#Just saying; if fucking with the player's expectations is all it takes to be “subversive” then Stick of Truth is “subverting its genre”

[thekimspoblog]

Is the video game really subverting its genre? Are you sure it's not just doing clever things within its genre, because otherwise the game would be boring and unchallenging and say nothing interesting? I'm just saying, it's cool and all that the internet allows horror game fandoms to overflow into eachother, but not EVERY 2 hour video essay needs to be spent breathlessly sucking off the devs. Sometimes a game is just REGULAR difficult and REGULAR high-quality.

Besides RPGs made over a decade ago, what is the thing supposedly subverting? Clearly not other contemporary indie horror games, because there is clearly a convergent ethos forming of cosmic horror and beginners' traps; that's just what the genre looks like nowadays.

[mysticcabinboy]

The "interactive cinematic experience" buzzword should stay in the 2010s where it belongs.

At the very least visual novels are up front that what they are trying to achieve is a little less rather than a little more. That's not to say it isn't a daunting task to write a book either but at least then you know the only extra disks that they are trying to spin is learning RenPy and how to draw rather than try and go for the next "revolutionary" 0 in the polygon count for their choose your own adventure romance plots. You get what you are expecting by going into a genre called Visual Novels, and you accept that in the same way someone accepts being a furry, creator or consumer you have probably already heard the memes a hundred times before and you decide to go in anyways because you're curious or already know its something you want to get into.

But videogames have a stigma behind them that lends itself to weird complications when it gets compared to its older (two) brother(s). When you call something cinematic, you are invoking an idea that the story is in some way trying to be its own "insert GOAT movie meme here". Which then becomes its own trap for the genre as a whole, if the story is good and the game is shit, it gets compared to cinema and becomes the new "best" game, if its ALL bad "well what did you expect, its a videogame, nothing but a shiny toy".

that's just fucking unfair. especially when the times I've ever felt genuine powerful emotion is when the game takes things you have been, if not thinking about, then dealing with for hours, before twisting it in powerful ways. Project moon is great at this, often taking small quirks of the game and putting it in context of the actual world. Their most recent game(sadly a gacha side project to keep the lights on while they do other stuff) has an ultimate/id system where pretty much every little weapon that the characters wear or use has some amount of thematic significance with them, so ultimately its up to the player to start wondering how it connects. Even if they don't and braindead the game, theyre probably going to start going insane the moment they hear the word 'ideal', 'that bastard', 'gallop on', 'chains of others', etc from just how often they hear those phrases. the most recent "main" chapter does something fucking amazing with it, turning something almost innocuous and meme worthy from the few times you try it out, then twists it to create a moment of extreme catharsis.

As an older example. I played Deus Ex for the first time a couple weeks ago as well, and the first level on its own is a perfect set piece in how to lay out even a basic sense of how to have your player view your world and game. It immediately gives you the tools to learn about the world and tells you what you need to know when you ask for it. Just with that it makes a great piece of symbolism just from telling you "hey see that green thing you clicked on? yeah the french extremists bombed the statue of liberty. They thought we didn't deserve it." and it makes you think "what the fuck? when? why? what would we have done wrong?" or in my case i check the date of when the game was created and realized it was made a year before 9/11. Its a very specific moment of emotion that is designed to confuse, it helps that its also a very early part of the game rather than a twist kept towards the end as a 'subversion of expectation' because there wasn't much building up to it and its passed off as... just something that happened.

This sort of thing is exactly why i hate it when writers try to market their game as cinema because it shows that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium they are working in. You aren't just making a movie anymore when you step into this space, EVERYTHING you allow the player to do can become a tool that can be used in service of a story, and just putting in a cover shooter for your "cinematic experience" shouldn't really cut it. Its an insult, you have every tool in your arsenal, including the concepts you made up out of thin air for gameplay purposes, and your first thought is to make cinema? Not a sandbox, not a game, not something that means something to the player when they fuck around with mechanics... but cinema? At that point you are better off just making a movie and getting laughed at by the people you're trying to impress because i sure as hell wont find it funny.

This isnt to say you cant write a story well on its own and let it be a part of a game. Just that when making and critiquing a game, consider EVERY facet of it. Ill praise Limbus' story to hell and back but the sheer fact its a gacha, and the consequences that come with it brings it down a little. The sheer fact that Limbus could have ended up like Honkai Star Rail in how braindead it is still fucking haunts me, even as the gameplay, while polished compared to the adjustment needed with ruina, was already sort of a step back.0.

[shaolinbynature]

The Stories (and Theory) of 1x04

In this very informative episode, I've notice that the main players of episode four all had a scene where they tell another character a story. And not just any story but a story that relates to the speaker in some way. When I went back and listened to them, I realized that a lot was said in these very brief instances and wanted to break them down for anyone who wanted to read. The main people being broken down are Martin, Kate, and Ashley, Kate's step-sister. It's a long (but juicy) read. TLDR at the bottom.

Martin:

When sitting outside with Kate, he expressed to her about a family tragedy he experienced when he was a teenager. His dad committed suicide (which is why he gets jumpy around guns) and feels regret because before his father had passed, they had a fight. He also briefly spoke about Greek mythology, when they were looking at the constellations, about how Poseidon was angered by Cassiopeia because she always bragged about how beautiful she was. He says it so quickly that you barely understand the story if you're unknowledgeable about Greek mythology. The story goes that Poseidon was so bothered by Cassiopeia's vanity that he was to destroy her Kingdom by water. When Cassiopeia tried to figure out how to stop that, she was told she had to sacrifice her daughter as a peace offering to the sea gods.

"A lot of family drama," Martin ends with it.

Learning about Martin's reason for being uneasy around guns says a lot but my focus is more on the story of Poseidon and Cassiopeia. Could this be foreshadowing about what ends up happening to Kate? "Family Drama"? Did someone get angered by not Kate.....but maybe Joy's beauty, status, and/or lifestyle and sought on destroying it? Which then, in turn, caused Joy to "sacrifice" Kate to stop her secrets, like the affair she's having with the family gardener, from getting out?

Kate:

"It's about a girl called Anabelle. Found herself in the woods one dark night, all alone and vulnerable. They were on a hunting trip, pretending they could love their pets at home while they shoot animals on vacation. Pretending that their marriages are perfect. Hypocrites, basically. Secrets, wild accusations, a desperate thirst for gossip. But back to little Annabelle all alone.....Till she wasn't. A man joined her. A man the grownups trusted. Now, of course, Annabelle trusted him too, because, I mean, why wouldn't she, right? She was just a child. And that trust led to something unspeakable. Then I think that puts blood all over the grownups' hands, don't you think too? That they were all responsible for what happened to her? Now, they'd better have all their stories straight, because Annabelle sure has hers. Secrets are scary because everybody has them."

Kate's story of Annabelle is an interesting one because it doesn't sound like she's talking about a real person. To me, it almost sounds like she's speaking in third person because of how she says, "Now, they'd better have all their stories straight, because Annabelle sure has hers". How would she know Annabelle has a story to tell if not Annabelle being another form of herself? A persona she created to be strong when she couldn't? Kate knows the adults have more involvement with her kidnapping then they are leading on and she's telling them to brace themselves because it's all going to come out one way or another. This "story" possibly matches up with the theory above of Joy sacrificing Kate.

Ashley:

While sitting on the swings with Derek, Jeanette's older brother, Ashley asks if he's ever heard of Berenice IV? She goes to explain that she was heir to the last pharaonic family in ancient Egypt and that she was Cleopatra's cunning older sister. "But history forgot her. She was invisible. She was a risk taker. She was subversive. But she paid a price. She was beheaded."

Another ancient story of family drama, the story goes that the parents of Cleopatra and Berenice were in fear of Cleo and Berenice's older sister, Cleopatra VI, the Pharaoh of Egypt, because she was getting way too powerful. So, the family fled to Rome for military help. Berenice, who stayed behind, decided to poison her older sister and take the throne since their parents are gone and technically she would be the next in line. While Berenice was in power, she refused to marry any man she was expected to and make him co-ruler because fuck that. But every month that went on without her having a man by her side, the civilians were afraid that this would cause the downfall of the family reign and Egypt. They forced her to marry one guy and she strangled him so she would continue being the only be the one in charge. She eventually found a guy she liked enough to marry but did not want to share her Pharaoh powers with him. This little reign only lasted three years until her family came back from Rome with that military assistance. Her father's army defeated Berenice's army and then had her beheaded for treason.

How Ashley speaks about Berenice VI is almost in an empathetic way. "She was invisible. Was a risk taker. She was subversive." It was like she could relate to Berenice. Berenice killed to get to the throne she wanted, she loved the lavish life, even betrayed family but family was the one that killed her in the end. The idea of Ashley liking Berenice is strengthened when we find out Ashley is in-fact the user Berenice4 in the chatroom with Kate. We saw in an episode prior that Kate seems to tell all to Berenice4 so it's extremely possible that Ashley knows the real story about what happened with Kate. Or at least the real side according to Kate. I've seen people say that maybe Ashley invading Kate's privacy by pretending to be an anonymous chatter was probably done with good intention but, if we go by the story of Berenice, maybe there is something else there. Maybe Ashley is to be the cunning older sister in this story.

TLDR: Martin, Kate, and Ashley have told stories in this episode that all parallels the theory that Kate being kidnapped may possibly not be Martin's sole doing but "family drama" that led her to be locked away in a basement. Martin mentions family drama with the story of the vain Cassiopeia that sacrificed her daughter so Poseidon wouldn't ruin her kingdom, Kate mentions that the adults in "Annabelle's" life have secrets that caused them to fail Annabelle, and Ashley mentions family betrayal with the story of Berenice VI (also Ashley's chatroom name "Berenice4") who kills her sister to be Pharaoh of Egypt and is later beheaded by her father for treason against the family.

[nigiyakapepper]

i might get ridiculed for this post but i want to put it out there anyway hoping there’s people who feel the same as i do

(spoilers & “reading the back cover” talk for Hades, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, Say No More, Everhood, Spiritfarer, Oneshot & Castlevania)

by all means, i would love for Toby to be able to create the story he wants to and get it out there. i admittedly don’t play a lot of games. i've played undertale & deltarune. i'm amazed that barely a week has passed and a lot of people have wildly different but all valid takeaways from various decisions that this game took to be what it is.

i've read how kris’ panic attack after the spamtron neo fight is because it’s put their feelings about us/the player controlling them into terrifying perspective. i've read how each dark world might be a manifestation of each character’s struggle & insight as to how they��ll overcome it. i’ve read a lot about how undertale & deltarune are brilliant subversions of various things we’ve come to accept in video games, about a game character’s agency & the consequences of our choices as players.

these games have a story to tell, i know. these kinds of stories have a right to be told, have a place to be told, i know. they've inspired people in various, life-changing ways, they’ve made us think. and think and think. how we approach video games, how we approach storytelling, i know. Toby for sure wants to tell a story in a way he can be more than satisfied with, i get that, i really do.

but, i'm old. i’ve witnessed media i love crash & burn because of executive meddling, behind the scenes problems we aren’t privy to, because …i dunno, producers were angry? annoyed? that fans could predict what happens (as decent storytelling would be able to let you) and decided to what, shoot themselves in the foot to one-up them? i've seen stories that choose grittier, darker endings become so forgotten, scorned even, while stories so bloody, gory & seemingly tragic to give happy endings for every. single. person. and that payoff felt incredible.

tl;dr, while (badly succinctly put) commentary on video games, character agency, player’s choices is good, i want to be able to help these people we’ve come to know and love.

these are sad games. lonely games. at 23 years old, i wanted nothing more than to let Asriel’s parents know they could talk to their son one last time. at 26, i wanted to help Kris & anyone else that have found themselves caught up in all this. at 29, i'm wondering if they’re having fun, that even if Kris is in a difficult situation, i'm helping them have fun at least.

i don’t want to be blamed for having been forced into having to make choices. i think it’s why players are generally encouraged to make good ones (unless we’re hunting for story/lore which is fine. it’s valid.) at the end of the day, it’s a video game. but that’s the thing, right? by nature, video games are meant to be played & if we’re heading toward some…moral lecture-y type of realization that the people in games we’re playing are better off without us being able to fuck them over by having been presented with a choice to be a dick, then…that sucks.

it's like that post about laminating tissue paper…vaguely. the tissue paper lasts, but is useless because you can’t use it as a tissue paper—BUT I’M DIGRESSING

look

the brilliance in the story of Hades is that you, as the player, have been given the feeling of having helped fix things, bringing lovers together, easing an eternal damnation, helping Hades be a little bit happier by encouraging Persephone to return home.

the payoffs of Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, Say No More & Everhood are, well they’re fun in their own ways. there's a portion of them that’s serious, that are conversations that you need to have (i.e. Say No More & boundaries, Everhood & their take on Buddhism that isn’t cheesed to hell & back like other more typical ways religious themes appear in games) BUT the way these games resolve makes you feel good. Satisfied. that you had fun playing the fun video game.

(i haven’t finished playing Spiritfarer yet but i know that game will gut me. it’s the nicest way of engaging w a life lived & coming to terms with Death i've seen portrayed any media.)

the gargantuan emotional payoff in Oneshot is you, as the player, quite literally helps a child that is stuck in a video game world RETURN HOME. i'm not going to spoil what Niko does but he gets to go home. WE THE PLAYER HELP HIM GET HOME.

all this talk of going “does anything even matter anymore” after finding out you are trapped in a video game neatly addressed with other characters explicitly saying “well, didn’t you have fun with people here? didn't they make choices that the code couldn’t predict? isn’t having had fun w people you met here worth saving their world anyway?” and succeeding. WE HELP SAVE THE WORLD AND GET THE PROTAG HOME.

whatever story Toby chooses to tell, i hope…i dunno, that it’s not just commentary? with how his worlds are, i hope that we, as the player, aren’t just…accuse first, prove innocence second? Like, I WANT TO HELP. let the lore hunters & dataminers & “i will immediately play dark routes next” do their thing. it's a valid thing to do! by nature of programming in a choice, there is the expectation of people venturing down that choice, as dark as it can get. you want people to see what you put in a thing or else there’s no reason to put it! (most of the time.)

but i want a happy ending. for everyone. because i'm playing this medium – these video games – i as a player want to help brings those happy endings about.

it's free to hope, i know. people need sad, dark, lonely stories, i know. but god, i'm tired. i want to be able to help get these kids, all these people to their happy endings. Please, Toby.

i’m not complaining about undertale or deltarune. all i’m saying is what is my point as the person who plays the video game if i can’t help these people get to have good & happy lives after all they’ve been through.

we’re doing that, i know. WE’RE TRYING TO. to some extent we’ve done that. but we left two dead kids in undertale. you can’t tell me we can’t find a way to give them happy endings to. alive, even. with their parents & friends. heck, if Castlevania was able to give EVERYONE a happy ending after everything, what on earth is stopping other media from doing the same thing.

Please.

[butwhatifidothis]

I know it takes a backseat to El's well-deserved criticism, but I greatly appreciate the love you've shown Rhea on this blog. She's one of my favorites and the fandom's treatment of her is nothing short of heartbreaking. Going into 3H mostly blind I expected her to basically be a sociopathic, overzealous Tomas de Torquemada stand-in, but she was really likable and understandable. Probably helps that I started with the Deer tho 'cause CF Rhea feels like a completely different character.

Thank you!

Ngl, when I was first playing 3H I hated Rhea because WC genuinely does a good job at making it seem like Rhea is suspicious to a first time player who likely isn't looking too deeply into the events going on. But as I was playing through more and more of the story I was like "whoa, wait, Rhea's A DRAGON?! And she's savin' the little chickadees? Oh shit she got 'NAPPED?" and so even with the narrative trying to continue to bonk me with "wait Rhea still bad" I wasn't buying it as hard anymore, I wanted to give her a chance... and then the info dump happened (since I played GD first too)!

And ngl, even for a first time player I was like "wow that's a lot to take in wish they coulda sprinkled this over a bit more naturally" BUT I DID take it in. And I really appreciated Rhea so much more now that I got to finally hear her story and got to hear what motivated her to do everything she did. I don't think she was completely in the right in her actions, but there's also... no real right answer? Like what was she supposed to do? Reveal herself as a Nabatean from the get go a thousand years ago and risk being fuckin' harvested for her parts like an abandoned car in an apocalypse by scrappers that outnumber her incalculable number-to-1 (maybe 4 if she dragged Seteth Macuil and Indech along for the ride - can't drag Flayn cuz she's too busy sleeping off death that was caused by humans!)? Actually rule over Fodlan and force the humans to progress how she wanted them to? Let humans have access to the shit that caused Ailiel to stay ass for a thousand years because of humans? Getting to know that context really opened me up to her, to the point where I can see the parallels she has with all the lords and actively wish she could build some kind of genuine rapport with all of them (yes, even Edelgard somewhat, though that'd have to be for an AU fic than actual canon. I really wanted her to bond more with Claude tho!! Dimitri's route tho could at least harbor the chance of that happening post-credits so I take solace in that lol).

And. Like. Seeing the fandom's reaction to her? Bruh. You have no idea how fucking disappointed I was. Like, I plan on making a post on how my experience with the 3H's fandom eerily mirrors my experience with the Bleach fandom (in all the worse ways), but a part of that is how fucking slammed a character I happen to personally like gets by their respective media. And like?? You hear the ass-backwards arguments from people that don't like them and your head fucking spins because my guy my buddy my good pal o' mine what in the fuck are you actually saying. Shit that never happened, shit the character grows out of, shit other characters are just as guilty of doing but are beloved by the fanbase, all to come together to form a hate mob for a character that exists almost exclusively on shit that either doesn't apply to the character (whether ever or by the end of their development) or should apply to others, that makes the fans of said hated character genuinely uncomfortable with coming out and saying they like that character? Yeah, no, the exact same shit. Like. Literally. Even down to the ableism! The victim-blaming! The excusing of a perpetrator's - who happens to be the main antagonist for the majority of the series' runtime/playtime - horrid actions because "oh they're just misunderstood and lonely" and they were only doing what they did to rule over the land the right way! THEY LITERALLY BOTH USE THE "THEY WERE LONELY" EXCUSE! THE "JUST RULER" EXCUSE!

Like. I get it. CF!Rhea and the rest of the routes!Rhea are two totally different depictions of her. You come in from CF, where the narrative never lets go of the Rhea Bad red herring due to Edelgard's own biases, and you see this crazy lady calling you trash and garbage and that your ass stank and you're doo doo and all that, and she's cackling like a Crazy Person™, and you think "wow. Rhea bad." But, like. The entire game is all about subversion. Dimitri isn't quite the pure hearted fairytale prince. Claude isn't a cold, devious schemer. Edelgard isn't the honest and forward person who cares for her people, just coldly. These are the first impressions you get from the lords, and they're all wrong. But nah, Rhea should be treated like the Agarthans and there's nothing subversive about her. She's Just Evil, because the beginning of the game says so just ignore all the shit that makes her not evil, and thus should be treated as such. Imma be mean for a hot second... you have to genuinely lack reading comprehension to believe the overall narrative of 3H makes Rhea to be a morally black bad guy. You can't hide behind the "only played one route" excuse... ever, really? The fuck are you doing contributing to discussions of the game when you... haven't finished it?

But, like, anyway lol got a bit sidetracked. Rhea deserves so much more love in this fandom than she gets, and I might not be able to really change that much... but I can wait for my Rhea zine to finally come in at least lmao

[hopeymchope]

Magia Record: Reflecting on the Anime and the Game’s Story Ending

With Magia Record's story now complete in-game and with the anime "finished" (only the first season, but it took until literally this past weekend for the production team at Shaft to acknowledge that the second season is coming/inevitable), I have like… a ton of thoughts about where the game and the anime landed.

This will probably mostly be gripes, but overall, I'm still pretty happy with both. I've invested my past year into Magia Record during a lot of my free time, and hey – no regrets here. That game was absolutely worth the experience. The anime? Jury's still out somewhat, but it looks good so far.

This is definitely a normal thing to find surrounding a radio tower.

Anime Adaptation Thoughts:

The original Madoka Magica anime made the world feel slightly off-kilter by employing locations that were just a little off the rails from reality. The producers noted Madoka's bathroom as an important example; it's simply too large and has too much wasted space. It's maybe the biggest room in their house for no discernible reason, and that's by design, because it feels wrong. Another one was the music store we see in the first episode, where the technology is noticeably on a level that you just can't find in any real shop. On the flip side, the Magia Record anime creates a world that is deeply bizarre in many ways – much moreso than the original anime or the Magia Record game world. This is probably because the creator of the witch designs in the original was given far more creative control over the series as a whole this time around, and the result was BUGNUTS. Take note of the massive stack of discarded school desks that is arranged in a dangerous, precarious pile atop the school building (helpfully labeled as a waste pile, despite the fact that… well, who is picking up these garbage desks from the goddamn roof?). That's some imagery straight out of a witch's labyrinth, but it is ostensibly "reality." I think that's where Magia Record's anime really goes bugnuts, sometimes to powerful effect in that it makes things feel more unsettling… and sometimes to ridiculous effect. I mean, the field surrounding the radio tower now being replaced with a yard of jagged, cockeyed, towering gravestones and cross-like woodwork dangling with ropes and tridents? That's a LOT. That's… that's too much.

Look, if you were a die-hard fan of Kaede in the game, I am deeply sorry, because your girl got done DIRTY by the anime. Anyone who played the game who then sees where she winds up at the end of episode 12 is likely on a train straight to Double-You Tee Eff Station. I can't deny that it makes sense for the limited story she's given to develop across, but it was still disappointing to see. I suppose we don't really have the time to develop up all of the other characters from the game, so somebody had to sub in for this role… but oof.

Sana's backstory with her family is not nearly explained or explored enough in the show. I honestly think it comes off as confusingly unclear why they treated her like this or why they didn't notice her vanish at all. The game justifies this devastatingly well, but it feels like it's not clear at all here.

I think they could've had Kyubey run around Kamihama for part of the first season before he got ousted/blocked, and I think it would've been beneficial to do so. Now, that's not just because I love his character and find him fascinating, although that's definitely true, but it's also because there's so much exposition that I wish he could deliver to the characters about what's happened before we got here. Like, the tragic truth about Felicia's backstory is wonderfully awful, and I wish there was some way to deliver that into the anime, but I don't think it's possible without a ton of flashbacks. (And to be fair, players of the game may never know it without playing her particular Magical Girl Story.)

The change to not having Mami attack Yachiyo when they first meet was something I felt was a positive move. I loved that Mami got to have a moment she never had in the game during the Radio Tower arc, too. In generally, I enjoyed the slower, more piecemeal involvement of the original Holy Quintet, which has served as nice slow tease compared to having them be more upfront in the game. I did kind of miss the Madoka/Homura involvement in the radio tower case, but I ultimately came away feeling like it was better to save those two for later in the story because they're probably the best-known characters from the original series.

The combat soundtrack is exquisite - maybe better than ever before, honestly. The Magia Record anime has the best fight music in the series outside of, say, Rebellion.

Game's Ending Thoughts: (Spoilers Within)

The anime cutscenes in the final chapter are delightful.

Puella Magi has never shied away from having its characters die in the original anime or in the many manga stories. I'd argue that those deaths are at least part of what makes it such a successful subversion of the Magical Girl formula; the threat of death (often via witchiness) establishes the idea of there being permanent consequences that simple hope and faith and love can't overcome in spite of what those other anime may have told you. On the other hand, Magia Record turns out to have very close to zero consequences. Aside from established deaths from flashbacks that have occurred before the game even begins, by the end of the game, literally no one dies. Not even the most blatantly psychotic character is allowed to shuffle off her mortal coil; she just "disappears" and escapes. I particularly like (please note the sarcasm) how three different characters do some kind of "super-move" during the final two chapters that is said to most likely kill them, and yet they all survive them! At least ONE character winds up with some paralysis, but jeez, the others walk away completely unscathed. I can only hope the anime doesn't go quite so weak in the knees about any of the characters suffering actual consequences from the potentially-world-ending-level battles that occur.

I previously griped that I actually expected the psychos responsible for the entire storyline to get off scot-free, and although they don't get off 100% free and clear by the time the credits role, they come extremely close to doing so. However, I was really happy with the "Cherry Blossom Dreams" epilogue event, because there is dialogue in there that has the Magius admit that whatever guilt they have now, they are still capable of being complete sociopaths who want to dominate the Earth. That one person's presence (Ui) shouldn't be (and isn't) enough to keep them from being incredibly dangerous. Ultimately, the solution/punishment they receive is probably the best one available in light of their overall survival. Well done.

Speaking of the Magius, I mean… is it really possible that so many feathers never questioned that they were following a couple of 11/12-year-olds and one blatantly obvious psychotic? I guess having face time with the Magius was pretty rare, but there was still enough that some of the feathers declared their allegiance was primarily to those three above all else. And most magical girls range closer to 16 than to 11, I mean, y'know? Which is practically an eternity in terms of maturity. So I guess MIfuyu did a lot of heavy lifting on NOT making them seem like absolutely the worst possible choices for leadership, huh? (And for that reason: Mifuyu got off fucking LIGHT.)

Aaaand speaking of "one obvious psychotic," I find it funny how almost nobody knows Alina outside of her Magius role except for Karin. Because, just… it's so perfect. Karin (who is not a "Karen") happens to be the most insanely tolerant person when it comes to Alina. She seems to shrug off Alina's entire everything as amusing, forgivable quirks. Perhaps because so many people believe Karin's own obsession with Halloween is a weirdly morbid quirk, Karin doesn't even question Alina's obsession with making art about death using actual human remains. Which is… funny? No, seriously. I think it's legitimately comedic in a good way. But it should probably be much more alarming to me that she doesn't care. I'd like to think that Karen feels it's just delightfully Halloween-y for Alina to paint her canvas with legit blood, and I do believe Karin isn't really the kind of person who would ask where the blood came from because whatever, it's probably fine, better get back to planning my pageant or something. She probably even thinks Alina's skulls are plastic Halloween decorations. :P

We need to talk about Mami: Mami in "Another Story Chapter 9" felt so off and out-of-character compared to how she was written in things like Rebellion or A Different Story or Wraith Arc, and furthermore, despite that chapter being entirely about Mami wanting to just be a simple peer with no superiority over the rest of the Holy Quintet, Another Story Chapter 10 has her immediately revert back to being the smart senpai character, further cementing how weirdly "off" Chapter 9 felt. I realize they had something difficult to write, here, though. It's painful how Sayaka has to run middlewoman between Kyoko and Mami in Chapter 10 of AS. I feel like I could write a whole screed about Kyoko's behavior across the franchise and how difficult a character she is for me to like even though I "get it" and don't think she's necessarily a bad person; she's just living on the edge of being almost a total hypocrite basically ALL THE TIME. The conclusion where Kyoko acknowledges that she's going to continue to work with Mami and the others semi-regularly in spite of everything is really the best closure you can hope for with her. She's too antagonistic to give us much else, and she prefers it that way. It would take years to see her mellow.

At this point, it seems safe to assume that there isn't going to be any "season 2" of the game like what happened with Fate/Grand Order after its finale. The main narrative is well and truly done, and it's just going to be various events from here on out. Is that enough to keep me around? Um. I don't know. Probably not? Hard to say. I don't really know what other mobile game to throw my heart into. I've considered Attack on Titan Tactics, but like… Attack on Titan hasn't been kind to me lately so uhhhhh.

[dahniwitchoflight]

fucking, god, he called his ship Theseus. Oh god im not ready to face this epilogue stuff in actual visual form oh jeesus

Dirk, Dirk pls. no one can take you seriously now that we can actually SEE your Villain-Sona. 

oh god, the second hand embarassment is real.

Alright so there seems to be like, a tinge of Rose existing as her own person, doing things that Dirk dislikes, but its in conversation only, so it seems facetious.

The other true thing though is the narrative is entirely Dirk’s perspective, and Dirk is exactly the kind of person who would absolutely love and believe he was capable of subsuming another person’s soul and idealogy entirely, but we went through this deceit in the epilogues with John and Roxy as well, with John’s unquetionaing hold on reality and what is canon also seeming to have an unconcious warping effect to whatever John thought was important, but Roxy gave a good point of how do you even know you did this and i didn’t choose it or wouldnt have chose it? you dont

So we could see that being repeated here, either as a parallel of that or a subversion, remains to be seen

“ Speaking of which, I think it's time I started undoing some of the more egregious mistakes this story has been subjected to over the years. Yes, I'm talking about that guy. The other orange one. Remember him? Vriska got stalked by him a bit and it was uncomfortable for everyone concerned. Anyway, the point is that he fucked up big time, and I'm here to clean up the horseshit. It's time to get this story back on the rails, back to what it was always supposed to be. I know it, and you've somehow always known it too. There was something else, some other route that Homestuck was meant to take but then didn't, a way that wouldn't've spent so much time dicking around with stuff nobody cares about. Like seriously, why did we all have to sit through talking about everyone's most intimate and private feelings for two hundred thousand fucking words. That would never have happened in Act 1. Where did it all go wrong? “

lol the andrew hussie is peeking through a bit here, so Homestuck2 is gonna be the exact thing I figured a sequel would be, its going to be a sort of retelling of the story, but its gonna flip the importance for certain things in the opposite directions, so right here its saying Homestuck is a story with a layer of importance on the characters themselves and their mindsets and how they lived in the environment they found themselves in, with the lore and the conceit of the story being a huge creation story more of a backdrop than the focus

so Homestuck2 is going to be a more "creation story” focused more on the sburb lore, buts its going to have less of a focus on the characters (perhaps even to the detrimnet? maybe characters will seem strange and out of character? but he kinda already made that feeling i the audience with the epilogues, thats what that intended effect was)

and neither one i think will turn out to better or worse than the others, theres definitely going to be benefit and downsides for both, but its not hard to see that Homestuck1 is the story that Hussie wanted to Tell, and Homestuck2 is how he’s changing it and telling a different story than he originally would have in the first place

not that hes changing Homestucks orignal story at all, but now hes telling a decidedly different one

Thus far, even though I understand Dirk’s basic mindset being “Hussie’s story sucks im gonna tell a BETTER one” and deciding that he alones gets to decide others will is unquestionably villainous train of thought, like why cant we let the characters just decide for themselves what kind of story they wanted to have and be genuine..

I AM dying of curiosity to see what sort of lore and information were going to get out of this, especially with the twist of that sort of focus being brought more into view, it’s a tantalizing glimpse of something very sexy that im into...

WORLDBUILDING :p

The World of Homestuck to me, HAS always been more infinitely exciting and interesting to me than the characters themselves, even though i liked them fine, they werent the reason why i kept reading the story for sure

Anything little thing we get about sburb or the world system out of this im happy with, regardless of what happens to the characters

(Would that be considered a villainous mindset if I was in canon? maybe ^^; good thing im not lol it does give off very “evil mad scientist morally corrupt experiments” kind of vibe lolol)

“ Look, I know what you're all really craving. I've been studying canon—or rather, what's left of it—and I think I've found it. The critical moment, in the wake of which everything started to take a nosedive into the protracted, endless slog of sheer insufferability we got saddled with near the end. This was the single most crucial error in the process that led to the present situation. The day when the story was wrested screaming from the arms of its readers like a bawling infant and carried helplessly away, from then on to be raised according to the whims of a masochistic menace with no thought for you, the common fan. “

I do have to laugh at this though, because your not wrong??? but also, it was inevitable that a story that started out like homestuck and was written like homestuck and ended like homestuck would inevitably turn out the way it did

it was a communal product of the screaming masses that turned into a singular mans story, it was unfortunately going to lose something to everyone, because everyones ideas couldnt all coexist in one canon at the same time (thats what outside of canon is for)

and then Dirk does something I DIDNT expect him to do

“Channelling my full potential as an ascended player of Heart, I expand my consciousness to commune with the boundless force of collective willpower that is the internet. My mind floods with its divine potency, a million formless cries coalescing into a sequence of discrete, formal instructions. It is a maelstrom as chaotic as it is deafening. And yet from this formless, uninterrupted spate of hard, unembellished data, a single suggestion takes form, as if bubbling up from a vast, infinite ocean of possibility. It is a whispered prayer to a compassionate god whose ear attends faithfully the will of his believers.Ok, let's see what you chucklefucks came up with.“

instead of entirely subsuming other’s will like a villain would, he has instead opened up his heart and conciousness to absorb the ideas, suggestions and wills of the masses, he is literally trying to bring back the act1 flavor of homestuck by taking suggestions, be he is ironically doing something no different than hussie did by curating and choosing which one to respond to

hah! he really does think he is the hero of this universe with Hussie as some sort of villain. 

So Hussie has probably intentionally curated this idea of himself as “Author Villain” who drives the story seemingly into mud by seeming to reject and upend the audiences expectation rather than curate them and bringing forth the best out, 

this happens with the epilogues undoubtedly, 

and this environment has gown a character from inside the story to step out and try to “oust” him from this position and instead tell a “good” story one that “everyone” wants, but is in fact detrimental to the story and world that the characters inside it themselves wants, which is was Hussie curated the whims to in the epilogues instead of the audience

So maybe this will be a “good” story, and hit all the marks for what the audience wanted originally, but there is no benevolent force to make sure a happy ending exists for any of the characters inside of it, because what the characters want doesnt matter anymore, only the lore does

[saucerfulofsins]

God your fic-idea under that redditpost just sent me!!! I can only imagine pat as the hedonism-bot tho, he’d fit so perfectly in that role

LISTEN I am So Inclined to roll with this! Because he absolutely fucking would, sipping his orange juice from a wine glass and smirking at Jonny working out!

But at the same time I also like the idea of Jonny being this rich kid and Patrick’s already kind –

No. No you know what? I really wanted to say I can see this from both sides. That’s why I wrote the tags the way I did. Even if at some point I deleted and rewrote a few putting “Patrick” in for rich kid and “Jonny” for hockey player. I love subversive roles! But no, you, my friend, you are 100% right. He fits the role perfectly. I’m gonna roll with it so hard.

[post + tags]

So yeah, it’s Patrick lying on his little sofa in the gym, watching all these hot hockey players. And honestly, it should be weird, because everyone knows Pat’s gay and they still go there and work out with him. He commands their respect though, he doesn’t play on their team but he knows his hockey and that holds its appeal. All the free food does, too, of course.

But Jonny realises he likes the way Pat looks at him. They’re college students; they all appreciate it when people like the hard work they put into their bodies, of course they do. He hopes to make the fucking NHL, his looks are a testament to the effort he puts in. 

And he’s awkward about being around Patrick, and he knows it, because he’s not used to this shit and he hates it. But then Pat taps on his shoulder after practise one day, and asks Jonny if he wants to help him out with his ‘posture’. Pat’s posture, that day, is supremely bad. Like, if Jonny didn’t know any better (and honestly he should, but he does go fucking stupid around Patrick) he’d say Patrick’s mostly trying to keep a bad posture during his deadlifts, because his body sure as hell says something different.

He corrects Pat though, gentle touches like he does with his teammates but this time not immune to the soft way Patrick sighs as he widens his legs a little, pushes his ass back a little farther, straightens his spine like he’s done this a million times before. He smirks at Jonny but still does it again the next time they’re invited over; then again, again, again. 

He’ll pat Jonny’s arm after it’s over and smile at him like he’s got Jonny all figured out, eyes flicking down to Jonny’s mouth, licking his lips like he’d lean in if Jonny wanted him to–

And Jonny begins to think maybe he wants Patrick to. Begins to think about it more and more, and then summer hits and he stays in town and begins to work out with Patrick, who wants to try out for the college team. He used to play, he says. Quit a few years ago, but never stopped skating, never stopped working out. He’s rich, Jonny knows, but more than that, he thinks Patrick might actually have it in him–he realises he’s been lead on all this time, Pat faking the bad posture for sure because he falls easily in step with Jonny during training, and afterwards they watch old games together, dissect them, take what’s good and hypothesise on what could be better.

By that time, he knows he’s got it bad. He does, and he’s pretty sure he’s not hiding it well, but still it’s a surprise when after one session Patrick pushes him up against the wall in the gym, smiling softly. Jonny’d expected a smirk, a chirp, but none of that comes as Patrick thumbs his cheek.

“I’ve wanted to, you know,” he tells Jonny. “You’re all hot, but you–I don’t know, man. You’re intense.”

“Yeah,” Jonny responds, voice hoarse. His head thumps back against the wall, but he barely feels it, Patrick’s thumb still trailing over his face.

“And I didn’t wanna like–I didn’t wanna come on to you. Didn’t wanna ruin this, or my chances of getting on the team.”

“Your dad could pay,” Jonny says. “Anything. We’d–any of the guys, we’d just–”

“I know,” Patrick shushes him, breath ghosting over Jonny’s lips. He’s close enough that he can smell the Gatorade, almost taste the fruity-sweet taste of its red still clinging to Patrick’s lips.  “Didn’t want that, though. I’m not gonna get close to someone who doesn’t want me.”

Pat frowns for a moment and Jonny breathes in, shaky and unsteady, his hand coming up to rest on Patrick’s hip. He’s done this before, but only with girls. “No? So why this?”

Blue eyes staring back at him, inescapable, and Jonny goes weak at the knees. “You watch, Jonny,” Patrick tells him. “The other guys–they might look at me sometimes, but you watch me.”

He’s not wrong. Jonny’s not had a lot of time to come to terms with this side of himself, but when Patrick presses their lips together it still feels right, still feels good; he still threads his fingers into the back of Patrick’s hair, curls winding around his fingers as he deepens the kiss and thinks yes.

[ardenttheories]

hm, i was looking for rage (specifically a seer), blood (knight), and maybe life (prince). realized/before they realize, maybe. my friend said it was important, so id want to clarify the prince of life is vvvvery angry and insecure haha

A Seer of Rage is someone who can See Doubt, Negativity, Anger, and Stubborness. 

Rage is a pretty abstract thing, and that can make understanding the equally abstract Seer Class really difficult. 

As a general rule of thumb, though, Seers of Rage can look into people. They can See their Doubts, their Fears, the worst aspects of who they are. They can See what Angers people - what already Angers them - and they can See what incites that roaring Rage. 

Seers are strategists, and that means that Seers of Rage can use a person’s Doubts and Fears to incite them. If a Player is lacking, or if they’re not pulling their weight, the Seer of Rage can use that negative emotion to give them strength; think anyone who does anything out of Spite. The Seer would be the person saying, “oh, you haven’t Godtiered yet? Well, [person Player doesn’t like] has already Godtiered, and they’re super powerful!”, knowing that this would be what makes that Player take the risk associated with Godtiering - or even just knowing that that’s what it takes for the Player to get over their Fear of death. 

They could also use Fear as a powerful motivator. They wouldn’t be against holding something against other Players if it got them moving - such as playing on a fear of abandoment, or of being worthless. They could also use a person’s stubborness for the complete opposite reason; taking into account that a Player straight up won’t do something to make sure an event doesn’t happen.

There’s not much they can see in the way of Timelines, but they can see how Players will react (mostly negatively) to various situations. They can then guide Players to these outcomes or away from them, depending on what is best. 

It’s much, much more personal than you’d expect from a Seer, and it does tend to mean that they’re less useful on the battlefield than some may like. There’s no flashy use of powers here; there’s just a carefully spoken word to spur an ally into action, or a furious war cry to terrify enemies into submission - based entirely on what they See will work best.

Seers also tend to invert their Aspect at first, until a tutor comes along. Think how Rose seems to like a lot of Voidy things, and doesn’t really have a firm grasp of Light until Doc Scratch shows her the way. 

Your Seer of Rage would likely be bubbly and happy, someone filled with Hope, until they get to that point of needing a tutor. They have no idea how Rage works - until, bit by bit, they work it out until it becomes as natural to them as breathing. 

Their tutor, thus, would be someone who understands Rage perfectly. It might not even be a direct tutor, but rather someone who just inspires the Seer - acting as an example they can work from. A really stubborn bastard of a Player would work well for this. 

When Realised, the Seer of Rage would embody Rage more. They would become firmer, stronger in their convictions, more in control of their own Fears and Anger. They could easily manipulate entire battlefields with a single word, and they could easily stop even the most Stubborn Player dead in their tracks. Again, they won’t ever really appear out in the fray - but they will be there to encourage their allies the entire way, and they’ll stand in the middle of it all, yelling out attrocities to terrify enemies and enrage other Players. 

Note: in my theories, Seers are the Active Class. They need to learn to take action, to use what they See and surge forward rather than just rely on other people doing everything. They have a powerful role; they need to actually step up into it. 

A Knight of Blood is someone who Protects/Protects with Bonds, Connections, and Responsibilities.

Knights are an Exploit Class, but it’s important to distinguish that they to so to Protect things - be that the Aspect itself, or to protect people with their Aspect.

Knights tend to hide behind a front of some sort, something that obscures the insecurities they feel. They tend to think that they’re not good at their Aspect, or that they don’t understand it at all, when in truth it’s as natural to them as breathing. Their front always shows them to be confident and brave - and that’s why Knights of Blood tend to position themselves as leaders (the defender of all Bonds).

They actually fear the group falling apart more than anything. They can see how fragile the Bonds around them are, and that tends to scare them. They can tell, just from a glance, that something isn’t going to last, that someone isn’t pulling their weight - and the Knight of Blood’s response is to make it their goal to bring everyone together.

They might not do it intentionally - or if they do, they don’t do it the way they expect. Karkat wasn’t some great leader that rallied people beneath him, but he was a good friend that people listened to and sought advice from when they needed it. That’s the power of a Knight of Blood. 

The thing is, they’re exceptionally good at exploiting the Bonds around them. So, a Knight of Blood can take one look at two people and think, “if I tell X that Y is in danger from these enemies, X will start to pull their weight in the fight!”, or “Z and A aren’t getting along. Their biggest issue is that they both have feelings for B - so if I can figure out a way to get them to look away from B, I can make them better team players.” 

They’re Responsible people at heart, and are the rock of the group. People can just Depend on them, and they’ll never fail to live up to that expectation - but they also have to understand that they don’t need to shoulder the burden. 

Knights can get it into their head that they have to be the Hero, and someone like a Knight of Blood can go further to think they have to be the Leader. They assume every Responsibility has to be their own. They need to learn to take a step back, to delegate, and to accept that they are good at what they do; that they don’t need to try harder when they’re already doing their best. 

To become Realised, Knights of Blood need to know when to take a step back and let the mask down. They have to accept that they are good enough, that what they’re doing works, and become confident in their abilities. Your Knight would have to look around at some point, see how strong the Bonds are around them, see how well everyone’s Responsibilities are handled, and say, “I did this. I made it work”. 

They have to understand, more than anything, that they don’t need to be the Hero or Leader. That they can just… be a person. This is the Knight of Blood’s greatest struggle; getting rid of that title and existing within the Bonds they’ve created. It’s their reward, and they deserve to take it. 

The Prince of Life is someone who Destroys Wealth, Growth, Life, and Wealth. 

Princes of Life don’t want things to change. They hate the idea of something flexible that can move from state to state; why go any further when everything is fine right where it is? 

Your Prince, specifically, would have a very negative mindset. Always finding the flaw in things, pointing out Inevitabilities or striking people where it hurts so that they struggle to Grow. They’re stubborn to the last, and ultimately refuse to see how letting things change could possibly be a good thing.

They are vain and impulsive. They’re pretty nasty people, always getting one up on others and grinding them down so that their progress - both as people and in general - becomes stunted. They follow strict rules (often created by themselves) that regulate how everything they do works - and they’re firm in the belief that everyone around them should follow suit. This naturally stems from fear.

They fear the unknown, the future, and things they can’t see. They know that something is Inevitable, so why bother trying to do more? Why move to a better place when the chances are that nothing will happen from it? 

No. The rules must be followed. They must be obeyed. They’re doing it for the good of everyone else, because everything is fine right where it is, thank you very much. Even if no-one else can see that. 

Naturally, in destroying Life, they can… also be extremely good hunters. They might not have a complete understanding of Life, just as a general rule. Kinda like how Dirk doesn’t ever fully understand Heart the way Nepeta does; the Prince of Life would see nothing wrong with necessary killing, and would be comfortable with the slow decay of things. In fact, they expect them. 

On top of this, they tend to destroy wealth and luxury with rules on what can and can’t be done. If you can imagine that a Life Player usually leans towards capitalism, the Prince of Life would lean more towards dictatorship. There can be no gathering of wealth, and nobody can improve upon where they already are. Everything is done based on necessity. The Prince of Life wouldn’t let you get a new xBox, for instance, if the other was still working - it’d just be a waste of money. 

They are domineering and large. You can’t argue with the Prince of Life - mostly because it could end your life, as your subversive behaviour would sway their control, and that’s just not acceptable - and honestly, it’s a lot easier just to fall into their fold, for better or for worse.

To become Realised, Princes of Life have to just… chill the fuck out? They have to come to accept that outright brutal destruction isn’t the right way; that some things have to Grow, that some Rules have to be broken. 

They need to recognise when change is good, and when Life needs to be allowed to flourish. In this way, they’ll be able to recognise when Life is bad - when it goes too far, when it makes people too ambitious, when people get too greedy, when they try to break the wrong rules. This is the Life they know to Destroy, and they’ll make things a lot better by destroying it. 

In other words, they need to understand that Dave’s character development is good, and that trying to keep him the way he is - as a coolkid who struggles to understand his own sense of Self - isn’t a good thing. On the same coin, they need to understand that Jane’s character development is bad - that she can’t become a dictator like that, and needs to be knocked down a step. One Growth is good; the other is bad. 

Note: In my theories, Knights are intrinsically connected to the Prince. So I’ll be going over that now. 

I’m assuming this is for the same session? So your Knight of Blood will likely form their facade based on something that’s related to your Prince of Life - something that the Prince represents. 

This most easily would be Rules and Regulations. Your Knight believes that they HAVE to act or think in this specific way because it’s been ingrained in them since birth, that there’s a specific role they have to take and specific Responsibilites that are theirs to shoulder. This means that your Knight never grows, never develops - that they stagnate in place because they’re so desperately trying to keep things the way they are. 

Your Prince, seeing your Knight’s struggles, would realise that sometimes Growth is good and Regulations are bad. That the pressure these Rules put on the Knight is making them unhappy, and that they’re failing to become their best self because of it. 

Being able to see it on such a personal level is what helps the Prince come to terms with their destruction - especially when you consider that your Prince’s actions probably have a huge effect on what the Knight is trying to do. 

If people can’t grow, it’ll be harder for your Knight to work with them; they’ll have to do even more to try and help everyone get over the same arguments, the same mistakes. They’ll go through the same motions over and over. It’ll get tiring for the Knight. The burden will start to make them crack. 

So, it’s a bit late, but I hope that analysis helps! Not sure if that’s everything you needed, but I tried to keep it as relatively simple as I could. I still ended up writing more than I meant to. Oops?

[fanfoolishness]

scenes from the Hanged Man (Hawke x Varric)

(Was talking with @bigassmagnet again about Varric and Hawke and this happened.  Wicked Grace, early act 2, teasing and perhaps a little more.)

***

Scene: drinks at the Hanged Man, terrible ale, raucous voices, naked steel and the occasional stench of vomit.

Scene: Min Hawke four pints deep, cheating at Wicked Grace almost as brazenly as Isabela, hiding cards up her sleeves almost as quickly as Fenris dealt them.

Scene: Varric Tethras carefully noting tells, techniques, tricks of the trade.  Varric Tethras tipsy himself, which wasn’t like him.  Varric Tethras, carefully ignoring that fact.

Fenris snorted.  “It looks like I win again,” he said, reaching out and collecting his winnings.

Isabela scoffed, flashing a blinding grin in Fenris’ direction.  “It’s only because I let you,” she said.

“Are you sure it isn’t that I’m the superior player?” asked Fenris.  “After all, I managed to win despite the fact you hid an angel up your sleeve.”  

“Three of them,” said Isabela, fishing them out of her cleavage and scattering them across the table.  “Not exactly up my sleeve, either.  But it gets boring only playing against yourself.  A challenge is far more fun.”

“Varric’s plotting something,” said Hawke suddenly.  “Look at his face.  I can just tell.  He’s going for the long game.”

“Me?” asked Varric, spreading his hands out and adopting a shocked look.  “You would accuse me?  Why, I’m practically a paragon of virtue.”

“Liar,” said Hawke.  “You hate Paragons.”

He had to laugh at that, almost choking on the mouthful of ale he had just taken.  “Good point.  Another hand?”

“The dwarf’s the one to watch,” warned Hawke.  Varric gave her his most wide-eyed, innocent look, even as he palmed one of his discarded cards to hide for later.  Nothing wrong with a little insurance.

Scene: Isabela a few minutes later, flush with her winnings, buying them a round of bitter shots that might have been the Hanged Man’s attempt at whiskey.

Scene: Fenris shaking his head with a wry grin, leaving the rest of them to their debauchery.

Scene: Isabela getting distracted at the bar, flirting heavily with Nora, actually eliciting a smile from the normally dour-faced barmaid.

“Nora, laughing?” mused Varric, comfortably warm.  He told himself it was just the warmth of the bar, though the people were starting to thin out with the late hour, and there was a noticeable draft.  “Shit, never thought I’d see the day.”

“Varric,” said Hawke, giving him a sleepy blink.  She giggled to herself.  “Are you drunk?  You might be drunk.”

“Sure you aren’t talking about yourself, Sparrow?”

“Didn’t say it couldn’t be both of us,” said Hawke stubbornly, a blush about her cheeks.  She looked soft and pretty this way, flushed face, playful grin, leaned over the table.  Had her tunic had so many laces undone, before?  “But you’re slurring, you know.”

Varric squinted at the empty glasses in front of him.  Eh.  Maybe.  “I speak with perfect diction.”

“You curse more than anyone I know.”

“And don’t I do it well?”

“Course you do.”  Hawke gazed down at the pile of cards in the middle of the table.  “One last round?”

“Sure.  Rivaini looks pretty busy, anyway.  I think we’ll have to play on without her.”

Varric dealt, the cards slippery in his hands.  Maybe Hawke was right.  He didn’t often drink this much.  But he’d just gotten some very disturbing news about Bartrand, and if it was true, he had a lot to think about.  Which he’d rather not do.  

He dealt out two hands and picked up his cards, pondering.  He could work with this.

“When did you first start playing this game?” Hawke asked idly, tossing a snake into the discard pile and drawing another card.  Varric watched her hands, ensuring she only picked up one card, not three.

“I was a kid.  Bartrand taught me.  Not because he liked playing, but because it was good for business.  ‘Negotiations are made or broken over this game, Varric.  Remember that.’  He never had a very well-developed sense of taking it easy.”  He shed a card and picked up another.  Act honest now, cheat later.  It was usually a decent strategy, though there were times that called for the subversion of the normal routine.

“My dad taught me and Bethany,” said Hawke.  A knight appeared in the discards, roses bordering the edges.  “And Carver too, of course.  He was terrible at it.  He never cheated.”  A small chuckle.

“Just like you?” Varric asked, taking two cards instead of one.  Just in case.  He was relieved to hear about her family instead.  He’d had enough with his for a lifetime.

“That’s me.  Honest to a fault,” she said, gazing into his eyes.  He swallowed.  Hers were so blue.  Cornflower blue, ice blue, he could never decide on the right shade.  He suspected there was a word for the color that hadn’t been invented yet; maybe that was on him.  Her eyes were so blue he almost missed her pilfering a whole handful of cards.  Almost, but not quite.

“If you expect me to believe that, you’ve got another thing coming,” he said, giving her a broad, easy smile.  Those were his specialty, he’d figured out long ago.  Big, open, welcoming grins: they were wholly unexpected in the Merchant’s Guild, and had become his signature.  People could hardly help but smile back.  He watched the way Hawke’s mouth twitched in an answering grin, and he kept eye contact with her while he squirreled away more cards for himself.

“Oh, do tell, Messere Tethras,” she teased, delicate brown fingers rifling through a stack of ill-gotten cards.  They were only supposed to have five, but they each topped at least ten at the moment, by his calculations.

“I’m going to call your bluff,” Varric said coolly.  He threw down the Angel of Death card.  “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” said Hawke in a silky voice.  She reached out across the table, twitching the fold of his jacket back to reveal a few cards wedged under the leather.  She plucked them out of their hiding places, fingertips brushing against his chest.  He shivered, though her hand was warm.

“How did those get there?” asked Varric with a surprised shrug, though his heart raced.  “You must have planted them there yourself.  I’d wager there’s more where that came from.”

Hawke laughed.  “Surely you jest!  But search me if you like.”  She leaned forward, chuckling with a soft slur and further loosening the laces on the bosom of her tunic.  Her breasts weren’t large, but the abrupt increase in cleavage was still an unexpected and welcome sight.  For a moment she paused there, lace ends within her fingers, leaned over her cards.  He could nearly feel her breath on his cheek.

Varric froze.  The warmth of the ale and the whiskey seemed a thousand miles beyond him. His hand twitched, fingers stretching forward.

He forced another laugh.  “Ahh, Hawke, clearly you’re too ladylike to ever cheat.  Sorry to have accused you.”  He leaned back away from her, his hand clenching.

Scene: the dwarf with his hands flat on the table, Bianca in the back of his mind, whiskey-muddled and mixed-up.

Scene: Min Hawke flushing, cheeks suddenly dull red, averting her gaze.

Hawke’s mouth opened slightly as if she wanted to say something.  “Right,” she said eventually, pulling the laces on her tunic tight once more and tying them in a sloppy bow.  “Yes.  Lady Hawke.  That’s me.”  She slapped down a set of four daggers and smiled weakly, not meeting his eyes.

Varric shoved over his pile of coin to her side, taking a deep breath.  “You win again, Sparrow.  And that’s it for me.  Can’t let you bankrupt me, after all.”

“If one night of Wicked Grace bankrupts you, you’ve made some very questionable decisions with your money, master dwarf,” she retorted, sweeping the money into her purse.  She bit her lip, then pulled out six cards from beneath the laces of her shirt.  “Er… not sure how these got here.”

“A happy accident,” said Varric, waving his hand.  He let out a long breath, then gathered up the cards.

Scene: Hawke waving goodnight, telling him she’d stop by tomorrow, her blue eyes luminous.

Scene: the dwarf alone in a crowded room.  The dwarf, wondering what the fuck just happened.

[masterthespianduchovny]

Let’s Talk about Subverting Expectations

What happened in ep 8x05 was not a subversion of expectations, it was a fuck you to the art of writing and fans.

I’m a writer and, although I don’t get paid for my work, I’d never pull the shit D&D did and no one should be supporting that shit either.

Words don’t fucking magically appear on the page, that shit is plotted out even if it isn’t in excruciating detail. It takes minutes, hours, days, weeks, and even years for things to finally come together for a book, show, movies, etc. Great work doesn’t happen overnight and you can clearly tell that no love, thought, to attention was given to the storyline for S8 of GOT.

They had two fucking years to get this shit right. They’ve had the ending since the beginning. They had time to adequately plot out all of this shit and have character motivations make sense.

Because when you “subvert expectations”, the details are woven into the plot they just aren’t obvious. They’re inconspicuous, so we leave them alone for other plot points that are saying, “pay attention to me.” That’s why it’s a subversion: the clues WERE there.

Dany going mad/dark isn’t a subversion because 1. they clues were underdeveloped 2. The reason why she went mad isn’t the reason why people think she went mad.

People point to her not reacting to her brother getting killed, burning slave masters, the Tarly’s etc., BUT D&D flat out said that if Missandei and/or Jorah lived, things would’ve went differently. “Oh, those two were just the straws that broke the camels back!!!” 

NO.

Madness is said to be a gene for the Targeryens, but if all of that other shit wasn’t stoking that madness fire within her, yet watching the two people she trusted most LITERALLY DIE FOR HER, it says that her mental break was due to circumstance and NOT genes. 

Dany has been handed so many L’s for being merciful and listening to SHITTY advice and fucking snapped because “fuck this shit.” Fuck it ALL.

“bUT ThaT MAKes her BaD.”

I honestly don’t give a shit and I don’t want to hear shit about, “If she can’t put up with adverse as a Queen, she doesn’t deserve to be Queen.”

We’ve constantly see Dany put off her plans and fucking offer her resources to others who’ve backstabbed her and showed ungratefulness at every time. We want her to keep taking this shit on the chin because we (read: antis) fucking hate her. Tyrion was fucking incompetent for 2-3 seasons straight. Varys betrayed her. Jon betrayed her. Sansa stayed true to the snake she is (regarding Jon). She lost two of the closest people to her and we expect Dany to have the sanity of a saint???

People kept saying Dany would turn on Jon and kill him, but Dany still HASN’t done that shit even tho he HAS betrayed her. And please shut the fuck up about how it was his secret to tell. Why in the fuck would he tell it DURING a fucking war, esp to a sister that fucking LOATHES Dany?

Why???

Jon could’ve WAITED UNTIL AFTER THE WAR.

But, he had to do that shit know, which set off the entire chain of events. Although Dany is responsible for murdering the Red Keep, Jon, Tyrion, Varys, and Sansa all have motherfucking blood on their hands.

ALL OF THEM.

Dany KEPT fucking trying to bargain with them or hold her tongue and listen to them, but since the everyone (including the writers) wanted Dany to go mad so bad we got this shit.

None of their actions or motivations makes sense.

Do y'all know how much TV and shows I watch? Do y'all know how savvy am I about how shit works? I can accurately predict most storylines and characters due to intently focusing on the story, details, tropes, and constant analysis of what I consume. I already knew this shit was coming, but I wanted my expectations subverted so bad even if it didn’t make sense. I wanted to believe that D&D weren’t frauds playing at being great writers (I know, I know, this trend started back in S5).

They relied heavily on telling instead of showing. They relied heavily on having trusted characters express whatever pushed the plot forward even if it didn’t make any sense. They relied on our love for the Starks to sway us into siding against any and everyone who disagree with them or are against them.

I said before that Arya’s character doesn’t make any sense when she’s paired with and defending Sansa and she DOESN’T. Not only was that relationship not earned, it goes against who Arya is--not the relationship, how she behaves in regards to Sansa and her xenophobia.

Also, her character motivation doesn’t make sense when going back to KL’s or how easily she was persuaded to leave. Why didn’t we see any conversations between her and the Hound leading up to that moment???

Sansa doesn’t make any sense. People want to talk how she knows how to play the game well, but here’s how she doesn't: LF and Varys spent over a decade fucking manipulating the court while most were oblivious to what they were doing. They’ve been doing this shit longer than Sansa was alive. No one has ever flat out called out their shit at the beginning of their scheming careers.

Sansa starts her first true case of scheming in the game and Dany immediately knows it was her. “But, Sansa won!!!” I mean, yeah, due to shitty writing.

Just about every major and cunning player is never blatantly called out like this even if people suspect them. Why? Because you aren’t playing if others know your move and that's how you get dead.

By Sansa being openly antagonistic to Dany, she showed her hand and that’s why I’ve always said it was fucking stupid for Sansa to be openly hostile to her. Sansa Stans thought I wanted them to be friends or for Sansa to bend the knee, which is moot since Jon did it, and it’s not that. Fucking politically savvy people don’t do the dumb shit Sansa did. That’s how Dany IMMEDIATELY knew how Varys found out and WHO the information leaked from. But, since Sansa has plot armor and the writers are up her ass, she won’t reaped the consequences for being shitty at the game.

(and Varys would NEVER make such a mistake, but I’m glad he’s dead)

And Tyrion. This motherfucker has been useless for HOW long???

Are people forgetting how much BAD advice he’s given Dany or that he believed he could appeal to Cersei’s humanity, which got people dead. Cersei ain’t never give a fuck about him and that’s not tea, that’s all facts (no chaser). Tyrion has done so much fuck shit, I hope he dies as well, but that’s not going to happen. The writer’s love Tyrion too much.

Having Cersei die with Jaime and not by Jaime or anyone else is BAD writing. Nothing in the show or books supports that this would happen. Having Jaime die with Cersei opposed to him believing he needs to kill her is BAD writing. Having Brienne lose her virginity to him is BAD writing. 

And to further prove how shitty the writing is, D&D literally admitted that Arya was only in the episode so viewers would care about the people in KL’s getting seared--THAT’S IT! That whole plot point about Arya wanting to kill Cersei was bullshit, which is obvious as fuck when watching the episode. 

I can take stuff happening that I don’t like happening if it’s written well, but as a lover of shows and books and as a writer, this shit is downright infuriating. None of this shit was properly set up. NONE. 

Writing is a motherfucking discipline and should be treated with respect. I don’t know if D&D are obsessed with “subverting expectations” or shock or whatever the hell that consumes their minds, but THIS is how you destroy the legacy of a show that was must watch TV. This is HOW you show you don’t care for a well loved show, DESPITE HBO saying they’d give you as much time as they needed to tell a story.

I wouldn’t have liked Dany going mad, but if it was told well, I would’ve gotten it. This wasn’t. 

Arya’s character motivations this season, outside of Gendry, doesn’t make any fucking sense.

Sansa doesn’t make sense.

Jon-wtf.

Jaime--all of them.

How are expectations subverted by Dany becoming mad??? 

Look, I don’t give a shit if people like it, I give a shit about bad writing that was poorly set up. 

*barfs*

[alexredgrave]

Ok this is gonna come off weird and I swear I don’t mean to put down what you like or your preferences or anything like that! I was wondering if I could ask you to list why you like Jason Brody as a protag/character? What’s traits of his you enjoyed regardless if they were redeemable traits or otherwise.

Don’t worry, it’s okay! 😊 I get he’s not the most likeable character and I always love to talk about Jason 👌👌👌Okay, so:

As a character, I think he’s very well written. You gotta look at the intent far cry 3 is written with: to make fun of the recurrent white savior/ridiculously average guy turned hero trope. (Genius gay writer) Jeffrey Yohalem wanted to subvert and condemn stories like that, to unveil the toxic masculinity, sexism and racism inherent in them. He said the bad ending was supposed to be a sort of punishment for people who didn’t “get it”. (It may not sound as anything ground-breaking but it takes a two second google search to see how it went over the head of so many straight male players how Citra was not your usual “woman as a reward”. There is a scene where she drugs Jason and rapes him in front of an audience while he is uncoscious and allucinating and they still see it as a hot scene because her titties out.)

But I’m getting sidetracked. The point is, Jason Brody isn’t a hero, not even a antihero. He’s not only a parody of the hero trope, he’s a subversion of it.

Most protagonists experience a growth; they end up somewhat better, more than they started off. Does Jason grow? No. Actually Jason, who was a bit of an ass from the beginning, turns into a progressively worse person as the story progresses. He gets more adrenaline thirsty than he was, violent, unstable, self absorbed, arrogant, rude. I could go on.

It’s true that he do helps the locals and rescues his friends, but the more you go on, the more it all feels like collateral damage. True, he loves his friends to a degree but ultimately I feel he would sell them all (with the exception of maybe Riley) for a bag of chips. Even when actually helping the locals, you can see by the way he talks to them, condescending when not outright insulting, how little he actually cares (most notable is the side quest when he’s told a lot of people keep disappearing near a lake and his reply is “then like, don’t go there?”; he eventually helps the man but not before calling him an idiot. Also, a recurring line of his is “fuck you”).

What Jason cares about is feeling important. You see, he doesn’t even really care for Citra, he met the chick a few weeks prior, but she tells his he’s supposed to be this Legendary Rakyat Warrior and he likes that concept A LOT.There’s a whole thing to say about this, Jason wanting to feel important, because it’s not really explicitly said but it’s implied that Jason used to feel like a LOSER. His files says he only ever worked odd jobs and got in trouble for doing reckless shit since leaving college. Meanwhile, look at his friends: Grant is a Sergeant, Daisy is a professional swimmer, Keith is an investment banker, Liza is on her way to become an actress, with an important audition coming up and Riley just got his pilot licence. True, Ollie is not doing much but the guy is so rich he won’t have to work a single day in his life.Can you imagine how it must have felt for white middle class american boy Jason being surpassed by all of his friends while he’s still struggling to figure out what he wants to do with his life? It doesn’t matter that many don’t know at 25, society tells you should have everything figured out by then. Especially since the guy had great scores in college (also mentioned in his file) so people likely had HIGH expectations placed on him. No wonder guy felt like a loser, no wonder he was frustrated. And no wonder he’s so relieved and outright giddy when he think he’s found his talent, his vocation (“For the first time I know exactly what I want”, he tells Liza. He also tells Daisy that killing feels “like winning” which speaks volumes not only about his current state of mind but also about his personality. Jason is competitive but not that used to winning anymore).This is good writing, in my opinion: a realistic, truly believable motivation, far better than love or revenge. If Jason had been doing all that to save his friends or to avenge Grant, he would have stopped at Vaas.

He also serves as a sort of mirror to the player. He enjoys the violence in the game as much as you do and, for the first time, he’s not rewarded or praised for it. There’s two possible outcomes to his story: he dies like he lived which is, as a dumb asshole or he tries to do the right thing and he lives but again he has not goals, he compromised his relationship with his friends and girlfriend and, by his own admission, it’s unlikely that he can ever overcome the trauma and readjust to normal life (“I’m a monster, I can’t come back from this”). Whatever happens tho, his dreams of glory are utterly shattered. The fact that he killed Hoyt and Vaas can’t even be considered an achievement because that wasn’t his goal, it was Citra’s. Jason actually walks away with LESS than he walked in with. Sad but also GOOD👌 because he honestly didn’t deserve any better.

So (to me) he is a good character. Well written, organic despite being a little over the top and despite actually having not that many lines. And good character is not necessarily a good person. But, despite Jason having many vices and being overall unpleasant, is he a bad person? Actually, he’s not, he’s just a victim. Jason is 25, insicure, not the smartest and he gets kidnapped, his brother is shot in front of his eyes and dies in his arms, he’s chased through the jungle for Vaas’ amusement and he’s forced to kill to save himself. That leaves him very traumatized. Psichologically, he’s at his weakest, most vulnerable state. And Citra exploits this weakness. She pretends to help him while actually manipulating him through lies, drugs, sex and his own insecurities to get rid of her enemies for her, all the while planning to kill him (while we know she lied about why Vaas left the Rakyat and went to Hoyt, whether she is lying about everything or she actually believes he’s a legendary warrior and even likes him in a way, we can’t be sure. Personally, I think she believes some of it but that’s a talk for another day).

Ultimately, I like him because of how very beliveable, different and refreshing he is as a character, how organic and real he feels to me. And I like that he’s so unlikeable, too 😂

I think there’s stuff I forgot to mention but this post is already super long so Imma stop here. You can talk to me anytime. I know a lot of people dislike Jason and I understand why. I’m okay with that so we can get along even if you hate his guts, ahah 😘

[casualarsonist]

Wolfenstein II, and the importance of tone.

B.J. Blaskowicz's pregnant lover, Anya, tears her burning shirt from her body as her grenades explode under the feet of the advancing Nazis. She straddles B.J's prone body and brandishes two machine guns aloft as blood showers her naked skin, and I roar with laughter. My girlfriend asks me what the f**k is happening. Hitler pisses into a bucket and vomits on the floor. B.J. rants against bourgeois pacifism in a drunken rage and passes out. And as the sword bites into his flesh, and his head falls into a pyre, only to be collected by a machine and reattached to a synthetic body, I rejoice at the moments wherein Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus has the balls to embrace the absolute madness of its setting and take everything up to 11. 

But something doesn't feel quite right. Its predecessor - The New Order - subverted and exceeded the expectations of everyone that awaited it; I don't think anyone could have imagined what Machine Games would do with the franchise rights of the world's first FPS. As a pitch, the idea of taking the inherently daft premise of a man fighting Nazi-zombie robots in a retro-futuristic 1960's and grounding it all in a real emotional place with characters that understand and communicate the gravity of their situation to one another and to the audience alike...well, it's mental. And yet it worked. It worked really, really well. The action was intense and bombastic, but when it was over and the game asked us to understand what was motivating these people to do what they were doing, the drama felt earned, and every enemy you defeated felt like a cathartic victory rather than an exercise in psychopathy. When a friendly character died, it hurt because you cared, and because the death felt like a genuine loss amongst all the well-written personalities. The New Order was dark and visceral and at times terrifying, but always a joy to play, and in the end, no matter which turn the story took, you were invested. 

So why does The New Colossus feel like such a mistake?

To be fair to the game, as I've already said, there were moments that I was literally rolling in my seat with laughter, and it is certainly at its best when it says 'fuck it' to the concept of restraint and goes mental. It is, at times, incredibly fun, and funny. The aforementioned scene in which an insane, addled, syphilitic Hitler pisses in a bucket whilst auditioning actors for a terrible, terrible film he has written is one of the best in the entire game, not just because it makes an absolute mockery of the long-feared icon of human evil, but also because it is rendered and animated so well that looking into his eyes is genuinely chilling for how lifelike it all appears. But moments like these are few and far between, and it's regrettably rare that, buried amongst long, long cutscenes that have nothing important to say, one feels like they are genuinely being surprised and entertained. 

I suppose it's all about on which end of the crazy scale you heap your content - balance is good, as is committing to one style and tone on either side, but to be indecisive, or to miscalculate and mistime and portion your moments improperly so as to leave your audience confused as to your intention can be fatal, and in the case of Wolfenstein 2, it very nearly is. Whereas The New Order balanced the silliness in its gunplay with sincerity and moments of genuine tenderness in its story, The New Colossus couples inappropriate moodiness and melodrama with the violent actions of its characters, and leaves them looking like hypocrites. After tearing through a gauntlet of soldiers leaving little but a hallway littered with bloody chunks of flesh, B.J. chooses to wax poetic about the loss of a friend's life and the loss of all her experiences with it, in turn completely ignoring the dozens of lives and thousands of experiences he just erased. The moment is timed so perfectly and the recitation of the lines so genuine that the juxtaposition almost feels intentional, as if the game wants you to scoff at his lack of self-awareness, and it might have been a nice subversive moment if this game’s immediate predecessor hadn’t pinned all its integrity on the fact that its characters and narrative were supposed to be relatable. Instead, B.J. comes off psychotic, annoying, and unlikeable, and the writers seem less like they’re in on the joke and more like they just don't know what their doing. 

Which is rather baffling, given that it's the exact same creative team behind the The New Order - the same two writers that created a masterpiece of action storytelling, and somehow married an impossibly absurd premise with a genuine, heartfelt narrative. They created a terrifying villain, complex and likeable sidekicks, and together with the ambitious and intense soundtrack crafted a world that lived and breathed despite exploring all manner of ridiculous scenarios (moonbase FTW). The New Colossus is this, but less well made. It repeats a lot of the same beats of its predecessor, and so they all feel forced, unearned, and inferior. It's as if the setting of Nazi-occupied America wasn't fertile-enough ground for the creative directors, so they needed to borrow directly from their previous game. They delve into B.J's childhood and fill his backstory with caricatures that overstate the point they're there to make, and yet at the same time expect us to invest in a depressing world that is directly at odds with the light-hearted insanity of the rest of the story, and I think moments like this come from a desire to leave the tone of their previous game behind in favour of something a bit more fun, while still feeling like they need to bridge the gap with some kind of drama. Unfortunately, they fail to find the balance, and the attempts at seriousness reek of try-hard melodrama and smash against the humour like two cars travelling opposite directions down a one-lane road.

I could be mistaken of course; perhaps I’m just too thick to ‘get it’ and they were trying to ironically deconstruct their own work, but the drama is so heavy, and heavy-handed, that I just can’t believe that this is the case, which is such a shame because there are all the makings of an amazing game under the hood - fantastic components have been assembled together in a confused and chaotic manner, leaving the follow-up to one of the greatest shooters ever made (and one of the most unexpected underdog releases) feeling like a victim of its own success. And this is exemplified in no better place that at in the ending of the game, which is in almost every way the antithesis of that of The New Order. 

A recap: in The New Order you must fight a super-robot implanted with the brain of one of your former comrades. After defeating it and ending the suffering of your friend, you’re attacked by the main villain - General Deathshead - as you fight amongst an increasingly unstable network of gas pipes and crumbling concrete. When you finish the desperate battle and kill Deathshead from within a conflagration of fire and flames, a short, poignant cutscene activates in which the game implies the end of one of the most important parts of the franchise. It’s a perfect example of why the game did best as a whole, offering the traditional trope of a boss fight with a new coat of paint, and then ending with a no-nonsense but impactful piece of genuine drama. 

So how does The New Colossus conduct itself? Well not only does it unravel the risk of the previous game’s ending within the first few seconds, but it ends by making the player’s last interaction with its Big Bad a single button-press that then triggers a five-minute-long cutscene in which the characters stand around and spout cliche ideological platitudes about America rising up. Then B.J. stares at the corpse of his enemy like a fucking nutcase, before getting down on his knees next to the wrecked carcass and proposing to his girlfriend, which would be funny if this wasn’t the same character we were supposed to be rallying behind and is now clearly insane. It’s anti-climactic, tonally unbalanced, and boring, and worse than all this is that it commits the cardinal sin of second acts in that it ends unsatisfyingly whilst promising a third installment that will be much more interesting. 

Fuck off. 

This could all have been avoided if the creative rudder of the production had steered it directly into the eye of the storm - the setting, its violence, and its cast of characters are all ripe for parody, so why the hell did they feel like they had to spend so much time exploring B.J’s tragic upbringing in which his racist, wife-beating dad makes him kill his own dog? What purpose does that serve in a story that opens with a wheelchair-bound protagonist machine-gunning Nazis in the face? It’s just madness. And in my opinion it ultimately undid a lot of the good will that The New Order worked so hard at creating. Even if the incoming third game commits completely to its craziness, we’re still stuck with this strange Frankenstein’s monster, and the fact that from about the half way mark I was just waiting for it to end is, for me, a nail in the coffin. It’s just...it’s such a shame. The New Colossus is a smooth, beautiful shooter, and also an trainwreck of mismatched tones, confused pacing, regurgitated story beats, and an unsatisfying ending. It tries to vary its gameplay and somehow ends up feeling more of a generic shooter than it’s predecessor - a game that actually set out to reboot the world’s first FPS. It has moments of absolute brilliance that it just fails to perpetuate because it doesn’t let them gather momentum, which leaves it feeling starkly weak specifically in the areas that The New Order excelled, and that makes it a much larger kick in the nuts to me than it ought to otherwise be.

Of course, if you’re not a whiny little baby like me, or are like a friend of mine who’d never played a Wolfenstein game in his life before this one, you might just enjoy it for what it is - a gorgeous, ambitious, and gratuitous FPS set in a strange and fun alternate history, but if you asked me to recommend it as a sequel to it’s fantastic predecessor, I just can’t do it. 

6.5/10

P.S. I think I’m going to remove the qualification titles of my ratings from this point onwards. I’m not 100% certain that I’m going to get rid of them forever, but between my poor attempts at thinking of ‘names’ for half-marked titles and the fact that I’m tied to classifying a 7/10 game as ‘good’ even though my subjective impression of the game might not agree with that, means that the more complex my feelings about a certain title, the harder it is to put a specific label on it. Wolfenstein II is a good example of this conundrum. I don’t think it’s objectively good at a lot of what it’s trying to do, and yet I don’t think it’s objectively ‘just okay’ across the board.   With this in mind, if you refer to my review scoring system you’ll get a better idea of what each ranking means, beyond what a single word can convey. You’ll see that Wolfenstein II gets a 6.5 because I think it is largely unsuccessful in the pursuit of its intentions regarding its narrative and tone for the reasons I’ve detailed above, and yet I can’t at all say that it offers a poor return-on-investment for the average gamer. Hell, you might think it’s an excellent game and disagree with me entirely - this is just my opinion, after all - but given that I will obviously weigh certain aspects of a work’s design more heavily than other aspects, I still think this is the best way to understand what each score means for me (and thus for you), and why I might have come any given conclusion.

[sunbrights]

good for nothing, starting from "He can feel Peko’s eyes on the back of his head" to however far you'd like to go!

I… MAY have gone overboard here, but let’s be real, when do I not go overboard. “good for nothing” is here if anyone would like to read it!

You know the drill – cut for mercy on y’all’s poor dashes.

He can feel Peko’s eyes on the back of his head.

I wanted to introduce a feeling of Fuyuhiko becoming hyperaware of Peko’s opinion of him during the rest of this scene, which is where this line comes from. She’s the only one in the room who holds all the cards in terms of knowing who he is and how he’s motivated, despite the “performance” he puts on here of the scary yakuza.

“That’s all the delinquent payments,” he says, dropping bills onto the table. “There’s interest. This—” He waves what’s left of the stack at them. It’s slim, but not insubstantial. “That covers you for the next three months.”

Huang looks dumbstruck. His wife glances between them, her brow knit in confusion. “What is it?” she asks. “What did he say?”

Fuyuhiko scoops his own money back into his wallet. “I said we’re even,” he tells her in Mandarin.

This story was the first time I’d dealt with characters switching back and forth between multiple languages, and it was a challenge to strike that balance between clarity and clunkiness. I don’t really like visual markers of language switches (like using italics, etc), so instead I tried to establish “rules” of who spoke what early on (Huang’s wife only speaks Mandarin, Huang and Fuyuhiko speak primarily Japanese, and everyone else only speaks Japanese– not in terms of what languages people know or what their first language is, just the most common language they speak in the story), then only made mention of language when those “rules” were broken (ie, when Huang or Fuyuhiko switch). Successful? Confusing? Up to y’all!

Huang’s throat unsticks. “Thank you,” he manages. “I- I… Thank you. You have no idea what this—”

“Don’t get it wrong,” Fuyuhiko snaps. “You got lucky. If I came back and all I had waiting for me was that,” he points at the lonely stack of bills still wound up in the wife’s shaky hands, “we’d be having a different fuckin’ conversation.”

“Yes,” Huang says, breathless. “Yes, of course.”

“You’re out of chances. Don’t fuck this one up.”

“I understand.” He reaches for his wife’s elbow, who’s still standing in the same spot, the money clutched to her chest. “We- We understand. It won’t go to waste, I promise you.”

There are a lot of secondary characters in this fic, with Huang being arguably the most important one. It was important to me for this one that the environment not feel so… contained? the way I feel like a lot of my stories do. I wanted it to be about the world Peko and Fuyuhiko come from and the players in it, so by extension I didn’t want Huang to just be a static plot device. 

Stuff is constantly happening everywhere, even if the camera is only on Peko and Fuyuhiko. It’s small, but this exchange was meant to show Huang’s growth, too– that during the course of the night he’s come to the understanding that keeping his family in the dark doesn’t protect them.

“Then that’s it. We’re done here.” Huang exhales, shaky. The kid buries his nose in his sister’s wispy hair. Fuyuhiko tips his head back. “Let’s go, Peko.”

She follows him out the door.

She doesn’t say anything about it, the money or the family or how Itou definitely didn’t “donate” shit. She walks behind him in silence, all the way back up to the cross-street.

I was trying to do a lot of things differently with my writing for this one, just to see how different stuff felt, mechanically and stylistically. This is one of the points where ordinarily I’d put a scene break, but instead I wrote a mid-scene transition. It felt EXTREMELY weird. I think it was the right choice for this story, but jury’s still out on whether I like it better this way in general or not.

Also, this is meant to be a continuation of Fuyuhiko’s hyperawareness of Peko that I mentioned earlier.

There’s just enough time left for them to take the train back, instead of calling another car to come get them. It’ll take longer, but at least it’s less annoying that way. They just have to change once, and then—

I spent way too much time trying to read Japanese train schedules for this fic. Just, like, way too much time. I don’t wanna talk about it.

His stomach groans, loud enough that a girl waiting at the crosswalk a few feet away looks at him, startled.

“Shit,” he mutters, digging his nails into his middle. “I missed all of dinner, huh…”

“Would you like to stop somewhere to eat?” Peko asks.

“Well… yeah, but…” He digs both hands into his pockets. He doesn’t know what he expects to find; all his cash is spoken for, and any amount he doesn’t come back with tonight falls on Huang and his family to pay. Maybe they wouldn’t care about a beef bowl’s worth of difference, but he does.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’m not gonna starve. Let’s just go back.”

I wish I could say there was some deeper meaning/symbolism/thought behind Fuyuhiko spending the entire fic ravenously hungry, but no, I really just needed a conceit for the ending of the fic to happen, and this is what I came up with. I DID want to emphasize the fact that he spends every last cent he has on him to dig this family out of a hole, but tbh that’s a different kettle of fish. I wanted my kids to have a birthday dinner not-date, sue me.

He starts off down the sidewalk, but she doesn’t immediately follow him. “Hey,” he says, stopping short. “You coming or what?”

She’s looking at her feet. “It will take time to get back to the house,” she says. The noise of the street almost drowns her out. “So… If you’re hungry now, then…”

“I don’t have the cash for it, though,” he tells her. He thought that was obvious, but maybe he’d been a better actor than he was giving himself credit for. “So, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it, let’s just go back.”

Peko hesitates, head still low. She reaches into the breast pocket of her blouse, and pulls out a neatly-folded stack of bills.

So, timeline-wise, this is meant to be Fuyuhiko’s sixteenth birthday, during summer break of their first year of high school, before HPA. For this last bit, I wanted to sort of open a door to the Peko we see in her FTEs, the one who’s trying to get herself ready to ask the boy she likes out on a date. What she’s done is subversive and flies in the face of everything she’s been taught; she knows it, and is grappling with what that means. (In my head she’d abandoned the plan to do anything with the money at all, before this opportunity presented itself.)

Sort of the crack in the wall before HPA happens and double-reinforces it with concrete and sadness.

[manifestoe-blog]

A couple of months ago I interviewed my one of my closest friends, the lovely Nina White, about an album of her choice in pursuit of getting to know her better through her relationship with music in her life. We discuss No Doubt’s ‘Tragic Kingdom’ in relation to female anthems, ska revival, being a little bit punk, the frightening prospect of having to sing on stage with your ex about your relationship, and the impact of the album in her life thus far.

So Nina, tell me about the album that you’ve chosen.

I’ve chosen Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt, which was released in 1995. I was only 3 when it was released; however they slowly released singles from the record until 1998 so I am guessing I was pretty late to join the party. My mum bought the cd for me, and it’s fair to say that I thrashed the absolute shit out of it until I was about 16. I honestly listened to it all the time; it was always on some kind of rotation, whether it was in the car, or in the six stack, whatever.

So you were listening to it pretty consistently for that solid 8 year period?

Yep, pretty much - it was one of those albums that I have never gotten sick of. Actually, a few days after you asked me to do this, I pulled it down from the shelf and played it in the car, and like four tracks in it started skipping. That poor CD – it looks as if it was strapped to a tire and driven on tarmac. I think it actually did really well to get through four tracks! It has survived a lot of years… coming on twenty.

This was their first really popular album. They spend 2 and half years recording this album in 11 different studios and by all accounts it was utter chaos. The name Tragic Kingdom is a nod to Disney Land which they grew up almost literally I the shadow of in Anaheim – always too poor to go, but able to hear what was happening there from their houses down the street.  

No Doubt were just so different to everything else I was listening to at the time because this was music that was written and lead by a woman, and while there was other female driven music rocking around at the time like say, Courtney Love or Garbage (who I was peripherally aware of, but not into then) Gwen wrote songs that were more relatable to me at that age. . She also managed to do that in a really fun and interesting way - and their visual language always really stuck with me as well. They were playful and chaotic and experimental and seemed to enjoy fucking with people’s expectations of what they were supposed to look like, and what they were supposed to sound like. I think the thing that draws me back into it every time is their exuberance, they’re wild.

Pre “Gwen Stefani, The Brand”, baby baby Gwen, is everything that I wanted to be in life. She's powerful, she doesn’t give a shit. She is just up there having a good time, stomping around in those bloody big boots with such contagious energy. I don’t think that their music is particularly punk, but their attitude definitely was. And the best thing about this album in my opinion, was that it was her first time writing (before that her brother was their songwriter), so everything is genuine and authentic because it was her first time. It was before she could even have the chance to construct something marketable. It was about her life, the shit that was going on, it was just her first coming out as who she was. The way she was performing is just so incredible; it was more masculine than anything else that I had seen at the time, yet she was able to do so without denying her femininity in any way. She was merely presenting herself the way that she is, and having fun doing it.

What are some of your highlights of the album?

Well, my highlights are different now to the highlights I had as a kid. In saying that, the first track Spiderwebs has always been one of my favourite songs off the record. It just sounds really fun and funky, but it’s actually pretty subversive. The track is basically about being pursued and harassed by a guy that you have no interest in. I really liked it as a kid because of how much of a banger it is, but now as an adult I like it because I can really relate to being dogged by someone and told you should take it as a compliment, when you really just want to tell them to fuck off.

Just a Girl is another obvious one because it has become a bit of an anthem. Just a Girl, Sunday Morning, and Don’t speak were the most recognizable songs from the album, and Just a Girl is the more punk track, when I was growing up everybody knew that song, and everybody knew Don’t Speak. To be honest, I didn’t really like “Just a Girl” as an adult until I saw a video of them performing it live, and it was like “FUCK YES. LOOK AT WHAT YOU USED TO BE! Dammit, Gwen.” It made the whole thing come alive again as something more than just a well thrashed track on a ‘90’s greatest hits’ playlist.

Anyway, I guess the whole album is centered around two main themes: coming of age, and the transition of an intimate relationship. I think these themes are the reason why it has continued to be relevant through different eras of my life. Don’t Speak is always going to have some kind of universal relevance; if you have an argument with a loved one or you break up with someone, any kind of emotional friction.

Or like in Sunday Morning, you’ve got themes of coming to terms with who somebody is and how they treat you. And how, I suppose, you may have been in a love bubble where you are allowing somebody to treat you a certain way, and as things progress you start to notice the power balance in the relationship. The whole thing is just so damn relatable, and almost dystopian. “I thought I knew you, I got a new view, I thought I knew you well, oh well.” It really captures that moment where the fog clears and you see someone as a person, not an ideal.

All these experiences that are shared in the album related directly to relationships within the band, especially the relationship between Gwen and Tony (the bass player) who had been dating for 7 years and broke up when they were writing the record. They then toured for something ridiculous like three years and had to play ‘Don’t Speak’ a totally autobiographical song about their personal heartbreak in front of thousands on stage every night.

I can’t help but just think about this in relation to all of the talk surrounding Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. They were writing, recording and then performing these intense songs about one another, and it weirdly creates this form of mythic speech around it all, which completely adds a whole new level of intrigue. I think it’s this whole appeal of an ‘artist coping mechanism’, which is ultimately often idealised, but is just so different to what we can get away with in day-to-day life.

Yeah! And I guess it is weirdly insular as well. The community for them is so incestuous, for want of a better word – they live in each other’s pockets constantly with little escape from each other’s bullshit. It’s a far removed experience from most people’s romantic complexities.

All of these themes are symptoms of situations that are often massive grey areas, but ones that we all go through at some stage and to some degree. And to be able to see people dealing with themes in a public and performative manner is just so intriguing.

You were saying before, about the simple fact that she was a woman writing and performing these songs, she was becoming this absolute icon, and it was super important to you hearing this female perspective. Is there a particular song or lyric that comes to mind in relation to how hearing her female perspective has influenced yours?

Yeah definitely, there are two that come to mind. First one being “Just a Girl”, because when I was little, that song was what sparked the realisation in me that being female meant that there were certain expectations you were supposed to conform to.  That song kind of slapped me out of the pretty much genderless, tomboy period of my childhood where I could get away with dressing like a boy, playing with the boys and there was no sexuality implied in that.  It was kind of like a trigger for me, to be more aware of what was expected of me within my gender, and I just hadn’t had to grapple with those expectations yet. There is a lyric in that song, “take this pink ribbon off my eyes” which directly refers to that feeling for me.

She wrote this song when she was 24, after she had to drive home after rehearsal at a late hour. Her bandmates, all being male, could just drive home and go to bed, but because she was a girl she would have to knock on her parent’s door to let them know that she was safe. The song is really about her coming to the realisation, through all of these subtle everyday experiences, that she was being treated differently. It documented a moment of clarity for her where she realised how much she was coddled and overlooked as a woman and how fed up she was with all the gendered bullshit. I guess as an adult it’s always a nice reminder not to take that kind of shit complacently in your daily life.

The other one that comes to mind was important to me a little bit later in my life, was “Excuse Me Mr.” Its the second track on the album, and it explored the feeling of waiting having to wait around for validation from people more powerful or important than you. Especially as an adult, female, creative trying to make a living doing what I’m passionate about, this song is just such a good reminder not to wait around for opportunities or support to fall into your lap and just get on with doing it yourself.

My sweet sweet Nina, thank you so much for telling me about Tragic Kingdom, this conversation felt like a trip to the Magic Kingdom itself. Would you mind summarising why you love this album in a few sentences for me?

Thank you so much for having me! I love this record because it was the first album that I l truly loved and it has aged with me like a good whiskey. Tragic Kingdom sort of ended up being the unlikely soundtrack to my life. It didn’t necessarily guide me, but it definitely made me feel like I wasn’t alone in my experiences. Especially as I’ve always been a bit of an awkward human, and it was good to know that there were some other awkward shitheads out there with me, doing their own thing and totally killing it. It’ll always serve as a reminder that it was okay to wear big boots, and be goofy, and that the people that matter in my life will still love me and stick around anyway. Yeah, that was pretty nice.

[vincentacovino]

I Was Given Lemons and I Made Lemonade: What Beyoncé’s Album Says About Contemporary American Race Relations

I Was Given Lemons and I Made Lemonade: What Beyoncé’s Album Says About Contemporary American Race Relations

    The release of Lemonade brought with it a public fervor. More than any other record last year, it spurred think pieces and discussion by the public and major music publications alike. Some were quick to praise Beyoncé’s visual narrative album as a complex and textured take on feminist politics and black identity. Others founds its themes of infidelity to be nothing more than manufactured drama with the intent to sell records — an example of commercial spectacle at its absolute worst. 

     What quickly became clear was that, regardless of the kind of conversations that were being had, they were certainly being had at an alarming rate. Something about Lemonade, beyond merely its commercial significance, had struck a chord with the American cultural conscience.

     It’s hard to talk about Lemonade without mention of its creator’s cultural clout.  Beyoncé, the R&B artist and business mogul, has been at the epicenter of American culture for sometime now. With six platinum studio albums and 62 singles, Beyoncé has cemented herself as one of the most successful solo artists of the century. And Beyoncé’s relationship with the American masses – at times messy and controversial – is emblematic of something else about American authorship and how impossible it is to navigate the constructs of the American race binary. Three particular moments, isolated in this paper, each suggest something significant about contemporary race relations: 1) Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance and the subsequent White Rage that followed; 2) the release of Lemonade and the questions of authenticity that swirled around the record; and 3) Beyoncé’s loss to Adele at the Grammy’s.  Each of these moments say something unique about the racial dynamics that rendered themselves so explicitly within the past year, culminating in the emergence of a new radical right regime. 

                                                                  ***

  “So when the national anthem started playing, I was not looking at the ground. I was praying. The lord’s prayer. My hands went up in the air. I wore black gloves, to represent social power, or black power. I wore socks — not shoes —  to represent poverty. I wore a scarf around my neck to symbolize the lynchings, the hangings, that black folks when through while building this country.” 

John Carlos

      American sports institutions have long been a hotbed of racial and political tension. From the black power salutes at the Olympics in 1968, to Muhammad Ali’s anti-Vietnam speeches on University campuses, to Colin Kaepernick’s recent refusal to stand for the national anthem — the legacy of black athletes using their respective sports institutions as platforms for protest are well documented. And the reaction of the White masses is just as visible. But often this history of white violence is borne less from an ideological disagreement than from the threat posed by a black presence in spaces largely characterized by their whiteness.        Claudia Rankine, in her popular novel Citizen, details how the arena of sports is often defined by the expectations and ideologies of its white audience with an essay on Serena Williams’ treatment by the tennis umpires. Williams place in American culture runs largely parallel to Beyoncé’s: both are entertainment titans, masters of their respective crafts, and powerful wealthy Black women who are often in the spotlight. Her presence on Lemonade itself speaks to this parallel. Rankine describes how the experience of being a black woman in a white space is often itself enough to garner a reaction from the American masses. Serena becomes the victim of aggressions from line judges in several major tournaments, where a series of egregious calls over the course of a number of years altered the course of key matches. This came to a head in 2009, as Serena reacted to a bad call with an expletive tirade launched in the direction of the line judge: “I swear to God I’m fucking going to that this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat, you hear that? I swear to God!” (29). Rankine calls this reaction somewhat laudable, or at the very least, understandable. It’s a response borne from “being thrown against a sharp white background” (29).       And it was another sharp white background where the first defining moment of 2016 came for Beyoncé. On one of the most watched national events of the year, Beyoncé performed her recently released “Formation” at Super Bowl 50 in front of the largest T.V. audience of 2016, and the third biggest U.S. audience in history. After some muted and sterile performances by Coldplay and Bruno Mars, Beyoncé entered the frame, introduced by the pounding thump of a bass drum. She assumed center frame, surrounded by fire, and was quickly joined by her dancers  — all black women, dressed in a black ensembles, hair styled into afros.       Although Beyoncé’s “Formation” music video alludes strongly to issues of police violence, the Super Bowl performance itself hardly warranted much in the way of critique. Beyoncé spoke exclusively through matters of style: the afros, black clothing, and hip-hop inspired dance moves. There was nothing in the way of lyrical or spoken ideology. And yet, Conservative media was quick to react. David Clarke, a regular contributor to Fox News, posed the question: “Beyoncé in those Black Panther-type uniforms, would that be acceptable if a band, a white band came out in hoods and white sheets in the same sort of fashion?  We would be appalled and outraged” (“Interview with David Clarke”). Rush Limbaugh followed suit, suggesting that perhaps Beyoncé because Beyoncé was a woman who was probably “not a big sports fan,” she likely read an article that was recently run in the “Huffington Puffington Post — which claimed that the Carolina Panthers were the first NFL team to be unapologetically black.” Out of this confusion, “it's understandable that Beyoncé might have thought the Black Panthers were playing in the game, and hence her tribute to the Black Panthers” (The Rush Limbaugh Show).  Michelle Malkin joined the conversation on Twitter, writing, “Cuz nothing brings us all together better than angry Beyoncé shaking her ass & shouting "Negro" repeatedly.”         It is no secret that this American reaction had nothing to do with politics or overt displays of ideology, and everything to do with the performance and its proud declaration of blackness — itself a frightening threat to white bourgeois power. And it’s worth taking a moment here to reflect on Clarke’s comment, as it's the most explicit reaction to matters of black style among any of the conservative commentators. While style might not be a spoken ideology, it plays an important role in establishing and influencing one. It was the Black Panther’s who recognized this better than anybody: “This brother here, myself, all of us were born with our hair like this. And we just wear it like this. Reason for it you might say, is like a new awareness among black people that their own natural appearance, physical appearance, is beautiful,” stated one member of the Black Panther Party (Stanley). Style has the potential to disrupt norms and operate as a genuine act of subversion.       And it was this style on display at the Super Bowl that was clearly the source of the outrage. Because for every empty critique of Beyoncé’s homage to the Black panther party was another critique that framed the performance as a danger to The Great American (White) Family. Rudy Giuliani referred to the Super Bowl show as a “terrible” display of  “a bunch of people bouncing around and all strange things.” He continued, ”Let's have, you know, decent wholesome entertainment, and not use it as a platform to attack the people who, you know, put their lives at risk to save us” (“Fox and Friends”). Laura Ingraham similarly lamented the death of wholesome television: “So in ‘Formation,’ women dressed like prostitutes. That's the message to little girls today...This is only 8:43 p.m. last night, Eastern time. 8:43 — no family hour. Family hour is over. There is no family hour” (“The Laura Ingraham Show”). In his book Race Matters, Cornel West talks about the taboo subject of “black sexuality.” He writes, “Americans are obsessed with sex and fearful of black sexuality” (West 83). West claims that this fear is derived from myths about black sexuality that still persist today. Which form of these myths Beyoncé is seen for is relatively unclear: is it the “seductive temptress” Jezebel (West 83)? The “evil, manipulative bitch” Sapphire (West 83)? It hardly matters. The presence and threat of black sexuality itself is enough to garner a visceral response, enough to elicit the White rage that became so visible a sentiment in our past electoral season.        West argues that it is a cultural space occupied by both artists and athletes that presents an opportunity for a dialogue about black sexuality, that “when white and black kids buy the same billboard hits and laud the same athletic heroes the result is often a shared cultural space where some humane interaction takes place” (84). It’s easy to push back against this claim. As has been noted historically by many a cultural commentator, America has always had a relationship with black culture that has been more parasitic than symbiotic. The valorization of black music does not equate to a similar valorization of black people.        This is certainly relevant in the case of the Super Bowl, where this shared cultural space is complicated by the aging demographics of the National Football League. While the NBA has been quick to adopt youth and millennial culture as its backbone and has offered its players at least some semblance of a political platform, the NFL has taken an almost totalitarian and apolitical stance on matters of politics, and especially issues of race. This may have less to do with the political good-will of the NBA than with each institution’s respective capital audience. According to a 2015 Nielsen report, 43% of the NBA’s viewership is under 35 years old: one of the youngest fanbases of all sports. In addition, 63% of  NBA viewership was done on behalf of African-American viewers (“Hoop Dreams”).         Beyoncé’s performance at, say, the Super Bowl as opposed to the NBA Finals is different than not only in the sense of the magnitude of viewership but in the dynamics of its space. The National Football League is the same organization that’s recent decline in viewership was arguably tied almost directly to the Colin Kaepernick protests. When white America is watching, blackness seems remarkably more offensive. Perhaps nothing sums up better the extent of the white reaction more than that of Tomi Lahren, America’s blond alt-right spokesperson: “What is it they are trying to convey here. A salute to what? A group that used violence and intimidation to advance not racial equality but an overthrow of white domination?” She continues: “You’re just like President Obama, Jada Pinkett Smith, Al Sharpton, and so many others — you just can’t let America heal. Keep ripping off the historical band aid. Why be a cultural leader when you can play the victim, right?” (“The Blaze”).        Lahren’s slip here is remarkable: remarkable for the way it simplifies the ideology of one of America’s most radical, successful, and powerful black organizations; remarkable for its acknowledgement of white domination ; remarkable for its blatant acknowledgement of racial violence and the total erasure of its historical implications.       This white fear of the black body and black sexuality, ironically, strengthen the relevance and importance of Beyoncé’s project. Is not the only way to combat fear of the black body by making that same black body hypervisible? Is that even possible within the confines of an American cultural enterprise that puts a premium on black style but continually devalues and destroys the black body? How can black creators resist a framework that “either liberates black people from white control in order to imprison them in racist myths or confines blacks to white ‘respectability’ while they make their own sexuality a taboo subject?” (88). 

                                                             ***

     Months after her Super Bowl performance, the release of Lemonade drew another wave of reactions spanning the full breadth of American cultural commentators. The conversations this time had nuance, lacking some of the vitriol that came with the world stage of Super Bowl 50. And yet, the questions that replaced the outrage seemed troublingly loaded, complex, and difficult to answer.      In her article “Why We Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Critique Beyoncé,” Zeba Blay argues that it’s okay to have conversations about Beyoncé’s position in contemporary culture. These conversations further “important discussions about the ways in which we underestimate femme feminist women, about the roles that capitalism and consumerism play in Beyoncé’s work, and about what we should (and shouldn’t) expect from our feminist and pop cultural icons” (n.p.).      This points to an interesting phenomenon: so much of the conversation surrounding Lemonade became less concerned with the content of the record than a conversation and critique of Beyoncé: her identity, her role in American life, the authenticity of her messages. When was the last album where so much of the criticism hinged on questions of authenticity and authorial intent? Infidelity, a major thematic strand of Lemonade, was often central to this critique. The media and critical commentary was quick to frame the album’s narrative as a commercial ploy to sell records, a cheap attempt at manufacturing an artificial drama between two music industry titans. Yet, this is a gross simplification of the scope of Lemonade’s thematic ambition. Much of what Jenna Wortham had to say about the “Formation” video rings true of the record as a whole, it’s not just a record about police brutality, or infidelity —  “it’s about the entirety of the black experience in America in 2016, which includes standards of beauty, (dis)empowerment, culture, and the shared parts of our history” (n.p.).  Lemonade borrows quite heavily from contemporary poet Warsan Shire. Her poem “For Women Who are Difficult to Love” is recited by Beyoncé as the voiceover track for many of the visual album’s most pivotal and evocative narrative moments: like when Beyoncé walks a deserted street, baseball bat in tow, smashing car windows. Shire grapples with many of the same questions Beyoncé does: how does any black woman manage to level the varying identity expectations continually imposed upon them? How are feelings of reactionary violence (“so what did you want to do love / split his head open?”) reconciled with adherence to traditional notions of femininity (“and you tried to change didn’t you? / closed your mouth more / tried to be softer / prettier”)? (n.p.)      And yet, the aforementioned inquiry makes sense, and is almost impossible to ignore.  Lemonade remains available today exclusively on Tidal, a streaming service that Beyoncé and Jay-Z have joint ownership in. Both artists are industry moguls. And this was the year where a dissatisfaction with the status-quo became a rallying cry for both sides of the political spectrum. It is worth asking: how do we remedy questions of capital intent with those of aesthetic authenticity? And in their influential work “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” Adorno & Horkheimer frame the answer quite simply — you can’t. Art made in the era of mass industry is art made for the purpose of consumption. Mass produced art is “nothing other than style,” and incapable of “creating truth” (103). It’s purpose is purely industrial. It exists solely for mass consumption.       This critique was raised not only by the white masses but among prominent critics and writers as well. In bell hooks blog post “Moving Beyond Pain,” she argues that we cannot divorce the process of listening/viewing Lemonade from its status as a commodity object. This, however, is not necessarily a problem for hooks. While hooks acknowledges that the “celebration” of black female bodies is also impossible to differentiate from their “exploitation,” she differentiates that the commercial intent of Beyoncé’s record is quite different than many other commercial contexts (“Moving Beyond Pain” n.p.). This is commercial art created for the sake of ascribing value to black women.      And yet, hooks has reservations about Beyoncé’s brand of feminism. In this context of high-stakes relationship drama, the black woman remains in the “victim” position to which her only escape is violence. Hooks states, quite controversially, that violence “does not create positive change” (“Moving Beyond Pain” n.p.). Additionally, Beyoncé’s conception of feminism lacks an intersectional approach, and is situated closer to the Hillary-Clinton-class-enemy brand of feminism than a true radical feminist ideology. Beyoncé adopts a contemporary conception of feminism that ultimately is not rooted in resistance in patriarchal domination but which is tied to it; and that is concerned ultimately with matters of capital self-interest. Ultimately, hooks questions the merit of the fictive space that Lemonade occupies: a world in which words like “Intuition, Denial, Forgiveness, Hope, [and] Reconciliation” are seen as effective combatants to racism and misogyny. In 2016, mainstream feminist ideals ultimately rang hollow: the wage gap feminism of the Democrats was not enough to rally a progressive base that wanted something lasting and systemic; and the radical right, angered by the very idea of a woman president, retaliated with fervent vulgarity. While hooks ultimately finds Lemonade as falling short of its feminist potential, is not the very fact that it puts such a value on black life, on black representation, and on the pure celebration of black culture a radical politics in and of itself?       At the conclusion of her article, hooks asks a question of Lemonade that speaks to a point about black women authorship in general: how can one move beyond celebrating pain and instead look to how it can be transcended? What does a transcendent feminist politics look like? How does black authorship escape the condition of a parasitic consumer culture?                                                              ***

On February 12, 2017, Adele’s album 21 won album of the year at the Grammy Awards. In her speech, she talked about why she couldn’t accept the prize:

“...but tonight winning this kind of feels full circle, and like a bit of me has come back to myself but I can’t possibly accept this award, and I’m very humbled and very gracious but, the artist of my life is Beyoncé, and this album to me —  the Lemonade album —  is just so monumental, it’s just so monumental, and so well thought out, and so beautiful, and soul bearing. And we all got to see another side to you that you don’t always let us see. And we appreciate that. And all us artists here, we fucking adore you. You are our light, and the way you made me and my friends feel, the way you made my black friends feel, is empowering, and you make them stand up for themselves. And we love you, we always have, and we always will.” (“Adele’s Grammy Acceptance Speech”)

     Adele’s speech is important for a couple reasons. The first is that it speaks to a critique that has become rather common of the Grammy’s the past couple of years: victories by black artists have been confined to the Hip-hop, Urban Album, and R&B categories. Not a single black artist has won album of the year since 2004; a black woman hasn’t won the category since Lauryn Hill did so in 1999. Meanwhile, the last few years have featured some high-profile snubs, including Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly in 2016, Beyoncé (again) in 2015, Kendrick Lamar (again) in 2014, and Frank Ocean in 2013. The Grammy’s failure to recognize the relevance and cultural significance of certain artists is partially the reason why it has lost some credibility in the past few years, with several high-profile artists refusing to attend the ceremony, and others speaking out publicly regarding their declining cultural clout and position as an outdated, archaic institution. It’s become impossible to define what it exactly is that can win you an Album of the Year Grammy. It is not solely commercial success (see: Beck’s win two years ago) neither is it totally critical reception. What you’d guess is that the recipe lies somewhere in between: an album that has popular appeal and that is critically viable; that speaks to a certain condition of the American politic at that time; that promises to reshape cultural trends in a way that is both significant and lasting.      So what wrong? That inquiry feels almost ludicrous in a year where the stakes felt so high. It’s difficult to reconcile a relatively meaningless spectacle like the Grammy’s with the current American sociopolitical turmoil, where the threat of violence against marginalized people is real and tangible. In that way, maybe hooks was right: there is a limit to what the fictive imagination can do and say. But sometimes, the politics that play out on the small stage say something profound about the politics that play out in the midst of our real and frightening reality. They lead us to conversations, to discomfort, and to the promise of something different.      And that brings us back to Adele’s speech. Somehow, Adele’s awkward and imperfect display of appreciation for Beyoncé and her art made startlingly visible what was so obviously playing out before our very eyes. The moment Adele marked her “black friends” was the moment that the thematic concerns of Beyoncé’s album became visible on the world stage. And on this world stage, Beyoncé’s album made sense only as one thing — a “black” album. And that was, arguably, Beyoncé’s intention. But despite the declining clout of the Grammy’s, the album’s loss felt profound. And glaringly obvious. No other outcome made more rational sense with the context of contemporary American race relations. And that’s why it matters so much       As easy as it is to fault Adele for the deficiencies in her speech, it’s also sort of admirable for the way she is able to cut through the codes and signifiers that even Beyoncé seemed unable to do. In her own acceptance speech for Lemonade’s win in the Best Urban Album Category, she stated: 

My intention for the film and album was to create a body of work that would give a voice to our pain, our struggles, our darkness and our history. To confront issues that make us uncomfortable. It’s important to me to show images to my children that reflect their beauty, so they can grow up in a world where they look in the mirror — first to their own families as well as the news, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the White House and the Grammys — and see themselves. And have no doubt that they are beautiful, intelligent and capable. This is something I want for every child of every race. And I feel it’s vital that we learn from the past and recognize our tendencies to repeat our mistakes. (“Beyoncé’s Grammy Acceptance Speech”)

      Beyoncé employs an “us” that is shifting and uncertain: sometimes clearly alluding to the black experience, at other times alluding to a collective American experience, and even, at one point, alluding to “every child of every race.” She certainly is not entering any All Lives Matter territory here, but is it fair to call her an activist?  Beyoncé speaks about race like an American who is afraid to say the wrong thing. And although her performance and her album spoke very clearly in matters of style, it’s strange to see Beyoncé speak so carefully around matters of race, of police brutality, of problematic gender expectations and matters of black beauty, of violence against black lives. It’s clear what she’s talking about, but the ideologies remain invisible, unspoken — to use Morrison’s phrase, “playing in the dark.” And that seems strange for an artist that seemed so concerned with, in the context of their art and performances, making visible the black American experience.        Lemonade goes to great lengths to subvert our concept of the literary imagination. Less talked about than it’s visions of blackness are its spots of whiteness: like when Beyoncé jumps to her death in an all-white dress, or when she’s surrounded by a blindingly white mise-en-scene. It’s an album where the black/white binary is turned on its head; where blackness takes center stage and pushes whiteness to the periphery — but where the threat of the white imagination is still present. And here we are on another national stage, with whiteness somehow pushing Beyoncé to the periphery, the world re-orienting itself. Despite Adele’s best intentions, her refusal of the award means little. What does it mean for a white women to refuse an award and offer it to another artist’s work because she understands its importance for her black friends?      I think again of Serena Williams and Rankine’s essay: of being “thrown against a sharp white background.” On Lemonade and it’s most popular single “Sorry,” -- viewed over 213 million times on YouTube -- Serena Williams makes an appearance. And although she doesn’t appear in any other songs, her appearance is memorable because, like Beyoncé, she is so clearly a symbol for everything Lemonade is trying to do. For what she represents to American culture and the American people. For her tendency to inspire white rage and overt displays of racism (see: Serena’s appearances at Indian Wells). For her position as a successful black woman and the significance that holds to other women and girls of color.       And I wonder, in the context of the Grammy Awards, where that moment of rage — one that looked like Serena yelling at the line judge — was for Beyoncé. Why was it Adele who got to speak on her behalf? Looking back on Kanye’s infamous Taylor Swift incident, it seems oddly more sensible now, less like an awkward and personal attack on Taylor Swift than a genuine but misguided effort to right an injustice.        The Grammy Awards affair makes it again clear how impossible it is to define what “success” means for black authorship in America. If a genuine radical politics is the goal for black authorship, than why does it matter who wins what popularity award? And adversely, 2016 was a year where not just black texts, but black texts about race were tremendously successful commercially. And what did these commercial accomplishments mean for black and marginal people? It seems difficult to answer anything in a time of such complete and uncertain political chaos. But if it’s true that the “subject of the dream is the dreamer,” is there anything else to do than dream (Morrison 30)? Maybe the fictive world holds more weight than we care to believe.

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