#and then the video puts out a more visual fucked up representation of that and its just

[the-kipsabian]

fucking GOD socioenvy was already like my favorite song from to let go and then nate puts out a fucking banger of a video for it thats digging so deep into my fucked up psyche like holy fucking shit bro CHILL

okay you know what im gonna put this here but content warning for blood, disturbing imagery and drowning so like. yeah. at least listen to it tho if nothing else its.. hitting home very hard tbh

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 2, Wave 1, Poll 1

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and prior here.

Hiccup Haddock-How To Train Your Dragon

Qualifications:

1. The man is missing a leg 2. He's bi in fanon (and in my heart) 3. Blorbo original flavor. Need I say more?

He has a prosthetic leg, and at least in my circles is quite often hcd as bi

Propaganda:

He's so cool. He builds his own prosthetics that interface with the prosthetics he built for his disabled dragon. First viking to ride a dragon. Chief that brought a new era of prosperity to Berk.

Probably one of the most popular physically disabled characters. And although I personally am not disabled, I have heard a bunch of disabled ppl say that they like him as rep. As he pretty much just exists with his disability. It is not ignored. He doesn't not always function the same as people with 2 regular legs. But it is not made into a tragedy. He just has a prosthetic leg after an accident which caused him to loose one. And nobody really makes a big deal out of it, which makes sense in the society they live in. Idk, here's a link to a video discussing the disability representation in httyd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvwRhb_ocPM

The qualifications and propaganda paragraphs correspond, @flammableengineering is the first submitter.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus-The Locked Tomb

Qualifications:

She's a lesbian and the author Tamsyn Muir has confirmed she's written as schizophrenic, based on her own experience.

Okay SO Harrow is a necromancer nun who is also a huge lesbian. She spends the books of TLT series being super gay and repressed about her emotions for 1. Butch lesbian Jesus and 2. Human Barbie the death of God. She narrates the second book (Harrow the Ninth) and is author-confirmed schizophrenic. She experiences hallucinations thru the whole book and has since childhood. She’s also WIDELY headcannoned as autistic by the fandom (me too) because. Because she IS SO FUCKING AUTISTIC (source: I am autistic too)

Schizophrenic lesbian with a traumatic brain injury

Schizophrenic and sapphic

canonically a schizophrenic lesbian. neither word is used in series, she isn't in a position to get a diagnosis and queer identities are so normalised in the universe that labels just don't get mentioned, but she is written as both by an author who is also both.

Canon schizophrenia

Canon lesbian with canon schizophrenia

She's a schizophrenic lesbian with a traumatic brain injury

Propaganda:

The Locked Tomb is pretty popular on tumblr but I might as well submit her anyway

She’s a lesbian necromancer nun. She’s a saint and also woke up the death of God, who is a human Barbie, who she is in love with, tho she’s also kind of married to lesbian Jesus. She’s schizophrenic. She’s scrungly. She puts bread in a drawer. She’s even autistic

Harrow first started hallucinating (visual and auditory) when she was ten years old! The traumatic brain injury and seizures are much more recent. Unironically gotta love a pov protagonist who makes you struggle along with her in sorting out hallucination and false memory to figure out what's going on. Also while Harrow's disability shapes the narrative, the book isn't at all about her being disabled. It's a fantasy/scifi gothic horror novel about being trapped at a work retreat with God.

so many women want her but she’s determined to be in love with the soul of the dead earth trapped in a 10ft barbie doll instead. she’s a lesbian disaster and is trying to deal with both schizophrenia and over 200 actual ghosts haunting her.

Author Tamsyn Muir has discussed how Harrow's schizophrenia is modeled after her own experiences. It matters a lot in her eponymous novel, where her inability to trust what she sees and hears is compounded by her self-inflicted lobotomy to save her girlfriend's soul from getting absorbed into her own.

Harrow is one of the protagonists of her series & both her lesbianism & her schizophrenia play major parts in the story. The author has spoken about how she wrote Harrow based on her own experiences, and the authenticity comes through strongly. Beyond that, she's a teenage gothic nun in love with a holy corpse & she's the greatest bone magician ever born. What more needs be said.

She's a lesbian, she's psychotic, she has seizures, she faints regularly and can't rely on her own memory worth shit. And the only reason she's not going to kill god is so she and her girl can escape the cycle of violence. Basically, Harrowhark Nonagesimus is the entire package.

Anything Else?:

Listen. Listen. I’m not doing Harrow justice here. I LOVE her (Submitter 2)

The author is also schizophrenic! Which is pretty cool. (Submitter 3)

The author of the series is openly schizophrenic, and has mentioned in interviews that she's drawing on that experience when writing Harrow :) (Submitter 8)

[cssnder]

I thought you were a DA blog. That's why I followed you. But you talked about gothic and metal and it put me off kinda :/ you're a poser

I am no one to tell you what to do. But I truly believe that you should let go of the need to have a strict aesthetic. You're suffocating yourself in the name of being definable, for the sake of belonging to a community.

I am not a Dark Academia blog for the sole reason that Dark Academia, while being the genre of the novel I write and being one of my visual influences, is not my aesthetic nor a label I want to out myself under.

Well, sure, I do have a personal aesthetic, you could say. But quite frankly, it's almost indefinable. The only thing you could name it is this: Cassander. Simply because it revolves around all my different personal influences: Gothic; Dark Academia; metal and rock music; gothic and german expressionist silent films; maximalism; dark colours; the ugly, the unconventional and the fucked up — think about messy hair, absinthe as a top note in a perfume, washed out walls, clothes that seem to swallow you whole and hide you in the darkness, black blue lipstick for only makeup —, the provocative and the sensual — tattoos hidden in intimate places, garter stockings and latex lingeries, kinky sex —; the morbid and the dark. And, let's be honest here, these are only some of them. There's a whole lot more. And because this is my personal aesthetic — which, at this point, I do not even think of as an aesthetic but simply a visual representation of my own little world and my tastes —, I am free. I am free because there is not pressure to be this or that. I am à la fois indefinable and yet I can only be defined as me. To make it easier for you to understand it, here is a visual representation of my little world. This, I keep on Pinterest. I should probably update it sometime.

So let me tell you more. Most of my hobbies fit the Dark Academia aesthetic, and frankly, so does most of my taste in things. But I love bands like Type O Negative, Architect, Motionless in White, Drowning Pool, and so on, just as much as I love Satie, Debussy, you name it. But guess what? I also listen to pop music. I am into Junji Itō's work, and yes, I believe mangas are a form of art. I am forever in awe of the amount of details in his work and the way he manages to inspire unease and terror. I watch animes and my favourite ones are Monster, Death Note, and Attack on Titan, followed by (oh my God, I think you're going to faint if I say it, are you ready?) My Hero Academia. I love knitwear, I love simple and classic clothing, but I also love bondage wear and leather pieces and clothes with weird shapes and cuts to them. My thing, especially, is layering everything and playing with the overall shape and silhouette of an outfit. I like video games, although I prefer to watch let's plays rather than actually play them so far — Until Dawn, Resident Evil, Cry of Fear, Silent Hill, The Evil Within are some among them. And while the Dark Academia community is into sportive activities such as tennis or polo, I am into weightlifting, boxing and judo. And this is barely the top of the iceberg of my likes and dislikes.

In short, don't tell me what I am, what I can do or what I like. You have no idea, because you're not me. If you're disappointed, unfollow me. It is none of my business. But don't come in my inbox crying because the version of me you made up in your head doesn't actually exist.

[plitaka]

Okay so because I’m gay and mentally ill I have decided to take it upon myself to go through Kafka’s demo frame by frame and overanalyze the shit out of anything I find interesting

It’s insanely packed with blink or you’ll miss it details so buckle up folks- this is gonna be a ride

Right off the bat she starts off with the same coin she also ends the demo with. This isn’t something that’s been part of her character so far nor do I think it has any real significance, so she just brought it to be extra and torment the poor souls she’s planning to slaughter anyway. Annoying dramatic bitch

Also just to get this out of the way now, this is indeed the Belobog museum, or at least its assets. The floor of some of the inner rooms, the staircases, the chandelier and the big golden clock thingy are the same, and in one of the shots you can clearly see the portraits of the former supreme guardians which is. Makes you wonder if they just picked the museum for grand dramatic interior or if she actually had reasons to have business there.

This. This fucking part is probably no longer than 5 seconds and yet, even with the video on 0.25 speed I had to constantly rewind and pause to catch everything and it still probably isn’t 100% accurate. Also I had to cut out a lot things because Tumblr only allows 30 images per post but like, you get the picture

“What do you see” over and over again as images of Rorschach tests flash across the screen so fast you barely have a chance *to* see. Personally I mainly see spider like things and butterflies. Among them are images are some flashes of the robo guards, which to me give the feeling of them getting caught in her web, losing themselves and their control to her mind games and technique.

Something else worth nothing is that this sequence is kickstarted by her throwing the coin and ends with it still in her hand, just thought that was an interesting choice

Before moving on to the next point, however, I want to point out the obvious irony of her telling the guards “don’t be afraid”. Truly words to hear from the woman who is incapable of feeling fear. And what is the name of the demo? Dramatic irony. We’ll get back to that.

Anyway, after that we see the camera pan away from her and over the guards as she uses spirit whisper. The camera movement is accompanied by a single rose petal that starts from Kafka and flies over the guards, which kinda feels like the visual representation of spirit whisper, a gentle rose petal innocently brushing across them as if carried by an invisible breeze

I wanted to make a joke about how her bounty is as large as her strap but seeing as I’m restricted in the number of images I can put I’ll just state the obvious and say she has the largest known bounty of the Stellaron hunters. I’m going to guess the only one higher than hers is Elio’s.

can’t be 100% sure this is what’s going on here, but the imagery makes it look like she’s taking a nice calming stroll and playing Vivaldi in her head while letting the guards slaughter each other, either by controlling them with her strings or with spirit whisper

Dozens of hands reaching out for her, trying to grab her as she’s cocooned in a vulnerable state, pupils visible. I’m sure we’ll eventually get an ingame explanation as to what’s actually going on with her eyes, but for now I do think this is a VERY interesting time to show them. She’s in a compromising position, she’s cornered and vulnerable, but she’s confident and cocky and always, always in control. To anyone else this would be horrifying, but she can’t feel fear, why should she care. Like genuinely this is terrifying imagery that in media is more often than not used to showcase or symbolize sexual violence of sorts and personally makes my skin crawl. I don’t want to get too much into it here I think it needs its own separate post, so for now I’ll keep it short and say that up until now, her pupils have only been shown in situations where she’s at a physical disadvantage (held prisoner at the divination commission, whatever this is etc)

Something a bit lighter to focus on is what she’s saying; “the silk is too fragile to be a treat… unless you’re more fragile than the silk.” Symbolism aside she always seems to refer to silk when talking about fragile things, which we know are, in her opinion, the most beautiful. I really don’t think she’s referring to herself here seeing as the next scene demonstrates she’s far from fragile, so I think she does mean it in a much more literal way and is talking about a spider web; too fragile to capture humans, strong enough to capture its intended prey, this being weaker bugs. All in all she’s probably insulting them by comparing them to bugs weaker than a fragile silk web.

Nothing much to say about the fight scene other than that it’s incredibly choreographed and confirms that Kafka is strong enough to roundhouse kick a guy in the head (god I wish that were me) and do backflips in midair while firing her guns. Also the elevator counting down the survivors as their forces dwindle is fucking rad.

“Destiny has thousands of faces, why does it choose to wear this one?” In the context of the scene this reads to me as her mockingly lamenting the guards’ fate as she beautifully takes them down one by one, but it’s also one hell of a peculiar sentence from someone working for a guy who supposedly sees destiny and directs his followers according to that. She’s a nihilist, everything is predetermined in her eyes, she’s one of destiny’s slaves, but destiny also has thousands of faces? Is she really so nihilistic that even her own worldviews are contrasting in her eyes? As I’m writing this it makes me think of dadaism more than anything else. To quote from wikipedia: “an early 20th-century international movement in art, literature, music, and film, repudiating and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the illogical and absurd.” Kafka herself in an artist in many ways; she’s an actress first and foremost, always dramatic and theatrical, following a script to a T. But she’s also a musician, everything about her steeped in classical music and references. Anyway, dada is an absurdist nihilistic movement, and you know which real life author known for his absurdism lived and wrote parallel to the Dada? Franz Kafka.

Genuinely Idk where I was going with this I just thought it was worth sharing, MOVING ON-

Neat way of visualizing what I’m assuming is supposed to be her spirit whisper. Also I’m extremely stingy with images (thanks Tumblr), but if you slow down the video around 1:17 you could see that the shot of her katana very quickly flashes into another spider, just wanted to mention that.

These are all narrative screenplay terms that flash by in like a millisecond each after the big ult (that, btw, has a similar shot saying ‘intermission’ right before she casts it but it flashes by so fast and with such bright colors that I couldn’t take a proper screenshot of it) and shown on the Belobog Museum’s projector. The most interesting one here imo is Oneiric Structure; “a cinematic story using dream like visuals, exploring the structure of dreams, memories, and human consciousness”, very fitting considering how much of her abilitieseing how dramatic irony is yet another narrative device.

All these movie terms and framings, however, feel to me more like a wink to Kafka’s roots than anything else. This is the third time she’s been tied to movies somehow (the web event, one of her leaked messages that actually mentions how she’d hate for her life to be turned into a movie), and this is one time too many for me to stop denying that the inspiration for her character was at least in part Makima from Chainsaw Man. I won’t elaborate too much not to spoil the 3 people unfamiliar with csm, but this whole thing feels like a homage, a love letter to Fujimoto’s own love letter for cinema.

Also she *is* an actress following a script, so there’s that as well.

The demo ends with her taunting the one remaining guard with the very same coin from the beginning, flipping it in her palm and asking the guard to guess the ending with heads or tails, prefacing it by saying “sooner or later, the curtain has to fall”. To me this indicates that she sees life as kind of a one gigantic play, with no fear and no value for human life everything is a performance to her, it doesn’t matter beyond what’s happening on the stage in the presence. But also the way this is all framed makes it very easy to assume she’s actually talking about the end of the guard’s life, and asking him how he thinks this encounter between them will end, lol.

Another thing about the coin that Meadows mentioned “her flipping the coin over and over is both like, play with fate, a distraction (like, think in movies, you see someone flipping a coin your eyes are drawn to it and not the sleight of hand happening elsewhere), and ofc her clear obsession with vintage shit”

This has been it from me for now, too dead to properly edit through this rn so I’ll probably go back and add some details once I’m feeling better. Would also love for anyone to chime in with their own conclusions since this is just one person’s interpretation. Especially if you have more knowledge than me about classical music and have ideas regarding the use of Vivaldi’s winter

[thelensofyashunews]

SINGER-SONGWRITER-PRODUCER LUBALIN RETURNS WITH THE INFECTIOUS just love

Singer, songwriter, and record producer Lubalin shares his first song in almost two years – the standout “just love”. The catchy pop drum & bass cut is released amidst a flurry of original content pieces all imagined by the TikTok mastermind. The song is available to stream now on all digital platforms via Cult Nation/The Orchard. 

After working extensively on Charlotte Cardin’s 6-time JUNO Award nominated album “99 Nights” and earning a nod himself for Producer of the Year, Lubalin dove into this new chapter with a fresh approach, ‘For this new batch of songs, I wanted to do a lot of the writing away from a computer so I could focus on writing and not get lost in production decisions too early. I wrote the chorus for "just love" sitting around with a classical guitar and it ended up living as a voice memo on my phone for a while.”

He continues, “I usually have to fight with my songs, work them, re-work them, tweak and tweak... this one just... happened. I honestly didn't do much to it after those first two sessions - I was too afraid to fuck it up and lose the magic.”

Kicking-off a six singles roll-out that will last through 2024, there’s plenty more magic where “just love”came from. 

Sonically tied together by the Kenya Grace inspired “dream & bass” sound and themes of self-doubt and connection, the project is also visually tethered by Lubalin’s dual personas : Suit Luba and True Luba. Put simply, Suit Luba represents True Luba’s alter-ego and stems from True Luba’s dread of having to promote himself. While True Luba would much rather focus on the Art, Suit Luba will do anything to market the music. The size of the suit is a representation of how badly he wants to be taken seriously. 

At the close of 2020, Lubalin skyrocketed to viral TikTok fame overnight thanks to his "internet drama" parody videos. The series has since earned him over 250 million views, 36 million likes, and 3.4 million followers on the platform and an ever growing audience worldwide. He was featured on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, The Kelly Clarkson Show, as well as in major outlets such as Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed and Entertainment Tonight. 

[ileftherbackhome]

OKAY

So

The style cloud taking over her is so fucking intriguing because if the song is about her ED mentality then the lavender haze mv is even more interesting because I didn't think about her ED specifically in my initial analysis of the mv but it kind of works really well about the music video being about how supportive Joe is to her through her trauma.

We get her waking up in the middle of the night, sitting on the edge of her bed with a Grey cloud over her. This could be a visual metaphor for how the 1989 trauma is waking her up and she's sad and depressed. She was at the height of her ED at this time and then she gets high and starts dancing in her room.

I think this could mean several things (dancing is something vulnerable for her and the way she gets made fun of for dancing def should be at the back of ur mind here). I think it's interesting because it kind of gives me tonight I'm gunna dance like u were in this room but I don't wanna dance if I'm not dancing with u except he is in the room in reality so to me this could mean how her sad cloud has transported her into past lavender hazes (relationships) where she felt like she was dancing alone. But he's in the room with her !!! And then

She's on the couch, on a mental low in a fancy outfit that doesn't go together. She's in silky pjs but a heavy coat (evermore wardrobe vibes... omg side bar guys : the difference in mentality in tolerate it with "where is that man who'd throw blankets over my barbed wire" vs in invisible string "something wrapped all over my past mistakes in barbed wire" because the difference between true love and abuse is depending on someone else to make you feel okay about your fuck ups and mental health I'm crying) and the fact that she is in a heavy coat I think echos this because she's the one in the coat, she has protection against the bad thoughts in the cloud because of the love joe gives her, but he's not the focus of the video because it's about HER struggle with her trauma and her truth not him and so

Then bisexual colored lavender sprouts in the room and she is crawling through the flowers (we can plant a memory garden vibes to me, each flower is colored differently to represent all the memories she has with both men and women where she was hurt and hurt others) until oh wait maybe the tv catches her attention first and also I think the fact that it's laith popping up... I previously said maybe it was a rep of her previous lovers but I think that's the flowers actually and laith is actually joe and he is showing up in the downward spiral she's having (not dancing, blows smoke out and shows she's coming down from the dancing alone... so she was dancing and having a good time before and now she's not) to remind her it's just midnight rain and it'll change again, she just has to shoulder the weather and he's right there with her. But maybe it could also be

Like a visual representation of how maybe her dancing woke him up so maybe he's having a conversation with her and the conversation is represented visually in the mv to show us his support of her, and so that's why he's shown to us again and to her, because she crawls to him and then opens the screen (this is me trying bridge anymore... You're a flashback in a film reel on the one screen in my town oh my god town= mind here and the screen is her memories), and the background is speak now and lavender and koi fish.

And he was talking on the screen so I think he's like giving her advice and maybe encouraging her to go back the flowers and into a deeper psychology one that she had forgotten (her childlike wonder and inner magic) and that's when she takes the lavender purple haze bath and she has on rep era style make up but in between the shots she puts flower scenes in there and so I feel like she's now falling bathing in the lavender haze of her past and cleaning herself off from her mistakes and her hurt and trauma, she is letting the lavender sooth her and cleanse her instead of running from it further and then we get

Her and laith dressed up at a house party and this could be a memory scene of maybe her being openly queer at a secret ish party and we have the strangers judging the two of them and I'm not going to talk about how u think the fact that they're in the house with her and Joe is probably meant to be her fans but you've seen my theory on that before, and so then he just holds her and then we get the return of the lavender haze but honestly the fact he's in there with her makes me feel like maybe they dressed up and danced together in the haze and he's like supporting her throughout the scene, he's always touching her and he's always there not saying much but dancing with her in the haze and then

We get the coolest part of the video where she opens the window and looks outside after she stops dancing she sees that internal world on the screen that Joe helped her find in the depths of her memory garden and she notices it that it's outside her house and so she breaks down the walls of her house and we see that this fantastical inner magic has engulfed her whole world and the cloud is white and puffy and she's kind of... gone through a journey of self healing almost and she gets back in the cloud and disappears into her own mind because she's not afraid of her mind anymore

She's gone through all her memories and recontextualized them and has managed to come through stronger on the other side and she just shows us herself because it's always been about her journey into growing up and that scene where she's at a desk with a drink gives me dear reader bridge vibes where eventually her mind is the only thing that's left and she disappears from view but the impact she left on the world is still visible and I just think it's such a wonderful video showcasing how a true love is in the backgrounds of your trauma cheering you on as YOU work through it all and honestly I feel like the fact that she is wearing lesbian colors but laith is there instead of a woman makes me feel like it could be another representation of how he's holding her through her worst heartbreak as she tells him everything about that situation and he helps her heal, but also the fact that she is wearing lesbian colors here could be a reference to her ed as well because laith is supporting her but I do think karlie and her fed off each other mentally for their EDs and the destructive nature of their relationship is why it fizzled out the way it did and I think she is highlighting that for a purpose imo because that's really her biggest trauma, and the closeting plays a role in that for sure, and I think that's why she shows him holding her and supporting her before they start dancing together and I think that shows how labyrinth is kinda like dress part 2 imo (she's talking to Joe about her past relationships and trauma) and that's why she links style to lavender haze because she wanted us to be aware of the deeper meaning behind both songs.

[nitpick7]

Ayo anyone wanna see my essay on why removing Anybody Have A Map made the Dear Evan Hansen movie worse? It is slightly long

Disclaimer: I did like the movie (I cried three times), but I think they made some stupid decisions with it.

Dear Evan Hansen movie + musical spoilers under the cut, plus a fair amount of DEH neg/crit

Instead of Anybody Have A Map, they just have Evan's mom say "Hey are you writing those letters to yourself? Also you should ask the kids to sign your cast" before he goes to school and sings Waving Through A Window. They ignore every other part of the song and quickly insert the only thing from the song that's absolutely needed to understand the story so Evan can go be angsty at school. We don't even meet the Murphys until they meet Evan in the principal's office to tell him about Connor.

Disclaimer part 2 electric boogaloo: I complain about Evan a lot here. It's not because I think his experiences aren't valid and it's not because I'm trying to demonize people with mental illnesses or something. I know that his own struggles influenced his bad decisions. That doesn't mean they weren't bad decisions. He still did shitty things and he wasn't justified (listen to Words Fail), but I know it was influenced by his mental health.

On with the complaining!

First of all, the movie opens with Waving Through A Window? It feels like they're putting the most popular song first as a desperate grab for your attention to convince you the movie is good and like... they really didn't need to do that. Waving Through A Window is right after Anybody Have A Map, it's not like anyone's gonna walk out of the theatre after one (really good) song.

Anybody Have A Map establishes a few things: it shows us that both of these families are struggling so that we know immediately that the Murphys' perfect facade is fake, it shows us that Connor was a dick to his family (this is very important), and obviously it tells us why Evan was writing letters to himself. It also introduces us to the two main families at the same time so we know this story isn't just about Evan.

By starting the movie with an Evan solo song instead of the group song, they frame Evan as the one main character, the only person whose perspective we need to understand. But Evan is incredibly flawed, just like everyone else, and by making us think the story is only about him, it immediately makes us (the audience) more inclined to believe that Evan is always in the right and less inclined to consider everyone else's side of the story. Evan is an incredibly unreliable narrator, he's always going to frame his actions as correct, or at least excusable, even when he's actively hurting/lying to other people.

All of the Murphys get introduced through interacting with Evan instead of interacting with each other. This makes it seem like the Murphys only exist for Evan, but the entire point of the climax is that everything doesn't exist just for Evan! Evan is not part of their family, he can't just use everyone around him for his own benefit, and all of the Murphys have lives outside of him. When they're introduced through Evan, they're introduced as existing for Evan. Anybody Have A Map introduces them separately from Evan instead of attached to him.

Without Anybody Have A Map, we never actually see Connor being mean to Zoe, so she just looks like an asshole for not being sad about her dead brother. To make up for it, she's constantly having to tell the audience why she hated him, tripping over herself to talk about all the shitty things he did to her because we don't have Anybody Have A Map to show us their interactions. Zoe ends up complaining about her brother the entire time, so when it gets to Only Us and she says that she doesn't want everything to be about her brother, it seems out of character for her.

And with the removal of Anybody Have A Map, we don't ever see Connor interact with his own family in the movie. Anybody Have A Map is the only time we get to see Connor with his family. It shows us that Connor really was an asshole to his family, it justifies Zoe hating him, and it gives his mom more dimensions by showing her struggling to keep her family together even with everyone fighting against her. Without that, the writers ended up ignoring the most basic piece of writing advice - "show, don't tell" - to fill in the missing information from the song.

In the movie, all we get of Cynthia Murphy is... her being sad about Connor and refusing to admit that he ever did anything wrong. She's just boring and annoying in the movie, but in the musical, we get that bit at the beginning that shows her as an actual person with actual motivations! By cutting Anybody Have A Map, they made her into a more one-dimensional character.

So in a bit of a conclusion: Anybody Have A Map establishes the Murphys as main characters separate from Evan and shows us Connor's relationship with his family instead of telling us about it. It sets the scene for the story before just jumping into "Evan is sad and alone uwu anxious depressed soft boy" and makes everyone a better, more three-dimensional character. Getting rid of it meant that they had to do backflips to justify everyone's decisions during the movie instead of setting everything up at the beginning.

I do think the movie could've benefitted from Disappear but then again, it could've benefitted from the whole "Connor being the visual/vocal representation of Evan's justifications for why keeping up the lie is helping people" thing in general, but they got rid of that so Disappear wouldn't have worked. (I am salty that they got rid of that thing but whatever) The Anonymous Ones worked instead and it was a good song, so sure, why not I guess? /neutral

I could also complain about how they got rid of To Break In A Glove, Disappear, and Good For You, but none of those decisions actually impacted the story too much. To Break In A Glove and Good For You both got replaced with some tell-not-show cutscenes that gave us the same information in a less interesting way (and Larry got less character development without To Break In A Glove), and Disappear got replaced with an Alana song which was honestly pretty good so i'm fine with that one.

Now for some good changes that the movie made!

The Anonymous Ones was a good song, I actually really liked that. I'm disappointed that they got rid of Disappear, but they replaced it with another song that served the same purpose while also giving Alana more screen time and character depth! And it was a genuinely good song, I really enjoyed it and it made me like Alana more!

I really liked the ending of the movie. In the musical, there are literally no negative consequences for Evan, Zoe even forgives him at the end. She fucking forgives him for lying to her entire family about their dead son and and taking advantage of them because it "brought them closer together". And the internet never finds out what he did! He does all this terrible shit, lies to the entire fucking world, and gets away scot-free. And he never learns anything real about Connor. The movie changes all of that.

Connor's song was also a great addition! Every time we saw Connor in the musical, he was either being a dick or he was a fantasy version of himself made by Evan and/or Jared. Seeing that Connor can, in fact, be a nice person, that Cynthia's belief in him wasn't misplaced, was so satisfying. He really was just a meaner version of Evan a troubled kid lashing out at the world in self-defense. He wasn't an entirely bad person.

The Murphys still decide not to tell anyone what he did, but then Evan decides (on his own!) that he needs to own up to what he did. He records a video of himself admitting to what he did, shifts all the blame to himself, and then goes out of his way to fix his mistakes in any way he can. He says that his biggest regret is not getting to know Connor while he had the chance, so he goes online to find anything he can. He reads Connor's favorite books, tries to find anyone who might be able to tell him what Connor was like, and when he receives a video of Connor playing his song in rehab, he takes the time to send the video (through the mail, on a flash drive) to the Murphys, Jared, and Alana.

Evan doesn't contact Zoe at the end, she contacts him instead. She doesn't forgive him, and he doesn't ask for forgiveness. He knows what he did was wrong and he owns up to it and tries to fix it as much as possible, knowing full well that it could ruin his life. He does the right thing for the first time in the entire fucking movie (that's hardly even an exaggeration) and it's such a good ending. It makes more sense and is more satisfying than the musical.

The Dear Evan Hansen movie was not nearly as bad as the reviews say it was. It wasn't as good as the musical, it had its own problems, but it also made some good changes that I think made the story better. It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it and most movies aren't perfect anyway. It really could've benefitted from Anybody Have A Map, though.

[cactus-joke]

the thing i will never wrap my head around is introducing sylvie as a frankenloki & then giving her absolutely no depth despite her being the key protagonist of season 1... like mike must hate women for the fact that

1) all the tva women of color are sidelined immediately (at least the two w the most prominent & interesting roles/backgrounds) for a white ladies development

2) you can count all the tva lady agents we see onscreen w one hand

3) frankenloki aka sylvie has a bunch of gaps for a character like where’d she get blonde hair dye. if ure hellbent on revenge why are u making stops at wallmart 2 get a box of hair bleach. where’d she get asgardian leather but SPECIFICALLY for her top (she’s wearing baggy pants & combat boots w that ensemble??? which as i say it also sounds like those corny wattpad “put my hair in a messy bun, wore my combat boots” fanfic outfits 😭), why and how did she get the AoA loki horns, she didn’t have them when she was taken. if she hates the loki association why’s she wearing the horns & the color green which is... the biggest target to be perceived as loki

4) if she’s an important part of the self love metaphor romance why does she always make this face “😐🤨🤢😐🤨😐” when loki talks (berating him & betraying him in the end aside ofc!)

5) why do we not know her nexus event? why do we not know why she chose the name sylvie? why does she have no prominent character traits outside of having a vagina? why is she cis? why did she get taken at the tender age of an elementary schooler but not when she was born if her crime was being born a girl?

6) has mike waldron ever met, spoken to, or seen a woman? has he engaged in critical, intelligent conversation with anyone, really?

7) can i be emotionally compensated by disney for simultaneously the most BORING (how do you make.. the god of mischief & tricks... boring is beyond me) and convoluted overstuffed show for wasting my time?

I don't know that Mike hates women, but I do think, based on his interviews and the resulting product he made, that:

1) It was certainly a choice to make the two prominent black female characters slaves to a fascist organization and one essentially a leader of it. A choice I don't think anyone involved in creating this show spent a second to think about.

I don't think they were necessarily sidelined on purpose, however. I just think it's an inevitable by-product of the show's terrible pacing and even worse writing. That scene one between B-15 and Renslayer, a scene I think was ultimately a waste of time, made me think that they probably did want to highlight at least those two characters on their own merit. They failed, of course, in the end, and with the set-up I think the intention or lack of intention doesn't really matter since we get what we get, you know?

It's not really a shinning example of giving your characters of color time and care, either, but I do have to highlight B-15's moment of doubt, a scene I think Wunmi Mosaku absolutely killed (seriously, everyone needs to check out her other work, she is effort and talent personified.).

Besides that, if you ask me, no character in this show has any real development anyway, including Sylvie. It is an uneven display of screen-time because obviously she's a main over everyone else but, like, can it even be said that Sylvie particularly benefited from it? I don't really think so. As you said, she has no depth, she is just an empty girlboss fantasy, and the diversity in general in this show feels empty to me.

2) I didn't really even want more TVA foot soldiers to be women. It wouldn't be a diversity win so much as just more empty pandering and Marvel's typical (military) propaganda fuel.

Anyway, I'd like to highlight some youtube creators of color who make great in-depth videos on this issue:

Khadija Mbowe: Color-blind vs. Identity-conscious casting and examining Hamilton and Malcom & Marie

Town of Tawiah: Performative Diversity and Colorism in Film | Dear White People Review, My Wife & Kids,HTGAWM & More

Cheyenne Lin: GOOD Representation Matters | Colorism and Casting

There's obviously way more, but these videos are a good starting point to expand on this topic from people who know what they're talking about. I put a link to their videos while the link on their names will lead you to their respective channels.

3) Sylvie's whole appearance is bullshit from the get-go. They deliberately used comic book references on her to confuse us and make their dumbshit twist of: oh, see, she actually is a Loki variant!

I remember seeing a post essentially saying whoever thinks Sylvie is a Loki variant with 100% certainty is media illiterate lmao, so I guess it worked on some people.

So, you know, IMO, it doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense for her to wear Loki's signature colors and the iconic AoA head-wear, she just does because fuck you.

Also, "if ure hellbent on revenge why are u making stops at wallmart 2 get a box of hair bleach." lmaooo - she just wanted to be her own person, you know, visually, but only with her hair and nothing else :)

4) Sylvie so very clearly doesn't even like Loki all that much, certainly not as much as he likes her (she is a girlboss after all, "she's got shit to do!"). It would be funny if it wasn't tragic. I do feel bad for Larry from accounting :(

5) I'm guessing we don't know her nexus event because they kinda never bothered to define what it was and they don't care. Maybe Renslayer saying she doesn't remember her nexus event was supposed to be this moment of like cold truth, or an attempt to hurt Sylvie because she knows but won't tell her, or, you know... actually, who cares.

6) I think Mike has spoken to women and I think he's had plenty of intelligent and critical conversations at his level. Which is a relative zero to a generous one. Perhaps two on a good day.

Idk though, jokes aside, his writing on this series is childish and lazy, his view of Loki is boring and reductive, his original script he used for this show is absolute shit, and that's all I can really say for sure.

7) I wish. The show really is boring when it isn't actively infuriating. It still boggles my mind how this mess even happened. Like, I knew the show would be bad, but this bad? Man oh man.

[hamphobicbasil]

Could u elaborate about the dsmp story being bad? Not a rabid/brain dead fan, just genuinely curious and I enjoy reading people's rants lolol

oh you dont know the floodgates you just opened

a few things:

1. despite not liking the creators of the dsmp anymore, I don't actually hate most of them. [the ones that are particularly unsavory fall outside of this of course] so all that I'm saying i truly mean in a critical sense towards the story, its also just all purely my opinion as someone who enjoys fictional and fantasy stories and who like criticizing works to see what it does well and what it doesn't do well

2. for clarification I'm going to use the c![name] to indicate when I'm talking about the characters. Don't get me wrong, I think its annoying too but its the only way I'm gonna be able to write this thing without getting something across the wrong way yknow?

3. I stopped watching the streams after November 16th, [save for one Techno one but I closed out after a particularly bad story beat lol] and so all information coming afterward is all second hand from either me seeing people on twt talk abt it or people dming me. All i really know is up to dream's imprisonment and some stuff past that.

4. This is mostly aimed towards the "main" story, so stuff abt the badlands, eggpire, and whatnot are briefly mentioned.

anyways uh, i'll try to be brief but also include enough information to get why i feel the way i do on some stuff across

A. Performances Alright obviously these people are all streamers, so obviously they might not be the best actors, and hell no one is even asking that of them. However, when you're telling a story that's based on the audio with the visuals kinda coming to a second, it's gotta be pretty strong. I will say, some of the best actors in my opinion are Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo. I would include Ranboo but I never watched any of his story bits or story streams so I can't say much. Wilbur and Tommy are excellent in selling their character's emotions and feelings, when I watch the stream I don't feel like I'm watching an rp but an actual thought-out story yknow? And one of my favorite Tubbo examples was in the Hog Hunt video whenever Techno attacked him, he sounded genuinely afraid and I believed everything his character was feeling.

However, unfortunately, not everyone is gonna be that good. And I'm gonna say it; Dream and Techno have to be the worst out of the entire cast. I understand Techno's whole character is this monotoned badass, however, when really emotional moments hit I feel like he never lets that fall, and a lot of intense moments just ring hollow. And I'm sorry but Dream's attempts at being intimidating leave me laughing whenever I watch them. It feels like he watched that one scene from The Marriage with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson and said "Oh this is what good acting looks like! Just yelling." His whole "I don't give a FUCK about Spirit!" speech isn't as great as people keep making it out to be. And whenever he tries to act coy when being a villain it feels like a guy reading the script for the first time, a bit like he's trying too hard. I have more problems with his character but his portrayal certainly doesn't help.

Everyone else is fine, and I don't feel strongly either way about a lot of them.

B. The "Lore" Okay first off, I can't be the only one who thinks it's silly that people are calling the dsmp's story "lore" when it's not, it's the fucking story. Lore indicates backstory to either the world or the characters, which a lot of the streams don't really pertain to. This is a really petty section but god it's a weird pet peeve of mine.

Other than the misusage of "lore" vs "story", the actual lore and world-building of the world are so lackluster that new elements can be introduced whenever and it often feels cluttered or not well thought out at all. And here's the thing, I feel like if the writers sat down just for a few minutes to establish world rules and general history, a lot of this could be solved! but so much is made up on the spot that it starts to feel like they're grabbing at straws to keep people invested, trying to reach that next high and intense story beat without actually earning it.

C. The Egg / Eggpire This is a pretty minor note since I was only invested in the Egg storyline for a little bit, but god it's so underused that it's almost embarrassing. Bad has provided this super interesting antagonistic force that's infecting the SMP, can control people, and who one of our main character is immune to, and it's just never used or even talked about again? Now I understand if he wanted to keep it to a side storyline only, however, to introduce this borderline eldritch creature and force within the world and then never have it dealt with is so weird.

D. The Writing Oh boy this is. kinda a big one. Now I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty obvious I have a bias for the Wilbur writing over the current team [that consisting of Dream, Quackity, and Tommy mostly]. I don't this his writing is perfect by any means, the characters constantly bringing up traitors got obnoxious after a while, and writing Hamilton but in Minecraft really isn't the modern Shakespeare or anything. However, I think his exploration of characters and plot progression was a lot more thought out and well planned, like he actually had two brain cells behind the story yknow? The current team I think fails to be as emotional or even impactful, things happened too fast and my god was everything drowned in angst for so long.

Don't get me wrong, you gotta have your characters face hardships to make them reach their goal believable, but some of the shit they put the characters through just felt like too much. From c!Tubbo's constant comparison to c!Schlatt [who btw, fucking ordered his death and kept him from his friends in a nation he felt trapped in] and on a side note, i kinda really fucking dislike the "c!Schlatt dad!!" au's or the au's where c!Tubbo inherits some of Schlatt's features, it would be like c!Tommy getting a c!Dream mask after his exile, it's feels so weird yet people eat that shit up for some reason.

But god, did c!Tommy get the brunt of it all and in retrospect after his final death, it kinda feels really fucking gross. Now obviously, I'm not trusting any of these people to write decent mental health representation, but c!Tommy's PTSD and how it was explored was just degrading. [Specifically the scene in that one Techno stream where he saw the final control room from the first war, and had a flashback / panic attack where he started calling out for c!Dream. I understand this is an actual thing people with PTSD will experience, but it felt so fucking stereotypical it got on my nerves. I actually had to close out of the stream because it made me feel sick, fiction shouldn't leave you feeling that way.] And don't get me started on how they basically reused the formula from the previous arc. [Problem introduced -> Tensions rise as things start to fall apart -> Big confrontation -> Exile -> Return from Exile -> Blowing up L'Manberg, again.]

And speaking of characters-

E. Character Arcs, or the lack of them In my genuine opinion, some of these characters' arcs are so disappointing. Especially c!Tommy's. I'm not one to believe that he was a "selfish" character or anything, however, his goals were simply set on his discs and maybe c!Tubbo, he didn't have much outside that. However, L'Manberg gave him something to care about, he gave up his discs for it and he fought for it tooth and nail, I think it taught him to open up to others and trust more. It was a great character arc for him to have, seeing him still fight even after his first exile alongside c!Wilbur, to return safely to the nation that he and his found family had built.

But then his second exile happened, and I feel like all of that was undone.

c!Tommy's exile genuinely pisses me off for so many reasons. It's not that characters can't have their low points after reaching a major change or feeling like they've "completed" their arcs or anything, but it's more of the fact that it seems like he's never going to heal that feels like a spit in the face, especially to people who might have had setbacks like that before. Progress isn't linear, sometimes things happen and you get knocked back down, it can take a while to get back up, but I don't think c!Tommy's character is ever going to be allowed to get back up. From c!Dream, who pretty much was a constant abuser in his life, killing him then reviving him, and his still fractured relationship with c!Tubbo, which by the way I have a had time believing they would still be friends after all that happened, it feels like he can never get a win and it's generally kinda a shit way to treat your characters who have been abused. Of course, not all abused characters are going to get happy endings, I'm not trying to dictate that they all should, but c!Tommy deserves one and the fact that it's so obscure feels shitty.

Side note: we still don't have a canon reason to give a shit abt the discs. Like I'm sorry but without some sorta connection to the MacGuffin why should we give a shit about him getting them other than "he wants them lol". Like hell, I would even accept the classic "they were the last gifts from his parents" or something, but we still don't have a reason.

c!Tubbo also lacks a fulfilling arc as well, from someone who started out as a yes man, he has progressed a bit into having his own interests first, but besides that sometimes his character makes me so. depressed. He's easily one of the most pushed around and hated characters within the story, all for being a kid who didn't know what to do and he's in the same vein as c!Tommy; these kids can't get a break. Also, his anti-violence beliefs morphing into the "lets kill c!Techno lol!" bit was so out of place and without proper build-up it was like. what. And now he's building nukes?? god c!Tubbo makes me so sad because he's kicked around constantly and never given a chance to grow.

Another small note, I also don't really enjoy c!Techno at all. Besides the previously stated reasons of lack of emotions when they're really needed, I find his character to be weirdly pretentious. He talks as if he's constantly been betrayed and hurt but I personally, don't see it? Like, I think one of the main examples was the Pogtopia vs. Manberg war, yknow he wanted to end the government but they just reinstated it after they won = c!Techno upset. But this doesn't make sense to me because why did he think otherwise? The entire time c!Tommy had talked about taking back their nation and starting again, so the fact that c!Techno suddenly thought there would be a sudden change is, to put it bluntly, kinda fucking stupid. I don't want to say that he "plays the victim" or anything because that feels a bit harsh, but his character feels so far up his own ass that I can't enjoy him.

I have a major grip with c!Dream as well, but that's getting it's own fucking section.

F. L'Manberg This is a quick note before we get into the, forgive me for this, endgame, of this entire rant, since the next two sections are tied together. But god, L'Manberg makes me upset because it feels like they gave up on it.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that it is supposed to be c!Wilbur's "unfinished symphony", the thing that destroyed a once charismatic and widely loved man, his attempt at power that utterly ruined him. But the fact that it just got blown up in the end after everything and left to rot felt like such a waste of time. From the first war, to Pogtopia, to even c!Tommy's exile, it all felt fucking worthless in the end, and the story is actively closer to how it was when it started now more than ever. I wished it was actually allowed to exist and continue to be a peaceful place in what is a chaotic world, but no it was just snuffed out because why dedicate to this concept of finding others you can band together with and feel safe. fuck that noise apparently?

G. The Villains Now villain-wise, I'm only talking about c!Dream [during the first war], c!Schlatt, and c!Wilbur. And believe it or not, this is actually mostly positive.

Now I'm not gonna lie, c!Dream as a staring antagonist wasn't bad actually, he posed a genuine and threatening opposition to L'Manberg, even if we didn't know his real intentions or motivations as to why he was against it. He's lucky in this sense because he didn't have to be good, he had to be passable. If anything, he felt more like an anti-hero than a tyrant or traditional villain, and my god do I wish he kept this theme going forward.

Now quick disclaimer, I don't like JSchlatt as much as the next guy, he's an adult man who should know better than to joke about some sensitive topics and act the way that he does. But the one thing I'll ever give him is that damn, was he a good actor for his character.

Now here's the thing, c!Schlatt wasn't particularly deep at all. He had no real motivations behind his exile of c!Wilbur and c!Tommy other than getting competition out of the way, had no reason to act the way that he did and yknow? that's fine. The reason why he worked was from his performance alone, he was actually intimidating. When he came onto the stream and was doing his typical bad guy stuff, it was actually intense to see what he would do. Whenever he would almost catch c!Tommy back in Manberg, whenever he would begin to pressure c!Tubbo, it put you on the edge of your seat and it felt like everything would change at the drop of a pen. He's a villain to be a villain, and this works out because he's just charismatic and well put together enough to make it interesting, even without the backstory or motives.

c!Wilbur however, is much more tragic, and the best villain of the story. He essentially was the "mentor turned evil" trope and it felt terrible watching him descend into madness, unable to trust barely anyone except for c!Techno and c!Tommy. Hell, in the end I think he still cared about them both, despite losing everything. Sure, he blew up L'Manberg, but there was still a smidge of the old c!Wilbur in there made everything he did feel melancholic. His death at the hands of his father after achieving his final wish was chilling, and something I still think about.

Until yknow, Ghostbur came back way too soon to let people feel his loss as a character within that world. And then he got revived, pretty much-undoing everything that moment meant for his character lol.

And then there's the worst one:

H. Dream. I'm going to be completely honest, c!Dream is one of the main reasons why I dislike the current dsmp stuff so much. Outside of his actions as a person, the way Dream decided to write his character as this overpowered madman of the dsmp really just. destroyed any intrigue that he could've had. Perhaps this is from my growing dislike towards him, manifesting into a bias towards his character, but god I cannot fathom why people try to insist he's interesting when he has as much depth as a fucking puddle.

And here's the thing, I'm not even entirely against c!Dream being a villain, hell I think he would've been great as an anti-hero if anything. Make him sympathetic but not through c!George to get your precious "DNF" points or anything, but show him actually caring about the people within the dsmp, including c!Tommy and c!Tubbo. This would make his rival status with them just a bit more complicated, sure they're enemies, however, he doesn't want to hurt or kill them, and there's still a level of friendship there that keeps them bonded when things get super bad. This could've been super interesting to see, the first villain of the story receiving a sorta redemption arc then descending into madness as he started to fixate on being a god. This is all how I feel personally, but god do I feel like it would've been better than his current character, and hell would've worked with how he was during the Pogtopia arc, before the war that is. I'm not trying to tell Dream how to write his own character, but there are so many other ways he could've done the madman seeking to become god rather then. whatever the hell we got.

Because instead, we got this power-mad asshole who does things... because he can? And that's one of my major issues: he tries to surround his character in mystery to make him "intriguing" but it's kinda like c!Techno, it comes off as pretentious. Not only that, but you cannot keep waving around this mystery of a backstory without ever actually revealing it. I know the story isn't over, but c!Dream is effectively at his lowest point, now would be the time to reveal his backstory. But no just keep it in the dark and keep everyone guessing, that's totally fun and not at all tiring and annoying. (sarcasm, if anyone needs it)

And back to his performance, he doesn't sell this aloof, cynical and strategic warrior that has perfected the blade or some shit, he comes off as some angry guy yelling on reddit. which i don't need to tell you, isn't intimidating. It feels like he's trying to have c!Schlatt's intimidation combined with c!Wilbur's depth, but instead he's like a little brother who's trying to hard to mimic his older brother and is kinda embarrassing himself.

but other then that i dont feel too strongly abt the dsmp lol

but seriously, these are the main complaints I have abt the story tbh, I could probably talk about more but I wont because man. this is probably gonna get me in trouble if any of the hyper-dsmp fans actually read it.

[bitter-sweet-coffee]

For the ask game, may i request 2,3 and 16 for espave? 👀 cuz yay to bisexual purple bitches

YES BESTIE!!!!!!!!!!

2. who is the one who likes to cuddle?

they're pretty equal surprisingly, even when they were just hanging out as friends! espio is great as a paperweight for people though, and wave needs to sit the fuck DOWN once in a while... jesus. wave can't sneak back into her workshop at 4 in the morning mid trip to try and build extreme gear that runs on plant based "fuel" which artificially recreates photosynthesis so they can she can mass produce negative carbon emission transport or some weird shit... if espio has straight up comatos'd himself on her as they rewatched series 4 of doctor who for the 17th time in a row. so like "espio" but it's more of a wave containment plan

3. who has awful taste in music?

because i kin both of them, neither. they have objectively perfect music taste. KIDDING! lol i'm not. the only ssue with them is actually just... shuffling their music library. you'll go from crazy frog to earth angel to not afraid to misery business and everyone has to put up with it

16. who knows the most obscure facts?

THIS IS ACTUALLY A COMPETITION THAT EVERYONE IS AWARE OF. people have seen espio get chatty at some point (especially the chaotix bc duh) but there's a secret game called "enable espio or wave to say a fact so they duke it out" because it's free entertainment. after figuring out how goddamn fascinating it is to put espave in the same room, the rest of the sonic characters go out of their way to set them up for rapidfire infodumps. espio knows a lot of Echidonian history, linguistics, weapons trivia, law, old films, and upper level calc/physics. wave specializes in anything tech related for obvious reasons, but also Babylonian history, geography, archaeology, video game lore, influencer drama, and compsci. music, 2000's to early 2010's fandom spaces, cold cases, philosophy, and sports have then equally matched (the last one being a common weakness). these might seem like non obscure areas, but trust me it gets specific real fast! "did you know there are 941 potholes in soleanna?" "yeah i did, because little planet and the black comet align to form a trinity with the festival of the sun every 150 years, and the close proximity of the black comet's chaos energy and the time stones would unsettle the island's foundations from the poisoned sunlight and cause damage that was never fully repaired, so the citizens made a point to keep the digits in the pothole count squarerootable, as x^2 represented the subscript of time and energy a visual representation of the orbiting masses, which amplify solaris' power while remaining in his shadow" "exactly, that's why half notes were used in compositions during the 17th century when these patterns were noticed, and all music for the next 13 decades that was played around the anniversary would have to be played in cut time." meanwhile... everyone feels like they're on jeopardy.

[girl4music]

The Human Condition - It suggests that humans are able to have a complex range of emotions for an individual. Therefore it is possible to love someone yet be repulsed by their behaviour and action. This is a unique trait of humans and the human condition. Humans can have more than one emotion towards another. And love is not lost in the meanwhile. Rather, it is amplified but it is expressed as tough love instead.

I would say that is very important to experience in art/entertainment. Particularly that of a VISUAL format such as TV shows, movies and video games so that you can see a representation of the human condition and the effects it can have on characters and on the relationships and experiences of love those characters have throughout their arc in that visual art/entertainment

I LOVE the character Willow Rosenberg from 'Buffy: The Vampire Slayer'. A HUGE part of the reason why I love her so much is that I can disagree with her, call her out and express what I think is wrong with this character or what her biggest faults and flaws are. This character has a gentle nature that gets abused over the early seasons of the show and you absolutely fall in love with her throughout those seasons as you watch her grow and develop... And that makes you want to defend and protect her. She's your cinnamon roll (I think that's the right phrase to use here)... So that means that she's a very positive character for you.

But then you're forced to see her in a negative light as she becomes abusive when she starts accumulating power and desiring to control everything and everyone and have her will be done... And you have to sort of split yourself down the middle with your love for her.

You're Oz or you're Tara or you're Buffy or you're Xander in that you have to choose whether to enable her behaviour or reprimand her for it. You have to wrestle with your ego and not put aside your love for her exactly, but use it to fuel your effort to make her accountable for her behaviour and her actions. This is what Tara does. Tara is a character that is also known to be very gentle natured and that also gets abused too... And by Willow herself.

Tara: "Willow, you're using too much magic. What do you want me to do, just sit back and keep my mouth shut?"

Willow: "That'd be a good start."

Tara: "If I didn't love you so damn much I would."

As such, my need to call Willow out and express all that I think is wrong with this character is not because I hate her. Far from it. I fucking love her to absolute pieces just like Tara or Oz or Buffy or Xander does. But I am like Tara. I love her enough to want to give her tough love because that would be far more beneficial to her than if I did nothing and said nothing.

This is what I mean about finding characters in art/entertainment that SHAKE you. Ones that make you wrestle with your own ego. Ones that make you want to insert yourself in the show and give them a good slap or a talking to. Ones that make you split yourself down the middle.

Why do I want to find these characters?

Because they're the REALIST ones.

Humans are an incredibly flawed species. But they're still loved anyway. Even when they're loved with tough love. So my need to find characters in art/entertainment that represent this level of HUMAN... It's because I LOVE THEM and I want to LEARN FROM THEM. It's not because I want to critisize them or shame them or judge them or hate them. It's easy to misunderstand that that's the intention... But no, I just really fucking love real flawed human beings. And I want to covet them in a way where I also want to let them go too. It's very contradictory. Can even come off hypocritical. But character representation and development is not necessarily about a character being "good" or "better" or "improved". It's about making the AUDIENCE examine, assess and reevaluate their own thoughts, feelings and beliefs about themselves and about humanity. About THE WORLD and about the human condition taking place in it. That's why characters like Willow Rosenberg really fucking matter and why they need to be written more into art/entertainment.

You don't want a character that you love because they never have faults or flaws, they never make mistakes or they never do any wrong. I promise you.

My question to you is, do you have the tolerance for this kind of art/entertainment? Can you love it even though it frustrates you, annoys you or even angers you? Can you love a character like Willow Rosenberg even when she absolutely SHAKES you and makes you wrestle with your own ego?

If you can and you do - we need to communicate. I want to talk to you. Because you will know the kind of characters and shows that I'm looking for and the level of character charactization, representation, development and evolution that I'm looking for. Willow Rosenberg is a character that becomes both a hero and a villain at different times throughout her entire character arc. Xena is a character that starts off a villain and becomes a hero/anti-hero throughout her entire character arc. Gabrielle is a character that is incredibly good natured and innocent and kind and sweet and compassionate and STILL struggles with the human condition in a way where I still see her in a negative light sometimes and where I still feel the need to insert myself into the show to call her out at times. I still fucking love her anyway.

I am a flawed character myself. I fully acknowledge it. And because I can't always see myself as clearly as I can characters on a TV show since I am always the observer of the world and not the observed... It's very very important to me to find characters like Willow and Xena that represent me. That I relate to and that I resonate with. OR characters like Tara and Gabrielle that can love me and teach me a lot. That I can look to as a guiding light in my life. I NEED the kind of characters with so much complex depth and layers to them that they seem like REAL BREATHING CONSCIOUS PEOPLE and not just some fictional shapes and sizes some illustrator came up with or just some actors reading lines for to portray them. That's not enough for me. It never will be. So please - if you understand what I mean by the characters and shows I'm looking for...

Contact me. Communicate with me. I am specifically looking for characters and TV shows that depict and deal with THE HUMAN CONDITION.

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Hey, feel free to ignore this, but I'd love to hear your grievances against Bridgerton? I saw some of the fashion posts you rbed, but I'm especially intrigued by the "fails on all aspects" parts? Thanks!

Hi there,

There is honestly so much that could be said and analysed in finer points but the short version of it is just that it is a bad story wrapped in the glitz of high production value but surprisingly little good technical execution despite all the money shoveled at it. Bridgerton is the type of show where the petty, mean side of me would delight in a detailed and cutthroat list of all of its flaws but for which I do not care enough to be actually invested in hating it. It’s just a thing to be puzzled and petty about: people think Bridgerton is good. Wild.

Now let me first say that I have no inherent problems with anachronistic creative choices, or the idea of a contemporary take on period dramas. After all, all period dramas are inevitably told through a contemporary lens, to different degrees. It’s also not like they were the first big production to do it either: has everyone just forgot about The Great Gatsby? or tumblr’s favourite Hamilton? I honestly think this kind of mixing already has so many cool outcomes when it comes to music (like this, this or this and this), I do believe we could get something really interesting out of creative anachronism in mainstream visual media. I’m also more forgiving with newer forms of experimentation, because sometimes new ideas need to be worked out before they reach their full potential. But the way Bridgerton does it.... so clearly lacks a clear creative vision and dedication to the concept imo that it makes it harder to excuse the ways it fails since the failures seem to originate from that lack of vision and dedication to storytelling. For instance, there is seemingly no logic as to when the diegetic music will be an instrumental cover of a contemporary song or not--which does not even broach the topic of how bad those ‘classical music’ arrangements for modern songs were? Honestly embarrassing how lazy those arrangements were: hire a good composer (or any at all), you cowards. And then the costumes... once again, a lack of internal logic seems to permeate the choices presented in addition to a lack of care in its execution: so many of the dresses are ill-fitted, the characterisation through the outfits were all over the place (like the mom who wore a silhouette that no one else wore and had no basis in any fashion of the era) and so many of the fabrics/jewellery looked the opposite of expensive (kind of looked like a lot of it was polyester and plastic tbh), which is sort of a problem when you are trying to sell the fantasy of "The lives of the rich and famous but make it regency” imo although I suppose a portion of the audience just doesn’t notice lmao. Honestly I find that a lot of ‘costume historians’ who made video essays on Bridgerton were too nice with the show, perhaps in order not to come off as seeming to hate the costumes on the basis of them not being historically accurate, and as a result were way too forgiving imo. And this lack of real creative vision is also something we see in the cinematography and direction which.... seems often confused about the way it wants to make things feel fantastical and ends up dropping the ball on the execution of these meant-to-be extravagant or over-the-top shots.

But, again, the cinematography is just... middling at best, made only worse by the editing which is just plain bad. I guess you’ll have to just take me on my word on this because I am not willing to do an autopsy of all I find off about it, but lord jesus mary and joseph it was painful to watch at certain moments.

Bridgerton is not the first show to do colourblind casting, although I’d say it deserves recognition for fucking it up for no reason at all. Like, sure there are criticisms to be had about how it remains still a very white story that falls into certain tropes wrt darker skin characters or the glaring lack of south asian representation considering what the contemporary UK looks like, etc. but what I’m gesturing at is the totally unnecessary but mind-boggling “royal love solved racism” twist we get in the, what, fourth episode? (Broey Deschannel covered the topic quite well imo) The audience would have accepted that there were no in-world explanation for the colourblind version of the already-made fantastical regency that had them dancing to Ariana Grande songs. The colourblindness, racism-free society would have just been another aspirational aspect. They literally did not need to do this.

Honestly I don’t feel like I need to get into why the story itself is not very good or well-executed since it feels very obvious. I won’t begrudge on principle the show for using well-worn tropes and common-to-the-point-of-farce character archetypes, but I have to object to the way it uses them and in the service of what story. And not to make myself in a plot-hole-ding kind of person-who-has-thoughts-about-media, but this is not a story that holds up well to scrutiny or logic, let’s say. And any type of social or political commentary it tried to include was dumb to the point of farce: the Feminist Character Who Wants to Read not Go Dance was just.... a masterclass in bad, embarrassing writing. I am surprised at how unlikeable and boring the vast majority of the characters were, but perhaps less surprised at how a series that planned on having multiple seasons already sold the twist of Lady Whistleblow’s identity at the end of the first season, for what seemed to be no narrative reason at all. That being said, I have to give credit where it’s due and acknowledge that there is a skill in being able to produce stories that get extremely popular and well-loved.

(Do I need to mention the performances? So many underwhelming or embarrassing performances. It’s hard to tell sometimes whether it’s the actors themselves or the directing that’s the issue, or a mixture of both, but.... oof).

I guess in the end Bridgerton’s biggest transgression is it sits for me in the uncomfortable middle where it is neither trashy or campy fun nor is it an interesting work of fiction. Differently put, it is simply neither good nor fun.

[shoezuki]

This is a post on the cheating accusations around dream mostly surrounding his response video.

If you don’t want to see this or any of these posts then blacklist the tag #discourse

SO I’ve been doing a lot of digging into what dream has said in his response to Geosquare’s original video and report, which was compiled and conducted by the Minecraft Java mods on speedrun.com. 

I won’t talk about that original report in detail, but basically: the mods came to the conclusion that Dream had a 1 in 7.5 trillion chance of getting the pearl bartering rates and the blaze drop odds that he did within the 6 streams he did. As in, someone would need that luck to replicate what dream got. Therefore, he cheated. 

I’m going to put this into a sort of ‘point form’ in according to topic, attempting to put it in chronological order.

Dream’s Initial Tweets

Ok so first like. these are bad. these tweets are what he said (on twitter, excluding in the speedrunning discord) directly after the video was Uploaded to Geo’s channel. 

worth noting he did apologize later, although i wanted to talk about these two instances so i felt the need to include it. 

there’s a lot of interesting wording in the apology tweet itself too. I personally find that when he apologizes he tends to still be very subtextually angry in them with the tone, but more specifically. where he says ‘although i have reason to be upset’, that’s kinda weak and really unneeded. Alongside the ‘intense criticism’, it reads as him trying to say he’s still in the right. kind of like “im sorry i was rude even though I had reason to be rude’. Its an apology sure but he’s not saying sorry for how he really reacted; its justified to him.

Dream’s Response Video

Dream posted a response on his side channel DreamXD on the 22nd, along with the report he had a supposed astrophysicist conduct. I’m going to talk about the report separately from the video for reasons I’ll explain. 

Frankly, the video doesn’t really summarize or explain the report in a meaningful way. At most, it takes some points from it but tends to twist the numbers around, misunderstand the probability and math, and also what the report itself concludes. 

Essentially, dream’s video insists that the numbers found by the mods are wrong and therefore he didn’t cheat at all, yet the report concludes that the numbers found by the mods weren’t entirely accurate, however they’re still extremely unlikely. This is also all under the assumption that the report is entirely correct (ill say how its not next)

His first point is that only his 1.16 run (that was at 5th place two months ago, would have now been 16th) was deemed cheated. This is true; the mods have said that he isnt banned outright and theres no reason to question the legitimacy of his 1.15 runs. 

He also concludes that Geo’s statement that Dream didn’t cooperate with them, and that he deleted 1.16 mod folders, was false. This one is a little more complicated. It could more be chalked up to a miscommunication, although it’s relevant. Geosquare posted screenshots of the specific conversation they had:

Essentially it wasn’t entirely clear, i can understand how geo and the mods interpreted it in such a way. Altho April added in a quote retweet thread that dream didn’t supply the folder she asked for, so he didn’t supply everything they asked for like he states in the video

Essentially: yeah, misleading and weird on both ends. I dont think this is really anything quantifiable, although dream talked about this in the video heavily. 

Out of this though, Geo DID correct himself in the description of the mods’ video. Dream shows this in his own response, but it crops out some of what geo says. here’s from dream’s video

that Update 2 is where he corrects himself. literally why the fuck would you crop it like this and put it in the video i mean this looks so weird and genuinely doesnt provide anything. Here’s what geo actually said

Dream specifically cut it before the line where geo mentions how he said he deleted his specific 1.16 speedrun profile. This one is just so dumb to me. I’d say ‘why not include that’ but either i feel its a) so there’s no potential for people to say what he had actually said could be interpreted otherwise easily or b) doesnt want people to know he got so upset he deleted files (ego wise yknow). Again, I dont think this is definitive of anything but god. it feels scummy lmao

The Video: Incorrect Representation of His Own Report

Dream straight up doesnt present the report’s numbers properly. In fact it makes the entirety of his visuals forfeit, i.e. the gold block analogy that goes on for like 20 minutes. 

The mods said his luck was 1/7.5 trillion. Dream’s report says its 1/10 million (with the addition of 5 other streams) or 1/100 million (only the 6 streams).

I’ll only consider the 1/10 mil odds, since its all dream really brings up. but Basically; there’s not much difference between 1/10 million and 1/7.5 trillion. 

Dream says that the difference is 7.5 trillion minus 10 million, aka 7.4999 trillion. This is what his entire visual with the gold blocks is based on. This is absolutely incorrect, i cant stress that enough. 

You can’t find the difference of fractions by subtracting only the denominators. Like. this is elementary school math. it just doesnt work. 

It’d actually be calculated as: (1/10 000 000) - (1/7 500 000 000 000) = (74999/7 500 000 000 000)

If the mods are wrong, they’re only wrong by 749999/7.5 trillion. that’s literally only  0.000000099999866666667. 

Dream no doubt saw the numbers, considered 10 million vs. 7.5 trillion, and used these big numbers to hold his own point. PROBABILITY DOESNT WORK LIKE THAT. I really think he was just taking advantage of the seemingly big numbers here and wrote it out in a way that favoured him. The gold block analogy in the video played throughout the entire video practically, jokes were made on it, and he made a point of it being ‘so big the game crashed’. 

It’s just plain wrong. even so a difference in the odds doesnt prove shit. He’s downplaying his own odds that he found too. 1/10 million isnt a small number. Even though the legitimacy of that calculation is in question, it is still significant enough to proclaim he cheated. 

Some quick points before I move onto the report; these aren’t as significant in my eyes but it adds to the picture

there’s been criticism of his joking manor throughout the entire video, very specifically the Bill Nye joke. Considering he doesnt actually have a name to provide for his astrophysicist, this joke doesnt feel right

the mod he had a voice clip from (willz) even believes that he cheated and has agreed with the mod team the whole time. 

Dream never has a name for the mod who is apparently on his side (more understandable), the minecraft developer he quoted, or the astrophysicist (most damning)

Dream states that fabric is used by most speedrunners which is true, but fabric and fabric API are different; dream also had the latter installed. my knowledge of how theyre different is limited, all i really know is the API is what can enable editing of the code while fabric is more a modloader. im not entirely sure on this

Dream has said at the end of the video that all funds will go to the mod team so they can make a client that will regulate cheaters. this has been noted as feeling manipulative or like a ‘bribe’, but it definitely puts the mods in a bad position. 

either they accept it and look like they ‘gave in’ to dream and therefore acknowledge him in the right

they deny it and look selfish/taking dream’s kindness for granted

geo said they would insist it goes to a charity instead

Dream constantly disregards the mods as young, inexperienced, ‘just volunteers’ etcetcetc, despite the fact that theyre analysis has been discussed by people with confirmed PhDs without much criticism

Dream’s Report

The report itself is extremely interesting, in that it’s very questionable, but even so it doesn’t come to the conclusion that dream didn’t cheat. The tone between the video and the report is drastically different. 

This is from the “3. What are the goals of this document?” section:

It essentially says this isnt intended, from the very beginning, to completely exonerate dream of cheating. Also note that the author says the mods’ report was mostly correct. 

This is at the end of “9 Conclussions”:

It does notably say cheating isnt the only explanation, but it doesnt actually go as far to say that it’s not possible that he cheated. 

But this can be argued to not matter if we consider the validity of the report as a whole

Dream’s Report: Criticisms

Possibly the first and most known debunking of the report is by u/mfb on reddit, although there’s been much more such as this programmer criticizing the code provided at the end of the report (partially due to how the author of it stated that piglins barter 4-7 pearls, which is incorrect: it’s 4-8), Andrew Gelman, an actual statistician professor from harvard, commented on the original mods’ report as ‘impressive’ while Dream’s report is being regarded as something funny in the comments, and even analysis of dream’s behaviours and his argument by a law student

But what u/mfb posted is what i’ll focus on. Some background into the user; he’s a particle physicist, is moderator in subreddits like r/cosmology and r/astrophysics, he’s regarded as a reliable source on r/askscience and r/askreddit. Basically, multiple other people have vouched for him and before all this he had many posts in these fields. 

that’s already better than the unnamed astrophysicist. 

The post is better speaking for itself but here is a few exerpts from it;

Essentially, the report’s methods are debunked by u/mfb-, alongside that a moderator of r/statistics regarded the report as ‘nonsensical in its application of statistics’ and linked to u/mfb-’s comment. 

i’m going to end this here. Partially because severe backpain or whatever,.

but I want to say at this point its practically definitive that dream cheated, that he lied to us, and that he continues to do so. Much more could be said on his video such as his tone, intentions, the overt emphasis on the ‘biases’ of the mods. 

I havent even mentioned that the ‘astrophysicist’ themself may be a scam; they are sourced from a website that is extremely sketchy, has no names attached to it, and was created less than a year ago (with practically no traffic on it until maybe a month ago). 

But i hope this is coherent. I have interest in this so if theres questions im always open. 

[itsbenedict]

I didn’t post about everything I played this year, so here’s my opinions on the stuff I played that I didn’t make a rec post for:

Raging Loop 

Raging Loop is one of them twisty meta Zero Escape-y branching-path visual novels where an ensemble cast is trapped in a mysterious circumstance where people are dying gruesomely, and you have to find out what’s happening and stop it by looping a bunch. 

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, because... it tries to have its cake and eat it too with the supernatural elements. Clearly magic is real and has important impacts on the scenario, but then other parts are trickery you’re supposed to see through, and it’s entirely uninterested in cluing you in to how that trickery was accomplished. Not exactly a fair play mystery, in that regard- you have to kind of just be along for the ride, rather than try to figure it out.

That said, it’s a good ride- pretty strong character writing, and the central conceit of the Werewolf/Mafia-style murder scenario creates really interesting drama. It’s more concerned with making itself feel clever than letting the player feel clever, but it’s still well-paced and gripping and has a pretty decent resolution.

Detective Grimoire

I recommended Tangle Tower, the sequel, pretty strongly- and this one, while obviously a little rougher around the edges with the art and mechanics (the suspicion tracker system is a total dud; I didn’t even realize it existed until I realized I was missing an achievement for using it), it’s still pretty darn good. Really fun character designs and animations, fully-voiced, and a solid whodunit backing it all. Plus- while the two are more or less self-contained, the continuity threads with Tangle Tower raised some really interesting questions.

Contradiction - the all-video murder mystery

This one was pretty fun, largely on the strength of the actors. The main mechanic of interrogating people on evidence and using their own statements against each other was some good stuff, too. Definitely had that Phoenix Wright quality to the deductions, and Jenks is a really fun character. (Had a few points where progression was just linked to standing in a certain previously-abandoned area of the map where a clue was suddenly there for no reason, there- good thing it had a hint system.)

As a mystery, it could use a little work- most of what you end up finding out is sequel bait (for a sequel that never actually came together, unfortunately), and the actual whodunit is just sort of hiding in the cracks of all that. And... cornering the culprit just sort of happens out of nowhere once you’ve got your hands on the right piece of evidence, without much fanfare. You’re following up on leads like usual, you find a little lie in someone’s testimony, and then- oh, shit, they’re just confessing everything! Unlike all the previous times you questioned them and they were super evasive like everyone else! And then the game is over. 

All in all, it’s pretty meaty and entertaining and I’d recommend it, but unfortunately the creators have moved on to other things, so there’s not going to be any follow-up on the stuff it left unresolved.

Ikenfell

Ikenfell is a tightly-designed RPG about kids at a magic school, with Paper Mario-style action command mechanics and a battle system that makes a big deal out of careful positioning and movement, which was really enjoyable. The difficulty’s a little high (I recommend always always always speccing into max damage because killing things before they kill you is worth more than any amount of defense, speed doesn’t work, and healing is cheap), but I found it really satisfying.

There’s... something... off? About... I don’t know how to put it, it’s... doing that “yes, everyone is queer and mentally ill, deal with it” thing, which, sure, okay. But for a lot of them it’s such a background thing, like... half the playable cast is unambiguously nonbinary, but like... I don’t know if it’s trying to make some statement on how there are no rules to being NB and you can 100% perform a particular binary gender presentation but still count, or if they wrote the whole story and then changed the pronouns of some of the characters for Representation Points, or what. Probably the former? I dunno, it just feels weird. Maybe I’m just not woke enough to Get It.

(unrelatedly: why the heck is the official art they use everywhere so... off-model? none of them look like they do in-game- they look like the creator commissioned someone to draw a group shot with one reference image each and didn’t tell them anything about the characters. how much you wanna bet they commissioned a friend and it came out wrong but they were too polite to say “sorry, no, this is wrong, can you do it over?”)

Trails of Cold Steel IV

Hoo boy. It’s... not great, and it’s not great in a pretty predictable way for an even-numbered entry in the Trails series. It happens every time- first there’s a game in a new engine with new characters and a new world to explore, and it’s really nice and does interesting things... and then it ends on a cliffhanger, and then there’s a sequel game in the same engine with the same characters and the same world, reusing as many assets as possible. Also the League Of Generically Evil Anime Supervillains is there causing trouble for reasons they refuse to explain, and the plot is a storm of magicbabble and macguffin-chasing that makes little to no sense. 

Cold Steel IV is that for Cold Steel III, full stop. Welcome back to all the same places you visited last game, except this time there’s some stupid magic apocalypse happening (not that it stops you from taking the time to do random sidequests constantly, of course). The whole “oh, the evil curse mind controls people and that’s why they do stupid bullshit that’s in no one’s interest” plot point is leaned on super hard, and it’s just a big yawn the whole way through.

It’s still really fun, though, because the battle system remains really well-designed. (The same battle system that was just as fun in Cold Steel III, mind you, but it hasn’t gotten old.) And- though they’re struggling to square it with the dumb mind control apocalypse plot, the NPC dialogue continues to make the world feel believable and lived-in. They don’t slack on the parts that make Trails good- it’s just the parts that make Trails bad are making themselves more evident than ever.

did finally get to date Towa though so that’s a win

One Step From Eden

OSFE is... uh. It’s fucking hard is what it is. It’s sort of a deckbuilding roguelike, and there’s this combat that takes place on a grid, and- wait, it’s like Mega Man Battle Network, it’s exactly like Mega Man Battle Network. Man, I forgot about that, but the mechanical influence is extremely obvious. It’s MMBN meets Slay the Spire.

Except it’s super duper hard as hell, because unlike MMBN you can’t pause and swap out chips or anything- everything is just always happening so much, all at once, everywhere, and you have no recourse but to git gud and learn all the enemy patterns and the behavior of your own spells and develop the twitch reflexes necessary to not fucking die from all the shit that’s on the screen always.

(What’s the story? Uhhhh, there was some kind of magic apocalypse, and some anime girls are trying to reach a city for some reason that doesn’t really get explained ever. The game doesn’t really care to build its world at all- it’s all mechanics plus a little token character dialogue that doesn’t say much.)

The point is it’s really frickin’ hard but I am an epic pro gamer and I got ALL THE ACHIEVEMENTS, MOTHERFUCKER. If you’ve played it, I expect you to be really god damn impressed with me, okay???

A Short Hike

This one was really relaxing! It’s a platformer where you explore an Animal Crossing-y island of cartoon animal people, collecting mobility upgrades- but like, mainly it’s about straight chillin’. The flight controls are fun and there’s lots of little secrets to find and it’s just a nice time that doesn’t drag on too long. Not too much to say about this one.

Pokémon Sword

Ehhhhh.

I’m not here for the hot takes about how Dexit is good actually. Development hell happened, they had to make cuts for time, I get it. It’s disappointing and makes the game a little bit worse, but it’s not the end of the world.

Apart from that... perfectly serviceable? The Wild Area could’ve used a little more technical polish (as could most things in the game, really) but was a step in the right direction, giving the player a wider array of early-game team-building options than ever before. No HMs is good. Story and characters were kind of nothing, but that’s par for the course. “At least this time they’re not shoehorning in some kind of stupid evil-team-wants-legendary-pokemon-to-destroy-the-world apocalypse plot”, I thought to myself before they managed to shoehorn one in at the last minute with zero buildup- but, hey, beats wasting half the game on it.

It’s nothing special and it’s missing a lot of polish, but its problems are mainly due to being rushed, and presumably next gen they’ll be able to reuse a lot of the models and animations (maybe even improve the animations so they’re not so boring??? a man can dream) and make something interesting. SwSh seem like they were testing the waters for something else, and not taking too many chances in the meantime. 

(yo why would you sell all these cosmetic items and then turn them all off during gym battles, though) 

Hades

Hades is- oh, who am I kidding? Everyone knows Hades, it’s the game of the year, greatest thing since sliced bread, Supergiant are heroes, yada yada yada. I’ve played almost 300 hours of it and I’ve completed everything except all the Resources Director levels (currently a Sigma Wraith), it’s extremely fun and you don’t need me to tell you that.

Petal Crash

It was that thing the Paranatural creator helped on? It’s, uh. It’s a block-sliding puzzle game thing, sort of in a Puyo Puyo vein. It has fun character designs and some good dialogue, like you’d expect from Zack’s involvement, but it didn’t really leave an impression otherwise (besides how got dang infuriating some of its Turn Trial puzzles can be.) The story is... kinda heartwarming, kinda didactic, kinda childish, not especially deep or interesting. Hard for it to be, when it’s told through little bits of fluffy character dialogue that exist to set up a puzzle battle as quickly as possible. Not super recommended unless you really really like block-sliding puzzles.

Hollow Knight

Man, why’d I sleep on this for so long? It’s a metroidvania platformer with heavy Dark Souls inspiration, in terms of tone and difficulty and death mechanics and environmental storytelling. And it’s... apart from all that, just really good as a game, with tight controls and juicy movement and great animation. Progression is linked as much to mastery as it is to upgrades collected- I found myself in lategame areas facing down things that would’ve killed me ten times over at the start- not because I had the best gear, but because I’d learned the game’s language and understood how to move in ways that wouldn’t get me killed.

(Usually. Sometimes I’d walk into a room and sit on a bench and suddenly there’d be a boss fight and I’d get slaughtered. Ain’t that just the way it goes?)

Anyway, on top of all that it’s just charming as hell, with a really unique and well-realized world full of little bug people. I love how, like, your character is clearly some kind of eldritch abomination, but it’s small and cute and so everyone (besides enemies that attack you on sight because they’re possessed by some kinda evil mold) is like “awww, who’s this little guy? want some help, little guy?”

(except Zote, who is just an ass hole. i love him.)

[jesterkindreview]

Neon Abyss - Review

Let’s try this one more time.

Neon Abyss is a roguelike in the truest fashion; there’s a fucked up place, and your character wants to fight their way through it to confront the boss so they can... well, in this case, escape, though this is the part that tends to see the most variety. Kill your past, kill your mother and/or representations of religious extremism, approach the throne... in comparison, simply escaping seems a little bland, but Neon Abyss is not a particularly story heavy game.  Rather, its a game that seems to be putting all its eggs in the Aesthetic and Theming basket, and in fairness, they are nailing it. When you fall your way into the Abyss for the start of a run, the visuals are striking; in the opening room, two Ancient Rome style statues stand, desecrated with neon paint and glowsticks in the shape of necklaces draped around their necks, and the rest of the visuals remain pretty darn interesting the way through.

The real strength of this game’s presentation, for my money is for the boss at the end of each floor. When you find the boss room, you enter, and you face... a God. 

Specifically, a god of something that’s considered a vice or obsession of modern existence, replacing the old gods. There’s Remington, the God of Guns, or Tik and Tok, the Gods of Mobile Videos, Gods that represent Racing, Pills, Idols, Plushies...  Later bosses towards the endgame, when you start winning your runs, complete this aesthetic by having you fight the Old Gods; a Zeus refitted as the God of Electricity, or just plain old Ares. While the mechanics aren’t quite as polished as other games where you control someone on a deicide rampage, but they’re certainly competent enough to allow this excellently intriguing premise to play out without too much concern.

On the topic of the mechanics, Neon Abyss is not reinventing the wheel. In fact, it’s pretty clear the developers either took heavy inspiration from other roguelikes, mostly The Binding of Isaac, or they are on the exact same wavelength and created the same works of Shakespeare through their own infinite typewriters. In fact, there’s a clear analogue to a lot of things in Isaac in this game. Each floor has one item room and one shop, the main consumable drops are Health, Coins, Keys, and Bombs... but those things are both taken from Isaac’s inspirations. Where it gets more interesting is the equivalent of the Angel Room and Devil Room, where this game gives you consumable Crystals that you can spend to open certain locked doors and locked chests to increase your Wisdom, culminating in a free item room when you max out the bar... or you can shoot those doors and chests to increase your Violence by spending health on them afterwards, culminating in a room where you can give up a heart container for a more aggressive, attack-focused item. It’s a pretty dynamic mechanic, but it’s not the only interesting change that this game makes to its inspiration’s blueprint.

Remember the Familiars in Isaac? Little guys that cycle around you and provide different effects, gained through items? Neon Abyss has an equivalent, but they don’t pollute the item pools because you gain them by picking up Eggs that drop from chests and room clear rewards, and that have a chance to hatch into a random familiar when you complete a room. 

Not everything was taken from Isaac, mind- a few things from Enter the Gungeon have reared their head, most apparent in weapons and items being separated, and in the very welcome presence of teleport stones in cleared rooms that cut down on how much backtracking you have to do. 

Of course, not everything in this game is as phenomenal or inventive as its setting and ideas respectively. I don’t have any major gripes with the game, but I do find its movement oddly floaty and hard to intuit- it takes some active effort to learn how your character moves, and what distance you have to be from something to trigger a melee attack instead of firing your weapon. Speaking of which, a fair number of the weapons you can find I’ve found to be... not worth trading out for your main weapon? Some are strong, certainly, but some are also pretty useless. Items share this flaw, but to be fair... pretty much no game can nail having a full item pool like this, so that’s to be expected.

I’ve yet to fully unlock everything in this game- it has a rather entertaining unlock system where you spend currency dropped from slain bosses to unlock a skill-tree-esque progression of items, characters, rooms, and other aspects to add into your runs, and a nice little touch is that unlocking an item guarantees you start with it on your next run so you can try it out. What I have played, I’ve enjoyed, and I’ll be keeping this installed for as long as I have access to it, as I’m playing it via the Game Pass. 

If you’re a fan of any of the roguelikes I’ve mentioned so far - especially if you recognised the ones I merely referenced near the top - I’d certainly recommend giving this game a shot if you ever get the chance. If you don’t like roguelikes as a genre, I really doubt this one is going to change your mind; it’s not doing anything that new. Overall, I enjoy this game! A positive experience.

If you’ve got any requests, thoughts, or questions, feel free to drop me an ask! In the meantime, and until I get off my ass to write more reviews, stay safe and have a good one.

- Jester

[dowoonie-namjoonie]

All You Need is Confidence

Paring: Teacher!Jae x Student!Reader x Teacher!Wonpil

A/N: IDK why but I’m on a student-teacher kick, probably because I’ve been watching PLL again so...ENJOY! BTW, if you like this I’m probably going to make it a series because why not! If this does make you uncomfy, I suggest you don’t read it. 

Warnings: Student-teacher relationships, poly relationship, slight age gap, minor language, and suggestive themes. 

(Unedited, and also there will be a second part!)

High school was not fun, you know how people say it’s one of the best times in your life, well you have reason to disagree. Senior year was the most stressful to you, purely because of the inevitable change from childhood to adulthood when you go to college. That pressure to instantly grow up scared the ever-living shit out of you without fail. 

However, school wasn’t always that bad, your senior year was bad, yes. But, three people in your life made sure on their lives that you’d have the best year ever. Number 1, your best friend Kang Younghyun. Both you and him were senior this year, Younghyun always had a higher work ethic than you. Motivated to do anything and everything, honestly, his main goal was to travel the world by himself. By far, he was the most daring, independent person you’d ever met, he had confidence practically radiating off of him. So, you can imagine that there was never a dull moment with him. 

Number 2 and 3 go hand in hand. Mr. Park Jaehyung and Mr. Kim Wonpil, they made sure the hallways were a safe place and more importantly that class was never plain. Mr. Park and Mr. Kim are best friends from what you know ever, they even went to this high school just like you and Younghyun. Even though they were best buds, they were complete opposites. 

Mr. Park’s english class was eventful. Mr. Park hated homework so he rarely gave it, said he “doesn’t believe in it.” Most of the time he’d spend class talking to kids about video games, giving so advice to novices to the games he liked. Of course he actually taught...once a month maybe! Mr. Park was just one of those cool teachers who didn’t teach, but yet someone taught you everything you need to know about the world. Weird how that happens. Commonly, people knew him as a young teacher-same with Mr. Kim-even romanticizing the man. Most of your girlfriends swooned over either one of the teachers: But, hey you had to admit it, you definitely had a crush on Mr. Park. 

Mr. Kim, on the other hand, taught a tedious government class. Mr. Kim seemed to always be second whenever compared to Mr. Park, it kinda made you feel guilty having liking the one out of the two. They both were equally good people, but since Mr. Park is barely a teacher people just like him more. You see, Mr. Kim taught, there was nothing he loved more than giving 30 slides worth of a powerpoint, making you take pain-staking notes every-other day. Mr. Kim was popular more on his visuals and how shy he was. Mr. Kim could get flustered about anything and everything, once a kid in your class asked to go to the bathroom because he needed to take a shit, and Mr. Kim blushed rocking back and forth on his chair all because how the kid worded his sentence. Mr. Kim was adorable in a I-can-make-fun-of-him way, maybe it was teenage hormones but you had a crush on him too. Ah, but the crushes you had would never go anywhere...right? 

Anyway, the theme between them two was that you always went to them when you were upset. Both teacher took a liking to you because of your playful nature and natural sense of what they taught. Your intelligence seemed to impress most people, but you had to admit when you had your downfalls, especially when learning what the difference of absolute monarchy and constitutional monarchy. Civics wasn’t your strong suit. In english class, Mr. Park would make you stand out from the class making fun of every detail about you, Mr. Kim had empathy for you. Tutoring you in a heartbeat whenever you had trouble in his class, which seemed frequent. No matter how much Mr. Kim would hate to admit it, but he didn’t mind your merciless teasing, so of course you were his favorite student. Still, they both helped you through thick and thin. Like today.

Today, today was not your day. Earlier this morning Younghyun told you he was going home early sick, so you needed to get another ride home. Or you’d have to take the bus home, which was a no-go for you since taking the public bus freaked you out. You don’t know, the fact anyone could sit next to you made you paranoid. What if it was a serial killer, who planned on following you home and killing you? See, paranoid. 

Then this girl in your class ruined your whole project, a fucking group project, those you despise. Why was it fair to be partnered up with people who, simply, didn’t care about their grade just like you did. This girl proved this fact almost definitely, for your chemistry class, you were supposed to build a representation on how electrical currents go through objects. You being you, took on the roll easily, priding yourself with most of the difficult things. The one thing she needed to do, that ignorant bimbo, was to bring a potato and toaster. So, the chemistry project was left with an F. 

When you got frustrated you cried, unfortunately this flaw was seen by everyone in your chemistry class. Leaving you the laughing stock of the school for at least the next few weeks. The stares from people-even the mocking laughing, made your spiral. And why, all because of a stupid girl who couldn’t do her part in a simple project. Embarrassing yourself further, you decided to run out of class to the nearest person who could help calm you down. 

Panic filled you as you ran through the, just nearly, populated hallways. As you sobbed down, people looked at you like you were some crazy person on the brink of a full-blown breakdown. In these situation where you had minor panic attacks, you would run to yours and Younghyun’s meeting place. The janitors closet that no-one dared to go into, no one but you and Younghyun. Since, he left earlier because he’s sick, there was only one other place where you could go besides the unhelpful guidance counselors that would give you shitty life advice and send you back to class. No, Mr. Park could help you, he always managed to make you feel better. 

People were insatiable, desperately trying to shatter you into a million pieces as you made your way to Mr. Park’s english room. Thankfully, and ironically, for you the bell had rung in the knick of time. Mr. Kim noticed a heap of students outside his classroom, crowded together whispering insults at god knows what. When he heard your name strun into the mix, he realized you were standing in the middle of this crowd, holding yourself trying to hide your tears. 

“Alright, alright,” Mr. Kim exclaimed, grabbing the attention of the students, who seemed more flabbergasted than anything. Mr. Kim never yelled. “Clear out, now!” 

The man had never looked more serious, a demanding tone riddled in his voice, his eyes like a black-hole to those who opposed him, and his hands put on his hips. So, this is what he’s like when he’s angry. His anger helped you, students cleared out into other room, lingering students were shoved away into the bathrooms fearing of a write up. Still, you stayed on the ground hiding your tears, Mr. Kim coming up in front of you, the tap of his shoes alerted you. 

“Y/N,” he started, voice getting closer as he kneeled down. Sure, he’s seen you upset thousands of times, but out of those times you haven’t cried once. There was no time due to your whining and yelling about whatever set you off that day. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” 

Mr. Kim was concerned, per usual he had empathy for you, upset himself because you were crying. He could never tell why, but he hated when you were angry or sad, he just couldn’t stand it. 

“N-No...,” you whipped a tear, looking up at his face. Being met with pure handsomeness, but there was no time to be entranced by his record-breaking looks. “Can-Can you take me to Mr. Parks...please, I need to talk to him-to both of you. Is that okay?”

Mr. Kim was taken aback, luckily for him and Mr. Park had no class, lunch break comes with perks. “Of course it’s okay, let’s go, everything will be okay.” Mr. Kim put a hand on your back, tapping you lightly to encourage you to get up. Complying, both of you made it to Mr. Park’s, just catching him in the middle of taking a bit of his tuna sandwich. 

“Oh hello...oh no,” his sandwich dropped onto the desk upon seeing you blotchy face. Uncomfortable sight to see. “Y/N, Wonpil what’s going on?”

Mr. Kim lead you to a nearby desk, out of all the empty ones he put you directly in front of the teachers desk. 

“I’m not sure,” Mr. Kim started, backing away from you as you convulsed with a sobbing fit. “I found her like this in the hallway.” 

Mr. Park clicked his tongue, looking around his desk for some unused tissue and a free water bottle. Oddly enough he had both of those things tucked away in his desk. Strutting over to you, he gently held the tissue up to your face, dapping off some stray tears, in the process placing the water bottle next to you. 

“Just calm down okay,” Mr. Park muttered, focused on cleaning you up. 

Mr. Kim came up behind him, reaching for the water bottle and opening it up for you. Carefully, Mr. Park withdrew his hand, letting Mr. Kim give you some water. Even then, you didn’t calm down, concerning both of the men when you started hyperventilating. Today was just one of those days. The whole ordeal rang through your head, no one could ever look at you the same ever again. Look at you now crying in front of two men, who you adore, sullying everything they knew about you. The thought that your life was over made your panic attack protrude, increasing your talent of overthinking.   

“What’s going on Jae,” Wonpil kept his eyes on you with pure worry in his eyes. Wonpil has never experienced a panic attack before, let alone even seen one in person. 

“She’s having a panic attack um...I’ve got this.” 

Mr. Park stepped up to you again, making sure you could only focus on him. He placed his hand on your lower thing, squeezing lightly, placing his forehead against yours. Both him and you made a deep eye contact, calmingly he said “Y/N, calm down, everything’s going to be okay.” When you didn’t respond to him, instead you ignored him, he began tapping in a pattern on your thighs. 

“Y/N,” he tried again, keeping up with the pattern. “Focus on my fingers, okay? Focus on how I’m tapping you, okay?” 

Listening to him, you began to calm down, feeling his tapping. One time on the right, next on the left, then on the right, then on the left...

“That’s it,” he began, not giving up on the tapping, pulling you back to reality. 

“I’m okay...okay...I’m okay,” you spoke up, swallowing back the horrible panic you just felt. 

Mr. Park pulled back, proud of himself that his efforts to calm you down worked, Jae was experienced with panic attacks. Although it killed him to see you like that, he’s just glad you came here for him to help you. 

With the tissue, you rubbed your face and nose of any liquid that came out of you. Both men looked at you in waiting for your next move, they didn’t know what could throw you off. 

But, someone had to speak up at some point. “Do you want to talk about it Y/N?” Mr. Park’s question made you shake, Mr. Kim noticed this nodding him off. 

“Let’s not talk about that,” Mr. Kim spoke, putting a loving smile on his face to hopefully not start up another panic attack. “Um...Why don’t we do something? Yea, like...” Wonpil was at a loss, looking over to his best friend for something that could distract you in this moment. 

“Y-Yea,” Mr. Park perked up, jumping to his desk to find anything to help you regulate yourself. The only thing he had that was remotely fun and not school work, was a Christmas word search he’d given the freshman class he taught yesterday. “This, we can do this word search!”

“Yes, a word search!” Both teachers yelled excitedly, Mr. Park placed the word search on his desk, Mr. Kim beckoning you to come over to them to do the word puzzle. 

You knew what they were trying to do, but really you were in exactly no position to deny the men who just helped you through that. After all, they were making you feel better. Like a snail, you slid off the desk, trudging your way over to both of the enthusiastic men sitting in Mr. Park’s spinny chair that they pulled out just for you. Mr. Kim placed a pencil in your hand, sliding the paper more towards you, meanwhile Mr. Park pulled up two chairs for him and Mr. Kim to sit in next to you. Sitting down next to you, the both watched you complete the puzzle, randomly helping you throughout. 

Mr. Park and Mr. Kim had a secret, an unspoken secret between the two of them. Even if it was left untouched and talked about, both men new that both of them had a crush on you. They were disappointed, even discussed in themselves that they liked you, but you didn’t make it any easier either. They felt the need to protect you, constantly, the need to make you happy when no one else could are their duties. For Jae, he started to like you when you promptly scolded him for being a horrible teacher, but an amazing guy. From that day forward, you and Jae formed a bond where you made fun of eachother with hidden love. For Wonpil, it’s when you defended him when people were making fun of the way he got flustered. He just knew you were the one, no ones ever defended him that way. The more you came to talk to them, the more their feeling began to grow for you. Ditto, same thing happening to you. 

All of it happened so fast, Mr. Park was lost in thought about you. Delicately, he watched you as you tried to figure out the puzzle. Even though your face was red, eyes swollen, and nose runny Jae still admired your looks. The way your face was scrunch up in determination to defeat the puzzle, the way you bit your lip, or the way your soft looking hair fell on your face-

Reaching out his bigger hand, he wisped a stray piece a hair from out of your face, getting a better look at your beauty. But then you turned to him, with your wide E/C eyes and a cute pout on your face, he just couldn’t help himself. His hand moved from your, now proven, soft hair. Stroking his way to cup your cheek, his callassed thumb ran across your bottom lip. The plumpness fueling him more, before you both knew it his lips were on yours. His lips encased yours, the sudden feeling making you whimper under him, the only word to describe how it felt was euphoric. First you were shocked, not expecting your teacher to touch you, let alone kiss you. Then, a feeling bubbled in you, your stupid crush and all the fantasies you’ve had about him made you melt into him. Closing your eyes, beginning to kiss him back, your hand met grasped his shirt, pulling him further into you. Kissing Mr. Park was something else.