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akuma-tenshi · 5 days ago

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finished closing night!! boy do i have some thoughts. and now that i've gathered them, i'm about to make my autism your problem. spoilers below.

the first part of the event wasn't awful imo, it felt like character building and just helping establish the dynamic. i know some people weren't fond of it but given that i was never really that invested in hullabaloo before this and didn't know every little detail of these characters, it was nice to get some character establishment and figure out how they all are as people. i am also a fan of slowburn character-focused horror, so that may just be a personal taste thing lmao

bryce papenbrook does a good job as mike, even though there are definitely points where he sounds exactly like nagito (namely the scene where he's shouting at margaretha in the foyer). he has a very particular way of speaking / voicing characters that make it immediately clear it's him. however, i do think he fits mike well and he definitely lays off the nagito-ness in the second part.

the rest of the cast was excellent as well. while there was a Choice made with murro's voice (he sounds WAY younger than he's supposed to be, which is off-putting and takes me out every time he speaks), it's very clear everyone knows their characters well and they all do a good job keeping their mannerisms and vocalisations unique and fitting to each role. aside from some awkward lines (which i attribute more to stilted writing than to the va's themselves), the voice acting is absolutely a highlight.

margaretha's trauma with sergi is portrayed very well imo. bear in mind i have not suffered the same abuse as her, so i can't say how accurate or good it is, but it feels like it displays that it was a terrible thing while also being respectful and avoiding being exploitative. the added layer that everyone else (except joker) liked sergi and was unaware of the abuse adds a lot.

in general, i think mike and margaretha are incredibly well-written here. i think ne could've absolutely gone the route of popular fan interpretations and completely demonised margaretha while making mike a perfect angel, and they would've gotten a lot of praise for it. but they stuck to their guns and made them both very flawed yet understandable people, and that just makes everything feel that much more real, at least to me. they're such different people with opposing goals, and their friction really comes through. everyone else is very well done (shoutout to me a couple of hours ago calling joker cute for some godforsaken reason i can't remember) and i love all of their characterisations, but mike and margie really are the standouts here.

i do wish there was a bigger payoff for margaretha using euphoria so frequently. i know it's implied to have been involved in violetta's death, and i appreciate the connection to game 5, but i wish there was a little bit more there. it's not a huge gripe though, so i won't harp on it for long.

the pacing at the start of the second part had me extremely worried; things felt like they were dragging along and being padded out for the sake of being padded out, and i was not having fun with it. fortunately, this issue was remedied about halfway through, and once things got going, i started really enjoying myself. the pacing of the first half of part two is my biggest gripe with this story.

i was noticing a lot of similarities between hullabaloo and fool's gold: hunter forms of popular survivors being announced and used as a major part of marketing for an update to the idv story. with the aforementioned pacing issues, i was really worried that hullabaloo's reveal would shape up to be similar to fg's: a kinda cool cutscene and a lame chase sequence at the very end of a long, boring storyline. however, despite hullabaloo having a much smaller part in this story than fg did in aom, appearing only briefly in the fire at the very end, i still think it's a better incorporation of the character than what they did with norton. better to have it be quick and intimidating than just kinda tedious.

every death in this (aside from joker's) felt very purposeful and well-done. violetta's death was heartbreaking. the change in animation towards the end, followed by the single sound of her machinery giving out after the screen went black, was beautiful, and hey, at least she died happy. margaretha's death pulled at a very specific and very major love i have in storytelling, that being a character choosing to die free rather than live in captivity, and the payoff of all the underwater scenes where she swims towards sergi finally coming through when she chooses to sink away from him had me losing my mind. i genuinely did not expect mike's death to be a straight-up suicide; like i said, i'm not completely caught up on hullabaloo lore, so maybe other people saw this coming, but the fact that he truly could not live with the truth about hullabaloo is such a heartwrenching yet satisfying end to his character. like i said, joker's is the only death that doesn't totally stand out, but i like that they let you put the pieces together yourself.

the chase sequence with joker was unintimidating and a little lame, and honestly it felt somewhat forced, just a way to get his hunter form in there bc they realised "oh shit right this guy's like. a hunter isn't he." i do like that they gave him back his chainsaw though; very nice little callback to the betas.

the animation of the hullabaloo fire was absolutely gorgeous and the ending had me in shambles. for a while afterwards i felt similar to how i felt after finishing end roll: drained and flat but in a good way, like a ton of adrenaline had just released from my body after some intense event.

all in all, i really enjoyed it. i can't say if i like it more than aom, but that may be the frederick bias coming through, so i'm going to choose not to rank them and just say hey. banger event. well worth the hype even with its hiccups and flaws. i always say this, but idv has some genuinely talented people in its writers' room, and i can't wait to see what they come out with next.

#rambling #idv #identity v #closing night spoilers #mike morton #idv acrobat #idv hullabaloo #margaretha zelle #idv dancer #idv female dancer #idv joker #idv weeping clown #idv smiley face #idv murro #murro morton #idv wildling #idv violetta #idv soul weaver

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pretzel-box · 1 month ago

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Hello everyone.

This will be a rather long post about some things I wanna adress, including the fact that I plan to stop writing for Pressure, my OCS and other peoples Ocs in the near future.

Down under the cut is a list with my personal view, issues and some other things that lead to this decision. Maybe I miss a lot or don't go too deep into detail but the main points are covered.

But before I would like to add that this is MY opinion and MY choice. I let you think of it what you want but I also request that you respect my actions.

The first point is probably already clear from the start. Maybe some noticed, maybe not but I fell out of love with the fandom and the game itself. It became boring to play, the characters lost their charm and I can't come up with any creative scenarios anymore and the ones that already exists have lost their meaning. This may sound like the typical burnout thing and maybe it is but I'm more than certain that I wanna step away from the game and the fandom to focus on other things that bring me more joy. Maybe I start a multifandom writing blog or I just learn another hobby.

The second thing that is close connected to the first point is the fandom of the game, including the community on tumblr. A huge part are super sweet people with a very creative side. I would go as far and say that I brought some of those together with my projects and writing and it really makes me happy to see everyone interact so friendly on my blog.

But something that I haven't adressed is the fact that there are also plenty of hardcore fans, haters and weird people in my askbox or general in the fandom. It is to be expected when someone gains a massive amount of followers. But I do not accept the fact that people judge me based on what I write, who I write for, when I write and if I write at all. I delete those asks. Some telling me that my community project is awful, unserious and pulls other ocs into dirt. Other people are claiming that I don't write Sebastians Character right and oh wow seriously? I am not Sebastians creator, I do not have that ultimate deep lore and mindset to write a person 1:1. I get hate for my own stories and of course the fans could now come to my protetion and say ��But Chea don't listen to the haters, you are amazing“ but it doesn't fix the thing in a slightest.

Also regards the people that praise me, some of them ( I won't name anyone) are counting to those weird people that force me. There were 2 or 3 people that acted all sweet in public only to try and take control of some story plots etc.

Also, I started writing when Pressure was first raising to be popular. There weren't many pressure writers out there. I am usually not someone that posts their work online, I don't comment on stuff and I rarely like something. But I really wanted to see more pressure fanfictions. Now we reached the point where there are more than plenty amazing writers and I can quit. There is no need for me to continue something that only makes me hate myself more because everytime I open my notes to write a story for pressure it feels like a mental torture. I leave the writing to the other blogs.

The status for now:

AASB gets discontinued.

Reverse AU gets discontinued.

Streamer AU will recieve 6 more chapters to end the story on a good term.

House of Entities will get continued for a small period of time, probably till I am done with the Streamer AU. There is no plan for the chapter count yet.

All requests in the inbox will get deleted and the inbox itself will be closed after Streamer AU finished.

Any other unnamed project will get discontinued as well.

All stories, one shots, series, drabbles and other works of mine are free to use. Other authors can pick them up, re-write them or just make an own story out of those. I drop all rights for the ideas and I won't demand any credits either. Maybe someone else would like to continue House of Entities as well.

My final word, which may sound repeating: I do not change my opinion, there won't be any motivation talks or sugar coated words that will change my stand in those things. I know some of you will try and comfort me but this is really not needed. I wish for you all to accept the outcome of this situation and move on more or less.

I apologize dearly because this is very sudden and I hope you all will understand.

-Chea

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welcometothejianghu · 2 months ago

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Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 延禧攻略/Story of Yanxi Palace.

Story of Yanxi Palace is a high-budget 2018 Chinese harem drama about the historical-accuracy-adjacent antics of an extremely baller young woman who gets a job working in the Forbidden City in an attempt to discover the reasons behind her sister's death.

Imagine Nirvana in Fire, but only the scenes that take place inside the Inner Palace. So there's still schemes aplenty, but now these schemes are happening among a cast that's 90% women, all locked inside a walled city with rigid rules, excruciatingly strict hierarchies, and a very limited number of ways of getting out alive.

This show was huge in China. The English-language fandom is almost nonexistent. I'm betting most of you reading this have never even heard of it, and if you have, you have only the vaguest idea of what this 70-episode palace drama is about.

I enjoyed this show a whole hell of a lot. I also had some major issues with the show, to the point where I very nearly did not write this rec. But I'm doing it because I think the good parts of the show are worth seeing, and because I think the problem parts of the show are worth thinking about. Interested? Then follow me through these five reasons (and a few anti-reasons) I think you should watch it.

1. The Real Housewives of the Forbidden City

Tired of c-drama sausage fests? Want to see a bunch of incredibly talented ladies act their faces off? Then this is the show for you.

The vast majority of characters in the show are absolute bitches to one another. They are locked in a cutthroat game of power and manners where the stakes are literally life and death, so they spend their whole lives either plotting to take someone else down or counterplotting so the person trying to take them down gets taken down instead. They all know they can't trust one another, but they also sometimes can't not trust one another. They keep their friends close, and their enemies closer.

Unlike most other schemes-based shows, which are all about one big mystery, Story of Yanxi Palace has several smaller arcs. Remember the sister-murder I mentioned at the start? I was prepared for that to take the whole runtime of the show to solve; it actually gets (mostly) concluded around episode twenty-something. Antagonists arise and fall. Situations happen and resolve. Think of it less like a movie's single narrative, and more like a video game's multiple levels. Hooray, we finished Garden World! Now we get to go back to Palace World, but with way more EXP and powerups than we had before!

I know that looks like a bunch of lovely, high-class ladies in that shot, but it's not. It's a pit of vipers. Any woman in that lineup would straight-up shank pretty much any other woman in that lineup without hesitation or remorse. Every woman there knows exactly where she fits in the hierarchy and has a detailed plan for how to take out every woman above her to get to the top -- except for the one in black, who already did take out every woman above her to get to the top, and that's why everyone has to ostentatiously defer to her now.

If you are a fan of TV shows where folk scheme their way to success, this is really a can't-miss property for you.

This is also a show about how smart women have to become to survive being at the mercy of stupid men. Not only are the women being vicious to one another, they're doing so while simultaneousy having to pretend that they are pretty, delicate, vapid ornaments whose only thoughts are how they want the best for their precious emperor and his beloved mommy. It's all about the exercise of soft power, how to hide your knives behind silk sleeves and a sweet smile.

So okay, it's not quite as trashy as reality TV, but it's still bitchy as hell and incredibly fun to watch.

2. You love to hate her (and her, and him, and her)

Now if you've read pretty much any one of my previous recs, you know I like a good baddie, and this is a show with some good baddies. As I said in the last point, this is a show about bad people doing bad things entertainingly.

However, I am not going to tell you who most of the show's love-to-hate characters are, because the vast majority of them do not start out hateable. If the show introduces a female character and you like her, or a eunuch character and you like him, there is like an 85% chance they're going to do a heel turn. (And then sometimes do a face turn after? Look, schemes are complicated.)

But I will tell you about one bitch who's rotten from her first moment to her last: Noble Consort Gao.

Noble Consort Gao is the scenery-chewing, shit-stirring, absolute meanest mean girl in the palace, and it is so fucking entertaining. She's your major antagonist for the first half of the show. She's strategically mean, but she's also recreationally mean. She does the anime villainess laugh for real. Her actor, Tan Zhuo, has set her bitch dial to 11 and isn't even bothering to chew the scenery -- she's shredding it with those incredible metal claw-nails she wears.

Noble Consort Gao is a good starting antagonist because she's so blatantly evil -- and yet somehow still unstoppable. She's a good example of how you can get away with being pretty much openly sinister if you also manage to mind your manners. The reason she gets away with being so damn awful to everyone else is that she's still playing by all the rules. She's managed to weaponize every convention about propriety to lord her power over everyone else. She's like a fucking HOA.

And you'll notice I'm speaking about her with such fondness because she's delightfully awful. In fact, pretty much everyone in this show is delightfully awful. There are exceptions, but on the whole, you want to see them go down, yet you're also going to be a little sad when they go. Even Noble Consort, by the end, you get where she's coming from, and you feel a little bad for her on the way out.

Do you like vengeance? Because we've got some vengeance for you here. Many, many people in this show have been wronged, often by the people they trusted most. And of course they all respond to this in a healthy manner, seeking justice for themselves and for their loved ones through proper channels and reasonable means.

Ha ha, just kidding, everybody here is completely unhinged! The primary difference between a good guy and a bad guy in this show is how many innocent people they wind up taking down with the guilty party. It's messy as hell and we are making popcorn about it.

This is a show full of villains. In fact, this cast is pretty much entirely bad guys, semi-bad guys, potential bad guys, and good people who had to do bad things to survive. There are maybe two non-child characters who are Just Plain Good that don't get nuked almost immediately. Everyone else is some shade of grey. Even our hero (and we'll get to her in a minute) is pretty yikes-inducing cruel when she needs to be.

Going to say this as clearly as I can: This is not a show for people who cannot tolerate moral ambiguity. This is a show for people who love to watch clever bastards work. And pretty much nobody's more of a bastard than Noble Consort Gao.

Ladies and gentlemen, the cunt is served.

3. No, seriously, this is actually what it all looked like

If you are at all interested in this actual time period, you owe it to yourself to see this dedicated work of historical recreation.

The amount of research and detail that went into this production is honestly mind-blowing. Because this show is set in the 18th century, we actually have some pretty great documentation about the places, objects, and people involved in this story -- including some (slightly later, obviously) photographs! The production went all out in its attempts to replicate the setting, including using period-appropriate techniques to create various accessories and objects.

The outfits are amazing -- and excruciatingly accurate in several aspects. I've seen more than a couple people say that their first reaction to the costumes was, ho hum, kind of boring. Well, yeah, compared to some of the absolutely bugfuck-complicated wearable works of art from earlier periods, these are a little understated. But then you start paying attention to the million little details: the embroidery, the hair ornaments, the layers, the fabrics. A whole team of people clearly put a huge amount of work into these outfits.

Nearly every royal character in the show is a real person. You could spoil yourself for several major plot beats just by going to Wikipedia. In fact, I accidentally did this, because I was reading the show's DramaWiki page and thought, oh, that's interesting; I understand why the actor names are links (because it takes you to the actors' pages), but why are so many of the character names also links? Turns out: Wikipedia! So, uh, careful where you click.

One of the great things about the show is how utterly claustrophobic it is. Most of it takes place within the heavily guarded walls of the Forbidden Palace; on the very few occasion it goes somewhere else, you're just traveling to other walled manors and villas. There's one brief scene in a forest, and the psychological difference is enormous. You see a few trees and you're immediately like, oh, so that's why these women are going crazy in their gilded cages.

The drama even shows how some of the least glamorous parts of the Forbidden Palace work: the chamber pots, the coal for furnaces, the mopping, the weeding, the laundry, the fire brigades. It's an enormous production, keeping what is basically a 178-acre city-state running to imperial standards. It's nice to see a drama that acknowledges that while rich people may want to see only clean walkways and fresh sheets, those things don't happen by magic.

If anything, knowing about all this detailed research makes the unintentionally funniest scene in the entire show -- the one with the eunuchs playing Western instruments -- ten times funnier. You had artisans spending months doing exact recreations of historical hairpins, and you couldn't spend thirty seconds asking the internet "when were saxophones invented?" or "does an accordion make noises like a string quartet?" Perfect. No notes.

Trust me when I say you'll get used to the queue haircuts on the dudes. It helps that most of the time, they're facing the camera so they just look like they've got their heads fully shaved, and most of them have heads that look very good shaved! ...Most.

4. The kind of girl who'd make Mei Changsu say damn

The show has a strong ensemble cast, but the woman at the core of all the action is the tough-as-nails protagonist, Wei Yingluo.

The details we have on the actual Lady Wei are sparse. She doesn't really exist as a person in the historical record, to the point where we don't even know her given name (if she even had one) or when she showed up to the palace. We mostly know when she got given her titles, how many kids she gave birth to, some of what she did later in life, and when she died. The show takes these historical gaps and just runs with them, weaving into the silences a narrative that, while implausible, could have happened!

The show starts when Wei Yingluo enters the Forbidden City, not as a royal lady concubine, but as a regular little maid. She's got an agenda, though -- as mentioned earlier, her sister has died tragically, and she wants to figure out why. The stakes get higher as it becomes clear just how much people don't want this question answered, for their sakes as much as for hers.

She very quickly realizes that she can't just live a quiet life and snoop around casually. Too many people are out to get her, and if she's going to survive, she's got to fuck with them before they fuck with her. And they are wholly unprepared for the self-destructive lengths to which she will go to to fuck with them.

Wu Jinyan deserves all the accolades for turning in a great performance. She has to be completely all over the board emotionally and energy-wise for seventy whole episodes, and she brings it. She's very funny and physical when the show calls for her to be! She's willing to flail around and stuff her face and ugly-cry. Then she turns on the don't-mess-with-me stare and the temperature in the room drops ten degrees. Did she get some award for this? [checks her DramaWiki page] Okay, she got several awards for this, good. Even in a huge cast this talented, she's an absolute standout. I can't wait to see her in the Double, which is definitely on my to-watch list.

I'm not going to call Wei Yingluo a Mary Sue, because that's not accurate, but this girl does have some serious plot armor on. You never get the sense that she hasn't earned it, though. She's smart, capable, and more than a little completely fucking crazy. The show makes you believe that the reason she survives most of the shit she pulls off is that everyone is just so baffled that anyone would try it at all that they don't even know how to respond.

I thought about starting out this rec post with Wei Yingluo -- putting her above the cut, in fact, because she really is that compelling. She's back here, though, because it's with Wei Yingluo that we start to slide into my points of critique. Too often, female protagonists are here to solve the problem with their cuteness and quirkiness and extra-special perfectness that shows up all the other girls and captures the heart of whatever boy she needs to save the day. And no matter how this show starts off wanting to make her something different, it ultimately can't conceive of a female lead who isn't at her core just like that.

The writers can never decide how much Wei Yingluo's Manic Pixie Dream Girl act is an act, and how much she means it. The show introduces her as a stone-cold psychopath who is capable of feigning being a carefree brainless uwu smol bean. Later it decides, actually, she's really at her core a spunky, soft-hearted creature who likes to goof off and is just capable of switching on Scheming Bitch Mode when she needs it! And it's like, are you kidding? You just spent like forty episodes telling me that it's all a big trick when she does this, and now you're saying it's not anymore?

It's like they made a character capable of decieving men, and then got decieved by her, which you have to respect. Any fictional character can fool another fictional character; only true legends fool their creators.

sidebar: fuck that dude

The show can never fully commit to this bit, because he's supposed to be our big heroic love interest, but the emperor fucking sucks.

Hands-down the show's biggest moral is that All Emperors Are Bastards -- yes, even the ones in relationships we're supposed to find cute; yes, even the ones whose lifestyles we're supposed to envy; yes, even the ones played superbly by the devastatingly handsome Nie Yuan. While watching we repeatedly invoked this tweet:

Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day

He is the dumbest, most easily played motherfucker in China. Getting horny makes him stupid, and he's horny all the time. He has absolute power over the lives of everyone in the empire, and you can distract him with the mere suggestion of a vagina. He has taken a full You Girls Fight It Out Amongst Yourselves stance toward his scheming harem. This will not go well for anyone.

And speaking of those wives, no matter how many times they loudly profess their undying devotion to him, I have a rough time imagining these women feel anything for the Emperor beyond exhausted contempt. Well, okay, maybe the Empress who married him before he took the throne, since she had a chance to get to know him before he was in full Emperor Mode. But none of the other women should ever stop dunking on this guy like the gullible shitbag he is. If you (like me!) are already skeptical about any given heterosexual romance in fiction, be prepared to roll your eyes through the Big True Love Story this one tries to sell you.

5. Right on the cusp of a fascinating feminist conclusion!

I may be on this one for a while; skip ahead if you like.

Okay, so: What little English-language buzz I've seen about this show has used the word "feminist" about it -- mostly in conjunction with how the show's popularity made the CCP sour on its failure to portray appropriate communist values (???). So I went into it expecting feminism! And I got a show with a whole bunch of female characters in it! And hoo boy, are those two things not necessarily the same!

This show is a great example of how merely passing the Bechdel-Wallace Test doesn't make something feminist. Sure, it's mostly about a single woman who, through her plucky nature, rises in the ranks of power. But that is feminist only by the shallowest, most girlboss, Lean-In-ass definition of the word.

At the beginning, you can kinda tell this was written, produced, and directed by men. By the time you get to the end, you can absolutely tell that the production team was dudes from top to bottom. This, to me, is the big tell: that the show cannot conceive that anything these women are doing could be interesting unless it's trying to stab another woman in the back. There is a time jump very near the end, where the few female characters still standing agree to stop being shitty to one another -- and then fast-forward a decade, because why would we care about seeing what their lives are like when they're not being shitty to one another?

The show is incredibly constrained by Actual History. At the end of the day, it's a Cinderella story, and as such, we have to cheer for the social and legal mechanisms that make it possible -- even when they're grotesquely misogynistic. The show lets its female characters pay lip service to how awful it is that women are little more than breeding stock, but it doesn't let them do anything about it. Mothers can be obliquely sad that their daughters are being fed to the same patriarchy machine that fucked them up, but talking is the most they can accomplish ... because those daughters were real people who were actually fed into the patriarchy machine. We know this. We have documentation. China is very good at keeping receipts.

Wei Yingluo starts out as a servant, and throughout the first half of the show, she moves up and down in the servant ranks -- and all the while it makes the point that being a servant fucking sucks. Maybe it's better when you get to work directly under someone you really like, but the actual job sucks shit and puts you at the mercy of everyone above you in the palace hierarchy. Your life is not your own. You're barely a person. You can easily get executed for merely working in the same household as someone who broke the rules.

The feminist answer to this dilemma is to notice that the system is bad and either a) refuse to participate in it, or b) use your power to mitigate its badness. The show, however, clearly thinks that the real problem with this whole setup is that the people we like aren't at the top of it. Somebody has to take the abuse; you just don't want that somebody to be you. Once Wei Yingluo gets to a place of real power in the palace hierarchy, she starts behaving very much like the people who used to be shitty to her and takes no steps to prevent the early-show damage she suffered from happening to other people.

Now: You can make the argument that if she'd done all those radical things, she would've been dead meat -- and I think you'd be correct! But the show never indicates that it gives a second thought to how abusive and unfair this all is. Survival in this system means exploiting the people below you. There's not a neutral option. And this show expects you to cheer for exploiting the "right" people.

The show never quite seems to internalize what the stakes are -- at least, not for more than a moment or two at a time. I made the Real Housewives joke because the show more or less treats the consort-on-consort schemes as fun catfights by mean girls wanting to be the prom queen. It almost gets to the point of realizing that a woman's place in the harem is literal life-and-death shit for her, and that if she can't produce a son and work him into a powerful position, she's fucked. It always bunts when it gets there, though, choosing to play up vanity and petty grievances instead of the absolute desperation these women must be feeling.

It gets so close with Consort Shun to a real discussion about how awful it is that the men in their lives see them as pretty objects to be bartered for favor and power with other men. But it can't fully go there, because that would undermine the structures propping up this Cinderella story, and then we couldn't feel good about the Cinderella story. And we want to feel good about the Cinderella story. We will burn every other female character in the show if we get to feel good about the Cinderella story.

I've made a lot of jokes about lesbians in this show, but the truth is, it is chronically deficient in lesbianism. Lesbian sex would have improved the lives of at least half the characters here, if not more. Unlike a lot of other historical c-drama shows, Yanxi Palace acknowledges the reality and possibility both male and female same-sex sexual desire -- but it does so in order to say that both are bad. (I legitimately cannot tell if the production is doing this to show how regrettably anti-gay the past was or to play on the audience's expected homophobic disgust. I suspect the latter, but I genuinely don't know.) While it does the fascinating thing of showing desire and coupled relationships between women and eunuchs, it has no idea how queer those setups are, nor does it acknowledge the possibility for same-sex pairings to fill that same positive dynamic.

So why on earth would I list this whole mess of problematic attitudes as a reason for, and not against, watching the show?

Because it is fascinating to think about. Look, I've burned a lot of time and brainpower here writing several paragraphs that no one is ever going to read about how interesting the show's moves are. It has the weird problem where it understands what happens when you lock a bunch of women together in a high-pressure situation keyed to a brutal hierarchy -- but it doesn't ever appear to quite get why. At least, not beyond the sense that people will claw their way to the top of any hierarchy they have access to, just because it's there. (Watch how it treats the few exceptions to this, the rare nonambitious characters. See how long they stay nonambitious.)

As I said when I labeled this point, the show is just on the edge of a smart conclusion, and that smart conclusion has to do with how awful it is that women are both the people who suffer most under heteropatriarchy and the people who work the hardest to uphold it.

Yes, the world into which these women have been thrust is awful. But they make it ten times more awful because they're all semi-voluntarily engaged in a vicious, Highlander-esque zero-sum competition. They could cut one another some slack, but they're more invested in continuing the cycle of abuse to maintain an intense, repressive order. The ones that try to be kind about it get repeatedly fucked by the ones who have no interest in kindness. They all have to engage in performative rituals that mimic sincerity without actually producing a single genuine emotion toward one another. It's horrifying and paranoia-inducing in the extreme. And they're doing most of it to themselves.

If it were really feminist, the moral of the Story of Yanxi Palace would be it does't have to be like this. This dynamic is not inevitable; this is a choice perpetuated by generations of people who benefit from it just enough not to question its correctness.

Sadly, there's still enough promise in patriarchy that being a Good Girl will save you from the shit we put the Bad Girls through -- so don't you want to be a Good Girl? All we need you to do is throw all those icky Bad Girls under the bus. It's their fault for being Bad Girls anyway. But you? You don't have to be afraid. We're not going to hurt you. You deserve all the good things we're giving you. You're not like all the other girls. You're different. You're special.

Just don't forget to watch your back.

If anything, I think the CCP is terribly wrong: This show is an excellent demonstration of communist values, in that if these women had just joined together in solidarity, all their lives would have been so much better! The Emperor should have been posting helplessly on Reddit like "My (55M) consorts (40F, 36F, 31F, 28F, 22F, 19F) have unionized" so the entire internet could come for his ass.

Care to watch?

This is another of those shows you can find in a whole bunch of places! Here's the ones I know about:

YouTube

TVBAnywhere

Viki

Tubi

iQiyi

I know seventy episodes is a commitment. I know eighteenth-century palace drama is a lot. I know that last selling point of mine seemed to go on for-fucking-ever and you probably didn't read any of it. But this show is a beautiful work that I think more people should see, warts and all. Besides, if all we ever consume is ideologically "pure" media, how do we learn to think critically about anything?

True story: My Chinese colleague, knowing I was watching this show, taught me slang for "lesbian." It's 拉拉 (lala). Very useful.

#story of yanxi palace #yanxi palace #rec post #i made this #延禧攻略

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sweetbottletops · 22 days ago

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Who allowed them to grow up?! Now they're going to have to deal with what? Communication issues AND bills?

Go on, go on, just walk away Go on, go on, your choice is made Go on, go on, and disappear Go on, go on away from here... The Cure - In Between Days

ch 107

When serious work needs to be done in the shop the significant others get invited. Not sure if Joe knows something is up, but it's nice to see Aya-chan is automatically included along with Kanna. It's going to take a village at this rate.

So this has been stressing Mitsuki out too, huh. Is that going to be about their relationship, Prom, Hime's house invite? The list is growing.

"Ah...for now, I guess I'll just help out at the store. Why?"

So at that point she wasn't hatching her own plan to invite Aya after all? Maybe she didn't know about Prom at this point.

It is nice to see Hime-chan was being really official with her invitation. Business card and everything. And it's actually nice her dad is just inviting her to a curated event instead of like corning her himself. She can network on her own timeline perhaps.

If Mitsuki had green eyed interest at the time....

...Aya is absolutely irradiated.

It doesn't seem like Aya had overheard all the details about the hallway invitation back then. Just that she didn't get to Mitsuki first for the 25th. I don't think she'd be this good at faking surprise.

Meanwhile Kanna has been quietly starring in her own romcom this whole time. Agu, please write them an omake when everything is is said and done.

It's interesting that Mitsuki is the one who brings up Prom and acting upset to miss it. Maybe you should have asked her to Prom yourself, silly.

I wonder if she's already decided Aya's the one so she skipped a few mental steps (that Aya needs) to make that clear they are a forever pair. Even if Aya backed out of asking there was no reason Mitsuki couldn't have just asked herself.

Joe recognized Aloud Records immediately. Must be big time then.

"But, it's on the 25th..." OMG MITSUKI. Did she really think it went without saying that they'd just be going to Prom? Without ever asking Aya?

"Who cares?! What Prom." Yup. Aya has killed her emotions dead already.

She is not going to do anything to impose on Mitsuki. She was really close to it last chapter, but from her POV she already missed her last chance. Now she's just going to be a cheerful supporter. Nobody can take being her first fan away from her. And good fans don't get in the way of the rise of their oshi.

Liar. She spared no thought to her family when she saw that Prom poster. She's going to go home that night and have a private meltdown. It's in her schedule at this point.

Look at Aya go! Best fan anyone could ever want. Not over compensating at all. Everything is FINE. Just like with their failed game of catch.

Dang, they are looking older in the face now.

"I guess this means we made up..." - Mitsuki Koga

No, it means she's given up on her romantic feelings in order to at least have this much.

And spare a thought for Narita. He'll possibly fail his tests because he spent his time setting up a Prom for these two idiots. Neither of which will be attending as it stands now. A true Olympian of yuri enjoyers.

Since I missed their faces and need the pick-me-up here's some Joe/Kanna (Joanna? JoKa?). At least things seem to be turning around for Joe a bit.

#the guy she was interested in wasn't a guy at all #arai sumiko #green manga #yuri #manga #the guy she was interested in wasnt a guy at all

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utilitycaster · 7 months ago

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I was asked by several people to elaborate on why I thought people hated Essek and specifically treated him as some spontaneous disruption rather than a choice driven by cast members, and so here it is.

An overarching theme is this: Matt, the creator of Exandria and DM for Critical Role, created Essek. The entire cast of Critical Role likes him. Liam O'Brien, as Caleb, chose to romance him. Now, none of this prevents you from disliking him, but I think people pile their hate on Essek because they don't want to admit they are upset with choices the cast members have made. (For what it's worth, this is why I think it's healthy to be able to express that you are frustrated with a cast member's character choices or with developments in the campaign or creative choices generally, and treating expressions of dislike as taboo or worse, inherently problematic, ultimately makes for a far more toxic fandom than one in which people can comfortably say "I don't like this"). Essek is an NPC, and as the post that led me to write this up states, he is a character who represents Matt's narrative decisions and the cast's choices in Campaign 2. To be mad at him is to be mad at a puppet because for whatever reason you are unwilling to admit a dislike for what the puppeteer is doing.

Now: why Essek specifically?

People who shipped Caleb with Jester do this a lot. I'll admit to my own biases re the C2 ships but I do reject this being pure fanwank because people who shipped other Caleb ships and were still around in the late campaign either mostly acted like adults, or just kind of threw Essek into the mix. The thing really is that a lot of people who shipped Caleb and Jester are very big fans of Liam specifically, and Liam and Laura's dynamic, and are loathe to say that Liam decided not to have Caleb significantly pursue the relationship; that Laura chose to have Jester act utterly unaware of the relationship; and that Liam decided, instead of having Caleb pine endlessly, to pursue another potential romantic interest. I also suspect that some abuse of power in specific fandom spaces gave people false hope and inflamed resentment. A lot of these people also hate on Fjord but tend to be quieter about that because it's harder to pretend a PC isn't deeply tied to a cast member.

There is a subset of fans who treat mlm ships and wlw ships (or male and female characters) as locked in some kind of zero sum game in which the existence of one dims the light of the other. This is preposterous. I cannot imagine a more wretched and unhappy fandom experience than miserably tallying up fics and art and judging success not by quality and enjoyment of what content there is but rather whether there's more for your ship or more for other ships. I have joked that when my favorite character is popular I enjoy that they're popular, and when they're not, I enjoy that I clearly have refined and superior taste and I recommend others adopt this mentality. I also have half-joked that it would be fascinating to do a survey tallying the quantity of posts complaining about, say, Caleb and Essek's relationship someone has made, vs. how many posts they've made about (for example) Beau and Yasha's relationship, because a lot of the time the energy spent complaining, or worse, harassing others over their preferences could have addressed the problem had it instead been devoted to creating fanworks for your ship of choice.

Also very generally, while it's true that there's no shortage of annoying fans of Essek, I promise, there's no shortage of annoying and shitty fans of basically every character and ship including the ones you like.

For his appearance in Campaign 3 specifically, I think people are blaming Essek for the fact that this is the Chickens Coming Home to Roost, Avengers Assemble campaign. If you take issue with the characters of Bells Hells being overshadowed by those from past campaigns, the time to make that complaint was when Laudna and Orym showed up as PCs with strong ties to Delilah and Keyleth, or at the very least when Keyleth was brought in as a ringer to help resurrect Laudna (and, as someone who did make those complaints at the time and has since accepted this is the Past Campaigns Campaign...this has not been the case). Multiple party members (as played by cast members) expressed interest and excitement in Aeor before Essek (even as Seth) was mentioned. Bells Hells (as played by the Critical Role cast) want to go to Aeor. You do not have to like it, but this is not Essek's fault, as he is an NPC as part of the story driven by the cast's choices.

I've said this before but it bears nonstop repeating: when the CR cast says it's their table, it does not mean "it's their table and above criticism." It means "they are making the choices they make to play a game that they will enjoy." You can and should say that you're not enjoying it. It won't change what they do, but you'll feel better. But Essek isn't a real person with real agency. If his appearance is upsetting you, you need to attribute that to Matt's choices and decide if this campaign is still something you wish to watch and if this fandom is still something in which you wish to participate. Acting like Essek is some kind of horrible natural disaster ruining your lovely picnic and not a very deliberate choice by Matt is a transparently absurd denial of reality.

#cr spoilers

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bluecrocss · 3 months ago

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Those Annabeth "fans" lol

I really wanna let this topic go, but if I have ONE MORE non-black pjo fan, come on to my page and explain to me how "they grew up seeing the book characters (they're literally only talking about Leah, btw) one way, and they just can't reconcile it with the show 🥺", I might commit serious bodily harm...

They act like only white kids read PJO. I was little black girl reading it in middle school and annabeth was my favorite character. Do you think I was like, "oh she's blonde and white, how can I ever relate to her??" I didn't really have that choice, cuz as a kid MOST of the books/shows/plays/movies I had growing up, most characters didn't look like me. The hunger games, harry potter (forgive me, I was a kid), nancy drew, every disney princess movie, you name it. I notice how only white people complain about "struggling to connect" with characters that don't look like them, cuz POC have always had to do it. When POC ask for representation, it is because we have historically been ACTIVELY excluded, not because we can't connect to the characters otherwise 🙄

When it was halloween, and I dressed up as my favorite princess (Belle) and my brother dressed as his favorite superhero (superman), we just wore the wig and the outfit. I didn't need to paint my skin white to see myself as Belle. Yet every year there's this new controversy of some white person painting their skin or doing some offensive cosplay when they dress up as a POC character, because they see the race of POC characters as INHERENTLY part of the costume.

Why does your perception of Annabeth and the pjo characters trump mine, because you're white and I'm not? I fully viewed Annabeth as a white girl when I read the books, and when I saw Leah was cast, that didn't change my view of the character because her race was never central to the character. The author has stated the same thing. If you can't view a non-white/non-blonde version of annabeth (I am not speaking about the writing of the show or Leah's performance because this discourse started as soon as she was cast) as annabeth, then the parts of annabeth that actually mattered, the parts that Rick has identified as the most important, the part that I and millions of other non-white, non-blonde girls connected to, never connected with you. Rare representation of Neurodivergence in a female character, being underestimated (which had nothing to do with her being blonde lmao), perseverance, emotional vulnerability, overcoming generational curses and broken family life, abandonment issues, I could go on...

If you managed to grow to the age of maturity and still struggle to connect with people and view people as equal beneath their physical/material presentation, that is a YOU problem... the rest of the world shouldn't have to hold your hand through this.

And once again... NOBODY FORCED YOU TO WATCH THE SHOW. You don't like the casting, DON'T WATCH. Stop, coming to my comments and explaining how you're the exception, and you're not being ignorant, how, in fact it's the author, the casting directors, and the majority of the fanbase, who just don't understand her character the way you do 🥺

Give me a break.

#percy jackson #pjo series #percy jackon and the olympians #leah sava jeffries #pjo #percy jackson fandom #riordanverse #annabeth chase #pjo tv show #rick riordan #racism #anti blackness #black fandom #black tumblr #mine

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not-so-lost-after-all · 6 months ago

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I saw some of your posts about how the game implemented the poly thing in regards to Astarion and I have to agree with you, the lack of dialogue in which Tav can tell him that he's enough, that they don't need another person in their relationship is glaring! I suppose they didn't include it because they didn't want to offend the fans who are for the arrangement, in case Astarion would've reacted too happily at the player telling him he's enough (realistically he would be VERY happy)? Either way, it's stupid. The whole thing is very badly done and I think the fandom should stop pretending Larian wrote this well and act like it's good poly representation. They didn't and it isn't. Yeah, some people will be offended if you tell them the truth, but this doesn't mean the rest of us should sweep the bad writing under the rug so we don't hurt some feelings. Clearly Larian intended to portray a healthy polyamory relationship in which all parties enthusiastically consented but I think in their desire to do so, they overwrote it inadvertently portrayed the type in which a partner agrees to this type of arrangement not for their own sake, but for their partner's. Oh and I love how these people guilt trip other fans, saying they're infantilizing Astarion for questioning how genuine he was about it or for not liking how the devs implemented poly, or accusations of hating real poly people, poly erasure and so on. If Larian wrote this well, most of the discourse surrounding this issue wouldn't exist.

Fans of this choice will chide you for having doubts and tell "it's normal for him to have insecurities, you just have to reassure him and it's all fine" and will also point to the dev notes saying Astarion is genuine about it except…you can even CONFIRM that his insecurities are true, that you have a problem with him NOT fucking you and he's still fine with it. What the fuck, Larian? Maybe I'm getting something wrong, but him accepting this kind of disrespect from his partner who outright tells him they care more about sex than him as a person is either a red flag which confirms he still has problems setting up his boundaries or again…bad writing. Not sure which is worse. Personally, I tend to believe it's both and after the new Mizora datamined lines in which the player CAN still manipulate him into forgiving the cheating I have to say it's quite clear that he can still be taken advantage of. Sorry, but a person who can healthily establish a boundary won't forgive his partner cheating on him, let's not pretend otherwise. It's GREAT that he's still confronting the player about what they had done, but it's not a good sign that he can forgive a cheater. Oh and let's not forget how before the datamined dialogue for the Mizora cheating many people used the fact that Astarion was seemingly okay with it and didn't have any disparaging reaction as proof of him being open minded about allowing the player to have casual sex with anyone…

Also, why the confidence about believing that Halsin will keep it at sex only when it's clear it's also about feelings for him. Yeah, he has prior experience with this, but is it really enough? It creates the impression that Tav is either lying to Astarion that their relationship with the druid will only be about sex or that Tav is lying to Halsin, therefore using him for sex only when clearly it's more than that for him since feelings are also involved on his part. Again, Larian didn't really think this through. Oh and it gets worse when nothing in the game suggests that Astarion even likes Halsin, if anything he talks about finding him annoying…

It's fucked up that that the Halsin conversation ends up with him agreeing with it no matter what you're going to say. People will probably say "well, Astarion is polyamorous, that's why he simply agrees with it"… well, for someone who's supposedly been written as poly from the beginning, he never brings it up on his own! It's always the player the one who does it. Since communication is so important, we should've had the option to discuss such matters at some point. What type of relationship he prefers to have with the player? Is it fine if the player only wants him? Maybe he would've told us he doesn't want to be in a monogamous relationship and that at some point he will seek out other partners on his own. Or I guess only Tav is allowed to have others on the side?

Now post-Cazador the whole thing feels less bad, but not by much. His impersonation of Halsin, the exaggerated laugh, the 'it's okay if things between us change' lines…sorry, it just puts you off. Not to mention it just doesn't fit into his romance arc, especially when he remains a spawn. He's in his first real relationship with a person he just confessed his love for and very importantly, he's just began to learn that sex can also be about having a loving, intimate connection with his loved one, and more than what he was forced to do, more than scratching an itch and you just prove the opposite by doing whatever you can to have sex with others. It's just bad. (and to ask bluntly, why do people act as if Tav will die if they go on without having sex for a while? oh the horrors!! Not everything has to be about sex all the time)

To argue that well, actually going poly is GREAT for Astarion and that he must be likely relieved about Tav having someone else to have sex with because it takes the pressure from him in the relationship to perform and now he has time to figure himself out…yeah, just stop. This is just coping and headcanon lol. He doesn't need his lover to fuck other people in order for him to figure what he likes, get real. Now I could be persuaded into thinking that in the future when he will have had more actual experience about what being in an actual relationship entails, he could be truly open to trying poly, but right now, to open the first and ONLY real relationship (that's a few months old!!) he has to poly seems a bit cruel from Tav's part. Had HE been the one initiating this, maybe it would've felt different. The only one getting anything positive out of this is Tav. I think it's silly to pretend otherwise. The same goes for the orgy as well (yes, he does consent to both, I'm not saying otherwise), it's bothering me a lot how a lot of people in the fandom think you NEED to take him to the brothel and have an orgy for him because, apparently, they say it's essential to his healing journey. I had someone tell me I'm a bad partner for not doing this with him, that I'm intantilizing and taking away his agency and freedom to choose…so, yeah. This is the BG3 fandom for you.

Regardless, people should of course feel free to do anything they like in the game without being judged or called a bad person, but those of us who feel uncomfortable about certain things shouldn't be dismissed as mere haters or bigots. Our criticism is still valid. It's funny how you can criticize the writers for pretty much everything you want except the horny parts of the game…now that's when people get really angry and come for your head.

Now this ask got so incredibly long, sorry about it! I'll just end this by saying I like your blog and agree with your takes about Astarion (oh and yes checking Astarion's tag on tumblr is a challenge in itself, sone of the stuff you can find there...ugh). It's just nice finding fans out there who aren't insane about him in a bad way and who don't praise every writing decision the devs made just for the sake of it.

Nonnie, yeah, it was long but it was apparently important for you to vent 🙂 I'm sorry if the sex positive crowd left a bad taste in your mind. I honestly prefer to stay in my small corner of the fandom and usually don't bother to argue or correct anymore. I've said many things you have mentioned myself and I'm probably done with this topic. It's pointless to be upset about what some people do with their barbies - but you should hold you ground when someone says something idiotic like that the brothel experience is "healing" and you should defo do it for him. The poly thing is so badly done I'm not even sure why he'd dismiss that option with Shadowheart in Act 3 if he's poly, to be honest.

#astarion

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riallasheng · 8 months ago

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Answering an Ask

In an unusual way, because my darn tumblr be broken and didn't show the ask in my inbox! Fortunatly, @edutainer2022 PMed me to make sure I got it! ^^

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Hi! Just in case the asks act out, some ask game points for you:

🍒 What’s your favorite character dynamic to write? (Can be romantic or platonic, specific or general!)

🥭 Rank from most enjoyable/fun to write to least: Fluff, Smut, Angst, Crack.

🍏 Is there something you overuse, whether it’s a certain phrase, trope, or piece of punctuation?

🍐 Is there anything in canon that you absolutely hate and love to fix in fics? A wrong choice made, a fuck-up in characterization, a misunderstanding never cleared up, a conversation never shown onscreen, etc…

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🍒 What’s your favorite character dynamic to write? (Can be romantic or platonic, specific or general!)

Platonic and/or familial! While I can and will write romance, there's always a heavy focus on the friendship of the characters, more than the romantic ^^

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🥭 Rank from most enjoyable/fun to write to least: Fluff, Smut, Angst, Crack.

Well, I don't actually write Smut at all (closest I'll come is Lime, and usually I'll only write Orange. I've never actually written even a Lemon, let alone anything more hard core than that), and the closest I get to Crack is 'here is a silly thing that canonically could happen' rather than true crack.

Sooooo....

Drama (angst, fluff, serious, comedy, and bunch of other stuff rather than a heavy focus in just one type.) FAR and away my favorite.

Angst & Whump (as old fanwoman is old and I go by the definition that ANGST is mental/emotional 'harm' that may have a physical element or trigger, but is all about the emotions and mind. Meanwhile Whump is physical 'harm' that may have an emotional/mental element or trigger, but is all about the physical). I generally prefer it to be an ELEMENT of a story, and I strongly prefer hurt/comfort, but I do have some instances fics / ficbits that are (mostly) solid angst and I'm more likely to have Angst scenes / elements in my works than Fluff

Fluff: tends to be only sparingly and mixed in admist other things, and even my 'pure' fluff pieces like A Cure for Boredom were cahracter and fan-lore explorations alongside the fluff. Mostly because pure fluff BORES ME ^^;;

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🍏 Is there something you overuse, whether it’s a certain phrase, trope, or piece of punctuation?

Ellipses, probably XD I actually try to alter my writing style to a degree depending on who the viewpoint character is, but I am ANYTHING but brief (even though I know brief / less is more is the 'in' thing now). So I tend to have lots of details and asides and descriptions and trend much more towards being VERY wordy

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Oh yeah, many things XD There's always at least ONE 'fix it' in every fic I write. Sometimes small, sometimes BIG... I try to give my reasoning for any / all changes, I do my best to respect that other people may have totally different takes than me. But yeah, there's always fix-its in my fics for things that bug me or that I flat out hate

Heck, in an example that I'm currently writing (well, re-writing as back in the Naughts this darn thing was COMPLETE and now I'm re-writing it from memory XD ). In As the Wyrm Turns and my fanfic Universe in general....

I moved Marineville. I've always HATED that it's canon location for a REALLY LONG LIST OF REASONS THAT ARE VERY VALID DARN IT, so I moved it to Maine (Isle Au Haut specifically). On top of solving most of my list o' issues, it also meant that I could have the Aquaphibians living in or near 'Atlantis' ^^

#ask game #(technically)#edutainer2022

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miloscat · 6 months ago

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[Review] Legend of Kay Anniversary (Wii U)

An unremarkable PS2 action-adventure.

After immersing myself in Avatar media for so long I looked around for any other games set in Asia-inspired fantasy worlds but made by Westerners. This let me knock one off my Wii U backlog, the 2015 remaster of the 2005 PS2 game Legend of Kay. Neon Software, the German studio behind the original game, are known to me for their Amiga Sonic clone Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad, and it's somewhat fitting that their final game before closure was this other furry platformer. Some of the Neon cofounders went on to form Keen Games, which seems to have morphed into a new Kaiko... the original Kaiko being the company that the Mr. Nutz Hoppin' Mad team left to form Neon in the first place! Who knows how long they'll survive now under the aegis of the troubled and layoff-happy Embracer, but it's been four years since their last remaster...

Anyway, this game is a sort of 3D Zelda-like-slash-3D platformer filled with anthropomorphic animal characters, which as a Rare fan sounds up my alley. Comparing it to Starfox Adventures may be a little generous though: this is very much a B-tier PS2 action game, and a graphical revamp for new generation consoles can't magically fix the mediocrity.

To get the plot out of the way: it's extremely Normal. Kay is a "plucky" (read: obnoxious) protagonist, using his martial arts training to fight back against the occupation of his cat village by evil gorillas and rats. He travels his island to settlements of rabbits, frogs, and pandas to free them from oppression. I think it's telling that there are no credits given for story or writing; anything story-related is constantly undermined by overly shallow characterisations, completely functional video game progression (go here to get key to open door to go there etc.), and the most brain-dead "banter". For example, Kay thinks the height of action hero quips is to call a rat "cheese-breath" about a hundred times.

The latter issue is not helped by some misguided voice acting choices. It's a fully voiced game but you'll wish it wasn't with Kay's bland sarcastic schtick and almost every other character uncomfortably presenting as a borderline racist caricature. Mostly it's white people doing faux-"Asian" accents, although apparently crocodiles are Eastern European and frogs are... Jamaican, for some reason? I was glad to find a setting that let me skip any dialogue scene with a quick tap of X, because there's no other way to speed up the tedious exposition and pointless back-and-forth when you meet enemy groups.

There's only a handful of what you might call "puzzles", and the platforming ranges from "not bad" to "OK", serviceable but doesn't excel. The biggest strength and biggest weakness of the game is its combat, which is pretty involved. You can swap between three weapons which have different attributes, you often have to get around enemy blocks so there's a Wind Waker-style roll around move to hit their back, but you can also zip between targets during a combo, or use rolling, crouching, or jump attacks. You can carry up to 5 usable items which sometimes are used to explore but you have to rely on them for combat encounters late in the game when they start throwing waves at you with hordes of armoured enemies. When the difficulty spikes like this, it all just becomes too much and goes from an exercise in creatively using moves to keep your combo up to a struggle to survive (and if you die, you lose any consumables you used in your last attempt, also there's a lives system for some reason??).

I said combat might be the game's strength and it was clearly a focus of the project, but I had the most fun exploring the little worlds. There's lots of goodies to collect, mostly in the form of chests and pots containing money. You quickly end up with more than you'll ever spend but I still liked finding it. The point multiplier mechanic may seem superfluous but when you get accustomed to the flow of the platforming sections, grabbing coloured crystals to keep this combo going to make your fights and coins worth more points becomes addictive. The level design may be nothing special but the zones you traverse have some character to them.

It should be noted that this is a semi-linear game, in that the levels are mostly open to explore with events and sub-dungeons within them, but you progress from one field to the next with no way to go back. This bit me on more than one occasion when I blundered into the story trigger to move on before turning in one of the rare sidequests or going down a side path to find a health extension, making it permanently missable. This frustration prompted me to occasionally consult a Gamefaqs guide with maps during each subsequent chapter. The game does give you a minimap in the corner of the screen but it can't be expanded to a full map so it's less useful than it could be.

Legend of Kay would have felt middling even at release but rereleasing it just makes its deficiencies even more obvious. It's still got some charm for being "of that era" (I was often reminded of The Hobbit's action-adventure game from the same generation, but with fewer instant death pits), so I got some enjoyment from it. And it has some ideas that work, like the acrobatic combat and combo system. While some of the environments look nice there were just as many drab areas, and the repeated character model reuse got old. Oh, and sometimes you ride an animal and it's not fun. On the whole, I can't recommend this one... even if you ignore the cringey cultural stereotypes!!

#legend of kay #legend of kay anniversary #neon software #kaiko #wii u #review

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narukaminigga · 5 months ago

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finished undertale yellow. the writing was really really not undertale and more like a pale imitation of it with weird less progressive ideas that undertale pushed. there’s like this misogynistic / orientalist japanese styled character or whatever named ceroba who kind of just doesn’t really fit into the wild western vibe that pervades the story and its kind of like whoever made this character really REALLY wanted to insert whatever weeb stuff in there. no i don’t think kimonos are cultural appropriation leave me alone.

flowey himself in this story is a fine companion because he is very involved in undertale’s story as a companion but he’s that kind of companion that acts as a dickweed edgelord who doesnt really see the value in the friendships whatsoever so he waits to steal all da power, so i think it was a strange choice for them to make flowey do the whole betrayal thing because the story relies on you understanding flowey is doing faux sympathies but even then in the og game flowey’s facade drops extremely quickly and just antagonizes you after u get hit / avoid the bullets. but then undertale yellow’s pacifist route suddenly has flowey never throw a temper tantrum—he just lets it go—and that’s it and i think its dumb because undertale yellow shouldnt even have a pacifist or genocide route. the genocide only happens if the player chooses to in the og game and undertale yellow just puts both routes in there. i personally think the neutral route is the only route, because you still end up in a rock and a hard place; asgore will get you and flowey’s temper tantrum asshole behavior is impossible to escape or whatever.

the big issue here with undertale yellow is that it just narratively does not fit in with the OG undertale. yeah i understand it’s thematic; the underground changes depending on the individual soul color. it is what it is, but none of these characters ever show up . theres no wild west world. theres like, nothing, and i felt sad leaving the game because well, this is a fanmade prequel attempting to depict events that dont need depicting. undertale doesn’t need you to speculate on how the others met their fates—they just didn’t have enough determination to make it through. they had flaws in their souls that made it impossible to reach victory, and the circumstances were not in their favor. but yours are, and that means frisk (you) gets out in a happy ending (or not). its why undertale yellows routes cant *work*; there is no incentive for doing either because they’re both wish fulfillment. the real routes the one where flowey gets hopped up on fent and starts tweaking cus u aren’t playing by his rules. the og game’s neutral route is a sense that it is not the end, because you just have to make a second attempt at befriending everyone, including the 13 yo flower nerd edgelord, who simply runs away from his problems. its why the game opens up more possibilities at friendship and its why undertale yellow emulating this doesn’t really make sense, since it has a beginning and end and sets up frisk landing.

i also am not a fan of most of the oc characters (martlet or whoever need to get smited) but thats just whiny me

hope that made some sense.

#undertale #undertale yellow #utdr #uty

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dolphin1812 · 11 months ago

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The sewer! It’s here!!

(I fully admit to being a fan of the sewer digression).

Hugo’s framing of the fact about the Chinese peasant has some racist elements (“to our shame”), but it also serves as an important framing device for the sewers as a whole: they represent waste in not only a literal sense, but the waste of the poor and the marginalized by a society that does not value them. China benefits from the peasant’s knowledge, recognizing that “manure” is “gold;” France wastes this.

This paragraph is also just beautiful:

“Those heaps of filth at the gate-posts, those tumbrils of mud which jolt through the street by night, those terrible casks of the street department, those fetid drippings of subterranean mire, which the pavements hide from you,—do you know what they are? They are the meadow in flower, the green grass, wild thyme, thyme and sage, they are game, they are cattle, they are the satisfied bellows of great oxen in the evening, they are perfumed hay, they are golden wheat, they are the bread on your table, they are the warm blood in your veins, they are health, they are joy, they are life. This is the will of that mysterious creation which is transformation on earth and transfiguration in heaven.”

I don’t know how accurate Hugo’s statistics are, but his general point about waste and disease certainly rings true. I’ve mentioned this before, but 1832 was the year of a cholera pandemic, and while it wasn’t known that cholera is spread through contaminated water at that time, it’s possible that Hugo was aware of such theories. And even if he was not, miasma theory – which posited that things like bad smells caused disease – was a really common theory in the 19th century and still would have led to concerns over waste disposal.

As for the Thames, as London (a sad city to Hugo because it’s sewer-less) grew dramatically in the nineteenth century, its challenges with waste disposal increased. Many of these issues paralleled problems in Paris, like the spread of cholera and pollution, but some were more specific to a city without a sewer (as there was nowhere for waste to go). Parliament eventually acted when the stench of the Thames got so bad that it was noticeable during its sessions.

I also love how Hugo is both really enthusiastic about sewers (he is choosing to write about them, after all) and really judgmental about them. He seems to say: “really? We’re spending this much on sewers?” While he is arguing that the waste that goes through sewers is valuable, he also seems to realize that his topic of choice here is a bit unorthodox, thus pointing out that this wealth could be spent on vague “splendors” instead. What these “splendors” are, of course, seem concrete – feeding the people by using manure to fertilize fields – but this aspect of the digression might have helped him appeal to middle- or upper-class audiences.

And of course, the link to Rome serves as a warning of the urgency of this issue. Rome was linked to greatness, but also to collapse; the Roman Empire fell, and Hugo’s implying that France could face the same fate without sewer reform.

#les mis letters #lm 5.2.1 #sewer digression

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roaringdargon · 7 months ago

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I'll go ahead and drop this after sitting on it for so long for @spr-ingo. This is for "Alternator" (AU). A PLA AU based on Yu-Gi-Oh. Feel free to have fun with this idea if you want to do another version.

It is something that has been stewing in my brain for a while but has gotten a bit too big for me. I'll see if I write anything for it. So here it is. Have fun! What spurred this idea was thinking that Emmet would be pissed if some spirit kept possessing him to fight pokemon battles.

Nameless Warden AU

Premise:

This is an au based of the original Yu-Gi-Oh plot. There was no chosen hero sent by Arceus in this timeline. Ingo is still accidentally transported to the past by unknown means. It's coincidental. He is without any prior memory. And is gifted the name Nobori(because it is convenient). Is this plot convoluted to get to a desired scenario? Yes!

In this universe Wardens hold a bit more blessed power in their assignments. The Warden bands(or other catalyst I am open to changing this) connect them to the blessed pokemon and act as a catalyst for Almighty Sinnoh's power. It's not game breaking power but it is things like the ability to be somewhat in tune with the land and its pokemon or predict the future. It's not important. The point is that these artifacts are a direct connection to the primordial powers. Which one is entirely based on who they believe in/ wish to commune with. It is very personal.

Nobori/Ingo is chosen by Sneasler and comes into possession of a sacred band. He is not as adept with the power that is bestowed upon him because he hasn't had as much time with the clan's religion, but he was the only accepted choice. He is still great at his job with his talents with pokemon and instincts so it becomes less of an issue.

Shit hits the fan while Volo spins his web. It is a trial with many injuries, but the Wardens are able to work together and calm the Nobles from their frenzy. Warden Calaba gets injured, her sacred band goes missing and Ursaluna is dying. Volo gets a hold of the item. And uses that to further tap into Giratina's power usurp the Almighty. He manages to frenzy both Dialga and Palkia which destabilizes the Wardens' connection to their chosen deity.

To summarize how the situation is solved: Ingo is less connected to Palkia than his other clan mates and was always more open to the idea of multiple higher beings as it just made sense. He realizes(through various means not touched upon) there must be a larger power other than space, time, and distortion. If he could appeal to this being he could have the power to stop this and possibly contain the distortion in a similar way to how Volo had detained the two Sinnohs. He is able to gain the approval and link to Arceus(a very hard being to appeal to. See Volo) and, through great effort, seals Giratina and the distortion world away using the power of his soul. Volo is seething, of course, that this Nobody has gained approval of Arceus and is using that power to seal them away.

Much like with the Pharaoh in Yu-Gi-Oh it is sealed with his entire soul and his name (which nobody knows not even him) is the key. Ingo's soul, now with amnesia x2, is sealed in his Warden's band artifact as a spirit. His true name is already unknown to everyone, but lore keepers erase his given one as well as many depictions of him from records as well just to be safe. Volo is definitely the Bakura of this plot and was similarly placed in the stolen Ursaluna artifact.

Ingo has been gone 4-7 years. I haven't decided.

The Future:

(warning: it/it's pronouns used briefly due to lack of knowledge. Evolves to they/them then he/him)

Emmet is given a strange box by an old friend of his brother's, Shauntal, who stated that she bought this in Sinnoh from an antique shop because that's just her hobby. They saw each other while at a party that Burgh dragged him to. She says she just feels like it should belong to him, which would be weird if it was not a completely normal thing for her to do. So he accepts with little thought. It's a puzzle box. Perfect he loves a challenge. He feels possessed(metaphorically) to solve it that night. Finds the strange band and wears it with no thought as if he has always had it.

After a while Emmet starts noticing that he is losing time. It's mostly on the Singles line when he is tired and the battles are boring anyway so he pays it no mind, but then It happens once on the Doubles and that is a step too far. He investigates his footage and sees that he is still battling, but with a strange slumped posture and a dour look. The strange thing possessing him is doing well. Even if it makes him look a bit feral. So he is being possessed. He knows that the only change to his person has been that item that was given to him. He doesn't really want to get rid of it for some reason, but it is interfering with his work. He visits Shauntal and demands she uncurses the object. She is surprised that there is such a strong spirit there in the first place. It was dormant and weak when she gave him the box. They must really like him.

They communicate with the spirit and determine that they are just as confused and aren't malevolent. Emmet sets some boundaries that they can stick around as long as it asks before battling in his stead. Heck he might even let them on some occasions like on the boring ass singles line.

TLDR Emmet gets a new spirit friend and learns how to be close to someone again. Slowly the spirit relearns who he is thanks to his new friend.

Also Cynthia uncovers some Hisuian artifacts, including a certain stolen one, so watch out for that.

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That's the gist of it. There are other versions I was playing with, but this is the one I am liking the best now. Also so many ways that this story can continue that I haven't really thought of.

#pla au #nameless warden au #warden ingo #submas

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