#Like in the episode I just listened to he’s having a female NPC have a crush on one of the main characters

[waterberry-strawmelon]

it really sucks when the creator(s) of something you really like clearly have some unchecked biases that leak into their work, cuz you know they’d probably try and correct their behavior if they had it pointed out to them, but they’re just so oblivious that some little comments drop here and there that just brilliantly showcase how entrenched they are in their sphere of privilege to recognize it

[honestlyvan]

What is dendro and who are your blorbos in it? :o

Infinite Dendrogram is a web novel/light novel series written by Sakon Kaidou that began publishing in 2015 that has a 12 episode anime covering the first five volumes and an ongoing manga adaptation by Kami Imai. It takes place inside a virtual MMO of the same name, filled with fully sapient AI NPCs called "tians", and all player characters, "Masters", are equipped with adaptive AI companions called "Embryos" that range from non-sentient weapons to fully sapient partners that are born from a profound desire their Master has, and evolve to fulfill their wishes, justified as them "adapting" to the Master's preferred play style.

It's bonkers good, has extremely tight power scaling and a well thought-out magic system, intriguing lore and absolutely stacks and stacks of the best girls in shonen. I haven't actually ran the numbers but I feel like the supporting cast is majority female and out of all of them only two could reasonably be considered love interests for the protagonist, the major recurring ones being either his peers or his mentors.

It fucking rules, nonny. I am spoiled by this series. I'm never gonna be able to go back to manga. Dendro has so many well-written, strongly characterised female characters who are nothing like one another and in fact occupy a lot of the archetypes male characters would in other stories.

Anyway! Onto the blorbos! Unmarked spoilers for volumes 1-21 and the entire anime from hereon out!!

Ray Starling & Nemesis

"Protagonist-kun? Really, Van?" Yes, really. Listen. Ray fucking rules. As a Maiden's Master, he is mechanically identified as giving way too much of a shit, and a lot of his personality is shaped by his attempts at harnessing the compassion that is too big for his body to good ends. Ray is very clear-headed about his strengths and weaknesses, and yet he still develops into a suicide bomb of a PC because he just really fucking hates people getting hurt.

He's humble and good-natured, engagingly intelligent without dipping over into annoying smart guy territory, and Kaidou's Girl Respecter streak has rubbed off on him a lot because Ray is chill about having female friends in a way that is startlingly grounded. He's a good ridealong character. He's sweet. He is a good lad.

But also! I did say my blorbo was Ray with Nemesis. And that's because Nemesis helps bring out nuance in Ray and also explain the core idea behind Embryo's so strongly I don't think it makes sense to read Ray without the context Nemesis provides for us. While Ray is chill and humble, Nemesis is exuberant and positively radiates self-esteem. While Ray is passionate and driven by his compassion, Nemesis is calculating and goal-oriented.

All of Ray's features that could be a hindrance to his need to do good, to be good to other people, are cleverly externalised in Nemesis, who is reined in by Ray's mastery but also made charming, relatable and loveable through her. She is gluttonous and hungry for praise, but she is also bold-hearted and principled. She's fearless in battle, but she is also very committed to Ray's safety.

The two of them truly do feel like two halves of a complementary whole, like she is a shard of his soul externalised and given a voice of her own -- many features Ray has that he suppresses or doesn't feel comfortable revealing about himself like his need to do things, be involved and take up space are expressed in her, and then given space to breathe through Nemesis' development as a character. She is herself, but she is also Ray -- and through their love and respect of each other, we understand both of them better.

Shu Starling

We very quickly discover that the reason Ray is so relatively hinged is because all the batshit protagonist perks went to his older brother. Shu is introduced as a chill and deeply unserious dude playing in a bear-shaped mascot suit, explained away by him forgetting to change the presents on his PC and thus it making it look just like him -- a real problem for a guy who IRL is both a former child actor and singer, as well as a known junior league martial artist and a genius level intellect whose career was being followed with bated breath during his university years.

To say that it doesn't come as a surprise that Shu is secretly one of Altar's (his and Ray's starting kindgom's) Big Three -- both a holder of a near-mythical Superior Job and a seventh form Superior Embryo -- would be an understatement. Shu Starling is a slacker genius with the power to punch reality so hard it shatters like glass.

However. Just like how Ray manages to be grounded despite being mechanically identified as giving too much of a shit, Shu is very relaxed for someone set apart by his skills from other people. He's not conceited about his own intelligence, but he's also not overly humble about it, and while he does try to keep a low profile and avoid expectations, he's has his own gentle and caring side too. You'd think a guy with narrative weight like him would be an albatross around the plot that would invalidate major parts of it but in practice Shu's power set limits him to circumstances where the power to punch reality so hard it shatters like glass is actually needed. For a guy that can solve almost any problem with his fists, he would really prefer not to.

Shu is mostly utilised as a comic relief -- his overwhelming genius contrasting with how little seems to be going on between his big fluffy ears being played for laughs pretty much constantly -- but as the stakes are raised, Shu reveals himself to be the "reluctantly reliable" sort. He's a piece of shit bear, but heroic kindheartedness runs in the family, and you can really tell where Ray got a lot of his habitual do-gooder streak from.

Xunyu

Speaking of the best girls in the fucking series -- Xunyu is introduced in the first arc as a Superior from the faraway kingdom of Huang He and a real goddamn troll who in her first proper appearance is already picking a fight with Shu even though she's a specially invited guest of the Altean royal family in the Arena in Gideon. Despite her irreverence and mischievousness, Xunyu is quite calculating and farseeing -- a "ludo" player who enjoys Dendro on a primarily mechanical basis, and likes to antagonise her opponents just so she has an easier time pulling off her multi-step, preparation-heavy strategies on them more easily.

Her player character is also a giant fuckoff eight-foot jiangshi while her actual player is a nine-year old girl. She's one of the first "oh Kaidou is a gamer gamer" characters, because her behaviour and mind games while she's in dueling mode are so reminiscent of pro wrestling trash talk, it's super delightful.

Outside of combat, Xunyu is cheerfully mischievous, and loves teasing people, but despite her bluntness she is genuinely very sweet, being both a graceful loser as well as a committed friend. She ends up becoming one of the many mentors for Ray, as well as being good friends with a fair few significant characters -- including many tians, despite her being someone who mostly thinks of Dendro as a game. She's not overly precocious, but being one of the Masters who are less emotionally invested in the world she ends up having a real grounding presence. I love her so much.

Figaro

Kaidou loves doing a thing where a character is introduced in a very sinister way through the rumours being told about them, and then their actual appearance contrasting with that, as you realise that a lot of the gossip is the result of tians not knowing how to read player motivations. Figaro is one of the first examples of this -- we hear that he is the Over Gladiator and one of Altar's Big Three, and that he really left them in a lurch during the war that happened just before Ray started playing because he didn't want to fight beside anyone, making him come across as haughty and blood-crazed. When we finally meet him, he's solo-raiding one of the hardest dungeons in the kingdom.

The reality behind the legends is that Figaro is, in fact, just extremely awkward. He's very sick in real life, and turned to Dendro for some escapism, but it hasn't helped much with his awkwardness because he ended up extremely invested in the mechanics of the game, and loves nothing more than throwing himself at crazy hard challenges to the point where he spends most of his time either dueling people in the arena or raiding hard-ass dungeons solo. He is, despite the intimidating appearance and the occasional blood rage, very kind-hearted and soft-spoken, and his friendship with Shu is genuinely very sweet and humanising for both of them.

(He also gets one of my favourite romances in the genre ever.)

Tsukuyo Fuso

The last of Altar's Big Three, Tsukuyo Fuso fucking sucks<3 She's childish, greedy and manipulative, and the leader of an actual fucking cult called the Lunar Society both inside Dendro and out in the real world. In real life, Fuso is Ray's upperclassman at TokyoU, and while there are some shenanigans to be had there, her influence within Dendro is so large that she kind of stays on the outskirts of the plot, causing problems for everyone. She is awful in every way and I love her.

But don't let this give you the impression that Fuso is a villain, though -- she is also a Maiden's Master like Ray, mechanically identified as giving way too much of a shit, she does authentically want good for her people and everyone else (which, y'know, she thinks would be easier if they just joined Lunar Society! :D) and her machiavellianism... well, I can't say it's exactly reined in by her better angels, but she does also do a lot of good in her own deranged way. She's both an antagonist and an ally, and she's not above getting in the line of fire if it accomplishes a greater good. We love a good morally gray girlboss in this household.

Kaga Jubei

Jubei is much less significant than almost any other character on this list, but she gets to be here because she is the platonic ideal of a blood knight. She fully gives Figaro a run for his money, and I cannot tell you how much I love that that particular archetype of a blood-fevered warrior went to a female character. She is the principle antagonist of volume 17, hailing from the kingdom of Tenchi, and over the course of the volume she keeps challenging Ray and his team because she's his biggest fan, and fucking loves the idea of the two of them physically tearing each other to pieces, to be challenged and to defeat or be defeated by someone she considers an inspiration. She just really wants to have fun, and has a powerful competitive streak that is fed by the fact that inside Dendro, Masters are functionally immortal, allowing her to throw herself with violence at problems to force them into giving her what she wants with her bare hands.

Outside of a blood rage, Jubei actually has a quite mellow, calm personality, but while this gives her a bit of a calculating streak, as far as the physical fighters in the series goes, she's one of the more instinctive and unfettered ones. She's also extremely remorseless and willing to play dirty with people who won't give her a honest fight, and will only resort to using her words where she doesn't think her swords can get the message through on their own.

On top of me just really, really loving a violent fight baka character, and thinking that this series is good at writing fight baka characters (there's also B3 who just barely missed out on being on this list), I love that the most fight-baka of them all in the series so far is a girl, and I love that she gets to be almost a dark mirror of Ray. I can't wait her to show up more in the next big arc. Teenage girls should be allowed to cut things with their swords just because they want to, forever and ever.

Sechs Würfel

Last but very much not the least, Sechs is a major antagonist and Shu's main rival, and he makes me lose my goddamn mind. We hear repeatedly about both his criminal escapades and the legendary duel that finally sent the worst criminal in all seven kingdoms into the gaol, and then when he finally appears in the plot, Sechs turns out to be the platonic ideal of just some guy, to the point where near damn everyone makes the mistake of assuming his soft-spokenness and aversion to conflict make him harmless. Even his allies are a little bit disturbed by how comfortable and proficient at violence Sechs is, in contrast to his unassuming personality.

This is because Sechs' whole deal can be most easily explained as him being an extreme hardcore never-drop-character roleplayer who just happens to be playing a villain. His way of embracing the infinite possibility of Dendro is to take it upon himself to deliberately break every rule and do every bad thing enabled by the mechanics, a task which is greatly eased by his Embryo making him into a slime monster polymorph that renders him functionally immortal and gives him extensive shapeshifting powers. His system of ethics is effectively upside down as applied to himself, which creates the absolute funniest contrast with the way he remains polite and accommodating towards other people, and commands a surprising amount of both loyalty and admiration from the people of Illegal Frontier, his guild made up exclusively of criminal Masters.

As befitting of a shapeshifter and a guy living and dying by his own bit, Sechs' sense of identity is actually extremely fractured, which is the driving force between his rivalry with Shu. Sechs does, after all, spend the majority of the time defining himself through violating the rules made by other people, whereas Shu will do no less than what he wants to, ever. The way their IRL circumstances -- fate's favourite little guy and the Unfavourite of his whole bloodline -- contrast giving them common ground and the way the roles they choose to inhabit in Dendro clash makes for excellent drama. The Weird Friendship between Shu the player and Sechs the player in contrast to the bitter rivalry between the King of Destruction and the King of Crime is genuinely my favourite feature of the ongoing myth arc, and I can't wait to see where it goes in the future.

[aciddaffodil]

Summer 2024- What I Dropped

Wistoria : Wand and Sword

I was so here for this anime; the animation is stellar and magic society interesting. A very simple concept of MC wanting to be with his childhood friend but doesn't have a lick of magic. Cool- until there's no likeable characters and it just feels like its showing off flashy sakuga fight scenes. Not to mention the fucking fantasy racism with the dwarves which is just...gross? Who knows, I may binge the rest of it once its fully out? I definitely want to try watching it again.

No Longer Allowed to Live in This World

A Dazai-like Sensei character does not successfully die by double suicide with his beloved and is reincarnated into a fantasy world. He constantly uses his power of negativity and absorbing sleeping pills/poisons as his ability against monsters. Everyone fawns over him, and he can offer some good advice...on occasion. I just didn't see the point to keep watching it and dropped it after 5 episodes.

Failure Frame

The Isekai(?) Overpowered MC who is dark and edgy and wants to cause ruin upon the Goddess who brought him to this fantasy world, and most of his classmates who abandoned him to die as a "low" ranker with skills that cause harm. What bothered me most was 1) the 3D CG shots just don't blend and make all the monsters look awful and its BLAUGH and 2) having to hear about men npc's wanting to rape a female npc character just is annoying and gross.

Plus-Sized Elf

I think the only thing noteworthy is all the workout advice in it- of which I won't retain anything of it and the plus-sized fanservice exists. I personally just didn't want to waste my time with it anymore even though the episodes are short.

2.5-Dimensional Seduction

It was a cute nerdy experience of them first meeting but honestly, I did not vibe with this show. I'm sure this show is enjoyable, as people have compared it to Dress Up Darling and like it.

The Ossan Newbie Adventurer, Trained to Death by the Most Powerful Party, Became Invincible

I gave this like 5 episodes? But finding out the dude is actually super over-powered and not just trained to death...was disappointing. For a trashy fantasy series, it was pretty good and fun to watch. I just have a habit of rage quitting if something frustrates me or if you listen to how cheesy and horrendous this opening is, that will do it as well lmao. Rick and Raenette's friendship is really sweet. I think him having the same dream as these S-tier adventurers is cool and I do hope they achieve their goals by the end of the series.

Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World?

I attempted to watch this 3 times, but it kept putting me to sleep so I dropped it.

Narenare Cheer for You

The only P.A. Works anime I've ever dropped. It was because of how irritating the line art is in color and how ALL the outlines of literally everything is in color. And when it comes to specific scenes, it gets muddled and that's why I couldn't stomach it past 2 episodes. I'm sure it's a cute cheerleading anime but the style of it was awful to me personally. WHY CAN"T THERE BE CRISP OUTLINES WHYYYYYYY.

Tasuketsu- Fate of the Majority

Ah yes, death games premise and where deaths aren't permanent cause you can ask a question and have loopholes which take away from the emotional impacts some character deaths have. I.e., the protagonist's best friend who came to life again with no reasoning behind it. The rules are so dumb but the power system interesting, I just didn't care to keep watching.

____________________________________________________________

It is frankly terrifying how much anime I'm keeping up with this season...my count is at 26 and even the most mediocre I have brainwashed myself to not give up on cause they all have some sort of redeeming factor. CURSES.

[piastrinorris]

quite literally nobody asked for this and it's a very niche crossover but this is what i think the spicy six's favourite aew wrestlers are/what each one's relationship is with wrestling

apologies in advance, i got really into writinig these lol.

starting off with the person who i think really got a lot of them into wrestling, robin. i like to think her whole sexuality awakening happened after she couldn't sleep one night, she tried to sneak downstairs to get herself a snack but her dad was up late watching wwe. transfixed by the female wrestlers on the screen, her dad thankfully mistook it for an interest in the sport and started letting her stay up late on wwe nights to teach her all about wrestling - the moves, the lore, the trickery of performance. she does end up loving the technical side of things soon enough, her and her dad go to a lot of indie matches together. she started watching aew when cm punk returned, but her favourite very quickly became nyla rose, especially when she learned about nyla being the first openly trans wrestler in the american pro circuit.

nancy initially doesn't take an interest in wrestling when robin starts trying to teach her about it. she thinks that it's all staged and she doesn't understand how people can believe that it's real. then one night she walks into the room to see robin watching dr britt baker, d.m.d. nancy asks robin isn't it misleading to tell people she's a doctor? robin explains that britt baker is an actively practicing dentist who also happens to show up and wrestle 1-3 times a week. nancy starts taking an interest in britt's fighting style specifically - something about being someone who helps others in need by day and a badass who throws people around at night is nancy's dream. nancy doing so is also robin's dream, but a very different kind. robin finds it hilarious when nancy starts cheering for specific moves, ooh-ing when moves look and sound especially painful, and continuing to watch long after britt's matches have ended.

eddie is also a wrestling sceptic, but for a different reason. he doesn't understand how people can watch something where the entire premise is grown men in skimpy outfits putting their hands all over each other and take it seriously. enter the obvious favourite for eddie: danhausen. eddie completely embodies that chaotic little gremlin man. he runs around doing the t-rex hands and the stare, 'cursing' everyone that defies him. he makes 'very nice' and 'very evil' patches that he puts on each side of his vest. steve draws the line at eddie trying to recreate danhausen's face paint, but he does find it funny when eddie shouts "send hook!" at him as he gets a bag of chips thrown at his face. he starts letting robin teach him about other wrestlers' backstories, feuds etc and he gets super invested. robin starts noticing some familiar-sounding lore from the npcs in eddie's dnd campaigns, but she doesn't call him out on it, she's just happy he's taking an interest.

steve certainly has a soft spot for hook, not just for the hookhausen parallel but also the whole legacy of hook being taz's kid, his commitment to the bit of being silent and stoic (aside from with danhausen ofc), his overall performance. but above all else, steve loves watching mjf. it started off with robin excitedly telling him about the cm punk/mjf rivalry, and he'd happily listen to her ramble and he'd watch with her if they were hanging out together, but he never went out of his way to watch it. apart from the dog collar match, of course. he offered to cover that pay-per-view, which robin had to really fight herself not to tease him about. robin's interest in mjf dwindles after his rivalry with cm punk, but steve gets really into the mjf/wardlow arc. he watches every episode of dynamite and rampage, and every ppv, just in the hopes for crumbs in their development.

jonathan has been into wrestling for pretty much his whole life. will even says he used to take inspiration from characters he and jonathan would make up, but jonathan's characters would always be wrestling personas he always wished he could perform as someday. jonathan prefers the indie circuit most of all, he isn't so keen on how wwe operate, but he watches njpw and aew religiously and, more importantly, silently. one day, when robin's telling the group about the bullet club, she gets hangman adam page and adam cole mixed up. jonathan quietly corrects her and her jaw drops. she starts shouting at and shaking him asking why he never told her sooner, which nancy soon puts a stop to, reminding robin that she's gonna scare him off. they chat away for hours over it, none of them have seen jonathan talk this animatedly about anything and steve jokes that none of them would have gotten dragged into being wrestling fans if this had all happened sooner. jonathan's all-time favourite pro is kenny omega, but he's pleased to see cesaro claudio castagnoli out of wwe, too.

argyle just kinda passively watches any wrestling that jonathan does, he isn't especially into any particular feuds or backstories, sometimes he asks jonathan what certain moves are called or whether he's seen this wrestler fight another that he happens to know the name of. however, whenever willow nightingale is on the screen, argyle is hyp. no. tised. no strain of weed has ever rendered him as incapacitated as watching her. the others start making a game out of what they can do to mess with argyle for as long as she's fighting. jonathan brags one time about how he'd saved up to go watch an indie show in new york and so he'd actually watched her perform live and argyle still asks him about it.

[emiko-matsui]

Recommendations for new podcasts <3

IF YOU WANT SHORTER, FUNNIER DESCRIPTIONS BUT THE SAME PODCASTS, GO TO MY PROFILE UNDER THE PODCAST RECOMMENDATIONS HASHTAG

Alice Isn't Dead: this is a horror/sci fi scripted podcast. it's only advertised as a horror podcast and i think that you will enjoy it much more if you look at it from both genres. it's a fantastic wlw story with a poc main character with anxiety. it has some terrifying and beautiful quotes. it also comes from the same creators as welcome to nightvale. if you like horror and lore stuff i recommend you check it out! (also definitely check it out if you're gay)

My Brother, My Brother and Me: three brothers starts a podcast in 2010 to keep them from drifting apart. over 500 episodes and 11 years later they are trapped in the podcast still. one of the aspects of the show is the brothers going onto yahoo answers and now, they have outlived yahoo answers. but jokes aside, this podcast is full of warmth and i've never met a person who hasn't laughed (out loud) while listening. and hey, if you're looking for a podcast to listen to when you fall asleep or if you zone out a lot, this is the one for you! you can zone out anywhere and have just as much context as if you hadn't, and it makes the podcast no less enjoyable.

What'sHerName: just listen to this podcast, just do it. it's about women forgotten by history and two female historians finally telling them. every episode they talk about a new woman and have an expert on the show about that woman's life and history. the vibe of the show is so calm and it asks question that are large in a serene way.

True Crime And Cocktails: so you take the world's most famous unsolved cases, often covered in netflix specials. their first season covers the unsolved mysteries episodes, but the women that host this podcasts does a lot more research than their sources. so if you like long episodes, unsolved crimes, and drunk best friends give this a listen. yeah, did i mention they're drinking during the entire time?

Sawbones: as the official description says, dr sydnee mcelroy and her husband justin delve into the twisted history of medicine. to a lot of people medical history sounds like an incredibly boring subject, that includes me, but then i listened to sawbones. the first episode alone talks about trepanation, or to put it simply drilling holes in your head to fix your illness. this isn't the history of medicine as we know it. this is the history of the most fucked up things we used to do and call medicine.

The Adventure Zone: ask anyone who's listened what they feel about it and you'll get answers after answers after answers of how profoundly beautiful this story that a family managed to create. how it's one of the most beautiful stories ever heard, with a fantastic score, and quotes that rip your heart every time you hear them. and then you put the podcast on and hear three brothers and their dad playing dungeons and dragons while making infinite dick jokes, dunking on every single npc their brother creates, and meets a man named barry bluejeans. our oldest brother fell in love with the grim reaper. our middlest brother swallowed an all-powerful pink rock. our dad almost fucked a plant. welcome to the adventure zone.

The Magnus Archives: it's a horror scripted podcast! every episode is standalone but becomes more plot heavy the further into the show you come. every episode has a creepy overtone but some episodes will be calmer and some episodes will be more terror heavy. this depends entirely on your personal fears. it has a genuinely cool narrative and gets pretty lore heavy by the later seasons (if that's positive or negative is up to you). the characters includes a brown bisexual asexual man, a blind lesbian woman, and a fat gay man. every episode includes trigger warnings.

Very Really Good: kurtis conner is a professional youtuber and standup comedian. for fun he does a podcast on sundays where he talks about... whatever. it isn't tied to either his comedic career or youtube profession just a thing he does on the side. the early episodes are more podcast centric while the later episodes are more youtube centric. it's a calm listen i recommend if you want something to have on and not engage in.

(if u want episode recommendations for these podcasts, check the replies)

[lyrebright]

Over the past two work days, I got through the last chunk of TMA S1 episodes I had left, and got through the first two episodes of S2.

Those S2 episodes will get their own post about my thoughts, but here I just want to ramble about how I felt approaching the season finale.

MAG033: I actually posted about starting this episode a few days back; I won't reiterate my thoughts on the opening when they're already there in my liveblog tag.

That said: it's still really funny.

The actual content of the statement actually did manage to live up to the absolute banger of an opening though; in a stunning display of memory that I rarely possess I do in fact remember the Lukas family being mentioned and involved in another statement and it seems they are, indeed, just That Fucked Up.

Rumour come out: Does Institue Sponsors Is Spooky?

How badly did I just age my online presence with that.

MAG034: another live statement!

Finally, I have context to the anatomy students I've had mentioned. I've literally had no context except that there are anatomy students in TMA somewhere and my friends stan them, apparently, so this was a big moment for me. Very exciting.

Idk what the teacher's problem was I support these inhuman monstrosities getting an education.

Could've done without the teeth apple maybe.

ANOTHER FUCKED UP BOOKS EPISODE (minus fucked up book?)

omg baby gerard. little shitty teen gerard.

Knowing things I know now from the season finale I am looking back at it like Hmm because honestly outside of 1) baby gerard and 2) the closing statement it didn't really stand out that much to me?

(A friend informed me that Mr Smirke was like a real dude tho so :0)

Speaking of the closing statement: I see you delivery guys. I see you.

I know we literally get it confirmed that these delivery guys are Those Delivery Guys but I sussed it out immediately!! Prommy!! I am very smart.

I was listening to MAG036 as I was doing a second coat on a door frame I'd painted the day before and a little beetle was very determined to crawl into my fresh paint and that did not help my experience with this episode.

Might have enhanced it in a way, though?

Just a solid spooky Ugh from the statement though Jon in the closing statement bringing up Vampire Guy and saying that his female companion seemed familiar...i was not given enough of a description of her in any way to lay claim to that same familiarity so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

spiders. Hmm.

And that table. God. I'll get more into my thoughts about it later. It'll be more relevant around the actual finale.

MAG037: confirmation about the delivery men! Good to have

Gertrude FR What Was Up With You

(The finale has only given me more questions)

Jon's repeated stating of how tired he is across the past few episodes has me ):

MAG038: this episode was so mean

I can't believe this cursed piece of monster furniture literally stole this man's husband.

if you or a loved one has been victimised by homophobic furniture, you may be entitled to

trauma

I'm gonna be upset about this forever.

This is the npc statement I'm choosing to Stay Mad about

God I was so caught up in homophobic ceramics I forgot: hello third mike.

I've been helpfully informed there's only like, four Mikes I need to keep straight, but that is still honestly entirely too many Michaels.

What Jonny Sims has in writing talent he lacks in the ability to name characters things other than Michael (or some variation of)

The ending to this episode blew my goddamn eardrums out I swear

Time for the fun stuff though!

:D

Actually you know what. The finale episodes get their own post. Hang on.

[biteghost]

How do you come up with so many cool characters?? All of your OCs seem so vibrant and fleshed out. Do you have a specific process for developing them, or do they just kinda come to you mostly formed? I find I struggle with building a compelling OCs for D&D games & would love to hear your thoughts on character development.

(This answer got long, sorry.) This is a super nice sentiment, I’m happy you think my characters are all cool and unique!!

As far as process goes, uh, it depends on the character? I’ve spent a long time (years) rewiring my brain when it comes to what I think about when creating OCs. They don’t usually come to me fully formed - I get an idea in my head about a concept, and then over like a week or even months of fiddling I end up with a character for that concept.

A lot of the time my characters are simply people I wanted to see more of in media as a kid! Mostly, female characters I actually relate to or are as nuanced and messy as their male cast members, haha... (It was a trip when I realized in high school that I didn’t hate female characters - it was actually that none of them were written as well as the cool boys in the anime series I liked, haha! Be the change you want to see in the world, basically.)

Inspiration for characters (and stories for them to be part of) come from a lot of places. An easy piece of advice is to make an effort to intake media you like! Read new comics, watch new movies and television shows, read books, play video games, listen to music and obsessively memorize the lyrics - hell, obsessively learn everything there is to know about black holes or public domain characters (that’s what I did, lol...)!

(Note: ’New’ meaning new to YOU - you don’t need to only be partaking of media that’s created in 2021 - you can find a lot to love in media that was created before your time, or for generations before you!)

I must reiterate: intake new media that you ENJOY! You don’t have to like all the same things as everyone else, you don’t have to be invested in the same shows and podcasts as your friends. Varied interests and taste is part of what makes us all unique! Increasing your pool of inspiration will help you come up with interesting ideas, and help you find YOUR voice. Your particular interests and the niche things that speak to you will help you figure out what kind of characters and what kind of stories you like to create! But the process doesn’t end at just intaking media... When you find the stuff that brings you joy, analyze what exactly it is about that thing that speaks to you... Put it into words. Explain it to a friend. Make it tangible, analyze the feelings and why the series made you feel that way... and then take it and shove it into your own stories, lol!

Engage critically and thoughtfully with work you like, with characters you like, and it will help you have the language and thought process to recreate it in your own work!

My creative process is like an exquisite corpse of all the characters and series I’ve liked over my lifetime. I mesh them all together in a grim blender and what comes out is a shake in the vague shape as an OC, lol

BUT... it seems like you’re asking more specifically about making characters for tabletop roleplaying games like D&D? And THAT is a different process for me than making OCs for my comics or original story ideas!

I don’t usually join a tabletop game with a fully fleshed out character, actually?? I don’t spend a long time on their backstory, and I usually figure it out like halfway through the story, or through collaboration with my game master!

My TTRPG characters are usually whatever I think would be most interesting in the given game setting or set-up and... usually they exist in opposition to whatever the core concept of the game is. So, the examples I have from games I’ve played are:

In Cardians: West (World of Darkness: Hunter the Vigil): we played in a modern-day urban fantasy setting, where players were recruited into a supernatural Hunter group that was also a criminal organization that Did Crimes and Broke The Law in the name of keeping peace and protecting humanity from the supernatural creatures that go bump in the night. I played Andrew, a Lawful Good Police Detective, because I thought playing a character who would need to grow past his original ideals of ‘Right and Wrong’ in the name of the greater good would be interesting! (And it was!)

In SINNING ADVENTURE (WoD: Geist: The Sin-Eaters) we payed in a modern-day urban fantasy setting with the premise that the players all Died and were brought back to life by forming a pact with a powerful spirit (and getting cool ghost powers in the process!) I played Cassius, a character who could not cope with his death, and thus refused to use his new powers because they were evidence that he was no longer strictly human. It caused conflict in the group and world, but I thought it would be interesting! (And it was! Cassius was a Bitch.)

In Rex Machina (Dungeons and Dragons 5E), I wanted to play an Aarakocra, but was having a hard time deciding on a class or backstory... until I found out that in the ‘canon’ of D&D Aarakocra only live to be like, mid 20s???? Their lifespans are insanely short compared to other playable races!! And I thought that was stupid, so I decided to make MY Aarakocra, Izzy, a warlock that’s looking for ways to extend his own stupidly short life. His pact essentially granted that to him, giving him extra time to find a way to achieve True Immortality. His conflict challenges what’s ‘true’ living in this world, and his extended life is in direct conflict with a lot of forces in the world we play in, and while it is very stressful I think it’s really interesting to play!

In Lamplighting (Monster of the Week), my character Aicen is an assassin who made a deal with a demon and gained supernatural perks out of it... except I decided that she doesn’t WANT to be in this deal. She is actively trying to undo it because it wasn’t her deal - she inherited it from a CEO that she killed during an unrelated job. (Aicen is probably my character I’ve put the most backstory into, and that’s just because at character creation in MOTW you are given a lot of questions about who your character is and why they’re where they are!)

In Hand of Adam (WoD: HtV), the concept was that all players were going to join a post-apocalyptic supernatural-hating cult. I played Shouter, who was a self-preserving pacifist coward who also turned out to be a fae (which the cult would have killed him over). It was stressful but very fun. I love Shouter. He ran away from fights and didn’t actually kill anyone until the last episode where they fought God (whom he killed, lol).

NOW. THESE ARE ALL JUST EXAMPLES OF HOW *I* LIKE TO PLAY CHARACTERS!! For me personally, I enjoy playing a character who has built-in conflict either with the world, the story, or the other players. I’m only able to play characters like this because my friend group are all really cool and we all know that conflict is not bad - it’s fiction and we’re just roleplaying! If I didn’t trust my GMs and fellow players as much as I do, I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough playing some of these concepts.

I don’t think you need to know every little thing about a tabletop character, and in fact, not knowing some things and leaving it up to the GM and story to flesh out is an easy way to help you get more invested in both your character AND the story your GM is telling! Tabletops are a collaborative storytelling experience, so if you’ve already plotted out your character’s whole story, there won’t be much participation from other players or your GM. Figure out what your character wants, and let your roleplaying and GM slowly put all the other pieces in place over the course of your campaign!

But the TL:DR about how I make tabletop OCs is that I just... try to give them a goal, an ideal, or a personality that is in direct conflict with some aspect of the game we’re playing. I don’t want the character to be undermining the whole game, because that’s really crappy to do to your GM, but I have to have something for my character to grow through or change. I like giving them built-in character arc starters, lol. I haven’t played a game where my character has gotten along with every other player character and NPC over the entire campaign since my very FIRST game, lol!

Also, if you’re having trouble, why not ask your GM what they think? Again, tabletops are collaborative! Don’t be afraid to talk ideas out with your GM for your character.

A final note about playing in specifically oneshot games (i.e. games that are not long campaigns but are meant to be played in one or two sittings). Personally, I always just retrofit an OC I already have to play in oneshots! When I make a new character for a long campaign, it usually takes me two or three sessions to find their voice and figure out how to roleplay them. If the game you’re playing is only one session, I find it easier to jump right in and get the most out of your character and the game when you’re playing a character you already know pretty well! I’ve played characters from my webcomic quite a few times, and it’s always a lot more fun for me than figuring out a new character on the fly!

SO UH, IN CONCLUSION... sorry if this is mad unhelpfu!! My personal processes are unique to me! but that's the point - no one person will have the exact answer that works for you! You have to keep trying until you figure it out for yourself! Good luck! Keep creating! <3

[utilitycaster]

Your fav character from each class in all the actual plays you’ve watched?

THE BEST QUESTION (if hard). I’m only counting regular PCs here; see the end for some guest/NPC/one-shot mentions. As you can see I love basically all characters but I do have my favorites.

Barbarian: there is a high potential, now that Ashley is back for good, that Yasha will win this next year but for now Gorgug and his sweet awkwardness and confused attempts to find his dad wins. (some other good barbarians: Grog, Beryl from Relics and Rarities who was a. kind of a stoner and b. an absolute delight and c. a cool depiction of path of the ancestral guardian, and Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt, sweet crepe loving failure)

Bard: I love Fig, but I have to go Scanlan. You know that art piece of the Vecna battle that’s overlaid with the All Work No Play “what would the worst character be” line? Yeah. From “I’m snoring after having sex” to “I was saving it for Vax”. You just can’t beat that. (some other good bards: Annabella from Relics and Rarities, Misty from Dimension 20)

Cleric: this is probably the hardest category (shout out to a lot of clerics. Jester, Kingston, and Kristen are tied for second place) but I think I have to go with Caduceus. I love how much he sees of everyone else and how little we know of him. I love how not-so-secretly judgemental he is. I love his bone flute. I love that he’s quietly trying to save his dying home, and perhaps find family that might be dead. Someone hug him for me. (I would like to recognize Pike and Merle of course, as well as Efink Murderdeath here, and while I’m only 7 episodes in I think Zolf is already my favorite of RQG. )

Druid: Keyleth. I feel like TAZ is at a disadvantage because they’re so early on in Graduation, but also I love the Firbolg but I am not sure a druid will ever surpass Keyleth, with all her messy awkwardness and genuine desire to do good at any cost. (shout out to Ricky Huckster for being a really unique take on the druid, Lillith from Escape from the Bloodkeep for being a great wine mom, and to Kugrash who is currently ripping my heart out)

Fighter: I’m surprising myself here but the recent developments with Fabian Seacaster have put him in the forefront, I think because his story is still ongoing and because I’m a sucker for an arrogant jock suddenly confronting mortality and failure. I do still love Percival De Rolo a lot though. (shout out to Magnus Burnsides who is good at everything, and Veros the O.G. Himbo from Relics and Rarities)

Monk: Beau. This is another case of like, I love Sofia Bicicleta too, but Marisha Ray has some kind of genius for playing female characters that really tap into like, things that many women I think feel but don’t know how to express (at least, I, a woman, feel these things and don’t know how to express them). Beau is such a complicated abrasive character who feels things deeply, and who has genuinely tried and succeeded in changing. She’s so dynamic and wonderful and I love her to bits.

Paladin: Vax. I wrote a whole piece about my experience of listening to CR campaign 1 episode 57 that I never published or posted. I think there’s something deeply profound and beautiful about sticking to an oath that you didn’t ever think you’d choose, and to a promise you fell into. (also, spoilers but Fjord’s going to be my choice for Warlock so I cover that there even though one of my favorite things about him is his switch to Paladin). (shout out, of course, to Ricky Matsui)

Ranger: Vex. Due to some valid and some invalid complaints about the ranger class few people play it, which is a shame because the revised ranger options are pretty great (Horizon Walker is amazing, I say as an admitted fan of weird planar shit) and because like, Aragorn was my favorite LOTR character. But yeah, everything I’ve said about Keyleth and Beau applies to Vex, the D&D character I think I relate most to despite my irl stats not matching hers at all (I do not have 17 Charisma). The imposter syndrome, the need to appear that everything is under control, the sibling loyalty, the stubbornness, the quiet leadership - it’s all so perfect and so unique and I love her very much. (Sokhbarr was a fun take though)

Rogue: put Vax as Paladin so I could nominate Riz as my favorite rogue (and again, I love Nott and enjoy what I’ve seen of Argo, and to be fair, Sasha seems very good as well) but I think the inquisitive subclass is so cool and Riz has such a wonderful arc. Also, goblin with gun is great but goblin high schooler with gun is straight up genius.

Sorcerer: a very rare class, tbh, with Pete getting it by default. He is indeed a fascinating character though, and tying his sorcery into the mythology of the world is a pretty brilliant DM move. (I also am very into Hamid thus far, not in the least because I love halflings)

Warlock: Fjord. I liked Fjord from the start, and even when he was being an ass during the pirate arc found him relatable. I think it might be my background as a bard player that makes me love this disaster who survived for years on just a high constitution and being really good at talking and playing roles; I also love someone who isn’t the greatest leader but falls into it, and someone with control issues working through it (see also: Vex, Percy) And finally, I don’t know if Travis was telling the truth about him being lawful good but he genuinely does want to make things better for people and he takes responsibility very seriously. (obviously, I also really liked Leland, and while I think of both Fig and Sofia as primarily of their main classes of bard and monk, they are cool as warlocks. I get why Emily Axford keeps gunning for Hexblade).

Wizard: Caleb. Given all the other sources of magic it’s always fascinating to see why someone becomes a wizard specifically, and I also like how complex Caleb is - not just the trauma, though that’s part, but the humor and the versatility. (Adaine was a close runner-up though, and Taako was my favorite of THB but is a little too goofy to be a favorite).

Artificer: I mean, obviously Tary.

NPCs and guests, with less commentary:

Barbarian: gonna go with Lionel the True Polymorphed Duck here.

Bard: Hazel Copperpot, she of the 1930s radio accent

Cleric: again very difficult, but then again, not so difficult. Lieve’tel was great.

Druid: Nila, the sweet and calming presence in our hour of need.

Fighter: oh god I don’t know if I can choose between Keg, bisexual dwarven disaster, and Brian David Gilbert’s Hargis, awkward goliath theater kid.

Monk: Ferriwen Breeze, who I do hope shows up again because she was my favorite Darrington Brigade character and I really love Genasi; also Expositor Dairon, natch.

Paladin: few people play paladins as guests which is weird. I do like Kerrek, and I do like Arkhan, but like, Kima, clearly.

Ranger: Sandralynn Faeth, hands down. A wonderful NPC.

Rogue:  I do love Cathilda, and I do love Twiggy, but I laughed about the Owlbear for the entire Darrington Brigade one shot.

Sorcerer: I mean...it has to be Gilmore, right? Calianna is great but no one can beat Gilmore.

Warlock: Zahra, who also, incidentally, is the only non-Hexblade Warlock who’s shown up. I mean hexblade is objectively amazing but Zahra is too.

Wizard: there have been many wizard NPCs across games and it was a very difficult choice but who else is graceful, unendingly kind and patient, and reliable in all situations? Allura Vyesoren is the wizard you wish your wizard could be. Yussa and Essek and Lup and Arthur Aguefort and Barry and Lyra and Ranier and far more wizard NPCs and guests are all wonderful in their own ways but like, did you think you could come for Matt Mercer’s self insert? you could not.

.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

top 10 podcast characters! (sorry if i spam, lol, your answers for stuff are always so much fun!!)

10.) Daisy Tonner (The Magnus Archives). another returning favorite from my list of favorite female characters yesterday. she’s truly got it all: fucked up past, connection to a sinister power that she’s struggling to control, homoerotic co-dependence with her best friend, basically a werewolf... I am obsessed. @ Jonny Sim bring her back immediately so I can be furious at you for however much she’s suffering.  

9.)  Cecil Gershwin Palmer (Welcome to Night Vale). this is like... my podcast dad. or, no, scratch that. my podcast cool uncle. I exist in a state of being permanently behind on Welcome to Night Vale these days, but every time I go back I hear Cecil’s voice and my brain fills up with exclamation marks as I feel like I’m being welcomed back home. I love this brave, weird little radio host. also, according to recent episodes, he and his husband get up to some kinky shit, and I sort of feel like Amy in the “booOOOOOne????” scene of B99 but also good for them !!

8.)  Jonathan Sims (The Magnus Archives). I don’t know, I’m just obsessed with this story and this sad dumpster of a man! I can’t even really explain what I like about him; on paper I don’t think I do but he’s really burrowed into my heart and gotten cozy there. his life is such a mess and I want him to be okay! like actually okay! he’s definitely not going to be and it’s going to mess me up a lot.

7.)  Bellow (Rude Tales of Magic). An incredibly recent addition to this list, since I started listening to RToM all of a week ago, but I just... really like this good good boy. at first glance you’re like “okay, that’s an annoying tiefling frat boy, ew” and five minutes later you realize he’s actually just a super chill sweetheart who offers to help everybody he meets and remembers all the NPC’s names when no one else ever does. there’s no normal-sounding way to explain this but he tries very hard to potty train a 4 foot tall rat man after everyone else has given up on him and it’s very sweet in the WEIRDEST way.

6.) Taako Adventurezone (The Adventure Zone: Balance). I can’t even quite put my finger on what it is with this dude... well, I kind of can. I knew he was gay going into the podcast and I always latch onto the queers (I mean... look at this list lmao), but that’s not all it is. Justin McElroy is just a damn good D&D player and makes a lot of really thrillingly creative character choices both in character and out, and I can always be won over by jerks who are secretly pretty okay.

5.) Moonshine Cybin (Not Another D&D Podcast). my fungal queen! NADDPOD is the first not-TAZ D&D podcast I got Extremely into and it’s just... such a breath of fresh air to have a woman in a game of D&D? which isn’t a dunk on the McElboys at all, but god, Emily Axford is such a fun and creative player, and Moonshine is an absolutely delight. disaster bisexual hick elf druid with a big gooey heart while reveling in spores and decay? that’s a big yes from me.

4.) Lord Arum (The Penumbra Podcast). it should surprise absolutely NO ONE that W39 and the Penumbra dominated the top spots; that’s just who I am as a person right now. anyway, Arum’s a stubborn bisexual lizard man with four arms who complains constantly to hide the fact that he’s a huge softy who doesn’t know how to handle anything, especially having a crush on two people who are supposed to be his sworn enemies. it’s like someone wrote a character SPECIFICALLY for me to be into. 

3.) Isabel Lovelace (Wolf 359). Lovelace also got a spot on yesterday’s top 10 female characters list, and I can’t... not... put her on this one, too. I said a lot of what I love about her there, which is that I’m always a sucker for a badass lady who’s been through hell and come out the other side rattled but determined to keep doing her best. Lovelace is a delightfully contradictory lady and beautifully acted by Cecilia Lynn-Jacobs, and I love the shit out of her.

2.) Juno Steel (The Penumbra Podcast). how do I even start to explain how much Juno means to me?? he was one of the very first explicitly, canonically bisexual podcast protags I got to know, his struggles with depression knock me off my feet every time, his ultimate resolve to grow and do better by others makes me want to cry a sweater of tears, and his relationship with gender gently opened the door for me to become comfortable with so many things about myself. Juno Steel, you dumb bitch, I love you.  

1.) Daniel Jacobi (Wolf 359). this is going to be so melodramatic after my gushing about Juno but I just like this one because I’m gay; that’s literally all there is to it. Jacobi is a shitty little trash man and I hate him and listening to his stupid voice shoots serotonin directly through my ears and into my brain. I wish I could explain my poor taste but truly I cannot.

[atamascolily]

lily liveblogs “terminator: dark fate,” part five

HEY, time for our industrial end sequence!!  This time, it’s on a dam because we had fire and machinery in previous films, and we’re switching to a different element.

(this means that the next film would have ended with a FOREST fight scene, right? Right.)

[parts one, two, three, four]

The NPCs run for cover. I have no idea what dam this is supposed to be! It looks like Hoover, but I honestly have no clue where they are at this point.

Carl and the chassis are fighting in the water. Then the oozy metal part comes up and grabs him from behind! I hate it when they double-team like that.

Wow, they just barely keep from going over the edge there. Oh, wait, too soon...

Sarah dislocates her shoulder. Ow. Grace pops it back in. Sarah gets another "Fuck!"

The Rev-9 vaulting out of the water is just like in the beginning....

"No, no, Grace, really...?" YES GRACE. She yells back at them to wear their seatbelts!!! WOW... Sarah snarks back at her because what good is it if you can’t get a one-liner in right before you go over the edge into the abyss and certain death?

OH my god the Rev-9 on the windshield is so fucking scary right there they are UNDERWATER in the DARK aaaaaaaaah.

Okay, I'm not sure how if they would have survived that in real life, but fuck if that underwater fight scene isn't as cool as hell.

A legit complaint I've seen is that the bulletproof vests would weigh them down too much to get to the surface with the air they have, but... I mean come on, if that's your only factual complaint about this movie, I think they did a good job.

Cut to them on top of the dam again, wow that was fast. This scene with the three badass women battered and bruised and clinging to each other.. MY HEART. MY POOR HEART!!

Ah, here it is... Grace's power source! The EMP substitute I’ve been waiting for. Then Carl shows back up.. with a weapon for Sarah. Triumphant theme music. The whole family is here. Oh, and meds for Grace. YAY. wouldn’t want to pass out halfway through the climactic fight scene.

Wow, this functionally dysfunctional found-family is only together for like half a day and I need a million TV episodes about them STAT.

Oh, of course it's a hydroelectric dam...so generators!

Oh, hey, Grace gets her chains from the poster! Nice.

Murderbot bonding time! The Rev-9 talks to Carl: "You and I were built for the same purpose. And Legion is the only future." SO MANY FEELS ABOUT THIS.

"I know she's a stranger to you. Why not let me have her?" POLITICAL QUESTION OF THE MOMENT, KTHANX. But also proof that even though the REv-9 is good at mimicking humans and predicting humans, it still doesn't UNDERSTAND humans.

"Because we're not machines, you metal motherfucker," Sarah snarls. And I think we're up to six fucks for Sarah at this point? I've lost count.

Have I mentioned that the splitting Terminators are creepy? Have I? HAVE I? Because they are.

Oh, dear, Sarah Connor confronting her nightmare of flaming death murder skeletons again.

Geeeeee, I wonder if that turbine will do anything...

Oh, Grace is stabbed, I guess she's gonna pull the power source out and take him down with her... or not. But at least now Dani’s going to object way less about self-sacrifice, since she’s already doomed.

I don't know why the REV-9 goes back to one; I feel like he's stronger and fights better in two parts? But you do you, I guess.

Pretty sure it's not over yet because Dani still hasn't done anything against the REV-9 herself. Oh, good, and Sarah gets to relive yet another nightmare of a metal skeleton stalking out of the flames. ONLY THIS TIME IT'S ON FIRE, TOO. (I guess that's the polyalloy bits melting away??)

Yep, Grace is gonna sacrifice herself to save Dani from the REV-9 and remove her power source. Oh, wow, Dani has to stab her and pull it out herself. That's gonna cause some more trauma. Another round for everyone!  

Dani gets to go after the REV-9... but it goes badly, because drama. Sarah yells for Carl to wake up, and it works!! He distracts the REV-9 long enough for Dani to stab him in the eye with the power source and... I guess that sets it off???

[why the hell didn't they augment Grace with more than one of those things? Maybe Dani will fix that in the future when she gets there. maybe that's something to add in fix-it fics. And where did they get them? Did they take them from destroyed Terminators and weld them into humans?? What happened?? ]

Carl and the REV-9 fall into the abyss together, because OF COURSE THEY DO, because just when Sarah has learned to forgive/accept Carl as he is, she has to lose him because RULE #1: SARAH CONNOR MUST ALWAYS SUFFER. And the REV-9 rips his flesh off and they both die when the EMP goes off, and it mimics the lightning flash in the beginning.

Oh, so yet again, Sarah Connor has to stand and watch a Terminator she cares about die in a fire. GOOD JOB PACKING ON THE ANGST, PEOPLE.

"For John." OH MY GOD, WAY TO GO OUT IN STYLE AND ALSO MY HEART.

The difference between this and the first film is that Sarah isn't alone at the end. The difference between this and the second film is that Sarah and Dani are... not equals, exactly, but they are more equal than Sarah and John were at the end of T2. They're veteran and leader, not mother and son. Dani and Sarah understand each other in a way that no one--not even John--can because of what they've suffered and lost. The cycle repeats, and yet it’s subtly different each time

cut to Grace as a kid on a playground, oh now there's some loaded symbolism in this francise, lol. And there's Dani looking through the chain-link fence at her right on cue, like Sarah looking at her might-have-been kids in T2. Is this where the filmmakers got the idea that Dani is Grace’s “mother”? LOL, nice try, guys.

She walks over to the car where Sarah is waiting for her. It's a Jeep, just like the one she drove to Mexico in at the end of T1. She tosses Dani the keys and moves over to the passenger seat AND IF THAT AIN'T A STATEMENT, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS.

"I won't let her die for me again," Dani says. "then you need to be ready."

Dani puts the car in gear and they drive away down the eucalptyus-lined streets of the California suburbs where everything is green and tranquil and beautiful, and while the movie ends perfectly here as is, I can also see how they would have linked it into a trilogy like they'd originally planned. But alas, this is probably the end until the all-but-inevitable next reboot.

And THEN the credits roll, and we get the main theme at the end, and I jut have to say, it's not the same as in the other movies, where we had to listen to the whole thing first THEN we heard it in the film itself. But nobody has the goddamn patience for credits anymore, which is why Marvel started sticking bonus scenes in theirs to keep people in their seats.

...but wow are these credits long. Oh, well, the music's good and I learn random tidbits this way, like how the writers have little imagination when it comes to naming minor characters, and just give them the same name as their actors (Diego, Gabriel, Alicia, etc). 

sadly, all the deleted scenes and bonus content is on the blue-ray and not the DVD sigh.

So. Was this a perfect film? No. It was written by committee, and I think it shows. Did it deliver what I hoped for--Sarah Connor being a badass, snarky dialogue, and cool action sequences? Yes. Did I enjoy watching it? HELL YES. Will I be thinking/ranting about it for a long time. YOU BET.

Was it "necessary"? Of course not-but is ANY piece of art ever really "necessary"? Who cares! It was fun, and it was thoughtful, it was interesting to me, and it was wayyy better than most of the recent rounds of sequels and reboots. 

And to be honest, if they can make a bajillion Fast and Furious movies, and James Bond, and John Wick, and Mission Impossible and Karate Kid action flicks featuring men (not to mention Star Wars and remakes of every single animated Disney film AND a three-part Hobbit movie trilogy), I think I can enjoy a female-led action movie with zero guilt whatsoever without having to justify its existence to anyone.

(I can’t think of a single other action film with three badass female leads, who have complete character arcs and aren’t sexualized for the male gaze... and if there is, I want to watch it STAT)

[theartofmedia]

The Art of Review: YIIK: A Postmodern RPG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But let me be clear here.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

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

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

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

Non-Spoiler Review

Plot:

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

Characters:

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

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

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

Writing:

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

Graphics:

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

Music/Audio:

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

Gameplay:

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

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

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

Tl;dr: Game bad. Don’t buy it.

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

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

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

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

Spoiler Review

Plot:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Characters

Besides Alex, there are five major characters in YIIK:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... yeah,

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

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

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

Anyway.

The Fucking Ending:

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

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

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

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

He finds one that hasn’t been attacked.

And gueeeeeeess what?

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

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

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

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

Then the game ends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elisa Lam

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

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

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

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

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

However, there’s more than just this.

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

... Gross, to say the least.

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

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.

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

More tasteless than a fucking saltine.

OH BUT WAIT THERE’S EVEN MORE.

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

But that’s not even the worst of it.

Allow me to tell you about the second ending.

Second Ending:

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

Ending 2, however...

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

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

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

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

... Roll credits!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Racism:

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then... the love interests.

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

Speaking of these ladies...

Sexism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Depression/Suicide:

Oh boy. Oh fucking boy.

A little background on myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anti-LGBTQ+

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew: The goal is to establish the white ethnostate.

[unintelligible as others laugh and talk over each other]

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

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

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

Andrew: Yes!

Dick: --Just ‘K,’ ‘K,’ and ‘K.’

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

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

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

Let’s talk bout The Scene.

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

The Legendary Third Ending

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

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

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

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

Miscellaneous Other Things That Don’t Fit In The Above

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The One Thing That I Liked

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

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

That? I think that actually really works.

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

[eponymous-rose]

Highlights - Fireside Chat with Sam Riegel (11/27/2018)

Note that there are some spoilers for campaign 1 in this discussion!

If you missed it, this chat is available for subscribers right now on the Critical Role Twitch, and will be posted to YouTube several days later. This video was a stretch goal for Critical Role’s $100,000+ charity drive for the Pablove Foundation!

“I’m seeing some questions in the chat right now. It’s not really questions so much as... insults about my legs?”

Has the wine been aerated? Of course. Who do you think he is?

Favorite aspect of Nott that he hadn’t planned when building the character? Her voice. During the Session Zero with Matt and Liam, Sam didn’t do a voice, but it just didn’t feel right, so just before the first episode of campaign 2, he decided to go for it. “I’m glad I get to do that voice every week, because it’s weird.”

“Nott, like Sam Riegel, loves a fruity Pinot. I think Nott would also love the robust wines of the Tuscan region of Italy. Because Sam does.”

Sleep with, marry, kill for his three characters? Sleep with Scanlan, marry Nott, kill Taryon.

If Scanlan met Caleb, would they be friends? “No way!” Scanlan might be interested in the magic, but he’d be a bad wingman and he “has no game”.

Nott is genuinely concerned for Caduceus, after seeing how he reacted to the initial chaos that got them on the ship in the first place. She’s used to the signs of trauma after spending so much time with Caleb, and she’s recognizing some of those in Caduceus.

Tips for better improv:

Listen: paying attention to fellow players and what reality they’re bringing to the table. Most of bad improv is from not listening.

Say yes: accepting the reality/character/situation they’re bringing.

Heighten: exploring and expanding their ideas.

Would Nott like Vax? “Would anyone like Vax?” No, but honestly, Sam thinks Vax was a great guy and also thinks Nott would’ve liked him.

He hasn’t found it especially challenging to play Nott as a female character, beyond remembering pronouns early on. “I hope I’m doing a good job.”

Scanlan probably hired a scribe to write the Vox Machina tale. After that, he’d probably focus on building his brand. Maybe a prequel, the Scanlan Story. Maybe some Scanlan-specific stories and/or “A Scanlan’s Guide to” series.

Best dad advice for Scanlan? Use his Wish spell to wish for a good night’s sleep every day.

Sam is really pleased that Nott is resonating with trans fans. He didn’t set out to build her character that way, but is thrilled that she’s been so relatable.

Sam tells his 4- and 6-year-old kids stories of the Mighty Nein before bed. Their favorite character is, mysteriously, Nott the Brave. He might shine a bit of a brighter spotlight on her in the retelling. His daughter has been asking about Yasha and is fascinated that she came from a place with a lot of monsters. She thinks Yasha was raised by monsters and is concerned that she may not have worn diapers as a baby. His son has been really interested in Vecna lately, because he wants to find out who’s the most powerful bad guy in D&D.

Further @SideBySamuel speculation info: they’re someone Sam sees almost (but not quite) every day of his life. And no, Sam isn’t the one running it.

Nott being a goblin after Scanlan hated goblins so much was mainly a coincidence. That choice was mainly based on Liam’s suggestion.

Favorite All Work No Play activity? Swordfighting. Goat yoga was the most bizarre. He talks about how they have to find experiences where they can enjoy them without losing out on being able to just hang out together.

Scanlan would probably want a bunch of kids. Based on Sam’s personal experience: “If you like yourself, you’ll really like your kids.”

Favorite mug/flask? The Caleb-killing-his-parents meme: “Why would Trent do this?”

At Yosemite National Park with his family, Sam stopped to get some refreshments, and the lady selling the refreshments asked to take a picture because she was such a big fan of Scanlan. Also, going through TSA, the guy checking his bag said, “You’re clear to go, Mr. Shorthalt.”

If someone showed a romantic interest in Nott, she’d be momentarily flattered, then start questioning the motivation and not believe it.

Something he’s bad at that he still enjoys? Writing songs. “I’m not a great songwriter, but I really love writing songs. I will continuing doing it, and you have no choice in the matter.”

Sam has been on Talks more than Ashley, Laura, and Matt.

Favorite D&D Beyond spot so far was the one where the devil was making a deal with him.

If he got to cast Wish in real life, what would he wish for? That his day, and his day only, is 25 hours long. “I’d like one extra, just for some me time.”

Besides his own character, which character-interaction dynamics does he enjoy watching the most? Caleb and Fjord. Also Caleb and Beau. Caduceus and anybody (especially NPCs).

If Scanlan hadn’t come back to Vox Machina? Sam thinks they probably would’ve all died. “That’s not just me puffing myself up, I think they all needed everybody. Everybody needed to be there for that to work.”

If Nott could switch bodies with one member of the Mighty Nein? Probably Beau.

What sitcom would Nott star in? Alf.

“Chocolate is just straight-up not great.” And the chat goes wild.

After Scanbo, favorite shenanigans? Tary and Grog with the guards in Vasselheim. The prank wars on the beach in Dalen’s Closet. Fluffernutter. The love potion.

[kaibutsushidousha]

How did you feel about Last Encore?

I have no idea. There was so much to unpack from that experience that I really don’t know what to feel about it as whole. I loved the surprise factor from it being advertised as a simple Fate/EXTRA adaptation but turning out to be something out else entirely. I also really loved how fitting the name “Fate/EXTRA: Last Encore” was to the setting: the anime was simply picking all of the Fate/EXTRA characters and giving them one final showing after their real stories were already over (even if only for them to go out not with a bang but with a whimper).

Anyways, overall Last Encore feels like an episodic show, with some episodes/characters that failed, and some that didn’t. To voice my thoughts about it, I would have to go through each character one by one.

Hakuno/Deadface: I was thought Hakuno (the real deal) was perfectly fine as an individual character but terrible as protagonist, and our Deadface-kun here takes the whole thing in the opposite direction. He is serviceable at best as an individual but much better as a protagonist than his EXTRA counterpart. Both were born from basically nothing at the beginning of their stories, but Hakuno defined their (or in this case her) own character with a strongly compelling drive to survive no matter the cost. While her determination was charming and remarkable, Hakuno somewhat fails as a protagonist because Fate/EXTRA had a whole story going on behind the scenes and we don’t get to see that because the current state of the world doesn’t matter for Hakuno’s survival.

Next LE brings us the Hakuno Deadface, a digital ghost born from our survivalist extraordinaire (+ background characters)’s salt over her defeat by the Twice in /EXTRA’s final battle. The edgy hatred speeches are really tedious, but ultimately he gets a neat arc from finding out he is something inherently bad but he is still wants to make something good despite being bad in nature. Unlike Hakuno being a generic NPC, on his case we get a good reflection of his own nature, which leads him to care about the dynamics of the world around him, since he defines him personal goal as improving it, culminating on him wishing for a “new world” with a Moon Cell reset. That makes him more functional as a protagonist than the real Hakuno. All that said, real Hakuno is still more enjoyable to watch.

On I side note, I love that this set up placed female Hakuno as the canon Fate/EXTRA protagonist, because honestly, who played as male Hakuno? I don’t know a single person.

Nero: Nero is just Nero as usual, which (controversial opinion) is always a good thing. That said, like Septem and Extella, this story (justifiably) started with post-development Nero and (unjustifiably) did nothing new with her character. It was already instantly better than the two above because it retold Nero’s backstory with interesting visuals, but still Nero was just Nero.

Shinji and Drake: Shinji was one of biggest highlights here. Easily his best iteration (I know that’s not real praise, but seriously, LE Shinji is really good). In Fate/EXTRA, Shinji is portrayed as the usual obnoxious ass from /stay Night, but after he is defeated, we get treated a reveal this Shinji was not the same Shinji, he was actually just an 8-years old kid roleplaying and that he didn’t even know that dying in the Moon Cell would cause him to die in real life. The big problem with that is that this reveal doesn’t Shinji any less of an edgy asshole than before, so I couldn’t gather any sympathy from it and the only thing it did was setting up the Week 2 storyline with Hakuno questioning whether or not they are capable of sacrificing people with fully realized lives to preserve their own uncertain life.

Then comes in Last Encore, all pushes all these ideas in a much more interesting direction. Instead of all that poorly-written death drama, this Shinji finds out about the “you die in real life” trope by actually winning his first battle and watching his opponent die. This 8-years-old who was acting like an ass because he thought he was just safely having fun in a videogame is faced with the fact that he unknowingly committed murder and decides that he has to do something about it, creating his stagnated city where no ones has to fight. This was an excellent new use of his previous characterization and it finally created a Shinji that’s sympathetic (as you can tell, I still haven’t played CCC).

Drake is still the same as always. Just a support to other characters with no relevant personal motivations of her own. Nothing noteworthy to say about her.

Amari: We didn’t get to see much of her in the anime and I didn’t listen to her Drama CD yet,so there’s not much to say. She presented herself as a woman who controls those weaker than her out of a crippling fear of not amounting to much, and in the end her character didn’t amount to much, so I guess she was good enough in terms of poetic irony.

Dan and Robin: Watching Dan and Robin was sad, and not in any enjoyable or exciting way. It did a good in setting the bleak nature of Last Encore’s world but it sure didn’t do the characters any favors. Robin’s “Should I just tell the old man to give and die?” scene was really strong and I also liked Dan’s sniping trick, but that aside, those two did not perform really well.

Alice: I don’t feel like I need to say much here because’s Alice’s story is the one thing everyone, Last Encore fans and haters alike, agree to be the best part of Last Encore. The original Fate/EXTRA really failed to make me feel anything about Alice’s character, because it focused too much on the mystery of the two Alices to give her some proper characterization (maybe that part would be better if I and everyone else weren’t already spoiled about Nursery Rhyme’s true nature), and when they did, the focus would be higher on the creepiness than in the tragic factor of the character.

Last Encore, on the other hand, realized the full tragedy potential of the character and created a very beautiful piece about it. And, as if being the most emotionally interesting part of the show weren’t enough, her chapters also get the Madoka witch barrier backgrounds and the Glass Game loops to make them the most visually and structurally interesting as well.

Julius and Shuwen: Julius being a Deadface was clever because he kinda was already one by the last week of the game. However, this time Julius’ Deadface status serves only to make Hakuno aware of what he is to kickstart his arc, while this moment in the game proper was entirely about Julius’ own character. Since he got nothing of that, both Julius and Shuwen appear as complete non-characters wearing familiar faces for no interesting reason.

Rin and Rani: They were nice, but considering their importance, I don’t think I cared nearly as much as the show wanted me to. Rani’s different personality added to the main cast dynamic in the few occasions she was present, but that was barely ever. None of her deaths really stroke with me because she of this lack of presence (and because she’s so dull in the game as well). Rin got to be more present, but her weirdly genki personality here overlap with Nero and was consequently overshadowed by her. This Rin would be better if she was allowed to be more proud and confrontational like her other versions, but I understand how her circumstances are too dire for her to afford that. One thing I did like a lot about this Rin was Hakuno acknowledging her 1000 year struggle and saying she was the one who deserved the Grail. That was really nice.

Leo and Gawain: Leo didn’t get to shine much here, but I’m never displeased with Leo content. Him being made to confront the flaws in his ideology is nice and the hope he gets from the Deadface Hakuno is what made me start liking the protagonist. Gawain was the same as usual and nothing interesting was done with him.

Twice: Twice is exactly the same character he was in the game, except his stupid 2-hour long speech is spread through multiple episodes starting from the first, instead of having him appear from nowhere as the final boss and spew everything at once. Undoubtedly much better but still not good enough to fix Twice’s character.

[readbythestarlight]

c2e20

Can you guys believe it’s been 20 episodes already?? I can’t

LOL oh Sam we love you even if you are a nerdy loser

“IM A REAL ACTOR AGAIN”

I hate him and his ads

I knew it wouldn’t take them long to get into mischief over Nott’s never-empty flask

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I think four?”

“How many members of the Mighty Nein are there?”

“Nine.”

“She’s fine.”

Good job changing the subject Caleb xD

F: “Are we not worried about the ambush thing?”

Everyone: “nah”

Yasha liking to snuggle Frumpkin gives me life

Molly just… using the Platinum Dragon tapestry as a blanket and Nott wanting to make it into coats smh

Clouds??

OH ARMY

oh no the cart!

leave the cart get away from the army plz go go go

or ask for help that’s possibly a good idea maybe…

Oh yay Jester, magicing it up!

Aw not enough tho…

Hey @Matt why make them lose their cart that was rude

They are SO BAD at planning on the fly it’s amazing

Hello Captain Maximillian

Laura, grinning: “What do he look like?” Laura is me I wanna know what the NPCs look like always

NOTT

NO

omg Nott plz

omg did it work

lol its food xD

Female solider: looks at Yasha

Yasha: *most awkward grin ever*

I apologize Matt thanks for letting them keep the cart

Jester loves showing off her strength and it’s the best thing ever I love it so much

Beau asking Fjord about his dreams. Beau is gonna singlehandedly dig up everyone’s backstories.

Fjord being a shifty boy about the dreams…

So much rain…. I don’t like it, it’s going to take Ashley/Yasha away soon isn’t it I can tell

YOOOOOOOO YASHA BACKSTORY

IVE BEEN WAITING

baby giiiiirl

BABY GIRL

matt I asked for a week without being sad for one of my children. just a week. that was all i asked for.

jesus matt why do you have to make me sad

Storm god??

stoRM GOD????

“You walk the right path. Be strong. Don’t forget who you were, and decided who you will become.” IT’S FINE IM FINE.

Ashley’s face is the same face I’m making right now

Yasha being an umbrella for Nott lol. For all of three seconds.

My life gets better every time Yasha speaks I’m not even kidding

Yasha and Nott bonding over collecting things is cute

I swear Sam just adds strange new things for Nott to collect every week

Seriously Nott and Yasha are just so precious

Caleb wants to poof in a house all the time

Molly and Nott are the Caleb cheerleading squad and totally believe he can magically poof in a mansion someday

LOL Caleb and his one push up

Please don’t melt the cart, Nott

YAY one vial of acid good for her

Idiots doing bird calls and Fjord and Caleb are jus like “oooookay really tho”

omg are they gonna find a pet crow in a trap i want them to

“THANK YOU OSCAR—I MEAN FJOOOORD”

creepy moving thing in the swamp 0/10

BIRB PERSON?

CREEPY SWAMP LIZARD

goooo Jester!

B: “What are we saving??”

N: “I don’t know, we’re—right now we’re saving Jester!”

SWAMP MAP SWAMP MAP

Haste on Nott, nice!

Oh wait except haste in a battle can be bad…

Matt with a sneaky second gator monster

Nat1, the bird lives!

“A 2, are you fucking serious!?” lol Matt! He’s so salty.

LOL then being like “wait the bird is restrained…” he really wanted to fuck up the bird xD

Fjord just like “why are we doing this”

Enthrall?? Have we seen that happen yet?

I love their enthusiasm about their new spells/attacks

Travis gets so excited every time Yasha rages its my fave

And Liam gets excited every time Nott does something sneaky/rogueish

Not how do you always end up pinned by/inside something

HURRY THE BIRB IS DYING

fighting in a swamp is the worst they’re so slooooow

oh wait i blinked and Yasha is the one in the gator’s jaws now I’m confused

My girl Yasha with the first HDYWTDT of the night again I’m so proud.

RIPPING THE GATOR’S JAWS APART LIKE SHE’S KING KONG YO

oh man poor Not! grappled again. thank goodness for uncanny dodge tho.

Nat20 to beat it on the nose go Beau!

Curse of the Eyeless?? What are all these things??

Liam all like “no no no matt no hurting nott” is such a mood

SAM DONT RISK IT WHAT THE FUCK

Jester is the worst cleric/Laura is the best worst

poor Fjord has been so useless xD

I TAKE IT BACK showed up just in time to get the other HDYWTDT

“Nott today!” xD

“A slop-dolly of epic proportions!”

Oh the bird! Yay!

Adorable little bird person!

IT SPEAKS

A LIL BABBY BIRDIE??

I LOVE HER ALREADY

i can’t believe the mighty nein are gonna take care of a kid

she wrote thank you awwwwwwww

Four she’s four she’s such a babby

Kiri I’m gonna adopt you

SHE’S LOST POOR BABY

Jester/Laura is in mom mode and I love it

I can’t believe she got stuck and her family just left her poor baby Kiri I’m cryyyying

“Nowhere to go, can I come with you?”

I CRY

“Can you handle a weapon?” CALEB SHE’S FOUR SHE’S A BABBY

omg she put her little wings like she was gonna fight I cryyyyyyyyyy

LOL the way she mimicked Fjord’s voice

omg Nott got that pouch of oats and corn. How convenient!

Beau please don’t hit Kiri

LOL she rolled a Nat20 to hit Beau good for her

OH NO DID THEY EAT KIRI’S FAMILY

Caleb totally playing dad to keep Kiri away from the talk about her family possibly being dead I cryyyyyyy

BEAU YOU CAN’T JUST ABANDON HER

she’s so tiny i love her

YOU WILL NOT DROP HER OFF YOU WILL KEEP HER AND LOVE HER UNTIL YOU CAN GET HER BACK TO HER FAMILY

The mighty nein have 8 members now!

Nott and Jester losing their shit over how cute Kiri is is such a mood

Aw poor baby is scared of Frumpkin xD

Caleb sharing his comfort cat is the cutest sweetest thing ever

Ashley why are you insight checking my sweet bird child

Nott gives to Kiri, Jester gives to Nott, Caleb tries to give to Jester. What a bunch of nerds.

Jester and the cranky old lady

“What the FUCK is pocket bacon?!” xD

Caleb is NOT getting into this place lol. An eight foot climb up a rope? Skinny boy can’t handle that.

Beau, honey, please don’t antagonize the Crown’s Guard

“I don’t like you”

“I get that a lot” Poor Beau

LOL then the awkward face off I love Beau so much

“that was me at 16 with every cop” Taliesin Jaffe backstory

NOTT NO ALCOHOL FOR KIRI

“We’ll get her a Tirly Shemple”

“Is it haunted?”

“….Do you like things that are haunted?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s haunted!”

Caleb making an intimidation check oh no

Oh wait it worked? holy cow

“It ain’t worth the coin!!”

“What if we gave you a hundred coin?”

“I’d come for that.”

lol Jester forcing the dude to sing

omg is Matt gonna sing??

I’M CRYING

do not trust the guy to take the cart that’s probably a horrible idea…

Nott darling sweetheart light of my life your problems are not a burden talk to Caleb if you need to

wow listen can we go like three weeks without making me sad about Caleb’s past and Nott’s issues

CALEB MIDDLENAME WIDOGAST DO NOT CALL YOURSELF A GARBAGE PERSON (unless you mean it ironically which I know you don’t) I WON’T STAND FOR IT

Matt’s face while Beau and Jester are talking about Captain Max

DO NOT LET KIRI READ YOUR SMUT BOOK JESTER

Molly like super locking up his room is smart, 10/10, that’s using your head

Fjord are you really just gonna sleep in two inches of swamp water

Yasha is having none of this gross guy’s shit good for her

This episode was sooooo good! I hate that I missed it live. It’s all good though. I’ll be back next week!

ALSO I’M SERIOUSLY GONNA ADOPT KIRI

ending it on teasing Marisha about her notebook

GUEST GUEST GUEST GUEST GUEST

[bippity-boppity-bullshit]

as happy as i am that aubrey's confirmed as bisexual it kinda bothers me that travis seems to be trying really hard to lock her into a female love interest right away. he's all but squashed the chances of her ever crushing on any other npcs, meaning that casual fans who don't listen to ttazz may not ever know that she's bi at all. i was really hoping she'd mention something about warming up (no pun intended) to jake coolice, or say something about the hot swimmer guy this episode, but no dice :/

Okay so I haven’t listened to the episode yet to thanks for spoilers my dude. 👌 also like…just like bi women not dating women ever, bi women not dating men ever still makes them bi? I super appreciate Travis wanting to have a female love interest for the reason that a lot of bi women in media don’t usually have long lasting relationships with women. It was an issue with Sarah Lance on Legends of Tomorrow, and now she has a potential long term love interest who is female. So things are changing. Slowly. But they’re changing. Also idk why you think I’m the authority on TAZ Bi women lol

[caladblog]

2017 The Year in Review

jesus h. fuck, we’re still doing this whole... “the passage of time” thing? really? ugh. okay. give me a moment.

*drags hands down face*

*sighs*

okay! it’s been another year! goddamn look at us go! welcome to my Second Annual Recap of New Fiction Stuff!!

(hark! a disclaimer: this features things that i experienced for the first time in 2017, not necessarily things that were released in 2017, because i live literally underneath a rock and it’s a bit out of step with the zeitgeist down here)

Books

Nominations: Neuromancer by William Gibson, The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Winner: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Neuromancer was good but this fic did it better. The Fifth Season was excellent and beautiful-- if you’ve read Jemisin’s previous trilogy about gods, there were aspects and elements from those stories that were really brought into perfect focus here; it’s a testament to her growth as a writer and I can’t wait to get my hands on the next two books in the series.

But The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet takes home the title because it is pretty much everything I want in a space opera. Everything. A galactic civilization that isn’t just an echo of European colonization. Interspecies conflict that isn’t a thinly-veiled allegory for racism. Aliens that are truly alien, different from humans and different from each other, with societies and cultures and values that logically follow from these differences. Lush worldbuilding (universebuilding?) that never sacrifices the plot or the characters. An artificial intelligence who sidesteps or directly refutes every frustrating AI trope in the book. Three-dimensional characters! Found family! ‘Xe’ being used as the linguistically-normal gender-neutral pronoun! A lesbian relationship between a human and a reptilian!

it’s good is what i’m sayin

Movies

Nominations: Rogue One, Thor: Ragnarok, And Then There Were None

Winner: Thor: Ragnarok. Stop the fucking presses, I saw a movie less than a month after it was released. This has only happened, like... twice in the last decade. Literally.

Anyway. Rogue One was good, but I’m not a huge fan of the war stars universe. I’m even less a fan of the marvel cinematic universe, especially what it’s become since cap2, but Thor: Ragnarok just fucken blows everything out of the water. No contest. It’s hilarious, it’s epic, it’s the first movie to get Thor’s characterization right. It loses points for including B******t C*********h, but it gains more points for everything described in this post, especially the way it specifically called out the way that societies built on imperialism try to cover up or whitewash the shameful bloody parts of their history. (“Proud to HAVE it. Ashamed of how he GOT it!!”)

Video Games

Nominations: Space Pilgrim Saga, VA-11 Hall-A, Fallen London

Winner: Fallen London. Confession time: I played a lot of video james this year, kind of went wild at the steam summer sale, and it was really hard to narrow it down to three nominations. Ultimately, though, Space Pilgrim Saga was nominated for humor and space and an endgame relationship between a gray-ace woman and a bisexual woman. VA-11 Hall-A was nominated for design and good music and queer representation and me being super gay for Dana.

But Fallen London wins because I’ve never played something that so naturally and regularly validates my gender identity and queerness. Not only do you get to choose a nonbinary option when creating your character, you also get to choose how the game addresses you and change it whenever you want, however many times you want. It’s always there (being referred to as a ‘gentleperson’ or any one of several non-gendered titles) but it’s never the defining aspect of your character or the subject of scrutiny/ridicule/whatever by any NPCs. Similarly, every point at which a romance is ‘required’* provides you with a male and a female option (and, as far as I’ve seen, the option to romance them both at once, too) and your choice of these is never determined or impacted by your character’s gender. Despite the ‘historical’ setting.

*in scare quotes because it’s needed to advance some stories and unlock others, but you do have the option of just. not doing them. or seducing the character for money or social status or some other personal gain, and not love. i'd like it if there was a non-romance option to advance these storylines, but eh.

It’s also just really well-written and interesting and funny and free to play-- there are storylines that cost money, and I’ve got my eye on several, but you never have to spend anything to advance. Even just keeping to the free storylines, there’s a ridiculous variety of things to do for whatever sort of person you want to play as. Go sign up now! Beware of wells! Don’t go North!!

Comics

Nominations: Harrow County vol. 3 “Snake Doctor”, Bitch Planet vol. 2 “President Bitch”, Ms. Marvel arc “Mecca”

Winner: “Mecca”

Okay.

I don’t remember if I ever posted it anywhere, but when this arc was being released earlier this year I had a Debate(TM) with myself about escapist storytelling vs. storytelling that holds up a mirror during rough times--how can you write escapism when hiding from problems does nothing? how can you write realism when the world already does so much to grind us down?--and I eventually settled that we need both, to read and to be written. Realism to show us how to fight. Escapism to help us rest so we can get back up.

This arc is so real it hurts, especially when you can only read it in monthly installments, but it’s the same hurt as pressing on a sore muscle. It’s necessary. There’s not a single aspect of this story that isn’t directly related to what’s happened this year, and what will go on happening next year, and the difficulty of resisting it, and the importance of continuing to do so anyway.

Also G. Willow Wilson appears to be the only Marvel writer who remembers that hydra is literally a splinter group of fuckng nazis so like

Podcasts

Nominations: Archive 81, Wolf 359, The Magnus Archives

Winner: Archive 81. What can I say? It’s precisely my shit. In fact, it’s so much my shit that it’s kind of hard to believe I’ve only known about it for a few months. Time is fake? I’ve already written in depth about how much I like this podcast over here, so I’m not gonna repeat myself.

Has to be said though that The Magnus Archives was a very close second. Like, when I started writing this post a few weeks ago, I had most of the winners already chosen, but this one was a last-minute decision. Especially when episode 81 (*EXTREMELY LOUD TWILIGHT ZONE THEME SONG*) was released and marked the first time in my life I’ve ever related to a male main character. Maybe a main character, period? At some point I’ll post a list of sampler episodes you can listen to without being too spoiled for the main plot to see if you wanna invest in a thing that’s got 86 installments so far.

so there we go! that’s been a sample of my year’s experience in fiction. see you all on the other side of this arbitrary dividing line that’s only marginally related to physical reality!