#at least have a compelling argument bro

[allgreekbitch]

hating on an arcane character bc “they’re a bad person” is so funny bc there’s literally no character that can be considered a good person in the entire fucking show and that’s the charm of it

[littlestsnicket]

more disparate iwtv thoughts

- the key to understanding loustat is that lestat falls for louis for the following reasons in this order: 1 louis’ capacity for violence, 2 louis being fucking gorgeous, and 3. louis having enough inner conflict and desire for self knowledge to occupy him for at least a dozen human lifetimes. lestat falls for louis because he thinks louis would make an excellent vampire, and nothing that happens over the intervening decades changes his mind. he believes he knows louis better than louis knows himself, and, narratively, on a number of points he is right. while this would be horrifying in real life, it’s extremely compelling in fiction

- i hate hate hate the idea that love isn’t real if it’s destructive. and i actually see that at least as much from entertainment journalists as fandom. lestat loves louis. armand loves louis. louis loves claudia. that doesn’t mean their relationships are good or positive or anything else. louis loves lestat. louis loved armand once, at least. (claudia loves louis but that’s not really relevant here.)

- relatedly cannot stop thinking about assad saying armand just wants to be loved. 100% correct. the fact that this desire is filtered through centuries of maladaptive coping mechanisms does not make it less true.

- louis has never used social media of any kind. he has a desktop computer to access email and databases of property and art. computers are for work. anything time sensitive gets filtered through armand or his staff.

- armand spends a lot of time on twitter and like 8chan searching for victims. this means he can code switch into perfect tech bro. daniel and lestat find this deeply unnerving. louis doesn’t spend enough time online to really understand what armand is doing. armand used to spend a lot of time on reddit, but even he could tell that the arguments he kept getting obsessed over were bad for him so he had to stop.

- lestat is a tumblr girly. he writes questionable sad poetry and posts artsy pictures. he occasionally gets really into fandom. he is a hannigram shipper. he has the worlds most eclectic music side blog.

- daniel is on twitter in a professional capacity, but he spends enough time there, both doing legitimate investigation and doom scrolling, to be relatively up on modern slang and what is trendy with the youth.

- anyway, my point is, even though lestat and especially armand are most comfortable expressing themselves in a way that is vaguely archaic, louis is the one most likely to need technology/modern phrasing explained to him. but also not that often, he does get out of the house and interacts with real people so he stays pretty up to date.

- i think claudia would entirely mirror louis in regard to computer usage. or maybe not. claudia would be an early internet adopter. she misses usenet and refuses to use any web 2.0. she wouldn’t even use google. she runs into armand on the darknet. mostly she and madeline would run an organic farm in the french countryside using corpses as fertilizer.

- louis and armand are both switches and into violent bloody sex. the fact that most of their sex since paris has been mutually unfulfilling is an achievement. (louis just… isn’t very good at stoping armand from turning sex into trauma reenactment time TM. louis doesn’t like it but armand is very insistent and louis is often lowkey angry at him to start with. they’re both at fault here.) (i’m not going to look up the exact quote but ‘half blank half apocalyptic, what’s it going to be this time? are you gonna want to lick my boots or cut my head off?’ says so so much about loumand.) (and ugh louis wanting predictability after lestat and that being his initial impression of armand and getting mr trauma gremlin instead…)

[where-the-water-flows]

character asks—hit me up with your hottest jiao liqiao takes

JIAO LIQIAO my best beloved nightmare failgirlboss. she cannot malewife for very long but by god can she manipulate and murder.

favorite thing about them honestly I love that she has a goal and she fucking goes for it, zero hesitation. is it a good, reasonable goal? well no. she would have been better finding someone to fixate on who was not somewhere on the utterly asexual to entirely homosexual spectrum, but y'know, can't win them all. A+ dedication, F- execution.

least favorite thing about them the laugh the laugh I know it is like, the most standard trope signifier thing but the high pitched ahHAHEHEHA laugh is always so jarring in a 'pulls me right out of the narrative' kind of way, I know it is petty but also oh my god please. please you sound like a second rate cartoon villain. please. On a more character less shallow note, bestie babygirl please stop playing with your food. it literally never works out for you, for the love of god. please learn your lesson after the eighth time it bites you in the ass. (also like on the one hand, I would love for her to not have a plot centered around how she is deeply unhinged for/about a man. but on the otherhand, like, idk, I think she's fun. terrible awful etc, but also, she's putting the fun in extremely dysfunctional <3)

favorite line look I love so much every unhinged word out of her mouth, especially the argument she has with snow master when he's like 'girl that man is gay/ace the magic incense amnesia did not make him suddenly not gay/ace he is Manipulating You' and she is like 'lalalala not listening he loves me also we both know that man can't/won't lie to save his life, also also if he is lying I'll mutilate him and keep him like a purse pet <3 but he's not lying. because he loves me.' I recognise that is not a line but like. you know what I mean.

brOTP uhhh I don't really know that she... has... bros. like I guess granny blood (rip), who is basically always full 'yes girl get your man he will def love you this time' in the manner of someone who knows that her friend is lusting after a guy who is 1)not ever going to be interested even if he wasn't 2)very gay/ace and is 3)probably mid at best in bed no matter how much her friend is like SEX GOD. like the most 'yeah girl go get your man!!!! (why that man though have you considered any other man literally there are so many other men) oh no, def the red lipstick, he'll love you in that (but why him for the love of god just buy a vibrator)' that said, I do think the wildly divergent au where li xiangyi ends up 1)aware of nanyin bloodline like. Early On 2) jinyuan alliance aligned, he and his cousin jiao liqiao would be a hilarious pair of nightmares. absolutely ends in disaster for everyone, including them and definitely including di feisheng, I have an entire stupid au vaguely plotted out about this, it is purely nonsense. compels me though.

OTP no<3 that said, like, obviously I do not want the boys to be mmmmm torture mutilated noncon wifed as the otp of my heart, but also, I think jiao liqiao deserves a harem of moderately to severely brainwashed/mutilated/etc malewives! as a treat! god forbid women do anything. I contain multitudes, the dirty joke here is left as an exercise for the reader.

nOTP shan gudao. I just. I think it would be a mess, and not even a fun one. like as an actual relationship I mean, not proxy fighting spy vs spy manipulation But With Sex kinda bullshit, that's fine and fun, but they are not romantically compatible except as a triad where the third part of it is the idea of the man they are individually personally psycho/sexually obsessed with. which I guess makes it like. a weird poly U, with two theoretical ends. weird poly u with them mostly egging each other on in their dysfunction, 100% fine, any sort of Actual Healthy Relationship, no. also, therapy. I think therapy would only make her worse, but on the off chance it did not, I don't want that for her. she's a nightmare! again, god forbid a woman do anything.

random headcanon she was literally never expected to take the throne, nor expected to be the primary way that her particular fork of the nanyin royal line passed down. which means she likely has at least one sister and probably a brother. I don't know if this is backed up or contradicted by canon, but also, she was raised knowing she was nanyin royalty (??) but also was allowed to just fuck off into the jianghu at age [mlc timeline is nonsensical]. like if that is your single heir of the bloodline you have been carefully keeping alive and aware of how they were The True Imperial Family, you are not letting said heir go out and get their ass killed playing with swords. therefore. youngest child jiao liqiao. no further questions, you know in your heart I'm right. less world logistics based, I think she absolutely can't fucking cook, but, crucially, feels that she is fucking aces at it. does she cook? irrelevant, also no obviously not, she is a lady of rank, we have servants for that. but, crucially, she feels in her heart that she is a great cook. not that she cares about it. but again, she is great at it. this is never challenged because 1)di feisheng, the one person I can see her lowering herself to actually cook for, does not pay attention to the taste of food unless he has amnesia, and thus he's certainly not going to be like 'you suck at cooking, ew'. 2) if you are not di feisheng are you going to challenge fucking saintess on her bad cooking? no! she will stab you in the eyeball with a chopstick.

unpopular opinion honestly I don't know that I have that many unpopular opinions on her. other than that she's fun. a nightmare and like, deeply uncomfortable as a character with how incredibly rapey she is, obviously. but fun! she is a problematic queen. terrible woman who really sort of stands out as one of the few of the main cast who uh...doesn't really seem to have any reason behind the terribad decisions she makes other than there is something Wrong With Her, but again, god forbid, etc.

song i associate with them Girlfriend, by Avril Lavigne; the early 2000s angry brat pop is just. so on brand. see also, so much for my happy ending. (also, this has given me the image of idea of early 2000s scene kids jinyuan alliance, which is the funniest fucking thing in the world to me. I don't know what sigu sect would be, but it's just so fucking funny.)

favorite picture of them quick and nasty screencap bc this response has already taken me two days, but like. the whole turn on li lianhua when he's in chains and she's like 'oh you're dangerous to talk to', I just. I feel so abnormal about it. she is so hot and scary.

[cdroloisms]

my dsmp hot take is that while yes c!dream was a villain and a bad guy (tho i'd argue he's morally dark grey rather than pure evil) his personality was not often the ultra crazy over the top anime esq villain some of the fandom paints him to be

Like everything from his line delivery to his mannerisms and tone made him seem like just some guy? Like just a actual seemingly normal dude who'd I'd say is unsettlingly casual a lot of the time about the things he does and says, which is what makes c!Dream and ccDream's performance of the character rather compelling and interesting to watch... imo at least. This is not to say that c!dream never has his big obvious villain moments but to me those moments truly stand out because of how he often is played so human and passing for almost normal most of the time

Anyways I really love c!dream, he's one of my favorite characters of all time because of how understated and human he is a lot of the time until the moments you remember why he's a threat in the first place.....it's just...aaaaaa he's so interesting and cool I wanna analyze him under a microscope

I ... am not sure if I'm following your argument but that's probably a me problem. It's true, c!Dream's actual personality isn't only the overdramatic villain act that somehow overshadowed like, everything about him to a large portion of the fandom. That being said, I would definitely argue that a large portion if not a majority of c!Dream's most overtly villainous moments and actions definitely didn't read as casual to me? tbh "casual" and "normal" are hard words re: c!Dream because the guy ... kind of fails at having any chill literally ever LMAO like even his more faux chill moments (such as the front he keeps up in Daedalus) are very hard for me to describe as casual--though that's just me, and might be a more subjective matter of how we define things lol. That being said, a lot of how c!Dream wields people's perception of him is absolutely about using the villain deal as a shield and smokescreen, which usually meant going full throttle with acting like a Disney movie villain (see: Spirit Speech, Green Festival, Doomsday, Staged Finale, etc.) to intimidate people. Of course, there's an argument for c!Dream acting 'casual' during Exile in mannerisms compared to his more ... overtly villainous acting in the aforementioned scenes, but even then basically every moment we see from his character from the second he betrays Pogtopia for the book (and goes on his whole For Chaos spiel to c!Tommy which had c!Tommy very visibly like ???? bro what the fuck) is so. Different from how this guy acted earlier on in the server that 'casual' as it means between the time period of November 2020 - January 2021 for c!Dream is a whole different ballpark from casual in summer 2020, you feel? Like, though they were definitely wrong, there's a reason why literal demon possession became such a prevalent theory around that time, because bro what the fuck.

It depends on how you look at it, I guess, but I really don't think being underestimated as a villain is like. Ever something that really features in this guy's story, at least from an in-universe perspective--people are primed to think the worst of him from quite early on in the story and the influence of that sticks as he keeps spiraling worse until the prison. Even when he "passes as normal" to the audience bc he's not playing up the villain show to convince people he's too much of a threat to handle, c!Dream-as-the-final-boss c!Dream-as-villain are ideas that very much precede the moments that are most obviously c!Dream wearing the villain title as a mask (which, makes sense--he's not the originator of c!Dream-as-villain as a concept, it's just something he uses to his advantage when the server has already decided that this is Who He Is and then eventually internalizes and attaches to his identity). I think that the big twist for a lot of people, audience and in-universe, comes from poking through the image crafted for him and by him to recognize the just-some-guy behind the villain's mantle -- which is part of why [gestures at the prison arc] like, all of that -- because for a lot of people, regardless of the humanity that c!Dream was literally always played with or even the literal history of the server preserved in vods that many of them had watched live, the power of the story established during the Revolution in and out of canon meant that every problem came him (stated by c!Quackity around the time of Dethronement, objectively untrue at the time) and everything he said was manipulation (gestures at Quackity's chat the day of Mexican L'manburg negotiations) and anything that humanized him was falling for his tricks (poor Bubbles' tumblr post 😭😭😭). It's true that there's no shortage of "just some guy" c!Dream moments to choose from--it's also true, imo, that what really governs c!Dream's story from start to finish is the mask of the villain that he is given and wears and becomes and then the dismantling of it.

[mxlfoydraco]

Unpopular hp opinion: snape is a good character and a terrible person. These opinions can and should coexist!

He serves to further the plot and serve as a mini antagonist that’s more relatable at school in the early years. I sincerely don’t understand the pro and anti snape tags because he may have had reasons to do things but it doesn’t excuse him (*jake Peralta voice* cool motive still murder bro). Similarly removing him from the story removes conflict necessary to drive the plot

My feelings about Snape are unpopular on both the pro and anti side. 😅

Snape was a terrible adult and there’s no excuse for his abhorrent treatment of already traumatized children, especially Neville

He was also an abused and neglected child living in poverty, literally no wonder he had anger and self-worth issues

Snape did at least trivialize his friends’ bullying of muggleborns and thought it was fun (e.g., Mulciber and Mary Macdonald)

BUT Lily also let him get away with that behavior and stuck by him knowing the crowd he was getting into, if I was a fellow muggleborn I’d resent that a lot

James took things way too far and incited the hostility between them, SWM was inexcusable. he went beyond the actual reasons Snape deserved to be criticized so much that those got glossed over

BUT Snape was actively trying to expose Remus as a werewolf, which he later did! that would not only get him kicked out but also registered to the ministry, yeah of course that’s agitating the friends who are breaking the law to protect him?? He went into the willow on a full moon while suspecting Remus was a werewolf. SIR

Also yes, I too would bully a racist classmate, sue me

Snape didn’t actually want to be a teacher and Dumbledore used his grief and regrets to keep him under his thumb until he was useful, he never had a life that was his own and maybe he could’ve become a better person if he had a chance to not get reminded of the worst moments/mistakes of his life daily yknow

He was willing to let Voldemort kill Lily’s husband and baby, the latter he went ahead and tormented knowing he was orphaned bc of his snitching for looking like his dead father also murdered bc of his snitching

That’s so cruel and petty, also disrespectful to Lily’s memory

He could have taken another path and exploring that in fanon can be fascinating! That can be done without excusing his fuck ups!! It is compelling to see such a hardened and closed off character find softness and empathy so yeah I get it!

One side ignores the circumstances that created such a bitter, resentful and lonely person and the other side acts like he’s a poor little defenseless baby who wasn’t giving it his best in return and acting a fool. like. can we find a middle ground please

I’ve been holding this in if you couldn’t tell lol bc I used to be so strict w my stance too. I find arguments from the both sides valid but the discussions get so polarized

[floatingcatacombs]

Bro Your Taste....

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 5

Watching the Elitist Anime Superbowl play out earlier this year on Tumblr reawakened something in me. Seeing Evangelion lose to Mononoke like that in round two felt downright heretical. But why? I started but never finished NGE and I haven’t even seen Mononoke, so I shouldn’t have a dog in the fight. And yet, there’s an unspoken yet established hierarchy in my brain that tells me that Eva is better than Mononoke. These polls were a bit of a wake-up call for me that this isn't actually a common framework or approach anymore! So I thought it might be worthwhile to give an account of what anime elitism meant, and means, to me.

tldr (from KC Green's anime club)

Rather than going through all the shows in the bracket, it may be more useful to start by identifying which internet communities skew elitist in the first place. I started watching anime in the early 2010s, so Usenet and early forums and email discussion groups are lost on me. But I did my time on 4chan, for better or for worse. /a/ is perhaps the textbook example of an elitist community, and I would say that they’re responsible for establishing most of the modern weeb canon. The anime blogosphere, though diminished these days, is also a tastemaker, especially when you start seeking out “hidden gems” to make your taste seem cooler and more unique. I originally considered making Floating Catacombs a WordPress blog to try and link up with some of these folks, but ultimately determined that the baked-in audience of Tumblr would better serve my purposes (and they’re owned by the same damn guy now anyways). Lastly, as those previous communities declined, patchwork groups of elitists began to form on Twitter, where many still reside to this day arguing and ass-kissing amongst one another.

Elitism is, in part, an acknowledgement that the vast majority of anime is dogshit. Just look at any given season and count up the isekai shlock, blatant wish fulfillment high school romances, and mediocre shounens ripping off other mediocre shounens. At least 75% of anime is stuff you’d have to pay me to watch. Of course, this isn't unique to anime, being just as true of live-action TV. The difference is that prestige television doesn't have to compare itself to soap operas or reality TV, whereas anime is still commonly treated as a genre in of itself rather than as a medium. As long as that’s the case, anime elitism will always have a place, as a way to say “oh I like anime but not like that” so your taste doesn’t automatically get lumped in with the most low-quality and/or sexually dubious shows of the time.

And obviously, elitism can just as easily be framed as a reaction against the masses. There’s liking Mushishi for the sake of liking Mushishi, and there’s liking Mushishi because its serenity and thoughtfulness reflect well upon you for being able to appreciate it, unlike those dirty Redditors and MyAnimeList denizens who need fanservice in everything they watch. Unfortunately, this means elitists have a tendency to elevate some truly pretentious stuff that looks cool but just isn’t very compelling or deep under the surface. Ergo Proxy is my personal go-to example of this– how it beat out Stand Alone Complex in that Tumblr poll is a mystery to me. I’d argue that Lain is also overrated in this way, but I don’t want to hurt all the sad neurodivergent extremely online women who probably make up my entire audience.  

One thing I've noticed is that elitist communities don’t make a ton of art or fanfic or other creative works. For them, the primary way to participate in fandom is to argue over whether or not a show was good, or if a given part of a show was good (waifu wars, etc). This makes the output of these sites fairly ephemeral (in particular, imageboards automatically delete threads to make room for new ones), but it also means that people will constantly repeat themselves and get in the same arguments to make themselves persistently heard. We’re still arguing about Evangelion 25 years later, after all! After using shows as a cudgel against other shows for a long enough time, you can start to form a hierarchy of notable anime in ways that you can’t really with Tumblr or Reddit or any other community that largely hops from show to show as they come out.

The canon for anime elitism is mostly contained to the late 90s and 2000s, and I think there’s a few reasons for that. As I brought up in the Patlabor post, the 80s are something of a dark age for broadcast anime, while the 90s contain some of the last beautiful breaths of cel animation. The 2000s were when 4chan had an outsized presence online, so it makes sense that a lot of shows deemed elitist come from the era where their taste was king. By the mid-2010’s, after GamerGate, moot’s departure, and the blatant fascism on every board, 4chan’s cultural clout had effectively zeroed out.

There’s also the blunt argument that simply fewer cool artsy anime get made these days. Ping Pong is one of the last truly “elitist” shows I can point to, and that was nearly a decade ago. Due to the overlapping issues of anime overproduction, poor working conditions, and production committees seeking ever-safer investments, a lot of the stuff that comes out these days has a very workmanlike quality to it, competent but never targeting excellence.

OHHH YEAHHHHH

But my final reason for the decline of elitism is a wholly good one – more people are appreciating the good stuff these days! Watching anime has somehow become a normal hobby for the teens that grew up after me, no longer something that needs to be hidden and consigned to small school anime clubs. While battle shounen still reigns supreme, it’s probably leagues better than the comparable stuff from 10 or 20 years ago (though still pretty damn misogynist most of the time). More importantly, new fans and old-guard elitists actually agree on the good stuff! Works like Mob Psycho 100 and Trigun Stampede were huge hits and bridged the gap between these groups through their quality and style, and in Trigun’s case by re-adapting a classic. The breakthrough success of Bocchi the Rock demonstrates that people can vibe with more experimental animation now, and it doesn’t have to be relegated to its own sphere outside of the anime mainstream. And Oshi no Ko has a difficult “dude trust me” pitch but successfully synthesized the pretentious and the mass-market in terms of both its audience and its themes. (I would guess. I haven’t actually seen Oshi no Ko either. An important, unspoken part of anime elitism is lying about half the stuff you’ve seen and just going with the flow on how people around you felt about it). Combining an old-school 90’s-2000s feel with insane pacing and fights, Chainsaw Man similarly captured a wide audience. Even if people have qualms with the overall quality of the adaptation, that one episode shot like a movie won me over. It’s good that some of the most popular anime can be artsy as well, and if that’s what ultimately does elitism in, it will be a happy ending. May poptimism save us all.

In the meantime, elitism lives on in the manga world, where smug assholes can talk about how they liked a series before it got adapted. Manga is very popular these days, but that's mainly driven by people diving into the source material for anime that they enjoyed. This leaves fundamentally unadaptable manga as the last bastion of elitism, which makes sense when you consider how people talk about Berserk.

I’ll leave you with some rapid-fire hot takes of mine.

Steel Ball Run is not that good and its ranking on MyAnimeList as the second best manga of all time is nonsense. It will receive more proper crit in a few years once the inevitable David Production adaptation shines a light on its more troublesome bits.

After rewatching it this year, I can say with clarity that Everyone Is Sleeping On Concrete Revolutio

Goodnight Punpun kind of sucks! Might just be me.

As far as beloved 90’s psychological anime goes, 4chan and Reddit historically love Eva, while Tumblr overwhelmingly went for Utena in that poll. This whole thing smacks of gender.

The Gundam fandom historically has something of a reputation for misogyny, so it’s really funny and good that my exposure has instead been almost entirely trans women on tumblr. We will inherit the mecha genre.

Actually, screw manga, there is only one vector for anime elitism now, and it’s Thunderbolt Fantasy. You gotta get in on Gen Urobuchi’s Wild Puppet Show.

[hamstermastersamster]

Finished first playthrough of The Quarry with my sis and bro-in-law.

When I originally played (and loved) Until Dawn, I knew what I wanted was another story like it with a new cast and more choice and nuance and variables to play with. The Dark Pictures Anthology didn’t really feel like it achieved this, with smaller, more compact stories that have overall just been a bit less compelling somehow (not helped by how many of them have ‘twist’ endings that just undercut all the spoopiness completely . . . ).

The Quarry, however, definitely delivered. Not all the choices determine whether or not the cast live or die; a lot of them just affect the way it plays out, or the relationships between the characters. You can encourage romances, rivalries, arguments, friendships etc. and it all helps shape the feel of ‘your’ playthrough. And you get to see some classic horror names like Ted Raimi and David Arquette in new roles!

UD had a great story, and The Quarry . . . is also really fun :3 Despite the mystery of WHAT being relatively easy to figure out early on, the HOWs and WHYs weren’t obvious and materialised over time at a good narrative pace. Being adults with lives, me and my family ended up playing this over 2.5 separated sessions but we were always itching to get back to it and see what happens.

(Time being of the utmost importance whenever my sister is involved, since she is medically unable to resist the urge to google and spoil herself if kept waiting too long to find out what happens xP)

We ultimately lost 2 of the main cast - Jacob, who was one of my 2 least favourite characters so I didn’t bemoan too much, but also Kaitlyn whom i DID like and appeared to lose due to a responsiveness issue with a critical QTE, which I absolutely swore about >:[

I don’t expect to like every character in a horror movie story like this, but some I thought I would really dislike ended up growing on me a lot. Dylan ended up becoming my low-key fave and HE survived (mostly >_>’ ) so that’s the important thing :3 Ryan was also a star boy.

We may try for a ‘perfect’ replay, time permitting (so probably not Dx but if not, I may do it solo!). The main game complaints I had were:

- The camera is so close to the character’s head at some points in the game play sections that you literally cannot see what the fuck you are doing or where you are going, or where there even IS to go. Hidden secrets = good. Secrets you can’t find because you can’t see ANYTHING = shit. I don’t know if the intention was to create claustrophobia but it didn’t; it just meant I COULDN’T SEE SHIT.

- Some of the environments were so dark with no character-held light source that, again, you could not see shit. Pitch black environments are not fun to explore, end of.

- How annoying it is to be afraid to explore in the ‘wrong’ direction in case you accidentally progress the plot. In a small number of scenes, they let you explicitly choose when to move on, but a lot of the times, clicking the wrong thing would just mean missing out on stuff.

- The ending approach (not our specific ending that we achieved, just in general) sucked. The ‘epilogue’ just gives you a character card for each character saying whether they lived or died, and a line about their ongoing circumstances if they lived. Then we jump to a really long, annoying, boring faux podcast about the whole thing that plays over the credits depending on how much evidence you collected. And that’s it! We spent all that time choosing not just the actions of the cast, but also how they interacted with each other, the relationships they built with each other. We don’t even get to find out how they reacted to each other’s fates? Or what happens to them immediately afterwards a la the interviews at the end of Until Dawn? HUGE letdown. Game devs i am once again begging you to please give us emotional and not just mechanical/functional payoff.

Regardless of their flaws, Supermassive’s horror games remain one of my big recommendations for couch-co-op fun/scares. Although not everyone in the room can ‘play’ (the later games do have some multiplayer options we haven’t tried to be fair because the single player format works for us), everyone can participate in the decision-making and everyone can jump at the jump scares and everyone can cry when we screw up a QTE, and it’s just a great time xD Think of it like an interactive horror movie so with all the added stress of knowing you’re responsible for who lives and who dies. Wholesome family content!

[lord-radish]

Mega Man X is one of the craziest examples of "first installment wins" in video games.

Like you'll get a game that's such a hard act to follow that the next game doesn't do well, or the devs will tack on two more games that have more in common with each other than they do with the original game to create a trilogy.

Really, there's a host of reasons why this could turn out to be the case, but it happens - the first one is the big passion project, later games don't measure up for one reason or another.

But for the most part, an enduring franchise - like Dragon Age or Ultima or what have you - will birth a handful of standout fan favorite entries between the contested ones, or have enough variety that there's a slew of equally valid arguments about which one is the best. The first one has clout, but maybe it doesn't age well or maybe later games approach things from a more compelling angle. Stuff like that.

Very rarely does a game series peak at the first game, then suffer an extended downturn that never really manages to rise above that initial peak. Even rarer is for a series like that to last beyond the standard trilogy of initial game releases that companies are known to do.

Fellas, gals and non-binary pals - Mega Man X.

Mega Man X is a series with eight games in it.

The first game has aged like wine. I played it for the first time in 2021, and it felt like it could have been released days beforehand as an indie title and sold 20 million copies. Straight up, I don't tend to like new games right away. I instantly loved Mega Man X.

It built on the foundation that the original Mega Man games laid and updated them for the 16-bit era of gaming. You could shoot in all different directions. You can dash and wall-jump, and you can get upgrades that makes the game feel even better to play. It is, for all intents and purposes, one of the best generational leaps forward of that era - Mega Man X is to Mega Mans 1-6 what Super Mario World was to the original Super Mario Bros.

The second and third games are fine for the most part? I think X3 has a cheap death due to a design oversight as soon as you spawn into a level (or is that X4?), but they're okay games even if they roll back some of X's most radical changes.

Mega Man X4 has a positive reputation, though I'm not the biggest fan. It has FMV sequences with voice-acting, and it's arguably the most "cinematic" game so far. It was ambitious, and it was the first 32-bit Mega Man game - it had a lot going for it. But frankly, I just don't think it was as tight of a gameplay experience as the first one was. I'd even say it felt a lot less tight than the previous two games.

And then the next three games are terrible! Like genuinely just terrible! X5 had a really cool effect on the first and last boss fights, but as a game it felt cheap and kind of desperate. X6 felt like shovelware - it had a cheap translation, no dub and really bad level design! And then X7 was the first 3D game in the series, and it hit the polygon ceiling at 300mph!!

X8 came out in the mid-00's, and it felt like it had the most love put into it in like 5 years at least. But even then, I couldn't bear to play much of it. Every game since X5 had been a step down, and I couldn't reconcile the fun I'd had with the first three games with the hail mary attempt that was X8.

Capcom made a game so good that it has hardly aged a day in its life. I'd say the proliferation of indie development and the revival of retro aesthetics has actually made X1 more enjoyable and relevant today than it was fifteen years ago, but it's always had such an incredibly strong structure and core that nothing has been able to touch.

It innovated on the Mega Man formula in ways that later games rescinded on in the name of tradition, iconography or formula. And after the series peaked in ambition at the fourth game? The series never recovered, despite producing four more games!

People still champion X4 as a worthy contender for the title of Best Mega Man X Game, but I can't get past its drawbacks. Mega Man X is all killer, no filler, and the seven subsequent games - try as they might - never held a candle to it. Seven full retail releases, over the course of 12 or so years and three home consoles, couldn't crack the formula that made the first game one of the best video games of all time.

They had the recipe from day one, but it was never as good as the first time they made it.

[guiltycorp]

I’m on my ‘kaeluc discourse’ train of thought again. It goes like this -  If you take the purely familial sibling relationship, the eng translation of an ‘adopted’ Kaeya at face value, then honestly… Considering the way that Kaeya as a character is very often paired and focused on Diluc while the latter rarely reciprocates (the only instances are Diluc’s first appearance in the game when he was the one who appeared at the end of Kaeya’s introductory quest and an in-game confirmation that he kept Kaeya’s horrible gifted vase), this interpretation almost straight up reads as a typical ‘younger sibling is a bit obsessed with the more competent and serious older one’. But wait hey, we also have that with Barbara and Jean, don’t we. The younger sister Barbara feels a bit inferior to Jean, and having been separated in their parents’ divorce they both have trouble communicating, while also still caring about each other (Jean keeps Albedo’s portrait of Barbara while part of Barbara’s main motivation is being of help to Jean, they do talk sometimes, they’re open to spending time and making fond memories together). Barbara brings up Jean much more often than the other way around and she’s the one who openly seeks her attention. They’re also straight up hiding their familial relationship from most people who aren’t close to them, same as Diluc and Kaeya who have yet to outright tell the Traveler in-game that they used to be (sworn or not) brothers. 

To be honest, I feel that there’s a lot of potentially compelling material there, too, especially if we could learn more about their parents’ personalities and the way they influenced both of them. However, Barbara just isn’t that deep of a character, and narratively speaking they don’t have much to do with each other. Like, unless Jean is relegated to secondary roles in future Fatui plots/Varka’s return, it is unlikely that her role as an older sister will be brought up in a major way. Either way, my point here is that their relationship really can just be defined as a ‘fractured sibling relationship’ and the only reason why they want to get along and spend time together is because they are sisters, even having grown apart from each other.  Meanwhile Kaeya and Diluc who might have even spent more time together (from ~10 to 18 years) have a considerably closer and yet at the same time more dysfunctional relationship. Unlike Barbara, Kaeya never has slips of the tongue, only calling Diluc his older sworn brother in the manhwa (and only in narration).

...Ah, actually in the eng translation here he said that the two of them were ‘like brothers’. But the eng translators also added some ‘bro’ comments from Kaeya which were completely made up, totally messing up their dynamic since this kind of easily assumed spoken familiarity just… Doesn’t work in wider context with them. They address each other either with polite honorifics (Kaeya-xiangsheng, Diluc-laoye) or just informally with their first names. But anyway, for regular readers that mistranslation was another point towards that kind of uneasy but fairly typical sibling relationship, I suppose.

And Kaeya is much more preoccupied with this older ‘sibling’ of his than Barbara, both with current him and with his memories of a younger Diluc.

He was the one who initiated cooperation with Diluc in the manhwa jumping at the chance to involve him, he was the one who apparently kept Diluc’s Vision for 4 years and gave it back to him, he also intervened in his character quest (although that at least was kinda his job), he asked for Diluc’s help with Jean’s day off and with making Jean’s summer dress, in Venti’s quest Kaeya tried dragging Diluc into an actual argument about the sold mansion. In the Midsummer event his reason for coming to the island was that Diluc was also going.

He also names Diluc as a ‘certain someone’ and ‘some people’ not once but at least thrice. Even his ‘interesting things’ voiceline tracks back to Diluc since it’s about an owl.

Basically, Kaeya is all about Diluc, which if we go back to the ‘actual brothers’ thing looks... weird. Any adult who has such a strong preoccupation with a family member has some real issues (Diluc with his father could also be an example of that actually haha, obvious daddy issues, although he seems to have worked through a lot of it already), and if an adult person is always talking about their older sibling that could be a symptom of an unhealthy idealization or misguided jealousy (unless they belong in the same corporate structure or clan, like for example the Kamisato siblings). Banter between the two sibling characters in that case also looks so much more mean-spirited than if it was meant to be just between two characters who used to be close friends. 

However while all that could be just fine and even interesting unfortunately it pushes down actual motivations that a character like Kaeya might have for revolving around Diluc. Kaeya has shared his true origins with him, had a close friendship and partnership with him in the past, they had a big fight, he is currently the semi-corrupt cop to Diluc’s righteous vigilante, he is seeking punishment and/or absolution from the only ‘deserving’ judge he truly knows, he feels that Diluc is his kindred spirit etc etc.  Those don’t really matter if his sole motivation can be simplified down to ‘little brother feels ignored by his big bro whom he adores!’ Idk idk Meanwhile if we turn to the chinese original and consider their relationship as ‘shared their childhood under the same roof with the same father figure, were very close to each other but then went their separate ways only to meet again as adults’, Kaeya’s mild obsession can be read as less formulaic and more due to his whole character arc. Starting with his original conflict of duty to his biological father VS duty to sworn father, leading to latching onto Diluc as the supposed judge of Kaeya’s decisions (both because they used to be sworn brothers AND because Diluc represents the righteous side of Mondstadt where Kaeya wants to belong), all while still honestly caring about Diluc as a person. Without the implications of this all being due to just being the rejected younger sibling! It’s not that unhealthy to stress this much about another person if they’re not just your relative but rather someone who could care for you without being forced to do so by familial obligations. 

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned that if Diluc were to behave this way to his actual adopted brother then he would be no real gentleman! Because then he’d be trampling all over his familial obligations, something that a nobleman like him wouldn’t be able to do without making the details of their argument public. The fact that Kaeya wasn’t adopted matters. The fact that Kaeya failed in his duty towards his sworn father and then also explained to his sworn brother that their relationship was never truly ‘righteous’ after all matters (and I do think it’s very fitting that 义 which we translate as ‘sworn’ means ‘righteous’ considering Diluc’s personality). The dissolution of their sworn brotherhood is completely logical considering the events of that night. That same logic doesn’t work if Kaeya were adopted. 

Basically what I’m saying is that perhaps I was the puritan all along because I find that interpreting them as strictly familial in canon feels icky to me considering their dynamic… You can easily say that it can just be both, of course! Kaeya’s original personal motivations plus seeing Diluc as a big brother figure.  (Which is kind of what’s going on in the original canon anyway, I think, since that’s basically what sworn brotherhood is about; although I’d claim that it’s still unclear how exactly Diluc himself feels towards Kaeya) But since this is a piece of fiction... the eng ‘actual brothers’ approach simply overweighs any other nuance and narrative threads their relationship might have had in the original. Pretty obvious if you look up literally any fanworks with this interpretation, too. Diluc’s potential care for Kaeya gets simplified down to ‘well he’s my little sibling so ofc i love him’ and Kaeya’s motivations are presented as simply wanting to make up with his literal ‘brother’. Or all of their relationship is straight up erased altogether and they’re just presented as a playful pair of characters who sometimes argue but overall are just regular brothers… Agh.

There’s a reason why a lot of those ‘platonic’ interpretations also rob Kaeya of his family name Alberich (which is present in the eng translations by the way, so you can’t even claim that this is just the ‘english version’). No, he isn’t a Ragnvindr, he never had to be, that’s not how Kaeya’s relationship with Crepus and Diluc worked. Calling them Ragnvindr bros is an interesting choice considering Kaeya’s attempt to ignore his complex immigrant roots but it’s very removed from canon. 

Mentioning that or even just talking about these cultural terms is so tied up with the idea of the ~forbidden problematic ship~ that most fans of the platonic relationship just default to the standard european nuclear family dynamics, refusing to acknowledge that, well... Their strictly platonic&brotherly pairing could be so much more unique and fun (and less weird) if they bothered to acknowledge that the translation is messed up.

All interpretations are free to exist of course, but it really rubs me the wrong way when that is the only ‘allowed’ interpretation in the fandom! Although to be fair if it wasn’t for the discourse, I would probably be much less interested in this whole thing. 

[evilkitten3]

so many people disliked thor: the dark world, and while i generally understand the "it wasn't nearly as good as the first one" argument, i do think people focus on the wrong things. i enjoyed tdw and thought it did ok as a sequel (it handled the fucked-up family dynamics pretty well for the most part), and while i'm annoyed by it's treatment of jane (who to be cleared deserved better in the first movie too) as well as darcy and selvig (who were also there), i think people tend to overlook the biggest problem:

malekith. not the plot-based arguments or the lack of effort gone into putting fitting his motivation into the story, i just mean the sheer amount of downgrade from the comics.

if you haven't read any comics with malekith (especially during the war of the realms storyline), you are missing out. malekith is an amazing antagonist - he's extremely fun to watch, bizarrely sympathetic at times (turns out having characters say things at you when you already know their historical sources are deeply untrustworthy is significantly less compelling than seeing it for yourself), and hilariously funny.

also, he and loki's relationship is fascinating. they're both untrustworthy bastards who will backstab each other at the drop of a hat, and yet for some reason keep working together. both before and after loki stopped being a full-time antagonist.

here's some fun malekith moments for y'all:

bro he's literally right there you're gonna make him cry

knives for days

malekith would like tumblr, i think. no further commentary.

hey he hacked that arm off you unfair and unsquare, odinson

mid-battle mockery

he came here to attack people and he's honestly having such a good time right now

gotta hand it to him

it's britney bitch

guess who's back. back again

they have definitely fucked at least once

[allronix]

Carth and Force Sensitivity (crossposted from Reddit r/kotor)

This is for @k-she-rambles:

Okay, so while we're shooting the bantha crap over on KOTOR fan theories, u/134340Goat mentioned my all time favorite "Have you been chewing spice?!" fan theory when it comes to KOTOR: Is Carth Force Sensitive?

So this one starts with a story. I mentioned my brother in law, who is pretty much Keeper of the Jedi Archives. Seriously, he's an English teacher and my sister is a librarian. They met at a sci fi convention and their first date was Phantom Menace. We're taking not just geeks, but geeks who can throw the damn bookshelf at you. Brother in law bought KOTOR on the day it launched and turned it into a week long binge watch at his house. And because brother in law is that kind of geek, he's translating the characters into the West End D6 system. I'm watching him do a playthrough, and he's got Canderous and Zaalbar at Ajunta Pal's tomb.

Allronix: Huh. That's odd. Why aren't commenting on anything when Ajunta is speaking?

Bro in law: Oh. They can't even see Ajunta. You have to be Force Sensitive to see a Force Ghost The stronger your Sensitivity, the better you can see it.

Allronix: Really? Then how come Carth can see it?

Bro in law (gets the "holy shit, I gotta confirm this" look): Really?! He just sees something out the corner of his eye or something?

Allronix: No, he sees Ajunta just fine. Understands what the dude's saying too.

Bro in law instantly rolls back to his last save, swaps Zaalbar for Carth, and sees the bit in question.

Bro in law: Oh. Dear. (Goes over to make some quick scribbles on Carth's character sheet)

Okay, so maybe that was a lore fail. I didn't really think about it too much until I hit that False Level Up glitch and ran around with Carth and Mission as Sentinels. Now, while I couldn't really see Mission as a Sensitive, that little bit with my bro in law nagged at me. And became a "once you see it you can't unsee it." Apologies to TV Tropes, where some of these were my additions to the Wild Mass Guess entry on this topic.

Any one of these on its own is pretty easy to blow off. After all, man is career military, and knows All this Shit is Weird. I also like to think of Sensitivity as a spectrum and not a switch. If all life is connected by the Force, then all life would be Sensitive to some degree or another. It’s just a matter of to what degree. It’s only as the list gets longer and longer does the case start looking damning...

What are the odds of surviving that attack on the Endar Spire, getting to the escape pods, sharing the last escape pod with the mindwiped Sith Lord, piloting through the chaos, landing in what passes for the "good" part of town, remaining uninjured, pulling the badly injured mindwiped Sith Lord from the wreck, evading Sith detection while all this is going on, and just happening to find a dump of an apartment where the landlord's not asking questions? That is one amazing string of coincidences and good luck. Get that many in Star Wars, and it's definitely The Force sticking its nose in things.

Piloting the escape pod to land in the Upper City, piloting the Hawk through the Sith Blockade of Taris, the random Sith patrols, the escape from the Leviathan, and the fleet around Lehon along with the crash landing that left the ship easily repairable. Now, compare to Atton who we know to be an excellent pilot and drawing on The Force who still manages to crash the ship at least three times.

He's a scary good judge of character if you're interacting with other NPCs. If you watch him with other NPC characters, he's got a pretty good compass as to which characters are being helpful and which ones are full of shit. The only one he calls incorrectly is Rukil, who is probably also an untrained Sensitive (the age, the "marked" comments) and half senile, which is probably throwing him.

Related to that, his distrust and wariness about something not adding up with the PC, the Jedi Council feeding the party a line of bull, that things just aren't adding up. And on all of it? Dead on. He's 100% right about the Player Character, he just expected something a little less crazy than "that's Darth freaking Revan."

If you play Female Revan, then Carth's the one who gets fried in the torture cages on the Leviathan. Saul comments how strange it is that Carth takes so much punishment and still remains conscious. Now, this is a low level thing, but in lore, Force Sensitives have drawn on it to keep them alive or conscious under duress. Explicitly, the first sign we got that Leia was a Sensitive when she withstood the Imperial torture droid.

Another of his scary ass judge of character feats? In the comics, Zayne (who is on the run from the Jedi, who framed him for the murder of his classmates) has a vision that Mandalorians are coming for Serroco. Saul? Laughs it off, throws Zayne in the brig. Zayne's own friends don't even believe him. Carth gets one of those creepy hunches and starts calling in "duck and cover" sirens as far as he can broadcast, which sends seventeen cities and millions of people heading for shelter. It saves their lives and Carth is called a hero for it. Armed with another hunch, he disobeys Saul (remember this is before Saul nukes Telos) and lets Zayne "escape" from custody. Mind you, not even the Jedi or his party members believed Zayne. Carth did.

Carth makes a lot of creepy weird offhand predictions about the future. He says he knows on some level he'll be there when Saul dies. That certainly pans out. He makes an offhand prediction that the Jedi have set the party up to take a fall. Right again. He tells a female PC that she'll have to make a choice soon, one she can't walk away from. And then we get the temple top. He even blurts out that "I sensed you would have to make a choice soon, and that was it*, I can feel it!"* If you specify a LS Female Revan, his recording for T3-M4 says he's had a hunch Revan would leave without warning. Again, spot on.

Specify a LS male Revan, and Carth will remark to Bastila that seeing the Exile reminds him "there are worse things to lose." The only other people who can see just how screwed up the Exile is are the Jedi Masters, Chodo Habat, and the Force Sensitive party members.

Specify a LS female Revan, and Carth will insist that he would know if Revan were dead (again, scary ass intuition) and that there's an "emptiness" where she used to be. Now, remember one of the things about a broken Force Bond? It would simply be "empty, a wound."

You know how your party members in KOTOR 2 feel upset or even horrified as they realize they feel compelled to protect Exile and can't being themselves to leave, even when said actions are kicking puppies? And how they swing wildly from being crazy, almost stalker level possessive of them to being scared out of their wits and clamming up when you try to pry anything out of them? And the more potent (and untapped) their Force Sensitivity, the more they get hammered with the effect? (Mira and Atton in particular) Yeah. Now, Carth's "I don't wanna talk" looks a bit different, doesn't it? It could also account for that romance arc, especially if you roll a DSF Revan and go for that "everyone dies" ending.

Again, Ajunta Pal. Seeing a Force Ghost? Yeah. Some degree of Sensitivity needed. Understanding what he's saying? Yeah. Takes a bit more than that. And Carth makes a weirdly insightful comment about the Dark Side on top of it.

Notice that this a wall o text argument already, and I'm now just getting to the "Yeah, his kid is able to throw around mid-level Dark Side powers and packing a red lightsaber." Given the jawline and the muleheaded attitude, no way Morgana was fooling around with the pizza delivery boy. That's definitely Carth's kid, and that's definitely Force Sensitivity. Now, while it can skip a generation (see Theron Shan), it tends to run pretty heavy in families.

Lastly? Gee. He comes from a planet settled by and heavily populated by descendants of Force Sensitives who failed their training. I'm also willing to bet some bastard children of Jedi get passed off as "foundlings" and "orphans" and dumped there, too. Jedi are forbidden attachments, but not sworn to celibacy, so...yeah, bastard kids are gonna happen. There's probably a Jedi or two in that family tree. It's circumstantial evidence at best, but it still supports the case.

Now, any arguments I missed? Counterarguments?

And the million credit question: If there's a character who gets to break this news to poor Flyboy, who do you think would actually take that on? How do you think Carth would take that kind of news? And what, if anything, would come of it?

I kinda figure Jolee might be the only one nuts enough to poke that with a stick...I also kinda figure "Sentinel" would fit best. Consular? Hell no. He hired Mical for that. Guardian works with the feats, but the whole "ferreting out deceit and injustice?" Yeah. That's Carth.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 297: We’re Bustin’ Outta This Joint

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi did his best to undo all of the good vibes from the Girl Power arc by killing off Midnight. It sucks and I still don’t like it, but it is what it is. Unfortunately, Not Killing Off Your One Female Teacher Character With Any Character Development was worth 30% of his grade for the semester, so it brought his average down all the way to a C-, and so he and his report card will just have to live with that. Meanwhile Ochako did some rescuing, and the other U.A. kids lay around unconscious and/or traumatized. The chapter ended with an abrupt cut to Tartarus, where AFO is apparently just chilling and waiting for the Nearly High Ends to come bust him free. What kind of a cliffhanger is that to leave your fans hanging on for three whole weeks. Who’s suffering more here, the characters or the readers.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “okay I know you all want to know what happens to Deku and Shouto and the rest, but have you considered finding out what happens to Overhaul and Muscular and Moonfish and New Girl Character instead?” Fandom is all, “you had us at New Girl Character.” Seiji’s dad is all, “I’m just going to say a bunch of stuff to help make sure none of the readers feel conflicted about cheering on a bunch of mass murderers escaping from prison.” Tomura is all, “dammit AFO why are you still here.” AFO is all, “shhh, Tomura, go back to sleep.” Tomura is all, “wtf but you’re literally hijacking my body and continuing to shred it to bits while we break into BnHA Alcatraz to recruit your own personal Suicide Squad.” AFO is all, “:).” Real!AFO is all, “HERE I AM, EVERYONE, SORRY TO KEEP YOU WAITING.” And then the chapter ends. Geez.

oh shit lol it’s a whole big fucking page all about Tartarus

my very first thought was “that’s a long-ass fucking bridge”, and then I went to go google “longest bridges”, and Wikipedia was all “son there are literally a hundred and fifty bridges in the real world longer than 5km, and the longest one is actually 165km”, and I was all “oh shit I really don’t know jack shit about bridges.” then I looked at the list for a few more minutes and realized that the super-long bridges were all built over land, and that the longest bridge over water is only 38km. which is way more reasonable, but also still really fucking long though?? ngl I would freak the fuck out on that bridge. what does any of this have to do with Tartarus you ask?? absolutely nothing, I literally forgot I was reading a chapter for a sec lol uh

anyway, my parting thought on the bridge is that it kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a giant island fortress prison, but whatever. moving on

and the six levels thing is straight out of One Piece lol. something tells me BnHA’s prison break arc isn’t going to be quite as fun. hmm

so now we’re cutting to “the Bronze Gate”, which is the main entrance off of the bridge, and some goat-looking motherfucker is out here trying to become my new favorite character. bro

SON OF A BITCH WHAT’S WITH THE BULLETS FLYING IN THE BACKGROUND. DON’T TELL ME THEY’RE SHOOTING AT GYGES. THEY CAN’T KILL OFF MY FRESHEST HOMIE GYGES. SURELY THEY WOULDN’T

ooh and now, giant robots!

giant robots with machine guns. “I’m very sorry I killed off Midnight, makeste” you know what, fuck you Horikoshi. thinking you can buy my affections back so easily

does Gyges have six arms??? look how fucking calm he is announcing the code red security lockdown, holy shit. GYGES

NOOOO

NO NOT BRIAREUS. THIS DAY EXACTS A HEAVY TOLL

YO, WHAT

he came there himself?? so much for making the Noumus do his dirty work. and based on the speech bubble shape and font, this is still AFO talking

uh oh what’s happening

is he using Decay or is his arm just sort of crumbling to pieces because he hasn’t had time to heal up yet? if it’s the former this prison break is going to set a record for shortest arc yet isn’t it

now we’re cutting to B10 which is apparently the lowest level. but do they mean lowest as in the least security, or lowest as in the deepest underground, a.k.a. the most security? idk it’s confusing and I think they should be more specific. is it B like in basement?? are there six levels or ten?? stupid Tartarus

anyway so the guards are talking about how Gigantomachia is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning. heh. will there even be a Tartarus tomorrow morning

(ETA: WELL, UH.)

wow they’re talking about just killing him outright. damn

I kinda feel like “prison guard” is one of those jobs that just sort of naturally attracts shitty people. anyways yeah, Seiji your dad is a real piece of work

and he’s even doubling down on it after the other guy repeatedly keeps trying to hush him up. dude we get it, you’re an asshole

ooh and now we’re getting an interesting look at the various prisoners, some of whom look suspiciously familiar!

for starters, that’s definitely Moonfish in the upper left corner, I’m like 99% sure. not quite clear who that is across from him in the upper right, but it’s been a hot minute since we saw Muscular, so maybe?

and could that be Overhaul in the panel beneath him?? they’re not showing his face so I assume it’s someone we’d recognize, and he’s the only currently-incarcerated villain with that haircut as far as I can recall. though it seems weird that he’s not restrained more given his quirk. I thought Horikoshi mentioned in Ultra Analysis that he’d gotten it back somehow. eh well we will wait for answers

I don’t recognize the person to his left either (though she has an oddly familiar look to her?). but the person on the bottom right, next to Kurogiri... is it Stain?? the hair and body language are sure giving off Stain vibes. if someone had told the me from two years ago that I’d actually be excited to see Stain again I would have said you were full of shit. and yet here we are. these sure are interesting times

anyway so now the Code Red intruder alarm is blaring. and I gotta say, that one scene sure was effective at killing any sympathy I might have been inclined to feel for these guards lol. bring on the imminent massacre

“what horrible timing” lol yes. it’s almost as if they planned it that way

uh oh

is he omae wa shindeiruing. watch your six, Mr. Prison Guard

oh shit

WHAT DID I SAY. WHAT DID I FUCKING SAY. but nooo, you all were all, “but a bridge is more convenient!” VERY WELL THEN, LIE IN THE BED THAT YOU HAVE MADE

anyway so it’s the High Ends lol. I mean we already knew it was them. let’s just get on with it

omfg Tomura ARE YOU RIDING ONE

WHAT ARE YOU, A NAZGUL. WHY IS THIS MY FAVORITE THING

and it looks like it actually is Tomura again, too (as opposed to AFOmura)

-- is he using Decay on himself?? is that what it is?? or no wait, is this just more of the weird side effect shit that’s been happening since he Awakened. actually yeah never mind that’s clearly what it is

y’all this man is out here having a full blown argument with himself

so this is equal parts compelling and hilarious to me right now lol. like I feel so bad for Tomura, but I also lowkey want to see how far this escalates. like do you think he’d go as far as to punch himself in the face. where will this journey lead us

fucking look at this shit

other people have already mentioned this, but with this scene especially it makes me really curious how they’re going to show this in the anime. will it be AFO’s voice coming out of Tomura’s mouth? or Tomura’s voice using AFO’s speech patterns? more importantly, will it be cool and dramatic, or will it actually wind up being hilarious? or both?? never count out both

also he’s looking pretty good there in that bottom panel with his one eye just barely visible. that doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but here I am, pointing it out

also also, lol at Tomura being all, “the fuck do you mean, ‘rest’, you’re the one that dragged my body out here to raid a fucking prison,” and AFO being all, “oh yeah, lol, true true, but I meant rest after that.” yes, this man clearly has nothing but the purest intentions, Tomura. trustworthy af

this fucking guy. Tomura is your bullshit radar finally operational yet?? can you see yet that it was always his intention to use you right from the very start?? oh man I am starting to get fidgety now listening to this

so Tomura’s saying he doesn’t just want to be used as a chess piece. and AFO is all, “well okay but what if it’s a VERY NICE AND IMPORTANT chess piece.” bro DID HE STUTTER

-- AHH BUT NEVER MIND THAT, HERE IT IS, THIS IS WHERE THE FUN STARTS OMG

GO ON AND ACQUIRE THEM THEN! omg. why am I so fucking excited. it seriously makes no sense. like seriously, ‘hooray, our old buddies, Overhaul and Stain!!’ -- come again now?? who is this person that I have become

meanwhile AFO is making all this fuss and I really don’t understand it though

why would you need to plow directly through the building. why can’t you just use doors like a normal person. it’s not like they can lock you out, like hello, you can literally turn anything you touch into dust, what’s with all the melodrama

anyway so he’s apparently hitting the prison with some sort of EMP attack now and shutting down all their systems

omg the suspense is killing me. this is going to be so badass once it’s animated, but right now all I keep thinking is “YES, GREAT, CAN WE PLEASE JUST MOVE IT ALONG”

the doors are opening ahhhhhhh come on come on come on let’s go let’s get to the excitement already

now the guards are running over to try and regain control. but, like

yeah that’s pretty much how I’m expecting the rest of this to go basically

so now they’re shooting at the dust cloud lol. well if there’s one thing movies have taught me, it’s that bad guys who wait inside clouds of dust while panicked cops blindly rain bullets at them until they run out of ammo are basically invincible lol. soooooo

OHHHHH SHIT

AHAHAHAHAHAHA. THEY ARE SO FUCKED LOL, SHIT

YEP, AND HERE’S ANOTHER ONE

is this the first time we’ve seen Moonfish’s face? I feel like we might have caught a glimpse of it before on an omake page or something. either way, it wasn’t anything I actually needed to see again. thanks...?? I guess??

okay but seriously, are we supposed to actually know who this badass lady is?? like I don’t know her but I feel like I know her, you feel?

(ETA: lol there are already like 60 different theories about how she’s related to every single character in the series. will be interesting to see if anything comes of this. although we did just get three “this villain was secretly related to [insert character(s) here] all along” reveals just in the last arc, so idk, it might be better if we pass on it this time lol.)

girl who are you. please stick around. for the love of god don’t let this man kill you off too

????

wait so is this Overhaul? boy sure has seen better days huh. but the floppy sleeves... yeah, it’s gotta be him

anyway so then the only ones missing are Stain and Kurogiri, yes?? omg. and one page left to go

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

NO ONE WILL BE ABLE TO CONVINCE ME HE COULDN’T HAVE DONE THIS SHIT RIGHT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. FUCKING TIME-BIDING DRAMA QUEEN

AND HE’S JUST FLOATING HIS LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM ALONG BEHIND HIM SOB. THIS FUCKING GUY

AND IS HE JUST ABSENTMINDEDLY DRAGGING SOME POOR SCHLUB’S CORPSE ALONG BESIDE HIM LIKE A SLEEPY TODDLER CARRYING THEIR TEDDY BEAR. I FUCKING CAN’T. REST IN PEACE, FRIEND. GIVE MY REGARDS TO GOOD OLD BRIAREUS

so that’s it! and we still don’t have any idea what AFO is actually planning to do now, after all of that. are they going to merge bodies?? or is he going to try to switch with him?? either way Tomura’s body has to be part of the plan somehow since he keeps making so much of a fuss over it. flkhglkhlk. dammit I need answers lol

[kitkatopinions]

You guys remember in the Harry Potter series, when Harry and Ron and Hermione are all talking about the Tale of the Three Brothers, and the question is poised over if they would choose to get an unbeatable wand that might result in their untimely demise, a stone that can bring back the dead but only part way, and an invisibility cloak that would let them hide from Death until they were ready to accept it?

Ron says he would pick the unbeatable wand, Harry says he would pick the stone that can resurrect the dead, and Hermione says she would pick the cloak you can use to hide from death. And if you’re like me, while you first read that, you likely knew what they would say before they even said it. Because those three characters were very different characters, and their characters had been well established.

In RWBY Volume 8, if they were confronted with that choice of magical objects to pick, everyone would say the same thing except for Ren, and it would be used to indicate how Ren is being bad and needs correction.

I love shows where the main cast are all very different people because obviously that’s interesting. I think it’s pretty clear why differences in characters make stories more interesting and compelling, upbringings, moral codes, and traits are going to impact their responses to things, their choices, etc. For an example, let’s look at one of my favorite shows, the Good Place. Spoilers (and RWDE) up ahead.

There are four main characters. Tahani grew up very rich with rude parents that looked down on others and were very strict with unachievably high standards, who forced her to compete with her very talented sister. Jason had a single dad who was a low-level criminal, and he was treated as a friend rather than a son. He grew up largely neglected, winding up with very little education and turning to a life of low-level criminal activity himself and having very little impulse control. Eleanor also grew up with neglectful parents, who were uncaring towards her and divorced, and in order to get away from them, Eleanor emancipated from her parents care and worked two jobs on top of attending school to take care of herself and put herself through college, leaving her with a selfish ‘me against the world’ mentality. Chidi had two loving parents who were thinking about divorce in his early childhood. Due to a misguided belief that his impassioned argument against the divorce was what made them stay together, Chidi decided that their was ‘always an answer’ to every question and became obsessed with moral philosophy and always doing the right thing, leading him to be plagued by indecision and unhappiness.

When confronted with a situation where they need to hide their identities and fit in with bad people, Eleanor is good at it, as she’s used to lying and acting in unsavory ways. Tahani is good at it, as she’s taken acting classes, knows many actors, and is used to hiding how she feels behind a persona. Jason is terrible at acting, but quickly falls in with ‘bro’ people he fits in with more so he doesn’t have to fake his behavior too much. And Chidi out and out refuses to lie, because he believes that lying is always wrong and isn’t able to lie without feeling extreme guilt and discomfort (well established in the show.) He only becomes comfortable enough to do it when lying is put in terms of moral philosophy and he weighed the ethical pros and cons against each other and fudged enough to get through.

RWBY has a similar start to this. Everyone is from such different walks of life and has such different experiences. Even Ruby and Yang - who come from the same household - had different experiences, with Yang having remembered Summer and taken on more of a parental role and dealt with Tai’s (presumably) early neglect and knowledge that she had a mom who left her, while Ruby likely doesn’t remember Summer, had at least something of a mother figure and seems to have dealt with less neglect from Tai (at least that’s how I’m piecing things together based on what little info we got about their home life.) And Ren and Nora, who had been together for a long time, had different experiences too. It was fair prior to V8 to believe Nora was either very neglected by her parents or homeless and/or abandoned, whereas Ren had a loving family he lost in a horrifically traumatic attack. And they all have such different traits. Blake is stubborn and feisty and cynical. Pyrrha is friendly and sees a lot in people, but is passive aggressive. Ruby is optimistic, a little airheaded at times, but also a strategist and incredibly brave... The point is that all of these characters are different. So when Blake did things like demand they go searching for Torchwick themselves or run away after the Battle of Beacon, we could follow the pattern, and her dynamics and her lines weren’t really interchangeable with the rest of the main characters. When Ruby became fast friends with Penny or threw herself into a fight with Roman again despite the low chance of success again or when she showed all that worry over Qrow, we knew her character and could track her actions, and Weiss doing the same thing would make less sense. But Weiss getting way too into a board game when she realized she might win or buying her way onto a plane, we could track it and Jaune doing the same things would be treated as weird (rightfully.)

In RWBY volume eight, if everyone was asked to lie, everybody would’ve automatically agreed that lying is fine because they just thought so, and Yang thinking it might not be good would be treated as something she’s wrong about and needs to change her mind to fit in with the group. And we know that, because it happened.

To be fair, there’s always been some trouble with differing characters, but not enough that it really hurt until recently. Let’s use examples that I know I’ve used before, but it’s some of the best one’s for this point. 1. Everyone’s reactions to Lost Fable, and 2. The Plane Stealing Plan. I use these examples so often because they’re some of the first examples of the ‘group think’ mentality.

Everyone but Ruby draw their loaded weapons to get ready to fight Qrow when it looks like he might protest them using a Relic to force answers out of Ozpin, even Yang, who is Qrow’s niece and who is supposed to care deeply for her family. After Ozpin’s entire past is revealed, Blake and Weiss - who both have histories with abuse (especially Blake who was abused by a former significant other in a similar way to Ozpin) - don’t say anything about how Ozpin might feel, don’t stand up for him, and don’t protest at all at seeing an abuse victim being punched into a tree. They don’t even offer sympathy. When everyone is planning to steal a plane to get over the Atlas border, nobody protests except for Qrow, not even Blake, who has a long established problem with stealing even when stealing from an oppressive and harmful governments.

And someone out there might be saying “Kitkat, there’s this thing called character development-” Yes, like what I outlined with Chidi in the Good Place. Chidi had a strict moral standard that he believed in, and a problem with something his group decided they had to do, and another character talked him around in a way that made sense to his character without drastically changing it all at once. Chidi in the show eventually became more confident and decisive as he worked through his problems. We get an example of this with Blake in RWBY as well! Blake had a tendency to run from her problems and refuse help, firmly established and used over the course of the show, and then in season five, this flaw was directly addressed and Blake started getting better and facing her fears + letting people in and deciding to be with her friends again, and they did that in a way that was consistent to her character. That’s good character development. What isn’t good character development is characters just suddenly not caring anymore about the thing they previously cared about without any reasoning as to why. Fans might come up with their own headcanons about it, but it’s not canon.

“But Kitkat,” someone might say again, “Do you really need arcs for every choice that characters might not be on board with one hundred percent?” No, actually. I’d like major character traits changing to at least be part of an arc, but you know what I’d be satisfied with?

Ruby: “Hey Blake, you’re looking nervous. Everything okay?” Blake: “Yeah... I’m just not sure this is right. I don’t like the idea of stealing.” Ruby: “Me neither, but if we don’t get over the boarder soon (insert the explanation we never got for that here.)” Blake: “Maybe you’re right...” *Ruby puts a hand on her arm and looks understanding.*

There. Short, sweet, doesn’t throw off Blake’s character or make her seem like a hypocrite or a doormat (or at least not enough that it makes me mad.)

And then of course, we get into the Atlas arc, where Weiss isn’t treated as a celebrity, Ruby gives very little reaction to Penny returning to life, Blake decides to go dancing rather than attend the rally for the politician running against the person running the business that actively harms Faunus, Weiss goes to the movies instead of attending the rally for the politician running against her abusive father, Yang’s stance that Ruby’s made a mistake vanishes and she defends her, Nora’s desire to focus on Mantle instead of the big picture changes into focusing on the big picture to eventually help Mantle later, Winter decides Ironwood squeezed Mantle until it broke despite her being on board with Ironwood’s actions throughout all of volume seven and even suggesting Martial Law long before Ironwood did, Nora didn’t care about wealth inequality in Mistral but cared about it with Mantle, Nora forced a kiss on Ren and all but demanded that they be together and then a volume later says that their relationship is swallowing her up, Qrow seems to care for Ironwood at least in some form and then immediately goes straight to wanting to kill him and acts like he hates him after the first sign of real trouble, Hazel suddenly switches side because he finds out that a magic lady does exist in a lamp (seriously, he doesn’t even ask Jinn a question,) and everyone accepts Emerald in about an episode or two, while Yang dismisses her prosthetic as ‘just extra’... It’s even rumored that the lines Yang says when she’s arguing with Ren were originally meant for Nora. Lines should rarely ever be interchangeable because characters are supposed to be different! Even if it’s just delivery, or phrasing, or just ‘they haven’t reached this threshold of friend yet,’ or ‘they should act hesitant about this,’ or ‘they should protest this,’ lines should rarely be interchangeable.

It’s a boring piece of media when everyone is supposed act the same or think the same, even if only in certain situations, or to fit with specific things authors want. This is why people say “the character wouldn’t do this” or “this was oc” or “this is what feels like the natural thing the character would do.” Because characters are supposed to have some consistency to them. Imagine if Ruby suddenly didn’t like Nora all that much and acted annoyed by her, and imagine if Ren said he’d never wanted to be a hunter. You’d rightly say it doesn’t make any sense. So why is it accepted that Blake suddenly has nothing against stealing and collateral damage? Why is it accepted that Qrow hates Ironwood after all the reasons to believe they were friends? Why is it accepted that Winter just never actually believed in anything she did throughout season seven and Ironwood was the only bad one in that season? Why is it accepted that Ruby doesn’t even react emotionally to seeing Penny alive or seeing her robotic body die in front of her? Even if the ‘real’ Penny is right there, shouldn’t Ruby be reacting? But they don’t even fully feel like characters anymore, just mouthpieces, animated figures on a screen with lines written by people in some office somewhere. And I get that it’s what they are, but that’s the thing about fiction. We’re supposed to be able to detach ourselves enough to care about and get into the stories and the characters, but when the hand of the creator is obvious enough that over and over again we say “why did this character do/say this? Well, I guess because the writers made them,” it makes it hard to care about the characters.

[gemsofthegalaxy]

sdfghjsdhk im,

Noah is playing a video of a Debate Bro claiming that he "constantly shits on the concept of leftist debate bros and thinks we contribute nothing to the discourse. He (and others) think debate is inherently bad and that, in fact, defending your arguments is bad" when.. Noah has said in two separate videos that he specifically watches (or has watched), debate bro content, and he thinks there is a lot of value to be found it in. he literally recommended debate bro content. like, yes with some caveats, but he has said multiple times it's a valuable section of the community.

also- i watch a lot of commentary channels that shit on other people's content (we're talking misogynistic alpha male-to-incel pipeline tiktoks) and while i admit the premise of just dragging someone else's stuff through the mud is always gonna be iffy, at the very least, the Commentary Channels show clips of the people saying these things on their tiktoks. they have proof.

whereas this debate guy just. says "this is what Noah Samsen says in his content" with no proof? golly. i wonder how many of his vast amount of followers just. believe him.

and like. to be fair. He's just fucking wrong. debate IS an interesting thing to interrogate, especially because you need to first define debate. For instance, the clip being show right now is a guy streaming, talking to his chat- that is not a debate, so if he considers himself a debator based on that alone like he's not even "Debating" but whatever.

to me, debate is a specific format of arguing two opposing sides, and is usually formal. And, in my experience, who wins can be way more about Sounding Right and Sounding Better than actually having the more factual/better/logical answer.

and that's just due to how well you debate, not the logic or raw content of your words. humans like....... trust things that are "Articulate" and "Well Worded" and "Compelling"- things that can be super loaded. they will take into account way more than just the actual words said, or even how they're said and artfully put together, but also how the people are dressed, the colour of the skin, size/shape of body etc.

so calling into question how much WEIGHT we put on the idea of debate is actually very valid!! and being unwilling to consider that, equating any insinuation that "debate might have issues" to "debate, and therefore being able to argue and back up your points on things, is useless" is a fucking wild thing to do!!!

these Left Tubers who call into question how useful debate is are not saying it's bad to be able to argue a point or defend your stance, goddddddddd

[sou-ver-2-0]

How different do you think Shin's character, or the story in general, would be if Shin had been a girl instead (let's call her, I dunno, Shinko. Souko can be her false name)? Obviously I don't believe it would make a /tremendous/ change to either the character or story, but it's just something interesting and fun to think and discuss about.

I agree that’s a fascinating topic!! At the core of Shin’s character is someone who worries tremendously about how others perceive them. Would the others perceive Shin differently if Shin were a girl? Would fem!Shin adopt new strategies to counter different kinds of expectations? Even subtle changes in the writing could make the story feel very different to us.

Personally, I’ve always thought that one of the best cards up Shin’s sleeve in canon is that he’s a man! Because we take men’s words seriously, even if they’re liars. If Shin were a woman, she might struggle more to be believed.

Before I go any further, I’ll keep calling her Shin, since Shin is a gender-neutral name. (That’s a plot point in the game! When the cast wonders if “Shin Tsukimi” could be the alias of one of the girls.) Based on my quick research, it seems like “Sou” is a masculine name. While “Shinko” and “Souko” sound sweet to me, I feel weird making up Japanese names, since I’m not Japanese. So I’ll keep using the original names, but I’ll try to be as clear as possible.

When I brought up your question to my sister, she pointed out to me that we could play this out in two ways. The first is the way you suggested, that fem!Shin pretends to be fem!Sou. But we could also do this the “Shakespearean way”; what if Shin was a girl pretending to be a boy? What if fem!Shin still chose to adopt the persona of the strongest man she knew, Sou Hiyori? This route would be especially emotional if fem!Shin were a trans woman or nonbinary, and still felt compelled to hide something essential about herself in order to survive. I don’t believe I’m the most qualified person to tell this kind of story, but that premise sounds intriguing. The subtext of Shin’s arc is already about repressing your true nature; this would simply be making the subtext text.

(Obviously that type of plot point can be handled in bad taste! But I think it could be a thoughtful exploration of gender issues, if written well. The focus of Shin’s name reveal here should not be “shock value,” and should instead feel like the natural culmination of her arc—that’s how Shin’s name reveal already feels in canon, so the new sentiment should mirror that. I think it also helps that we have another trans character in Alice, who lives more openly, and would bring a necessary perspective to this type of story.)

But let’s go back to the first way that you suggested, that fem!Shin pretends to be fem!Sou. What are some changes we might see if our lying antagonist presented herself as a woman?

I definitely think her biggest disadvantage would be that we take women’s words less seriously than men’s. To use a sad example, I think even Sara struggles with this. Would the group take Sara as seriously as a leader if she didn’t have Keiji backing her up? I don’t think they would.

In contrast, Shin is a liar who tries to command the group’s attention by behaving outrageously. This is already an incredibly dangerous gamble in canon. It’s made even more difficult by Shin beginning the game with a timid personality. I can imagine Fem!Shin struggling even more. It wouldn’t be a tremendous change, like you said, but you could definitely play it up. Maybe Fem!Shin would need to rely even more on acting “cutsey” to get what she wanted, if folks wouldn’t believe her when she tries to sound confident.

Perhaps Q-Taro might even throw Fem!Shin under the bus in the First Main Game, like he does with Nao, Gin, and Kanna? I remember that my sister and I joked that the reason Q-Taro doesn’t call Shin “useless” in canon was because of the unspoken “Bro Code.” (In other words, Q-Taro wouldn’t target an adult man—even one as weak as Shin—because that would endanger himself too!)

On the other hand, folks might be more “delicate” with Fem!Shin, and less likely to threaten her with violence? That would be an advantage! I’m especially thinking of how the group goes on a witch hunt for Shin in the beginning of Chapter 2, and Reko says that she wants to beat up the “beanie bastard,” while Keiji says he wants to throw handcuffs on Shin. Later in Chapter 2, after Shin takes the Sacrifice Card from Q-Taro, Q-Taro “stomps around” in a rage planning to attack Shin! Would they talk differently if Shin were a woman? It’s possible!

The downside of men being “taken seriously” is that we overlook their vulnerabilities. Shin is frail, but this is mockable in canon because he’s a man. If Shin were a frail woman, that would be expected. I think folks would be more careful with their threats and jokes if Shin were a woman. This also ties into how people often don’t take it seriously when men are victims of abuse—something masc!Shin likely struggles with in his regular life, since being an abuse survivor is an important part of Shin’s character.

Being a woman could also subtly change Shin’s relationships with other characters!

For example, Shin’s power games with Keiji would look different. On the one hand, I could imagine Keiji trying to be “nicer” to Fem!Shin, at least in the beginning. On the other hand? We could make this darker. I could imagine Keiji flirting with Shin to intimidate her. But instead of trying to “push her away” like he does with Sara, he’d be trying to put Shin in her place. Keiji is a master with words, and he could use them to devastating effect to remind Shin that she’s a woman while he’s the man in control. (To be clear, there’s no reason Keiji couldn’t flirt with Shin in canon! I’ve even written a ficlet of this exact scenario that I never intend to publish. I’m simply thinking that it would appear more “normal” for Keiji to flirt with another woman in public, and Keiji is concerned about appearances in this Death Game too.)

What about Shin and Kanna? One detail I thought of is that Fem!Shin might feel a little more hurt that Kanna sees her sister in Sara instead of her. Masc!Shin can rationalize that Sara is a girl, but Fem!Shin has to rationalize even more. I started thinking about how Fem!Shin might worry that she’s too old or not pretty enough for Kanna’s affection? Personally, it makes me emotional in canon how Shin was sure that Kanna would pick Sara over him if she had the Sacrifice. We know he feels self-conscious about it. I like to wonder what his thoughts were. Fem!Shin’s worries might look a little bit different, even if they’re worrying about the same problem.

As for Shin and Sara, their rivalry would also look different, even if it’s subtle. Fem!Shin would lose the advantage of “being a man,” though she still has the advantage of age. Maybe Sara would sympathize more easily with another woman? Maybe she’d feel a little sad that Fem!Shin won’t join the group of “The Idiot Girls”? Or perhaps their arguments would turn even pettier. I do want Sara to still be able to attack Fem!Shin to try to claim the smartphone!! Just because you’re a woman, don’t think I’ll go easy on you!

Those were my main ideas, Anon! Thank you for the fascinating question. I did my best with it!

[themattress]

My Top 30 Favorite Video Games

Inspired by @ultraericthered’s Top 30 Favorite Anime post. 

Although I’m doing mine in countdown form, ‘cause it’s more fun that way!

30. Super Mario Bros. - Arguably the first “blockbuster” game to be released, not only does Super Mario Bros. still hold up over 35 years later but it’s a gift that keeps on giving with how many different incarnations, remixes, fan games using its assets, etc. that we have now.

29. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - OBJECTION! While I cherish the entire original Phoenix Wright trilogy of the Ace Attorney franchise, I’ll always be the most partial to the original outing. The sheer audacity and hilarity of the concept, which is grounded by endearing characters and compelling mysteries, shines brilliantly in this little, easily accessible game. 

28. Trigger Happy Havoc: Danganronpa - While similar in many ways to Ace Attorney, Danganronpa boasts a variety of more actual gameplay than mere point-and-click text scrolling. But what really makes this stand out, beyond gameplay or even the strength of its concept, story and characters, is the atmosphere it creates. For good and for ill, traversing the pristine, neon-lit hallways of the abandoned Hopes Peak Academy looking for clues as I’m forced to play by Monokuma’s twisted rules is an experience that will stay with me forever.

27. Star Fox 64 - Beyond all the entertainment this game provides through memes, it’s really just a fun, reasonably simple but just moderately complicated enough game that’s accessible to any player even if they usually don’t go for aerial shooters. It’s also one of the earliest console games that I ever played, so of course it’s going to hold a special place in my heart.

26. Batman: Arkham City - It’s an impressive feat when an open world game can still feel so claustrophobic in all the right ways, and that’s what Arkham City accomplishes. This game is essentially The Dark Knight to Arkham Asylum’s Batman Begins, escalating the action, suspense and sheer Batman-ness, providing unlimited opportunities to enjoy yourself playing as Gotham’s defender and facing down the greatest Rogues Gallery in comic book history.

25. Red Dead Redemption - Look, I know that Red Dead Redemption 2 is technically the superior game. But its complicated story, sprawling cast of characters, and vast canvas of a world can be pretty daunting, whereas I feel like the original Red Dead Redemption struck a much better balance. Allowing open world freedom within the confines of the straight-forward story of John Marston’s redemption really makes you feel like you’re in an old Western film, and the way that choices you make as a player impact the way that film ultimately turns out is one of the strongest arguments for video games being worthy of consideration as true art.

24. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - So, ten years ago an open world adventure video game series releases its fifth entry...and to this day, we’ve had no sixth, in favor of expansions and updated re-releases of said fifth entry. But that’s not a sign of laziness; it’s a sign the developers know they hit such a peak in quality that they have no need to rush anything further out the gate, as Skyrim is a gift that keeps on giving. Addictive in how unlimited in possibilities it is, with each playthrough never being the same as the one before, Skyrim is a gaming masterpiece that I don’t think I’m going to get bored with playing anytime soon.

23. Super Paper Mario - This may be an unpopular opinion, but I vastly prefer this game’s action-platform-RPG hybrid gameplay style to the prior installments’ traditional turn-based RPG style, which feels more at home in stuff like Super Mario RPG and the Mario & Luigi series. But gameplay aside, I think this has the strongest story of any Mario game, trading in the usual “save the kingdom/princess” fare for saving all of reality, with legitimate emotion and drama and even character development. It’s one of the Wii’s shining gems, to be sure.

22. Epic Mickey - This game’s graphics are by and large unremarkable, its gameplay is fraught with issues (that camera is unforgivable), and it’s nowhere close to the best on its system or genre. But Epic Mickey is a case study in where the effort put into crafting the game’s world and story, not to mention the obvious love and respect for the material being worked with, pays off. Any Disney fan will love this game for its story, which puts Mickey front and center as an actual character rather than a mascot and dives deep into his history as he meets his “half-brother” Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and its mystical, unique atmosphere - what the graphics can’t deliver, the fucking music more than makes up for. All of the game’s flaws mean nothing compared to the sheer heart on display, and I treasure it greatly as a result.

21. Batman: Arkham Asylum - I already mentioned that Arkham City is the superior game, but as was the case with Red Dead Redemption and its sequel, personal preference strikes again. The simpler story and narrower confines of Arkham Asylum just appeal to me slightly more, and I feel like the borderline horror atmosphere this game has could never fully be replicated by all of its sequels and spin-offs. Also, you can play as the Joker in this. WIN.

20. Metal Gear Solid - And on the subject of Arkham Asylum, it owes much to this game, which created the template of a lone badass hero having to use stealth and weaponry to liberate a government-owned island from the lunatic terrorists that have taken over. Hideo Kojima famously never wanted this game to have any sequels, and I can definitely see his point, as it’s a complete and wholly satisfying experience in of itself and I don’t feel like it’s ever been topped. At the very least, it’s certainly the most enjoyable of the series to me.

19. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Also, speaking of “borderline horror atmosphere”, we have the freakiest game that the Legend of Zelda series ever put out. What was supposed to just be a gaiden to Ocarina of Time mutated into this beautiful monstrosity that’s become just as iconic. Nobody who plays this game is ever going to forget that fucking moon and all the constant jumping back and forth in time across three days as you try to prevent the apocalypse of Termina. It’s the kind of gaming trauma that’s well worth experiencing.

18. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories - Like Majora’s Mask, this game is a case study where you can take a bunch of recycled assets and gameplay, and then make something unique from it if you have a well-crafted story with a dark and disturbing atmosphere. It’s hard to experience or appreciate the transition between Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II without playing this midquel, which takes the narrative and characters to deeper levels without being pretentious about it and sets the stage for the proper console sequel perfectly. And if you can’t get into it being on Gameboy Advance, then just play the PS2 remake (which is arguably the superior version anyway) and you’re good! Just...don’t mind the cards, OK?

17. Sonic CD - And now we have another game about jumping back and forth through time to prevent an apocalypse! See the common threads at play here by this point? Sonic the Hedgehog is at his best in 2D gameplay, and I personally enjoy this the best out of all the 2D games in the series. As obscure as the Sega CD was as a system, it was powerful enough to take the blue blur’s speed to its maximum level, set alongside beautiful graphics and a kick-ass soundtrack (well, two different kick-ass soundtracks; and I actually prefer the US one). 

16. Pokemon Black & White - While there were advancements made to story and graphics and gameplay features in the third and fourth generations of the Pokemon series, nothing felt as truly ground-breaking as the second generation games until the fifth gen with its Black & White games. This was arguably the game series’ peak in quality on all fronts, but its specifically the story that lands it on this list, as its well-written and paced, subverts many formulaic elements from the previous games, is set in one of the most unique regions in the Pokemon world, and has a timeless message that has only grown more relevant with age. 

15. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - The whole series could really go here, but fortunately the most recent entry is the perfect embodiment of said series, with every playable character there’s ever been and then some. The sheer variety is unmatched by any other fighting game out there, and its story mode, “World of Light”, is quite possibly the greatest video game crossover in history given how many characters are featured as both fighters and spirits.

14. Super Mario 64 - I’m pretty sure this game used to be higher in my favor, but replaying it on the Nintendo Switch recently has made me aware of how, as the first game on the Nintendo 64 and the first 3D platformer, it’s poorly aged in several areas. However, I must stress that it is still a very good game. The fun of going to the various worlds within paintings in Peach’s Castle hasn’t changed, nor has how smoothly and seamlessly Mario managed to make the jump from 2D to 3D. Just like Super Mario Bros., the number of games that owe something to this one is too great to count, and that’s an achievement that remains timeless.

13. Dark Chronicle - Also known as Dark Cloud 2. I hadn’t heard a damn thing about this game before renting it on a whim many years ago, and I was caught off guard by just how good it was. It’s got a simple but effective story and likable characters, a timeless atmosphere, beautifully cel-shaded graphics, dungeon-crawling gameplay, action-RPG combat gameplay, literal world-building gameplay, and even a fishing minigame! This game can actually stand besides the Zelda series without shame; it’s truly an underrated gem.

12. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Oh, speaking of Zelda, this game goes full Lord of the Rings-style epic fantasy with it and it is glorious. Between the near perfect gameplay, beautiful 3D graphics, and one of the best stories in the series (with one of the best characters: Midna), Twilight Princess’ most prevalent complaint from critics all the way up to its own developers is that it wasn’t even MORE expansive and awesome given how long it was hyped, and if that’s the biggest issue with the game then I’d say it’s in pretty good shape.

11. Super Mario Galaxy - Super Mario 64 may be held back a little by how its aged, but no such thing is holding back Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario Odyssey might be as good or possibly even better, but I just don’t hold the same feelings of amazement and respect toward it that I do for this game. From the blitzkrieg-style attack on the Mushroom Kingdom by Bowser to the discovery of Rosalina’s space station, this game had me hooked from the first few minutes, especially with it blaring that awesome orchestral score the whole way through. To this day, I maintain that this is Mario’s greatest 3D adventure. It’s simply magnificent.

10. Final Fantasy X - Ha! See what I did there? This game has caught flak for some of the awkwardness that comes from being the first fully 3D entry in the series, but I think that’s tantamount to nitpicking when compared to all it does right. To me, this was the last really good installment of the main Final Fantasy series, with a story and world so brilliantly developed that the game earned the immediate breakthrough success and acclaim that it found in its native Japan. 20 years later and, as the HD remaster has shown, it still holds up as one of the most engaging JRPG experiences I’ve ever had the pleasure of having.

9. Banjo-Kazooie - At the time, this was basically Rare’s copycat version of Super Mario 64, although considered about as good. Now, however, there’s a difference: the aging issues I mentioned for Super Mario 64 don’t apply for Banjo-Kazooie. Whether replaying it on the Nintendo 64 or on whichever Xbox you’ve got, this game is still just as fun, imaginative and hilarious now as it was back then. It’s quite possibly the greatest 3D platformer ever made.

8. Pokemon Crystal - The definitive edition of the Gold & Silver games of Pokemon’s second generation, taking what was already a phenomenal advancement and improvement to the first generation and making it even better with additional features such as the ability to play as a girl for the first time and a more clearly defined storyline centered around the legendary Pokemon featured on the game’s box art. Pokemon had been written off as just a passing fad up until this point. This was when its staying power as a video game juggernaut was proven.

7. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Talk about a win right out of the gate for the Nintendo Switch! This game returns the Legend of Zelda series to its roots while also applying all that has been made possible in video games since the original game’s release, and the result is an enthralling, addictive, open world masterpiece that has set a new standard of quality for both the Zelda series and for many modern video games in general.

6. Kingdom Hearts II - The Final Mix edition to be precise, although in this day and age that’s basically the only edition people are playing anyway. This game is the apotheosis of Kingdom Hearts as both a video game series and as a concept; filled to the brim with Disney magic and Square Enix RPG expertise and paired with some of the most refined action-based gameplay there is. And when it comes to bringing the original Kingdom Hearts trilogy’s story to a close, does this game ever stick the landing. The series could have ended right here and I would have been completely satisfied (and its reputation would be a lot better off, too!)

5. Pokemon Yellow - While I maintain that this game, the definitive edition of the original first generation Pokemon games, still holds up as fun to play even now, I’ll admit that it’s pure bias that it ranks so high. It was the first proper video game I ever played, there was no way I was leaving it off the top 5! Its blissful nostalgic atmosphere is always such a delight to return to.

4. Banjo-Tooie - Remember when I said Banjo-Kazooie was “quite possibly the greatest 3D platformer ever made”? The “quite possibly” is because its in stiff competition with its own sequel! And personally, I’m in Banjo-Tooie’s corner; something about how inter-connected its worlds are and the addition of so many things to do all while maintaining your full moveset from the original game is just beautiful to me. Both it and its predecessor are like obstacle courses that I never tire of running through, which is the hallmark of brilliant game design.

3. Kingdom Hearts - Another case where the sequel may be the superior game, but my own personal preference leans toward the original. And in this case, it’s a highly personal preference: this game and my memories of playing it for the first time are so very dear to me. The characters and worlds of Disney put into an epic crossover RPG was like a dream come true for me and no matter how far the series it spawned has deteriorated, nothing can detract from the magic of this game. It’s got a certain, indescribable feel and atmosphere that’s never truly been replicated, and that feel and atmosphere still holds up whenever I revisit it. The gameplay may not be the best, particularly when compared to Kingdom Hearts II’s, but the charm of the story and the characters and the world and the very concept more than makes up for that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of Disney and Square’s greatest masterpieces.

2. Final Fantasy VII - I was aware of the hype this game got and was totally ready to call it overrated, but damn it, it got me! I don’t know what it is about this game with its blocky early 3D graphics, poor sound quality to its excellent soundtrack, and frequently mistranslated script that proved to be so gripping and enjoyable to play through, but man did it ever Limit Break its way into my heart. This is considered a JRPG classic for a damn good reason.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Do I really need to explain this one? It’s famous for being frequently cited as one of the greatest video games ever made, and like Final Fantasy VII, its hype is well-deserved and totally justified. Whether you’re playing it on the Nintendo 64, the Gamecube, the Wii, the 3DS, and hopefully the Nintendo Switch in the future, there is a magic quality to this game that permeates through every step you take in its fully 3D world. It’s a triumph that has stood the test of time, cementing the Zelda series as truly legendary.