#The voices don't have in game dissertations of their character in the same way

[random-autie-fangirl]

Which is Flowey Dreemurr more like...

[bereft-of-frogs]

friday update!

we are reaching the end of my vacation week which is both good (I miss my routine and my own apartment) and sad (I have to go back to work and no longer have all day just to write)

reading:

(finished) The Great Transition - Nick Fuller Goggins : Not quite as good as Station Eleven but...surprisingly decent for a book doing stuff I normally find annoying.

(in-progress) Kill Show: A True Crime Novel - Daniel Sweren-Becker : Look I LOVE trying to recreate found footage in literature. House of Leaves, S...I'm not sure this one is doing it for me. I wish there was something more than just the interview transcripts, which he has room for. Like at one point there have been quotes from a journalist and a professor, instead of doing the same interview block quote, he could have put in excerpts from articles/dissertations, we could have had more narration and description that way. It's just a little flat with it all being the same and also I'm not sure he has enough distinct character voices to justify it all exclusively being interview quotes. I feel like you need really good, unique character voices to exclusively do transcript quotes. And there are other issues I feel like he didn't think through, like I still don't really know how old the brother is supposed to be in relation to the main missing girl because it's not in the character intro and no one's mentioned it. But I'm not super far in, I'm going to stick with it to see if it gets better.

(in-progress) Jaw Bone - Monica Ojeda: Also only a little ways in, intriguing though, I like this one much better than Kill Show so far.

Lord of the Rings reread: I did fall a little bit behind by a couple chapters this week, but! We're onto the last book of Return of the King.

(phone book) Into the Dark - Claudia Gray: haven't had to read on my phone much this week since I've been on vacation, but the High Republic reread continues!

watching (tv):

*vibrates* Yellowjackets (Paramount+/Showtime): oh my GOD I have been wanting to watch this for years and I finally did, binged all two seasons this week. (Minus two episodes I have left to watch, so no season finale spoilers yet!) Yellowjackets. What is there to say? It's great, you all knew it was great, I was late to this party. There's like a venn diagram you could make between this show, NBC's Hannibal, and Black Spot/Zone Blanche but I can't articulate it yet. It's just got everything to appeal to me specifically: spooky forest settings, plane crashes, cannibalism, antler gods, murder, not one but two cults. It's great, extremely on brand for me, Shauna is my poor little meow meow, Melanie Lynskey should play more cannibals, murderers and warlords, she does it so well.

watching (film):

Pearl / X (2022) (double feature): Is it an unpopular opinion that I like X better? I'm also a bit late to this party but I feel like I remember people being like 'oh X is fine but Pearl is so good!' (Confirmed by looking at their comparative Letterboxd scores.) I just think X had a more interesting time period setting, better ensemble cast, better cinematography...which I think make sense given my understanding was X was the film they were originally making, and then they added on Pearl as an origin story project while they were working on X. It felt like more thought was put into X. Also, the 'Don't Fear the Reaper' scene was great. It seems like most of the reviews just comment on Mia Goth's performance as a highlight but like...it's just a lot of yelling and then a very long monologue and then the end credits. Idk, I think X just worked better as a whole, with the ensemble cast.

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2023): This movie was so funny, probably my favorite ending/explanation to a 'wow everyone went from no murder to yes murder really fast' film I've ever seen. I also just love Lee Pace. Lee Pace sabre-ing a bottle of champagne. That is all.

there is no video game update because I have no mobile video game consoles so they are all at my apartment and I am not there, and since I had to leave early Friday instead of my original plan (Sunday) I didn't get to do anything before I left

craft update: slow sweater progress, so close to linking up the armholes and no longer having to purl, so close...

writing to-do list update:

I didn't end up working a ton on oneshots or 'omens' because...

I did it! I got up through chapter 6 on the longfic tentatively titled 'the station'. that's about the halfway point in chapter count, and I've been doing a pretty good job keeping the lengths even and hovering around 5k so far. It's 33k words now so I expect the final word count to be around 65-70k? Thereabouts? Which will be my longest Star Wars fic by quite a lot, even counting adding up the two pieces of the dark ocean duology. But since I'm only at the halfway point, maybe I shouldn't get ahead of myself. It's so much. I love it. I'm terrified it's secretly bad. But it's probably fine haha, I'm actually feeling pretty good about the plot I'm using to string together a bunch of self-indulgent angst, which really, what is fanfiction if not finding a suitable plot to tie together self-indulgent scenes, angst or otherwise?

list for the upcoming week:

I still have to extract my dogsitting fee aka do all of my laundry

got a couple social events over the weekend

pack up and head back to the city sunday

I'm considering doing a probably ill-advised chaos rearranging of my room when I get home unless reason and logic kicks back in and stops me

go back to work (boo)

also clean whole apartment throughout the week because I have eclipse guests

eep somehow acquire eclipse glasses yikes I put this one off

keep chipping away chapter-by-chapter on this fic. I'm just getting to the action, which is both fun because a bunch of things are coming to a head and terrible because oh god writing action scenes is so hard

[alltheanonymousmusings]

I finished my 1st playthrough of Veilguard and I definitely have thoughts. If you are still actively avoiding spoilers until you finish your game, do not interact. While there are no plot spoilers, I don't want anything in the post to potentially spoil something for you.

The Good:

I really enjoyed the game overall. Will definitely be playing multiple times, hopefully finding something new the next couple times. (I wasn't anywhere close to 100% this time around haha)

I love that I can make Rook and absolute purple menace, and I also love that sometimes the companions will call you out on it if it bothers them. I used the not-american voice option for my female Rook, and the voice actor was absolutely delightful. They really nailed the inflection and timing for me.

I really like the return to a smaller world as compared to Inquisition, but it still feels large and expansive without being overwhelming. And no bears! Or spiders!

The Lighthouse is so much fun to watch change as your relationship with your companions grows. Harding's little greenhouse going from boarded up and empty to a literal overflowing garden is soooo cool. And Lucanis going from an empty pantry to a less empty pantry with a lamp. 💀 Man is a whole ass mood, I get it.

I literally cried. Like had to put the controller down and take some time, cried. (You know the part) And here's the thing, I LOVE when media makes me cry. I LOVE having my feelings put through a pasta sheeter. I LOVE having my feelings hurt in the only way Bioware can. And when I look back on the entirety of the game now, I just.....wow. Very very good.

I surprisingly (for me) really enjoyed the combat. It kept me really invested in what was happening, and instead of just bringing the same few people I always do- I had to actually think about who combos with who and what not- which I actually found fun. Though I do wish there was a feature when choosing your party that showed which abilities or who certain companions comboed best with depending on their abilities.

I really like how the inventory works. I did fight with the menu from time to time, but that's a user error and just getting used to what buttons do what.

I could probably write a dissertation on the character creator, but enough people have already. It's seriously the most comprehensive character creator I've ever used to date. I think there's a few things that could be tweaked, but not enough to make me feel it's not amazing.

I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE that you can choose an armor/weapon, but then set the appearance to something different. It seems silly to some, I'm sure, but I have had moments I've wanted to use a lower tier item because I absolutely hated the way the higher tier item looked. (I'm a visual person...not sorry)

BEING ABLE TO PAUSE CUTSCENES... as someone with a young kid, this is an absolute dream come true.

I love the campy dialogue. I love being a shithead to Solas. Some of it got a little cringe- but keeping within the dragon age charm we all know and love.

Auto saves at decision points is soooooo cool. Gone are the days of save scumming (to a degree). I love it so so much.

The Meh:

Sometimes the pacing gets a little weird, but that's kind of inevitable when you're playing a game with lots of little side quests like Dragon Age games usually have. I know a lot of people who played Inquisition didn't like the power system, but I found it really nice for getting a ton of side quests done and a large chunk of exploring out of the way.

Patch 1 dropped about halfway through my playthrough, but I did hit some weird respawn and mission bugs. I didn't go back to see if the patch had taken care of it or not, so we'll find out next playthrough. But I adored the new chest in the Lighthouse, and the nod to Mass Effect...that was so cute.

I know I just praised the character creator, but a few things: it does take a certain level of skill, and...if you lack skill...patience. I don't like the triangle sliders as much as I thought I would, but again...skill and patience. I know the more I practice with it, the better I'll get and the more I'll enjoy it. Also, in the character creator, I literally could not see the glitter anywhere, even when I turned the intensity up to 100% and made the glitter an obnoxious color. That could be something on my end, but I ended up always just using none and moving on.

For the amount of hair options they gave us, I still really struggled to find one I wanted. There are so many hairstyles where it's just a different length of the previous option, but of course not the one I wanted. (Also, a long- like chest length version of Antoine's hair would be so pretty... come on, bioware)

The Cons:

I need more companion moments. I need more romance scenes. I romanced Davrin for my first playthrough, and he's charming, he's flirty, but where's the spice? A huge selling point they gave us was how impactful and significant the connects we'd build with our team were, how deep the romances were, and how steamy and spicy the romances were. I'm not expecting (nor do I want) a full blown bedroom scene, but like...Davrin gave me half a shoulder rub and magically took my clothes off. Give me more buildup, more tension...something. I feel like they were so much more focused on the connections between the companions that the connection with the player fell to the wayside. The "dates" felt like filler, and the whole thing kind of felt like an afterthought. Seriously, bioware, if you need help writing romances, look to the fanfic community...we're going to be working overtime to satisfy a lot of missing content.

The lack of an epilogue other than the "where are they now" right before the credits is a HUGE bummer.

There are other thoughts, but they take a level of nuance to discuss that I don't think can be accomplished in this particular setting.

Overall, my opinions are overwhelmingly positive, and I'll definitely be doing a bunch of playthroughs. The game was so so enjoyable and I had a great time. I know the community will fill in the romance blanks with all the amazing art and fics. I'll also be writing up a storm...even in just the tiny bit of content I got I've fallen so hard for these characters.

Anyway, on to my next playthrough!!

[wheeloffortune-design]

This could be a whole dissertation (or a 30 min rant, I counted.) Important points:

1- Reference is the lowest form of humor. It's not even humor. It's just including a thing, a character or an actor that will make the audience go 'I know this!'. It's not funny in itself. It's not emotional. It's just a gimmick. Remember when Ryan Reynolds made Free Guy and the climatic surprise was that they'd paid to get the rights to use the Captain America Shield and lightsabers?

(Free guy)

Deadpool and Wolverine is 2h 8min of similar references, with very little soul.

But this is not a critique of Deadpool and Wolverine, or not only that. It's a critique of Hollywood.

Because 2- Now that Disney owns everything, it's easier to include IPs by the dozen, fill the movies with things we already know, because people pay to see the things they already like, and risk doesn't pay as much. Just the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a multiplying monster of self-reference, where now they're not only jokes, but homework too. To fully appreciate this joke you need to watch three other series on Disney+.

Before the mergers, sometimes cross-studio cameos happened and they were hilarious in their rarity.

(Who framed Roger Rabbit)

Now they all belong to the same company, are we supposed to gasp when they bring back the same people, the same objects? It was special at the start of the MCU, but now it's been a decade of the same stuff.

Are you telling me that a movie cannot be complete in itself?

(Intermedio: I am aware that Deadpool's humor is to break the fourth wall. He did it better in his first two movies. Now the time that should have been taken to write a better story between him and Wolverine has been spent on 'Oh look it's--!')

But you're gonna ask 3- Are all references bad? I like them! Sure, you do you, but this is not about liking something, it's about quality of writing. There are ways of taking existing things and adding them to your story, or your media, and make them mean something. My favorite example of this is Um, Actually

(Um Actually, on Dropout.tv)

The whole point of the show is to find what is wrong in a reference, and the decor proves it. It's not just a background with geek stuff to prove their geek cred, they remade the things so they could be part of the game. This is elevating references to a higher level.

4- But you were talking about Shrek?

Shrek, my friends, dit it All, did it Best, and did it First.

They played on references on two points: the fairytales, that everyone knew, and the pop culture of the 2000s, that adults knew. For this was Shrek's message: this is not your children's fairytale, this is adult humor. They used the fairytales to clash with the irreverent and crass jokes, and added a layer of pop culture that only adults could understand. It was all part of the package.

And the voice actors were part of that too! Yeah, there were already stars playing 2D or 3D characters, but when Shrek came out, it was a supernova of megastars. I spent the walk home trying to explain to my brother how huge Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers were, actors today just can't compare to their level of stardom. This was promoted as an adult blockbuster and every decision they made, every known actor, every pop culture reference, went in the same direction.

And Shrek still holds today, even distanced from the pop culture it reflected, because it has soul.

And then, they did something today's movie makers can only dream of: they made a sequel, and it was even better. Because instead of making the same jokes that worked in Shrek 1, instead of referencing itself and capitalizing on the love they already had acquired from the public, they made a new story, with more characters (and megastars! Antonio Banderas! Julie Andrews!!!), more depth, more soul.

When you're too busy recreating what worked once, you don't create new, better scenes like the fairy godmother singing I need a hero while Shrek storms the castle.

Conclusion: Shrek, and Shrek 2, were a novelty in the kind of irreverent humor, pop culture, megastars, references it contained, and Hollywood has spent 22 years trying to recreate it, again and again, losing sight of what made it special.

Ogres have layers. That simple.

Deadpool and Wolverine is just the logical conclusion of Hollywood having spent the last 22 years trying to recreate Shrek. And failing.

[inkyquince]

Omg thank you, i thought i was the only one who skips the dialogue like?? Some of my friends are a big fan of genshin characters and how they interact with each other and they analyze their convos and I'm like?!!??!?! How do they do it

I would love to analyze conversations. But I cant. Im in constant danger of Paimon breathing.

No but legit? Like, when Paimon aint screeching, listening to Zhongli and Childe chat, its quite fun? Maybe Xiao interacting with any character is fun too. And Shenhe? Love her.

But with the plot? Side quests? I wanna get back to the combat. I'm truly bored. RN, im smacking past dialogue with Thoma, i like him, but my god, im bored. I don't care. The only part of the main plot that i liked wasn't even apart of the main plot, was the bit with Dainsleif. It was intresting and I'm so mad Paimon wasn't crushed to death in the end.

Okay but real talk right now?

I have studied narrative in stories, mainly focusing in constructing a narrative in table top games and video games, then secondly focused on novel driven plots, followed by tv plots. Im shaky on plays, but anyway.

Genshin Impact is carried by its combat and characters. I'm not joking.

So, the main issue I have is the "dialogue trees". Basically, they were first created in games, to have the character choose how to respond to something, to have a choice.

I have the same issue with Genshin as the same I had with the dialogue trees in Deus Ex Machina reboot games.

They serve no fucking purpose. NO FUCKING PURPOSE. It doesn't serve to solidify what type of person the Traveler is, like in Mass Effect. It doesn't lead to a different outcome, like opening up a separate way to lead deal with a situation. At most, it allowed you to stall a quest for a bit.

So why the fuck are you giving me two different sentences to say to an NPC? It doesn't impact anything, at most, they have a slight change of dialogue. And that doesn't???? INFLUENCE ANYTHING?

It's the illusion of choice. Just... Do the silent protag thing properly. Have the blond little bitch nod along or look annoyed, like you already do, BUT THAT AWAY THE MEANINGLESS DIALOGUE. YOU'RE JUST TRYING TO MAKE YOUR GAME SEEM LIKE MODERN RPGS, BUT YKNOW. THOSE DIALOGUE TREES SERVE A GREATER NARRATIVE PURPOSE.

You basically have two different sentences to say on the way to agreeing to do the quest, in the same way as intended. That's some shit for brains game designing.

I have written four different essays on Narrative Games Design, that i turned in to my tutor, who forwarded it to the NEXT UNIVERSITY OVER, WHO HAD A GAME CREATION COURSE, because he wanted her to read through. The same next door univeristy tutor wanted me to make my final dissertation on fucking game design, but i wanted to explore Jennifer's Body and how it applies to feminism before linking the entire process of creating it and marketing it really just showed the movie's point, and im glad i did.

But my god, i studied game devices and narratives and impacts on the player, and for fucks' sake, Genshin makes me so fucking angry because it somehow doesn't fucking grasp that.

Some of the side quests are so fun too, so its a shame.

Also paimon is the worst thing to do to a player. People were already fed up with Navi from Legend of Zelda, how was inflating the little bitch and making her worse, a good idea?

Also silent protagonists are so good. How did you ruin that completely? Silent protagonists allow the player to be alone with their thoughts, to be able to project, to think through this new world they've been introduced to. So, why make the traveler... SILENT. if you were just going to replace their voice with paimon's???

PAIMON DOESN'T NEED TO BE THERE. EITHER HAVE THE MAIN CHARACTER HAVE A VOICE TO POINT THINGS OUT TO THE PLAYER OR MAKE PAIMON A BETTER COMPANION LIKE WHEATLY FOR A SILENT PROTAGONIST.

death to paimon.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

is the VA thing a "All I hear is Makoto" situation or a "I recognize them from P5 and I have war flashbacks" situation?

It's a "All I hear is Makoto" situation (tho sadly it was prepped prior to Makoto...I'll explain in a bit). If it was "They are from P5 and I have war flashbacks" I don't really have those. I joked about Robbie the other day (it was more to inform fans who really like his voice that he voices novels as well), but it's not really the case for him. Despite me only......knowing his voice from Goro (I've listen to a few other roles he's been in, half the time I forget it's him tbh....which is good cause it doesn't pull me out aklfjsafj except for Mitsuki but he always felt like he'd have the same voice as Goro so I'm fine 8U), same goes for Xander. The only reason Japanese!Futaba gives me some war flashbacks, is cause of her damn voiceline trophy in the vanilla game......I'm sitting there listening to very specific lines before I move on.

(Below the cut is a self reflective dissertation on why I’m having a hard time with this VA 8U Also I know what you are thinking “Silly this is kinda stupid” yeah and I hate it and I want it to go away too but it’s not and I’m stuck...and I wanna vent)

What's odd is a heard a good few number of roles by Cherami before P5. I was actually gathering clips of her for my videos way back when (was probs going to make an Anne video, just cause 1) Anne was the only female character at the time, 2) I kept running into Cherami's voice). Tbh that was probably the downfall I had, since it got me really in tune with picking up her voice. But prior to that she voiced one of my fav characters! Komaru Naegi. Only issue I had at the time was for some reason her voice went from higher pitch, to suddenly lower pitch in the last chapter (except for the animated cutscene where it was high again)....and this is something that the Japanese dub did as well(???? I dunno that's just what I heard, but whyyy DR devs??? WHyyyyy???). That was a bit off topic, but moral is, the only issue I had at the time with her voice was the voice direction in DRUDG (aka it’s not her fault, I was upset with the director). 

Before I really heard what Japanese!Makoto's voice really sounded like, that I was hoping she'd be like Satsuki from KLK. But then I heard her voice.....and the second I really heard Japanese!Makoto in action my brain went "Oh, she sounds like that character no one likes from Psychopass" (fun fact, I'm not as hard on Mika as most of the fanbase seemed to be at the time, dunno how they feel about her now, I'm still sympathetic towards her). And when I started collecting the voice clips, and trying to listen to other voices during that time.... and I found they all really sounded almost the same (cadence wise, obvie the acting I could tell was diff from char to char a lot of the times, tho if they had the same personality they could feel the same but I was eh about it at the time, and thus my big issue with her voice started to grow but.....I def thought there was something about her that fit Mako).

Then P5 hit, and you know how deeply unsympathetic I am towards Makoto. And RIGHT then is where I realized something about the voice. It was whiney. I thought back to the two big voices I knew her from, Komaru and Mika, and both were whiney (both had roughly good reasons, more so Komaru than Mika). "But Silly! You said you were more kind to Mika than the rest of the fandom. Why are you calling her whiney?" Yeah well, here's the thing. Mika is brainwashed and gaslit by the dystopia she lives in (hence the whiney parts of her dumbass). She is an antagonist to Akane. She is conflict to the story. I don't think we are supposed to like her (at most pity her). As for if she gets off easy in the story, it's been to long to say (ironically all this is said about S2!Mika, before in S1 I was like "man I hope that Mika char joins the main team for S2! :D and then klajsfdl;jafsa S2 happened XU). But regardless, we aren't supposed to really 100% root for Mika, she plays the role she is written for (can't hate her for that). Complete opposite of Makoto in terms of how the writing is handled but I digress. 8U

Anyway, after Makoto I could escape how condescending Makoto sounded (and FYI I thinks she did FANTASTIC as Makoto, because Makoto sound so gd condescending in the text I think she nailed it, sadly I just now associate Cherami’s base voice with it DX.....”Silly you know Makoto’s not supposed to sound like tha-” Yeah well we know how I feel about the writing and how I think Atlus missed the mark so we’re gonna just move along from that now XU). So I started to associate it both with whiney-ness and condescending-ness. I started to actively avoid her voice (sans Mako, can't escape her atm, not that I was listening to Mako 24/7), a year later after I listened to the Boruto movie dub. I.....thought that Cherami would fit Sarada. What I didn't expect was how it would make me feel towards Sarada (whomst I liked in the jpn dub and in the prequel manga pages). I found her annoying, like I do with Makoto (tho ironically the first season of Boruto I found Sarada to act like a brat that would remind me of Makoto that was in the jpn dub, which isn’t going to help my mental image of Cherami’s voice any better so DX). So maybe I typed casted her....

And after that it was just a knee jerk anytime I heard the voice. The second I heard that cadence, all my negative connotations associated with it (aka Makoto), would flood the character on screen....to the point I don’t see the char. I just see an annoying voice. Well hear...you know what I mean.

Basically......I think I pavlov’d myself.....to that voice. It’s not Cherami’s fault (maybe a little........a lot of her younger girl voices sound the same, she’s got maybe 3 modes......maybe I’m just not used to the other newer actresses or maybe she’s just special for my brain atm). I tried uhhh “rehabilitating” the voice (aka, exposing myself to other roles), but it didn’t work out. So now I’m trying avoidance. Obviously not working since I clocked the woman on a breath *sobs* a breath! The character just inhaled and I was like “oh god that’s Cherami-GDI!” *sobs* I just want to turn my brain offffffffffff! orz

I’ll probs try to expose myself to the voice again.....just not right now.....I’m still recovering from the breath incident. 

Or maybe it’s not pavlov...maybe it’s OCD, I do have some OCD tendencies.....Regardless if it’s Pavlov, OCD, or type castng....wish me luck. I must undo a prison my brain has trapped me in~!