#all i want for christmas is guil being alive

[be-right-bach]

what kind of person u r based on ur visual prison ship because Why Not

(putting aside the fact that half of these ships are either problematic or have kind of an incestuous vibe to them since the discovery that turning someone makes you their pseudo-family lmao)

guil/ange: u probably have a daddy kink. and u had hopes for this ship till ange's age theories surged and ep 9 attacked.

ange/robin: u just want a little bit of fluff and comfort and honestly, same.

guil/eve: u either love the "accidentally sharing the custody of a bunch of kids" dynamic or u r trying to replace the absence of a paternal/maternal figure with these two. i hope it's the first.

eve/robin: Too Much Energy + Low Energy. perfectly balanced. u play it safe, nothing can go wrong with this.

saga/mist: u probably need couples therapy. and if u don't have a partner, then know that you'll need it. they're cute i'll give you that.

hyde/dimitri: u just don't want to fight with anyone. probably a reigisa shipper too.

jack/robin: hun u r stuck in That Scene in episode 3. and in 2012 before twitter threads and cancel culture were a Thing.

saga/jack: probably a sebaciel shipper. in the middle of 2021. say sike rn.

eve/elizabeth: u r cool and i respect u for this. have a cupcake.

yutaka/guil: go to you ao3/wattpad/fanfiction.net and tell me how many sad/bittersweet ending, everyone lives/nobody dies, fix it ffs or reincarnation aus do u have. now u get it.

saga/guil: ah yes, you'll probably go to great lengths for the people you love, but will they do the same for you??? u r here just for the pain.

[fromthedeskofthecaptain]

For anyone who would like to know the contents of the Ghosts Empire Spoiler Special, I’ve summarized the discussion below.

There are two episodes, both centered on series 2, excluding the Christmas special. The first is Martha, Ben and Larry and the second is with Matt and Jim (and is better in terms of how deep they go into characterization and the writing process). I’ll skip the bits that are just chatter.

I’m not going to transcribe it all, but I’ll spend a few posts talking about the key points. I’ll do the second one first, because it’s the richest.

Writing process-

Storylining is done half a series at a time as a big group and then who writes each episode depends on availability and not being engaged on other projects. People will often write an episode because the plot was their idea, but it can work out that they write up an episode based on someone else’s outline.

They knew they wanted to show characters going against type - angry Pat and vulnerable Captain - and that they wanted to explore love between the Ghosts. They wanted to show humanity, add complexity and depth to characters and allow a range of movement into the present and the past. It was harder to write than Yonderland because there isn’t a new character with an “adventure of the week”.

Episode 1 -

The original idea for Pat’s DJ spot was that he would give an intro to Dexy’s Midnight Runners “Come on Eileen” and hum the first few bars, but it turned out to be £1000s to obtain the rights. Jim was so thrilled that it got such a laugh in rehearsal he considered paying himself. They tried a few others (2,4, 6, 8 Motorway) and then Jim improvised “Chicken and Chips” thinking he’d have a lot more tries, but Tom Kingsley moved them on before he could.

(Btw, they had no problems getting Kylie to agree to use of “I Should be so Lucky” because she loves the show! Music Club presented the same problem of having to ask for clearance and pay. Apparently there’s no standardized system so they had to think of something and ask, rather than picking from options with a price list.)

Episode 2 -

They came up with Dante’s plot to give Alison some way of moving through the house and interacting with everyone. They went with the Ghosts natural reactions to partying. Pat was conflicted between fun and the right thing. The plague ghosts and Mick giving everyone the plague was based on a play Matt was in years ago about a village where this happened.

They structured the episode by using the principle “what’s the worst thing that could happen next?” a la Curb Your Enthusiasm and thought the answer was the plague ghosts coming upstairs and there had to be a cause of that. The archaeologist was a good person to deal with the question of how is it they’ve just found out what Mick did.

Mary x Robin came from them thinking someone would end up having some intimacy with someone in hundreds of years without much stimulation or any other people, or even things, to touch. They joked about everyone having had ghost sex(!!) with everyone else at one point. (Editor’s note: I can’t really see this. Kitty doesn’t know what it is, Cap and Fanny are too uncomfortable with it so that leaves Julian, Thomas, Humphrey and Pat, who I suspect is too loyal to his wife).

Episode 4 - The Thomas Thorne Affair

There was an awareness that Thomas’s character could become a “one note joke” with no capacity for development. Jim described him as potentially like Pepe Le Pew. Matt asked Charlotte how she felt about the sameness of some of their interactions. They thought about having Alison just lay down the law as it were, but that would change who he was too much. They needed to “play the same tune with a different dynamic” in Thomas’s arc. They considered making his character a peeping Tom, but thought that would bore everyone quickly.

Episode 4’s plot structure came about because they wanted to promote the unreliable narrator idea. They knew some ghosts would have witnessed Thomas’s death and that, plus familiarity with characters, let them play with the format. Matt didn’t want to have the flashbacks to deaths to be done the same way each time. Pat’s in series 1 was obvious because he “wears his death” (Jim). Jim did an improv of Pat’s death in the writer’s room when they first had the idea of how he died. It worked because although it’s quite horrific, the audience knows he’s ok, in a sense, afterwards, so it can be comedic too.

Matt felt a bit guilty about being front and centre of the story he wrote. The unifying thread was Mike and Alison’s issues with truth / perspective. His death also establishes that some ghosts are present at others deaths.

They developed Thomas by writing about why he is as he is. Matt thinks that because Thomas died “heartbroken and fixated” Mary’s observation that “you stays how you dies” is psychologically true, too. They always knew he died in a duel over a woman, but elaborated it to include dying thinking he’d been abandoned. He transferred this state of unrequited obsession onto Alison. Thomas can’t cope with Robin’s point, re monogamy, about what would he do if both Isobel and Alison were alive.

They still aren’t sure if he’s a good poet - they wrote it so we know it’s bad BUT he can believe it’s good and the audience within the show are a bit confused about whether it’s just confidently delivered rubbish or not. They think he’s capable of good work but gets too caught up in his fixed ideas of what being a good poet is and tries too hard (the implication being that this blocks genuine creativity/ originality). His vulnerability is quite charming (Matt).

The idea of the cousin betrayal was thought up once they started. The first idea was just that Thomas tells a story and others interject to say it wasn’t like that and Kitty would tell her version which the audience would know to be true because she has no guile. The contrast was originally just in Thomas’s grand passion cruelly interrupted story versus the actuality of a not very good poet being deluded about a random woman who barely knew who he was. The twist of the cousin was a spark in the writers room that everyone was immediately excited about and that matches Thomas’s sense of the melodramatic.

(As an aside, they always knew there were different groups of people in the house before the Buttons and intended to use that to explore other stories and characters throughout history.)

Matt is a bit embarrassed that they didn’t really have space to give Francis a proper motivation for orchestrating his cousin’s death. They put in a bit about him appreciating Button House and added a line from Thomas - “don’t embarrass me, cousin” - to suggest perhaps Thomas bullied him a bit. They thought about giving Francis lines about having gambling debts to create an urgent need to marry into money, but that made it too obvious that Francis was a bad guy.

To be continued...

[thisyearingaming]

1997 - This Year in Gaming

Muggins here was born in ‘97, and can’t really remember much of it, natch. But there were some good things released this year - I’ve played every one of these, and have missed so many more.

Diablo - Windows, January 3rd

We start with dungeon-crawl-em-up and well-loved out of season April Fool’s Joke, Diablo. I’ll be totally honest - I don’t like Diablo that much. It’s absolutely fine, I just can’t get into it. The writing, setting and characters are all very good especially since this year only marks the beginning of games being seen as a bit more adult and intelligent. Check out this gameplay from Hour of Oblivion on YouTube, and marvel at the faux-Scottish accent on Griswold the blacksmith.

Mario Kart 64 - Nintendo 64, February 10th

Compared to its more recent versions, Mario Kart 64 is a veritable bloody relic of the past - solid controls and a quirky style mean it’s still a crowd pleaser to this day, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone right now that would die on the hill of it being their favourite single-player racing experience. It’s also got some of the deepest, impenetrable lore in any medium known to the human race - why exactly is Marty the Thwomp locked up here?

Blast Corps - Nintendo 64, February 28th

February’s position as most boring month of the year is shaken up a bit by having a uniquely designed Rare game slammed into its 28-day long face. Blast Corps is the puzzle-action game where you take control of several vehicles to destroy homes and buildings in order to prevent a nuclear warhead exploding in the coolest incarnation of Cold War politicking ever seen in a video game. Calling Blast Corps a “hidden gem” these days is like calling Celeste a hidden gem - it impresses nobody and makes you look like a dick. 

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - Nintendo 64, March 4th 

The N64 was home to a surprisingly large number of above-average shooters despite its muddy graphics and small cartridge space - Turok is one of these, a great FPS game where you shoot the SHIT out of dinosaurs. Brett Atwood of Billboard said it was like Doom and Tomb Raider mixed - Doom Raider, if you will. I say it isn’t - there’s no demons, and there’s no polygonal breasts to poke dinosaurs’ eyes out with! 

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

What is a retrospective? A miserable little pile of opinions. I’ve only recently played through SotN for the very first time on a TOTALLY LEGITIMATE copy with a CRT filter. Bloody good (geddit?) game, that takes the repetition of its predecessors, improves on it in basically every conceivable way, and combines it with special effects and graphics that even 23 years later had me going “ooh, that looks quite good!” Symphony’s music and audio design are wonderfully paired with a deeply enjoyable experience that’ll have you saying “mm, maybe just one more room?”

Tekken 3 - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

Also releasing from the Land of the Rising Sun that day was Tekken 3, which many believe is still one of the best fighters ever made. Tekken 3′s combat is so fast and responsive that it’s better than some games made today. T3 is also the best and easiest way to knock seven shades of absolute shite out of your friends without risking a massive head injury or a trip to the headmaster’s office... where you could also challenge him, but only if he plays as my favourite Not-Guile-or-Ken character in gaming, Paul. 

Sonic Jam - Sega Saturn, June 20th

The moment Sega realised that re-packaging old Mega Drive games would net them serious cash - although unlike later collections, this is a strictly Sonic affair, and has a neat little 3D world to run around in as a sort of hub world. Sonic X-Treme proved that Sonic Team would have to work hard at getting the fastest thing alive into 3D space properly: Jam is the sort of test ground for it too. It features some genuinely good emulation work for 1997, although it’s basically the gaming equivalent of going round to your grandparents at Christmas only for them to give you the exact same gifts you got in 1991, 1992 and 1994 but wrapped in a bow to make you think it’s different. What are you lookin’ at, you little blue devil?

Star Fox 64 - Nintendo 64, June 30th

So there’s this German company, right, called StarVox. Nintendo look at Europe and say “shit, we don’t want another lawsuit... after all, we’ve done three this year!”. So they give us in the PAL region the exciting title of Lylat Wars which as far as I know means absolutely fucking nothing in the context of the game. They’re still called Star Fox in-game too so what was the point? Anyway, fun 3D shooter with graphics that’ll make you do a barrel roll off the sofa and onto the power button to make the brown and green blurs a little easier on the eyes. Hello 2007, I’ve come back to make old references with you!

Carmageddon - Windows, July 30th

The game so scary it was BANNED in the UK! More like the game so fucking shit it was banned. Carmageddon is so deeply boring to play on PC that I can only imagine that Stainless Games made it tasteless by 90s standards simply to ramp up demand - much like another game we’ll be covering soon. 

Herc’s Adventures - Sony PlayStation, July 31st

“And they said Kratos was the best hero? Shish... they got it wrong, sister! Hercules is clearly better... he even has a coconut weapon.” A surprisingly fun overhead action game that most people only know for... well, I’ll just embed it.

Mega Man X4 - Sony Playstation, August 1st

A few years ago I tried playing every Mega Man game there is - I gave up at X3 because I was getting bored. Even still, Mega Man bores me - but at least the level design is good. Stay away from the Windows port. Pictured: me in the background yawning.

GoldenEye 007 - Nintendo 64, August 25th 

The name’s Intro. Overused intro which I also managed to fuck up twice through the deeply editable medium of text. GoldenEye is like the Seinfeld of console shooters - playing it nowadays you’re unlikely to be amazed but holy shit there’s some absolute greatness in this game. Every sound and every piece of music in GoldenEye is permanently seared into my brain - sometimes I’ll just hear Facility or Frigate in my head alongside the door opening sound and the gentle PEW of the PP7. I mean come on, fucking listen to this and tell me Grant Kirkhope isn’t cool as all hell.

LEGO Island - Windows, September 26th

The first open world experience I ever had was LEGO Island. It’s still quite good today, utterly deranged animation from the likes of the Infomaniac and Brickster - a cautionary tale for children that giving pizza to high-profile criminals is disastrous for the human LEGO race. 

Fallout - Windows, October 10th

War never changes, but franchises do. Fallout’s legendary status in the industry is exemplified in how different it feels. Yes, we had the game Wasteland nine years prior, but until September 97 there was nothing quite like Fallout. From the chilling introduction sequence showing the ruins of the United States to the tragic ending, Fallout is an exercise in pure human misery with the brightest spots of hope it can possibly muster thrown in for good measure. What begins as a tedious isometric point-and-click RPG ends as a minigun-wielding power fantasy, before your entire worth is stripped from you at the finish line. You have 500 days to find a water chip before it’s too late, but you’re constantly being fought by terrifying Super Mutants, irradiated animals, and the biggest monster of all - humanity. See what I did there? If anything, humanity in Fallout’s setting would be the greatest unifying force possible against the horror of the outside world. But how is it? It’s dull, it’s sluggish, and it’s really hard to get into even if you’re already a fan - but push through that and it’s worthwhile to see exactly how far the series got before Todd Howard said “eh fuck it” and had the whole thing dipped into an FEV vat.

Grand Theft Auto - Sony PlayStation, October 21st

To put it simply, the first in the GTA series is now nothing but a novelty. It has an irritating camera, wonky controls, poor graphics and deeply repetitive gameplay. But thank fuck it exists, because without it the Rockstar story may have been very different indeed. It’s quintessential cops and robbers gameplay, spanning across Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas in one game, but with maps so far removed from their modern incarnations they may as well be named “Not New York, Possibly Bristol and Orange Town”. People really fucking hated Hare Krishnas in the 20th Century, didn’t they?

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back - Sony PlayStation, October 31

A hard one to talk about, honestly - it’s more Crash and better than the first one. It looks great, and Crash controls so well compared to his first outing. It’ll also keep you playing for 100%, fiendishly addictive and unashamedly difficult. Had a weird cover that moved with your head. 

PaRappa the Rapper - Sony PlayStation, November 17th

Type type type the words into the box! (Type, type, type - uh oh - the box?)

PaRappa is a gorgeously stylised rhythm game about rapping to steal the heart of the girl of your dreams - which involves learning karate, getting your driver’s license, selling bottle caps and frogs, making a cake, desperately trying not to shit yourself, and finally performing live on stage. Every one of its segments is so well-produced that they’d genuinely sell like ghost cookies in this era of shite rap. Notable for producing the greatest Jay-Z backing track ever made.

Sonic R - Sega Saturn, November 18th

Sonic R is absolutely FINE with vibrant textures, interesting levels, neat gimmicks and decent controls. But I’m gonna talk about its fucking AWESOME soundtrack by Richard Jacques and T.J. Davis, an eclectic mix of Europop and New Jack Swing - even thinking about it is bringing tears of absolute joy to my eyes hearing Super Sonic Racing in my head. You’ve got the main theme, Living in the City, Can You Feel the Sunshine, Back in Time, Diamond in the Sky, Work It Out and Number One - all of these are absolute club bangers and genuinely wouldn’t be out of place in a 90s disco. 

Tomb Raider II - Sony PlayStation, November 18th

Lara Croft returns to single-handedly endanger every species on Earth. TR2 is really good, the exploration and puzzle-solving aspects of the first game expanded upon here and the gunplay remaining just as punchy. Lara’s got a fully-functioning ponytail which absolutely boggles the fucking mind - a lot of work went into Lara’s hair for the 2013 reboot, so I can’t imagine the amount of man hours it took to get fluid(ish, come on, it’s the PS1 we’re talking about) hair movements in 1997. 

And really, that’s all I played from 1997. I’ve left out big hitters like Quake II, Gran Turismo and Diddy Kong Racing, but I simply haven’t formed an opinion on them yet. Maybe in a future post. 

Thanks for reading.