaw’s employment opportunities are limited because he’s blind, so its gotta b him)

uhh a massive tangle around this parentage drama between squirrelflight, leafpool, brackenfur, and crowfeather, which i used as the crux of humor for how batshit the plots can get, so i’m not even going to pretend i can make it funny, but just know that it’s batshit and the correct opinion is as follows: no one is right, but squirrelflight has done the least wrong, brackenfur is an asshole to her where it’s unwarrented, and hollyleaf is an idiot

and the current drama centers around brackenstar and ashfur and is tied directly to the point above, which is why i’ve kind of given up trying to make jokes about this because this is the culmination of like 35 novels.

section nine: i feel like i need to have some conclusive point to justify writing all of this

but i don’t have one, because this was really an excuse to ramble about an old passion for like half an hour. i mean i guess i can say, like, i think younger fans are sort of embroiled in this drama they don’t really have context for, because i’m not kidding, the current drama centers around the grandchildren of our original cast.

it’s kind of hard to know why, say, mistystar matters if you don’t know that she’s the child of bluefur and oakheart and if you don’t remember the drama that surrounded that when bluestar was dying and tigerstar and leopardstar were ruling a combined shadow/riverclan.

(i really hope that’s intelligible i tried to lay the groundwork for it. basically, there’s a biracial kid in a very segregated society who becomes the leader of one of the clans. which is obviously drama, especially considering that that clan was part of a weird supremacy movement a while back.)

& you know? i really hope one of the new series gets to be like, a soft reboot. just. end the current drama and pick up again with the latest generation. a) we’re starting to run out of names, and b) i think that it’s kind of tipped over the edge of sane.

the series also used to be very low fantasy. the cat societies are reasonably close to feral cat colonies (the biggest detail is that toms don’t all have their own territory, but there’s honestly in-universe discussion of this and it’s basically a culture thing), and while star clan/religion is a real and legitimate thing, there’s also a discussion of its abuse and most of the early books don’t really use star clan/related ideas as a physical force so much as a plot device, barring, like, when a new leader gets their nine lives.

honestly, i’ll always adore these books for serving the role they did, and a lot of the series is fantastically well written. but the fandom surrounding it can be, uh, not great because 9-14 year olds don’t really have good brains to understand this.

also, i’m very sad that i can’t find the flash game that was for the great prophecy. it was not very fun, but i enjoyed playing it, so if anyone knows the url so i can search the internet archive for it, please let me know.

section ten: i’m morbidly curious but there are 56 hours of books to read, assuming a very fast reading pace, so is there something i can start with to experience this without dedicating 4 days to it?

yes, there is.

it’s called bluestar’s prophecy. it’s standalone, and i should have given you enough of a background on the lore that you don’t need to know anything else. i’ve already given away the twist in series 1 that it would spoil, so you’re all good on that front.

if you want more, or want the original experience, the first series is self contained and quite good. i’ve given the broad outlines of the plot, but trust me, there’s a lot of surprises and all sorts of things i skipped over because while i like it, it’s not exactly fandom primer material

i also enjoy firestar’s quest and skyclan’s destiny for super editions, but you’ll need to read the first series to understand FQ and FQ to understand SD, so it’s not exactly a starting point. also, SD especially deals with a very different set of themes as the other books.

also, if you were to, say, search “readwarriorcats” (no spaces) on duckduckgo, and then click on one of the first links, you know, not the official site, the one hosted on one of those free website things, you know, not wix, not wordpress, the other one, you would only find lists of the books with hyperlinks.

#warrior cats #fandom #txt #mine #1st #February #2021 #February 1st 2021 #essay #personal #long #q

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thesteadydietofeverything · 5 years

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Top 10 Games of 2019

This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:

-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go.

-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.

-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.

-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.

Alright, he’s the actual list:

10. Amid Evil

The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.

9. Ape Out

If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.

8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.

7. Resident Evil 2

It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.

6. Judgment

No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.

5. Control

Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.

4. Anodyne 2

I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people.

3. Eliza

Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.

There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.

Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.

2. Death Stranding

For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.

The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.

Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.

1. Outer Wilds

The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again.

What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.

The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.

#outer wilds #death stranding #eliza #anodyne 2 #control #judgment #resident evil 2 #fire emblem: three houses #Ape Out #Amid Evil #games #video games #GOTY

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wileds · 5 years

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after the fall spoilers! please be warned!!

hot mess incoming im still processing and NERVY AF ASJDKLDFHJ

ok. my muse isn’t canon of course so i am focusing on the vacuo revelations.

1) it is very nitty gritty and super survivalist, the wildlife was more dangerous than expected, shade being described as the only source of order makes much more sense now. in v4 sun expressed surprise that menagerie didn’t expand inland and blake said that menagerie’s desert wasn’t like vacuo’s - it was inhospitable, and had wildlife more dangerous than average. if that’s still true then holy shit. the grimm, harsh nature, lack of resources, and wildlife we get exposed to in this book?? vacuo is a hard fucking place to live.

2) vacuo organizes itself mostly around settlements which was surprising to me too, i didn’t expect nomadism to be that much of the norm even though it’s forced due to grimm attacks and sandstorms / other natural disasters. it just brings a nice contrast to the utter luxury of love’s upbringing, being landed outside of vacuo city. they have had the means, money, fortune, luck, security etc to give up nomadism.

3) added headcanon: love’s tribe definitely has their own small cct support tower.

4) i hummed at some of the more callous/uncaring descriptions and stereotypes of vacuans...

surviving is what we do here, or we don’t. we look out for one another but if it’s down to your life or someone else’s, you choose your own. no hard feelings.

the only home you have in vacuo is the people you keep close.

settlements described as honestly meagre places. “there was no way is could ever compare to beacon, let alone any village in vale”

but i’ll take em since they came from the mouths of vacuans, from their experiences living among different settlements. still, just the first page had trite stuff like vacuo: the wrong place at the wrong time and a terrible place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. SO I STARTED OFF SQUINTING REAL HARD. i was really scared of just .... not liking the vacuo we get, after all this time of waiting and worldbuilding on my own. i was terrified that my hype would fall apart or be disappointed by some mad max wild west bullshit. and terrified that i’d feel overly protective of my headcanons or salty if others suddenly started paying attention to vacuo thanks to cfvy, who aren’t even from there (bar you know you), so vacuo would just become a theater again.

5) but fox and slate especially brought a lot of feeling and sense and heart to these sayings and environments, so i really wound up liking it! (“no matter how long you’ve been away, you’re always part of your tribe, and your tribe’s always part of you,” slate said. fox smiled.)

6) although i liked much less the judgments made by coco & velvet when they’d only been living there for a little while and obvi are there because their hands were forced after the fall.

7) i guess the clarkia tribe’s strong ethics and emphasis on hospitality can be a product of their wealth too. they can afford this generosity, whereas a lot of others need to focus on survivalism.

8) most vacuans wore simple, light-colored tunics and linen cloaks and head coverings for crossing the desert. ... inb4 love really is extra Extra for his sense of fashion.

9) the bits on vacuan attitudes on leadership vs authority were very interesting and i have old headcanons that i need to dig up and think about. fox said most tribes and settlements don’t have elected officials which...personally feels incredibly yikes and unsustainable. incredibly. “it’s even more unusual for a tribe to have a leader that they trust” honestly, i don’t like this canon. i’ll trash it when it comes to love. on slate’s good leadership, from coco’s thoughts: “it was because she cared more about them than she did herself, and that was a rare quality in vacuo.” ... like, objectively i know this attitude is probably true but god do i hate generalizations!! i felt like this when rping ciel too, on generalization about atlas that was all rly about class. ah!! oh well. i’ll think about it.

10) velvet dabbled in fortune-telling when she was younger can we TALK about this.

11) all the grimm were beautiful by the way, beautiful and terrifying and fucking everywhere, though that was mostly because Plot. gotta remember that that high level of threat is not typical, but due to Plot.

12) speaking of plot: someone seeking out people with strong semblances? love has a Strong Semblance. his semblance, in fact, has a whole mound of its own lore and celebration behind it. pls fuck him up, or warn him that this is happening.

14) descriptions of shade, too, i am on the fence about. “It felt like everyday at the school was a test to see how good you were, to prove that you deserved to be training to be a Huntsman. Survival was more important than teamwork, and it was more competitive than Beacon Academy- even within your own team- placing CFVY at a unique disadvantage” / “...focus on survival and results rather than teamwork and studies.” ... we get it, you have to survive. why the fuck wouldn’t teamwork and studies be important to survival and training career huntsmen? i just don’t get it and it doesn’t quite align with my views, though i know that attitude certainly exists in vacuo, ffs it’s not monolithic. in a huntsman institution?? i don’t buy it. idk!!

15) “Vacuans were typically more respectful and less wasteful than anyone else.” !!! A GOOD ONE!!

they acknowledged several times that vacuo’s problems has roots in other kingdoms taking advantage of them!! “Their whole existence was centered on picking up and moving on. And it was the other kingdoms that had created this situation for them. No wonder they didn’t want to get involved in Remnant’s politics.” I FUCKING STOPPED AND CHEERED AT THIS PART. AAAAAA GOD FUCKING BLESS. i have added legitimacy to how love doesn’t at all sign onto the grandeur of being a huntsman especially if it leads him out of vacuo, he does it for other and personal reasons. the goodness is a happy bonus.

i’ll stop here or else i never will. big takeaway: i fucking love fox alistair. i love him. i adore him. every time fox alistair did anything i wanted to scream. also, i’m upgrading my velvet cosplay. also, brnz. also sssn. FUCK.

#im not shaking YOURE SHAKING #ooc.#after the fall /#after the fall spoilers /#spoilers /#✧ﾟ * hc. i see gold on your cheeks and glitter in your lungs –— *#or #ref tag #long post /#hc.vw

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moonlit-maiden · 5 years

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11/again!

tagged by @kaatiba again~! Thank you so much <3<3<3 Please check her out guys, she's wonderful and uber talented!

What is the biggest change that’s occurred so far with your WIP?

Well Gali became Disaster Bi so I consider that an improvement over Just a Trash Mess when my friend played her so.... XD But in seriousness, I'd say the 3rd book. For a long time I struggled with how I'd end it. It came super slow but luckily as I pinned down the first 2 books is came to me finally. I was very very stressed over it.

Was writing something you eventually picked up or was it something you’ve always wanted to do?

A friend of mine in 7th grade English was writing her own story (as 12 year old girls do) and she turned to me one day and said "You should write. You'd be amazing at it, you read so much!" I'd never considered how books came to be until that moment. So I started writing! So it kinda just... happened.

Any fandom related things that inspired your work?

Not really. I actually actively avoid fandom. I tend to have Controversial opinions on Things and even back in my youth (bitchyouarenotoldbutokay) people would NOT be happy and chase me out. So I've kinda always done my own thing. Floated on the edges of fandoms for books and video games I love. That's all.

Do you use face-claims?

Generally no. I always have in my mind how they look and rarely does a face claim match up. Chernolo is one of the few exceptions. I had a vauge idea for him, found a pic of it to-be face claim and it clicked. I'm pretty sure he was going "That's how I look mom. That. Nothing else will do." Tenshi I already knew how he looked. When I stumbled across his FC I was genuinely startled it was so eerie!

What is your main issue with the books you dislike?

8D Who has 2 hours? For everyone's sanity here be the highlights:

Women are only strong if they're masculine, reject traditionalism or refuse to be in love. This is bullshit. Stop it.

Stupid male characters in order to "empower" the female character. Stop it.

Homosexual love and romance being treated as something different then heterosexual romance. It's the same thing; love. Stop it.

Killing off parents. Stop it 8D

Making parents stupid and uninvolved. Stop it. 8D

Making siblings horrible or absent all the time. Stop it. 8D

Not drawing inspiration from non-Western mythos/lore. Expand your horizons.

Shoving in diversity just because. Stop it. Either write it in to start with or don't bother.

Making the villain dumb and predictable. I'm not scared by that.

Either sexualizing only the guys or only the girls. Stop that; equal fanservice if you're gonna do that nonsense.

Equating love to sex. They are not mutually exclusive. Stop it. 8D

Making daughters hate their fathers. Stop it.

Toning down scars, trauma and torture experienced by female characters despite it being applicable to the situation (such as being in a war, being a fighter). Stop it. 8D

Making authority evil. This is boring and untrue.

No chemistry between love interests. Better no romance then poor chemistry PLEASE. And yes, this applies to gay romance too. Being gay doesn't automatically make the romance interesting.

Being afraid of having religion in your work. PUT IT IN THERE YOU COWARDS!

Mary Sues/Gary Stus. Yes, they exist. And NO it's not when the character is OP. It's when the whole world bends to the will of the character to the point of ridiculousness. THAT is what a Mary Sue/Gary Stu is. OP characters just run a higher risk of falling in here if not handled well.

Not showing friendship between boys without it being homoerotic. Please don't put your fetish into the book and just show guys giving a shit about one another and caring.

Villainizing mothers. PLEASE STOP IT.

Promoting HeroxVillian pairings that are abusive/toxic. Stop. Hard. It's nasty.

I got lots more but we'd be here all day.

What message do you hope to deliver with your WIP?

Lol, like the above we'd be here all day. So here are the highlights.

Do not be afraid to ask for help.

Love in unbelievably powerful in all it's forms

You parents try VERY hard to raise you. Cut them slack and forgive them for their mistakes.

Women can be strong no matter what path they choose.

Racism is horrible, degrading and demeaning. And no, it doesn't matter who's doing it to which race. It's not an excuse.

The line between a hero and a villain is paper-thin.

Reality is huge and strange and terrifying.

If it's not human, don't trying to put human logic onto it.

Learn to forgive. Your own hatred will kill you.

Don't give up on a dream, even when the world is telling you to stop.

We always want what we don't have. Learn to take comfort in your own skills and beauty.

It's okay not to know your path when you're young. As long as you keep looking around.

It's okay to like the pre-laid out path your family/parents recommend. Don't feel ashamed if it feels right.

Consensual polyamourous marriage should be legalized.

You both make your own fate and are bound by it. It's a messy look with no start or end.

Stories are powerful.

Love is at the core of all motivation.

The world is not what it seems.

Favorite song to write to, if any?

sljd my music taste is so all over it's stupid. I've literally listened to Baby Metal while writing romance/smut scenes. There is no logic here. The only consistent is Lo-Fi/Vaporwave/Future Funk playlists.

Do you have the ending plotted out? If so, can you remember when you came up with it?

Yes, thank gods. I think it happened in 2017/2018, near the end of my brainstorming.

What is your strongest point in your writing?

Worldbuilding, character relationships, horror and smut. One of these things is not like the other.

What do you do when writer’s block rears its ugly head?

Okay. I'mma be real here. I don't GET writer's block. I legit don't. But I DO get "lazy brain". I'm sit out 20-30k words in a couple weeks and then my brain will check tf out for a few months. Rinse and repeat. This is a bad way of writing things. don't do it.

Would you travel to research your wip?

*packs bags* So who's paying for my trip to Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seol?

tagging: @the-ichor-of-ruination, @ivonoris, @ikilledmyocs and anyone else who wants to do it!!!

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thedeadflag · 7 years

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@dreamsheartstory said: if you find any good sci fi, let me know… it’s so rare…

It really is. For a genre that has so much potential, it rarely makes the small screen without being corralled into a few very specific tropes (sci-fi cop procedural is so, so overdone, but I’m desperate haha)

Still, this is what I’ve watched over the past...3 years? 3 years, yeah. At least, the notable ones, not including the obvious big name Netflix marvel shows, Sense 8, orphan black, etc..

SOME MINOR SPOILERS BELOW

The Expanse:

Harder sci-fi. Essentially, it’s the future, where humanity expanded across the system, and Mars split off to do their own thing after a civil war. The people working on “the belt”... as in the asteroid belt and other such unsavory places and stations...are the clear have-nots and are generally abused at will by both Earth and Mars, and the show starts where tensions are at an all-time high, with the belt a hair’s trigger away from revolt, and the Earth/Mars tensions coming to a head

Great casting, the crew of the Roci is fantastic. Though Thomas Jane is...a Thomas Jane character. He’s such a perfect fit for Miller, because Miller checks all the boxes for his strengths, and hides his weaknesses well enough in the flaws of the character. So i can’t blame the show for that, but I hate looking at his face. Still, the casting is just top notch. And they have Shohreh Aghdashloo, who is always fantastic, and Frankie Adams pops onto the scene in S2 and does quite well. Essentially, casting = A+

Only real complaint is that i read the book, and there’s a pansexual lady character that is exceptional and amazing and I love her and her mouth of a sailor. The show cut that and made her more passive and scared in S2, which is bullshit, and led me to stop watching because I was furious at that decision, but in the end, it’s still absolutely 100% worth watching. If just for the Roci crew alone and the endless shenanigans they get into (and sometimes out of)

Binge-worthy. Pacing of the first two episodes is a bit inconsistent, but they’re covering an absurd amount of ground, so that’s expected.

Killjoys:

Lighthearted space-faring sci-fi, set in a totally built from the ground up universe. It slowly leaks out the lore as to not jeopardize the general tone of the show. However, it does turn serious for stretches.

Easily binge-worthy. Takes 3 episodes to get momentum, but after that, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

My only real quibble is with the origins of Dutch. We get a hint of her growing up essentially as property, abused into being a living weapon/assassin, before we get a good read of the world, and that...really comes off as a bit exploitative, given she’s a woc.

The ship is an A+ lovable sassy ladybug

Dark Matter:

A bit “harder” sci-fi than Killjoys, but it has its lighthearted moments

Super super slow burn. I finished the first season and only then did I really start to dig my claws into the show. It’s slow.

That said, interesting lore, and the overarching series of narratives are solid and worthwhile, they just take an egregiously long time to lift-off.

There’s apparently wlw content in season 3. I haven’t finished S2 yet, but I’m hoping it’s solid.

Westworld:

Western meets Wizard of Oz featuring Anthony Hopkins with an old west fetish. Set far off in the future. There are, like, androids and stuff

I didn’t get through it since western shows give me the creeps, but most of my friends who watched it says it was pretty great. I only watched the first episode, but the acting and cinematography and music were all very well done.

Ascension:

A sci fi mystery, set in a space-ship, if that space-ship was sort of like one of the Bunkers in the fallout games, full of people from the 50s.

The show is not without its warts, but it’s a miniseries (so it’s not long), and it’s surprisingly well done. Doesn’t cover all the themes it brings up with the greatest nuance or skill, but I’d wager it’s probably worth a watch?

The OA:

Another mystery! Sci-fi in the vein of alien abduction and strange abilities.

It’s kind of surrealistic? It makes you pay attention, and if you slip up, you’ll probably miss out on something. There’s a decent chunk of content mashed into those surprisingly few episodes.

Didn’t like that it robbed a character of a disability. I think it would have worked just as well with the character still being blind. They could have made it work.

Trans guy rep in this show, which was a plus

American Gods:

I’m not sure if this counts? It kinda counts. I’m saying it counts. It mixes sci-fi and fantasy.

I haven’t finished this yet, mostly just because it’s hard to find torrents that aren’t tracked by the network. My ISP is okay with me getting one or two notices a month, but past that, it’s tricky, and I can’t afford a good VPN, so I’m playing the waiting game for a bit.

Ricky Whittle and Ian McShane were fantastic in the episodes I did see. The show is, if nothing else, visceral and beautifully shot.

3%:

Sci-fi in the vein of Hunger Games, but a better premise, and better executed

I only managed to get it with the dubbed audio, so that was flat out atrocious and made me weep over the injustice

Still, despite the absolutely grating audio, I pushed through that and enjoyed much of the rest of the show. it’s solid. Not, like, the best show out there, but it does what it does well, it covers its themes well, and the visual elements of the acting seemed strong.

Find the sub-titled version with the original language (portugese iirc?) audio. I think that’s available on Netflix now, or at least Netflix USA, from what I understand.

12 Monkeys:

It’s a police procedural time jumping sci-fi with a dystopian, post-apoc future.

It’s okay. Nothing special. The two leads really do try to put the show on their back, btu the writing’s not real strong. Watchable, but lots of plot holes, plot armor, and writers shoehorning in sudden/coincidental events out of nowhere to increase tension. if you want something to watch for background noise, or maybe if you want a procedural show and have checked out the others already, maybe this will be for you.

Agents of Shield:

Superhero-based sci-fi

First season is slow and full of filler because they were waiting for that Captain America Winter Soldier movie to come out before tying their show in with the events. There are guides to watching the first season. I thought it was all decently fine, and good writing alla round, there’s just too many episodes that season to justify the few meaningful narrative events.

Season 2 has Dichen Lachman. The final half of that season character-assassinates her (and the other inhumans) to provide the show a late-hour villain to root against. I hated that. It’s the weakest season, thankfully, and I’m sure there are watch-guides to skipping through that because...

Shit gets real in season 3, and it’s worth watching even outside of S1-2, I’d even rec skipping those if there wans’t so much character-building in those 2 seasons. The writing is better, the acting is better from S3 onward. There’s still some fumbling of themes, but not to the degree of the previous seasons. Same with Season 4, where it arguably has it’s greatest few episodes. Ends with a brief Hydra-AU arc that IMO is skippable, but some adored it. I didn’t, but eh.

Colony:

Harder sci-fi. Aliens invaded and swiftly won. Now they’re ruling us from a distance, using human figureheads to do so. Really neat lore, and worldbuilding.

Unfortunately, it’s the most frustrating sci-fi show i’ve seen in years, because the male cop lead always has a gut feeling that always aligns with what the revolutionaries are planning, so he always intercepts them. And they get unbelievable plot armor to escape the writers’ ham-handed tension-building, ensuring the writers don’t pay any consequences for the shitty bullshit they keep pulling over and over.

If you can take that sort of crap, and care enough about worldbuilding/lore/etc., then go for it. There’s definite value, and things improve greatly in season 2. But my lord, season 1 is so frustrating.

Person of Interest:

You’ve probably watched this one

Hard sci-fi in the vein of "Hey, maybe writing a secret intelligent AI is just a really bad idea” *five minutes later* “Oh no what have we done”

It’s a really bad idea.

But we get fun police procedural moments out of it, because John is solid, and Carter & Root & Shaw & Bear are excellent.

Bear is best.

The show has watch guides for getting through the first season, and parts of S2.

Avoid the final 3 episodes of the series. Maybe the final season altogether. Otherwise fantastic and heartwrenching stuff.

The Last Ship:

Naval Adventure to Rebuild the World After a Rampant MegaVirus sci-fi

Surprisingly decent for a show that’s basically funded entirely by the American Navy.

Just keep in mind that there will be shitty patriotism bits of bullshit tossed in here and there, and there won’t be so much shock when those bits show up.

First two seasons play out like a mix of The Hunt for Red October and Jesus Camp. It’s bizarre, but sometimes it works? Rhona Mitra and Christina Elmore are probably the reasons for that. And Dichen Lachman is in S3 and she doesn’t die, so that’s a plus.

It definitely has its dips into shit-tier quality, and self-righteous bullshittery, especially in S3.

But it also handles a national political arc halfway decently for a sci-fi show in S3.

Anywho, this is good for, like, background watching? Or low-intensity, low-effort watching. In that context, it’s a good enough show.

The Leftovers:

Three seasons of super depressing and heart-wrenching drama with sci-fi at its core (huge amounts of people vanish one day...the show is about the world finding out how to move on, what ti all means)

Excellent acting. Top notch. Like, some of the best on TV. Some stunning stuff.

The show only gets better. I didn’t like the first half of S1, it’s very slow and arduous, but it’s worth it.

Not very sci-fi, at least not until S3, but still. It works with sci-fi elements and it’s a very thoughtful, smart show.

Wayward Pines:

It’s sci-fi in the vein of Under the Dome, but it manages to be even worse somehow don’t ask me how

Oh my god don’t watch this, the cast does not make up for it, they flounder in atrocious writing. i’m only mentioning this here because it’s just so bad, don’t waste your time like I did.

That’s...well, the stuff that’s not far below mediocre.

#spoilers #AoS spoilers #agents of shield spoilers

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renmaru · 5 years

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you know. sometimes i love something a lot so i need to scream about the things that piss me off about it. i don’t think this is a particularly negative post but it’s just like sheer frustration and if you dont get some satisfaction from articulating your frustration into tumbler dot coms longposts and destroying the capital of this website because you are not a gemini sun then like fair i guess feel free to disregard this. tonbokiris kiwame is cool go look at that.

now to the lukewarm tea ive been simmering for five years. the one thing i always think about all the time is that tkrb is a popular game despite itself. the piss poor gameplay with only the barest of bare QoL in the five years its been up, the seeming complete lack of direction and the frankly nonexistent worldbuilding is held up purely because of its attention to detail and reverence to the original culture and history of the swords combined with some very good character design and subtle but nuanced character writing that can be openly interpreted. just enough flavour to imply something larger but chickening out on actually making anything y’know. concrete. basically allowing the fans to draw their own conclusions. but even then a game like that would not survive cause there have been countless, hundreds of games with high quality and fervent attention to detail and respect for the source material that just died completely because they have such little to actually offer in terms of engagement. i think the main thing that bugs me about tkrb is that it has one of THE most creative, dedicated and strong fanbases of this genre of game who go out of their way to engage with any and all of the content and the devs seem kind of oblivious to this.

in comparison to modern gacha style games, touken ranbu releases barely any new content and frequently recycles content but somehow it’s still relatively popular with approx. 1mil active players daily but the maddening thing is that tkrb can reach much MUCH further. the fans are there, the curiosity is there, it’s just the game content is not fucking there. it does not put the effort into commissioning seasonal art, pushing new events with actual plotline/story content, creating promotional materials, tie-ins etc. but somehow its still in the top 5 comiket circles for nearly five fuckin years straight. here are your badley compiled receipts: c89(w2015), c90(s2016), c91(w2016), c92(s2017), c93(w2017), c94(s2018), c95(w2018), c96(s2019)

it can launch itself from laughably low in the appstore ratings, hovering in the middle of the 200′s to TOP 30s in the appstore at the flick of a switch. what is this magic button that fucking quadruples revenue and skyrockets your app into the top 50 grossing apps? 3/4 of your characters getting static CGs that you cannot use at all anywhere in the game but will do a powerpoint transition and appear for 5 seconds at login. oh and like a few free mats i guess. and i kid you not it fuckin worked.

wanna know why that worked? it’s cause otherwise characters, especially fan favourites just don’t get anything at all. it’s like most characters outside of the very popular ones rarely get new art, new recollections, new anything outside of their kiwame upgrade which is more often than not years down the line and only recently, four years in, they decided to add alternate costumes but even then there’s a catch which has me feeling some kind of way.

and yes, i fully understand that tkrb is a multi-media franchise, i get that it’s got its fingers in so many pies like the stageplay, musicals, various manga anthologies, the animes, hell its even got live action but man, would it hurt to give some love in game? i’m not asking them to go full fgo route and commission the industry creme de la creme to make 6 full CE illustrations, lots of promo art and tonnes of new merch every single month. but the fact is for such a big franchise, reusing the same sprite art on nearly every piece of official merch, going so far as to add NEW costume art which is just the heads of the old default sprites edited onto new bodies? it screams cost cutting, it screams lazy, the path of minimum effort. it’s almost like the game itself and the original materials are an absolute afterthought at this point with only the most dedicated hanging on to it. i guarantee that the majority of people still playing tkrb are the committed day1 players and the actual rekijou cause it’s just painfully offputting to new fans, with other fans even going out of their way to specify the game is not integral to enjoying the series which sucks, but it’s true.

its a real damn shame to think that something you are so invested in is not particularly invested in itself. sometimes, just sometimes i wish they dev team for tkrb was more hands-on, more adventurous, more willing to listen to players, invest in the game and genuinely try and make the game the best it can be. i’m not asking for balls to the wall summer events, beautiful animated CMs from the likes of the industries best animators, i’m not asking for pages of supplemental lore compiled into books, character backstory novels or whatever i’m just asking for the lore and the characters that we love to sometimes occasionally be remembered in the actual game outside of like ... the two years between their kiwame and the vague possibility of a recollection. i want to feel like this game puts as much effort into itself as the fans do towards it.

it’s a painful truth but there’s one shining light which is that the fandom for tkrb is genuinely one of the most committed and transformative ones ive ever seen. i have never been involved with a fandom that varies so widely and puts in so much effort for these characters and this world. tkrb exists solely as a popular franchise due to the sheer legwork of the fans carrying it on their backs collaboratively. ultimately, tkrb is very very lore-light, there’s so much thats missing and the characters in-game rarely rarely interact with each other. the characters are contained solely in however many voice lines they get at implementation, their kiwame letters, and their updates kiwame lines and the only interaction they get with other swords is recollections or depending on the sword, the odd custom sparring lines.

but despite that there has been so much fan effort to explore everything in so many different varied ways, and amazingly there are certain tropes, relationships, lore etc. that have started off fanon and become canon. the fan community, especially the fanartists, doujins, writers, animators etc. being given a small indulgence by the anime is one of my favourite things about tkrbs relationship with its fanbase. that’s not to say that the fans dont give back in kind a hundred fold.

there’s so much i love about tkrb fans going out of their way to go SEE historical swords in japan, single-handedly reforging swords using crowdfunding and revitalising lots of small-town tourism having real world impact. shit makes me unbelievably happy. the stage plays and musicals are always met with warm reception and are always well attended and even though its hard to access, there are lots of western fans who have dived into a whole new MEDIUM that most of us arent really familiar with but out of their love for tkrb theyve done that. they have hosted the musical as far out as india and france, making tkrb a truly worldwide franchise and there theyve met full seats! as far out as india! then theres the fantranslators, who always have the drive the commitment and energy for the thankless work, the wiki always always is well maintained and they have new content up so fast, and there are so many people willing to help you out. even when crunchyr*ll got hanamaru s2 (i think) a week late and we were left without subs for the premier episode for a whole ass week, fantranslators who had never subbed before stepped up to translate a whole episode for FREE, encoding, subbing and timing it all despite never having done so just so others could understand the episode faster than cr*nchy themselves could. even, as well, it’s made so many history nerds out of a whole bunch of people, it’s created an appreciation for nihontou and japanese history that would otherwise probably never be in their orbit because of how inaccessible it is, especially in english. even on a personal note, i started learning japanese primarily so i could understand tkrb and the history behind it better and to read jp fanart/interact with fanartists.

no matter what, i am forever warmed by how much i love tkrb and its fanbase and im glad that tkrb is still going strong, even despite itself sometimes and i hope that moving on tkrb tries new things, and becomes better for everyone.

#rentxt #i started off grouchy but now my heart is warm #thats just how touken ranbu works babey #you know sometimes i think about how tkrb fans reforged hotarumaru and i get teared up

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hawk-in-a-jazzy-hat · 8 years

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Anime Review: Eureka Seven, and Why Anime was Better in the Olden Days

In a constantly shifting world, people are clinging to life as best they can, despite tectonic shifts and mysterious Desperation Disease making life hard. Still, the people cling to hope in this weird world; hope for the military, for the rebel group Gekko-State, and hope brought about by the hero of the people, Adroc Thurston. Hope that the world will someday be healed.

So we meet Adroc’s son, Renton Thurston, who lives with his mechanic grandfather and dreams of a life where he can freely lift through the sky. Then his life changes as a giant robot crashes through his roof, and he meets a mysterious young girl named Eureka, as well as the Gekko-State leader himself, Holland. Given a powerful device called the Amita Drive by his grandfather, which is able to power a famous robot known as the Nirvash, or Type/Zero, Renton rushes off in pursuit of Eureka, and a new life aboard the Gekko-State. But ominous rumblings are brewing in the military and the very core of the world itself, and the carefree life that Renton thought he was getting into may just be the greatest test he’s ever faced...

Oh yeah, I’m going there. And I’m finally gonna explain why.

The golden age of anime, or of media in general, is an incredibly subjective thing. It depends on your tastes, the things you grew up with, and the things thrust at you as you stumble through life. As such, I cannot in any way say “anime was better at this time that it has ever been since”, because that’s just my opinion. And I would always respect otherwise. But still, for me, film, music and anime were all better in the olden days.

Of course, “the olden days” itself is relative. In my case the golden generation would be the one before me; say the mid-80s to the mid-90s for music and film. Anime is slightly more recent, given that the industry is actually slightly behind western animation on the timeline (so much so that the first ‘anime’ series, as it were, Astro Boy, was based off of classic Disney cartoons). That means the ‘golden age’ of anime for me actually spans from the late 90s to exactly 2007. And yes, as with everything, of course there was a load of crap that came out in that time period, and yes there have been better shows come out since (two of my favourite shows are from 2010 and 2011 respectively). But, in general, I feel anime was at its best during that period, for a few reasons.

So where does that leave Eureka Seven? It came out in 2006 as an original story from Bones, and is now considered one of the classic mech shows along with Evangelion and Gurren Lagann. So how exactly is it? And what is it that makes it so firmly a product of the golden age of anime?

Let’s start with the animation. The absolutely phenomenally awesome animation. Oh yeah, Studio Bones, baby. Immediately that puts this in the classic category; I know nowadays there are a tonne of awesome studios out there, both veterans and newcomers, but back in the day when you saw the Bones logo you knew that the show was going to look stunning. Wolf’s Rain, both FullMetal Alchemists, Soul Eater, Darker than Black, and even in the recent years they haven’t let up with shows like Blood Battlefront Blockade, My Hero Academia and Mob Psycho 100. For the longest time they were the epitamy of quality animation, and they don’t drop the ball here. Eureka Seven looks absolutely wonderful. The character animation is amazing and never devolves into emoticon slapstick, the backgrounds are wonderful, as are the colours, and the show has probably some of the best aerial battles I’ve ever seen. Eureka Seven has the unique style of having giant robots surfing through the sky, and whether or not it’s a silly concept, you can totally buy it with some of the most wonderful flying and falling moments I’ve ever seen. The only time Eureka Seven looks less than stellar is just on occasion, where they’re obviously holding back a little budget and some of the faces get a little squash-and-stretchy. But honestly, it doesn’t matter one bit. Having every frame be perfect is nowhere near as important as having the truly important moments be special.

The animation truly is excellent, but honestly I was far more blown away by the score to this show. The composer was Naoki Satō, and honestly I’ve only heard his work once before in Assassination Classroom, although for the life of me I can’t really remember a single track. Here is a different story though, as the entire score to Eureka Seven just blew me away. From wonderfully emotional opening themes to bittersweet endings to great sweeping strings and horns to some actually epic trance and techno pieces; the whole score is full of standouts both long and short, and it’s probably the only anime soundtrack I’ve listened to in full while I’ve been working (aside from Baccano). The music belongs to the show, and it is the show. Without it, it wouldn’t be the same. I’ve heard some people say over the years that soundtracks aren’t really important, and there seems to be a rising case of that in many modern blockbusters. But as these old series, and heck, even older films can testify, the soundtrack is important. In fact, essential. Decisive Battle. Goodnight Julia. The friggin’ Team Rocket theme. And among films, The Raider’s March. He’s a Pirate. Binary Sunset. I don’t even need to have the music clips and you’re probably already humming them in your head. The music of your favourite things will stick with you until the very end of time. That is how important the soundtrack is. Again, anime was better in the olden days.

While I can’t lavish as much praise onto the dub as I can the music, I can say it grew on me an awful lot. This is, I believe, an early Bang Zoom! effort, a company who would later go on to do good work with Madoka and Kill la Kill. It still has the old dub flavours though, with a few very recognisable actors and a few actors who don’t really act very well? I don’t know; as older dubs go it’s not as fluently fitting as GTO but it’s nowhere near as flat as Elfen Lied or Soul Eater so it sort of balances out. And for the most part the actors do a great job; Johnny Young Bosch and Crispin Freeman perform really nicely as Renton and Holland respectively, as you’d expect; Kate Higgins is a standout as Talho, and while Stephanie Sheh as Eureka takes some time to get into the role, she’s definitely nailing it by the end. In fact most of the Gekko-State, the recurring villains and even a few one-off characters really nail the voices, with the exception of Woz’s actor, who always sounds like he’s questioning everything he says, and Ken-Goh’s VA in the second half of the series, Kyle Hebert. He isn’t terrible, but after the original actor Bob Papenbrook sadly passed away in 2007, the change is very noticeable.

If there is a problem with the dub it lies a little more with the script than the actors. While most of it is very well handled and feels natural, there are definitely a few monologue-y moments where the actors are clearly just standing on a soapbox. But still, as a dub it works well. Very well. And I’m not convinced that the monologue-y moments are really the fault of the ADR team, at least, not completely. But I’ll get to that a little bit later.

You may have been slightly confused with the plot synopsis, and all the weird and wonderful terms and things going on. This is understandable; this is not a simple series, with alien worlds, political and military turmoil, and a huge cast of characters. There is a lot of lore, and a lot of stuff going on in the background that even I couldn’t always follow. Much like Outlaw Star, this is a world of...well...worldbuilding. And yet despite not being simple, it is far from inaccessible. I’d even go so far as to see this would be a very good introductory series for anime newcomers; certainly a better introductory mecha series than either Evangelion or Gurren Lagann.

(Partly because it’s kinda not really a mecha series. I mean, it is, and the mechas are a very important part, but halfway through it sorta turns out to be Trigun in disguise, in more ways than one).

There’s a reason for this, and again it goes into why I prefer the older style of series; despite the fact that all this stuff is going on, the focus is constantly on the main characters. The central point of the series, for the whole 50 episodes, are the relationships aboard the Gekko-State. Romantic, platonic, and familial. Renton’s growing relationship with Eureka and Hollands strained relationship with Talho. And the characters interact with each other, and no interaction is the same. There’s no simple ‘oh I respect this guy and I’m utterly loyal to him’. There’s a lot of back talking, and a lot of abuse being flung around. There’s blood, there’re tears, and fights, and some of it can be downright unpleasant to watch. But guess what; that’s a family! Even when Renton is being at his most annoying-teenager, or Holland is at his most annoying-manchild, or heck, the three kids who are constantly annoying, it still feels natural. They are inherently relatable characters, even if we don’t always like them.

And that’s just the main four; the rest of the Gekko-State are wonderful to watch as well, and heck, even members of the military. Despite the fact that not all of them go through a character arc, even the less prominent ones like Woz and Joves still feel like real people. And I say that not all of them go through an arc, but there’s a lot of really sneaky development here across the board. The shouty military commander Jurgens spends the beginning as a shouty commander, but he reveals a few hidden depths later in the series. Moondoggie (yeah, I know, but just roll with the names) is constantly fighting against feelings of his own inadequacy. Stoner is trying to find his own way to fight, being very pacifistic. Ray and Charles, despite a limited screentime, still manage to be some of the best written characters in the cast. Even among the children, there is Maurice, whose story I found utterly heartbreaking, not just for the obvious reasons, but for the build-up throughout the series and how much the final...reveal...hit close to home. These are real people. We spend the series following real people making real decisions, and some of them are very bad decisions. They make mistakes, they scream and shout. Some of them never recover, whereas others must try to deal with the consequences. And occasionally...just occasionally...some of them find their redemption. And let me tell you, they may make for the most glorious scenes of the show.

That’s the thing. Not every character needs to go through a deep epiphany, or come out on top, or even have a real purpose in the story. You could easily write out half the members of Gekko-State, but the show would suffer greatly for it. In most modern shows of this kind, every character needs a purpose. They must have their moment in the spotlight, and their own character arc. But the thing is, we already have a story, that being, Renton and Eureka’s relationship. Some of the other characters will have stories tying into it, but this is their show. We are seeing things unravel through their eyes, and sometimes, the main character needs a constant they can lean on. That’s when you need the Winrys, the Meryl Stryfes, and the Gekko-States. Back in the day, characters were exactly that. Characters. Characters in their own right, whose paths would cross with those of the mains. Not constructs. As wonderfully crafted as shows like Hunter X Hunter and FMA Brotherhood can be, the side characters too often steal the focus away from where it needs to be. The show does not need to pull you out of the main character arc to show you another one; it should be able to just show you through the eyes of the main. I don’t need to know Shoot’s or Ikalgo’s or Ling’s motivations absolutely word-for-word; I should be able to work it out for myself.

And that’s the point (which I’ve finally gotten back round to); when I see a good modern anime, or a good modern film, or hear a good modern song, I see and hear something that is perfect. Something that has been crafted beautifully and exquisitely to be utterly flawless. And, as weird as it sounds...that’s not how art works. Art needs to have flaws; that is one of the fundamental aspects. You cannot have art that is objectively perfect, since part of the reason it exists as it does is the fact that it is subjective to the creator. It cannot be objectively perfect, therefore, it must have flaws. Every show, every film, every song out there has flaws. And that’s what makes things beautiful.

Eureka Seven has flaws. Oh boy, does it have flaws. Way too much technobabble and monologuing in parts. Some of the dialogue feels incredibly forced and preachy. Some really, really unpleasant scenes in places where even if it fits with the characters it’s just not nice to watch. The pacing can be very off, especially in parts where there are multiple things going on at once. Little things scattered throughout the series, and heck, I like it. There are people out there who are going to hate this show for the choices it makes.

But the flaws make Eureka Seven what it is, just as they do for every show. But more and more nowadays, I see films and shows that have to be utterly perfect in everything they do. The plot has to have the right timing and the right number of twists, and be split into nice neat little arcs. The characters need to have a distinct character arc that finishes in the correct place, and heaven forbid we let any characters make mistakes. Nothing is allowed to be their fault. As technically great as things such as Civil War or Frozen are, I hate the fact that there has to be a villain. There has to be somebody you can point at and say “I can support the good guys in everything because it’s all their fault.” Direction and music fit everything to a tee, to the point where the soundtrack can just be plucked from a massive backlog in order to fit the mood perfectly. In songs, it’s always the same beats, and the same chord structures, and the same computed synthetic backings, in order to show how the singer has such perfect control over their voice even though they’re not saying anything. And NOTHING is allowed to have flaws anymore. The moment a show goes into the very slightest of heavier material, suddenly it’s problematic and sending a bad message. The general public are far too critical of everything nowadays, constantly pointing out plot-holes and every single mistake a film makes, so much so that you fail to see the good. We live in a culture that will judge everything we see before we’ve even seen it, and we will praise the technically flawless as the very best without accepting that people could possibly, possibly like something else more. And believe me, I’m among them. I went through a period of being so critical that I was willing to criticise the technicals of a joke in a kid’s play. It’s not a good look, and it’s not a good feeling when you look back and realise that sometimes you just need to sit back and enjoy something for a change.

Does it go for everything nowadays? Of course it doesn’t, and of course not everything in the olden days was better. We’ve kept the good stuff and wisely decided to leave the crap behind. Even in anime. Too much studio meddling, too little effort going into the story or animation, often way too much filler, and sometimes so needlessly dark that you end up with a Berserk or an Elfen Lied.

And the very reason that so much modern anime is so technically great is that the industry is in a fantastic place. More series are being made every season, with a variety of lengths, new techniques and new studios. Just last year Studio Mappa made a massive hit with Yuri!! On Ice; a unique sports show that was funny, charming, had some gorgeous skating scenes and finally gave a great representation of a gay couple in an anime, in a mainstream hit. It had its issues with the animation and the ending (and I’ll admit, I haven’t seen the whole show so I can’t give my own opinion) but honestly that’s what made it such a hit. It’s going to stick, whether people love it, hate it, think it’s over or underrated or just think it’s meh.

And in every medium, that is the art that will stick. I can think of two areas which are better now than have ever been before. One is kids’ shows and films, which are finally being taken seriously as a legitimate art form and are having more effort put into them than ever before (Lego Movie, Zootopia, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, Inside Out, and every Laika film, among many). The other is things that are entirely creator-driven, which was what made the classics what they were. More and more people have more freedom to create the thing they want to make. Over in the west, people like Guillermo del Toro, George Miller and Neil Gaiman, or again with the kids shows, people like Rebecca Sugar, Pendleton Ward, Daron Nefcy, Ben Bocquelet and Alex Hirsch. Netflix and Amazon are bringing more unique and wonderful shows and adaptations to more and more people. And in the anime world, there are creators like Gen Urobuchi, Kunihiko Ikuhara, Jun Maeda and ONE, as well as new and upcoming studios like Shuka, 3Hz and of course Studio Mappa. The talent is out there. The people who care are out there. And I have no doubt that in another few years we’re going to see a new renaissance of media as people like this – people like you and me - take the technology and the dedication we now have, sit down, and make the story they want to make. Flaws and all.

Anime was better in the olden days. Film was better in the olden days. Music was better in the olden days. Not because it had more talent or technique behind it, though we have sadly lost several geniuses over the past few years. It was better, because the people who made it cared. They didn’t care about it being perfect, or being good for people. The things that were good were so good because people picked up the camera, or the pen, or the instrument, and they wanted to make something. They wanted to make their very own piece of art, and nobody was going to stop them.

And we got Empire Strikes Back, and Blues Brothers, and Terminator 2, Labyrinth, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ghostbusters, Lion King, Gremlins, Jurassic Park and Beetlejuice. We got Take On Me, Living On a Prayer, I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), Heaven is a Place On Earth, Under Pressure, Tunnel of Love and Dry County. And we got Cowboy Bebop, FullMetal Alchemist, Wolf’s Rain, Gunslinger Girl, Baccano, Bokurano, Clannad, Princess Tutu and Welcome to the NHK.

And we got so, so many wonderful things. Not one of them perfect. But all of them forever wonderful.

Eureka Seven is a deeply flawed show, and yet I absolutely love it. It impressed me in all the right ways, with relatable characters, an exciting world, an inspiring story and an absolutely gorgeous presentation. It is every bit a product of the heart and love of Dai Satō, Naoki Satō, and every member of Studio Bones who worked on it. Not everybody will like everything about it, but personally, I found it a true classic. It made my top 20 in an instant and I would recommend it to anybody interested, and in fact, if you live in the good old UK like myself, the whole series is available completely free and legally on Viewster. Go for it. See the stories that came out over a decade ago. Because let me tell you, it’s going to be a little while before we see anything like their kind again.

My score: 9/10

#eureka seven #studio bones #anime 2006 #sorry not sorry

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