#but this is just downright unforgiveable from a writing standpoint

[tenebriskukris]

Oshi No Ko Chapter 155 - My Thoughts/Analysis

I never thought that this series would disappoint me more than it did with Chapter 152 but apparently the manga is just shoveling us utter dogshit on our plates now and expects the readers to think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Let’s just get on with it. Spoilers for Oshi No Ko Chapter 155 below.

And so we open this chapter with Ruby’s POV. Finally we get to see her thoughts on this whole mess. And with double black star eyes too? Considering we see her have white star eyes a few chapters ago I’m Assuming that there isn’t much of a timeskip between the movie being shown to select people and this interview but the manga’s use of timeskips without a clear timeline being placed is just yuck. 

This entire issue wouldn’t be relevant in the first place if the manga didn’t sidestep showing the readers key reveals when they happened chronologically in the first place. Or already have a tendency to have these conversations and key reveals offscreen of all things. 

I’m going to do what I can for Ai. Like jump off a building? I wouldn’t be surprised if that man does something like that after he’s had this worldview shattered into dust. Or does something hasty like go on a murder spree. The worst kind of person to deal with is one that has nothing left to lose—they’re unpredictable. 

Aqua letting him go here is just a huge fucking mistake. He pulled the strings to kill Ai, after all. What’s to say that these events wouldn’t lead him to kill anyone else. Ruby, himself, Literally Anyone Else. It’s plausible that he could lash out at people and cause a whole mess. If someone from the movie dies while it’s being pushed out then it’s going to cause more than enough controversy to get the movie pulled from theaters. Who would want to screen the movie if one of the actors died because of it??? It would be a nightmare of legal issues. 

Your revenge is over now. Interesting. So Aqua’s given up on revenge? Or does he have something more planned? Another case of the series telling us these things without actually showing the progression of events happening to these characters and expecting the readers to just be okay with these logical leaps happening. It’s a trick that’s only useful if a writer doesn’t overuse it, but the way this series is using it as a crutch is just disgraceful. 

Incredible. No decompression. No conversation between the twins about what they just experienced. Just a timeskip back to Miyako. If they don’t talk about what just happened in this chapter I swear to all the gods and deities above—

Well that was a cute interaction between Miyako, Aqua and Ruby. It is also a cheap way to tug at the reader’s heartstrings. This entire scene would hit harder if we actually managed to see Miyako in this pseudo-maternal role more but as it stands now it is nothing more than a toothless attempt to insert her into this arc as a pseudo-mother to the twins. This “newfound” understanding of Aqua’s character for her is also similarly one which has little substance behind it were it not a callback to the earlier chapters of the series. It’s a sad scene, don’t get me wrong, but it’s all style and little substance when one considers that Miyako’s paternal role has been rather lacking throughout the series.

And now we’re back with Ichigo. Wonder if we’ll ever see his interview come up—because that’s still up in the air, apparently. Same with the other interviews, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all done offscreen like so many other important bits of the narrative.

Ruby made a choice. And telling Aqua that she’d encountered her father was just done offscreen again. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. Of course. Just offscreen the conversation that Ruby talks to Aqua about forgiving Hikaru—surely something like that isn’t relevant to Ruby’s character arc in the slightest. 

Not the mention that with Ruby’s black star eyes blazing in the start of the chapter—did she really forgive Hikaru or that just Aqua assuming she did? Oh! We don’t know because their entire conversation about Hikaru was offscreened in the first place. At least we know that Ruby knew who Hikaru was this whole time—which was a fact that was very obvious in the first place. 

With Ichigo not wanting to kill Hikaru anymore that’s more or less everyone’s revenge scheme more or less wrapped up. I highly doubt we’ll be getting any more insight on how they made these decisions in the past because it seems like this series is dispensing in quality and good narrative structure in exchange for rushing towards the ending as quickly as possible. I’ll be more than happy to eat my words later down the line if the series is going to give these characters and this story the time it needs to shine but I won’t hold my breath.

Finally we get an Akane appearance. I was starting to think she was killed offscreen. Would not surprise me in the slightest at this point. She got a new haircut!!! Very cute.

If Hikaru is the one behind everything, then some things don’t make sense. Of fucking course! Aqua and Akane both independently figure out that Hikaru and Niino were responsible for Yura—and a bunch more people’s—death! And this realization was also done offscreen again!

And then there’s another thing. I recall somewhere during the Mainstay arc that Aqua said that he knew Goro Amamiya but with Akane reading the script she would easily be able to tell that that was false because Goro died before Aqua was even born. For someone as observant and smart as Akane was she surely would be able to put two and two together and call Aqua out for his bullshit but noooooooooo. We’re just going to pretend that never happened, then. 

What a complete and utter travesty. So the narrative is now pointing at Niino as the final antagonist of the series. A side character who a good chunk of people didn’t even know existed and was first seen in some side material  until she showed up close to the end of the arc. After Hikaru was unceremoniously thrown out of that role without the sufficient narrative payoff after all the buildup. 

I think I have to make an amendment to what I said before on one of my previous chapter reviews. The quality of writing that we’re seeing here isn’t of a college level writing student. That would be giving the writers the credit that they don’t deserve. No, I’ve seen high school level students draft me a more coherent narrative than whatever the fuck was going on in these last few chapters. Amazing.

The editors of this manga must surely be hungover drunk in their seats or held at gunpoint if garbage like this is allowed to get published. Then again, any reader swallowing this slop uncritically deserves media that crashes and burns when it gets to the finish line. The main writer of the series already has a tendency to screw up the final arcs of his manga series so I’m flabbergasted that no one took a step back and bapped these chapters on the head because of how low quality they were. But I digress. 

Ruby changing her black star eyes directly into white star eyes in this chapter is just—why. Every time we see one of the twins change from black to white to black star eyes and back again it was because of some event that touched their life. Now it’s just—they do it whenever, I guess. Whenever the plot demands it with little to no repercussions.

Having Niino as the final antagonist is also incredibly yucky. This isn't a hashtag GirlBoss moment with her being responsible for Ai’s death. Her being the final obstacle for this series to overcome is some horrible social commentary and reeks of misogyny. The final antagonist of the series isn’t a product of the horrible system—some high ranking industry official who was also scarred by the industry and is now in a higher place to also exploit people in the same industry—ala Hikaru. No, the final antagonist is someone who was on the same level as Ai—even lower, really—who had a hand in her death and wants to keep people from reaching the same level as her.

That’s not even getting to the fact that having her as what is essentially the final boss of the series has to be one of the stupidest writing decisions I’ve ever seen in media—about as idiotic as having Kaguya from Naruto appear at the end of that mess of a series. If you told an Oshi No Ko fan when they started the series that the final antagonist of the series would be this random side character that was first shown in a short story they would laugh because of how stupid that twist would be—and yet it fucking happened!

On a slightly more serious note, Nino as the main antagonist fails so supremely for a variety of decisions. The first is buildup. The narrative has been pointing towards Hikaru for the majority of the series and now we’re pivoting to what is essentially a side character taking his place with little to no buildup. The stuff we got from the movie arc is so minor compared to how the narrative was building up towards Hikaru throughout the entirety of the series that pushing her to the main villain role is just cheap at this point.

The second is character. Or rather, her lack thereof. Nino is more of a plot device than a character from what we’ve seen of her already. Her motivation is to keep people from surpassing Ai and—what? That’s basically it. She’s a one note character without anything interesting going on behind those eyeballs with absolutely nothing else to say. At least Hikaru had some backstory and motivation shown—even if it was done in a completely haphazard way.

Let’s examine that point further, shall we? Both in the side story and from what we see in the small bits of her in the manga paint the picture of a woman who was incensed that Ai was more popular than her and now she wants to keep anyone else from rising higher than Ai ever did as we see with her words to Ruby. It’s obvious that she’s going to make some move on Ruby during Kana’s graduation concert or around that time so that’ll be her 

And then there’s her absolute dogshit motivation. Nino had a hand in killing Ai because Ai was more popular than her? I’m sorry, that is a literal skill issue. At the end of the day, the idol industry is still an industry. Those who have more potential or skill than another will obviously be more favored and reach higher. It’s not a slice of the dark side of the idol industry, it’s simple fucking causality. 

It’s the equivalent of an average student in high school that helps a group of students murder the smartest student in school and the only reason she helps them is that the smartest student is better than her academically so she has to die. That’s basically the gist of Nino’s reasons for wanting Ai’s death. It’s petty. It’s entitled. It's downright idiotic. I would even say it was character assassination were it not for the fact that she barely had any character in the first place. 

The third point is what Nino represents as the final antagonist of the series. I spoke before about how having her as the final boss is an incredibly tone-deaf narrative decision for a series that delves into the darkest parts of the industry. The narrative before these couple of chapters was pointing at Hikaru being the main and final antagonist of the series. This high up industry official who was also taken advantage of by the worst of the industry lashed out at Ai after she broke up with him and whose children find revenge on him by telling him that Ai loved him all along. It doesn’t absolve Hikaru’s sins and his hand in killing Ai but sidesteps the issue in favor of casting blame towards his circumstances caused by the industry. The concept sings, fits with the darker side of the industry the manga has been trying to grasp, and tries to wrap up everything in a neat little bow.

Nino has none of that backing. Ai’s last attempts at reconciliation with Nino were unceremoniously denied by her in her short story and she does not grow as a character because of it. She is not built up as a character who was sufficiently ruined by the industry the way Hikaru was or has the justification for her misdeeds. No, the true and final antagonist of the series is a woman who was jealous of Ai for upstaging her and because of that she helped orchestrate her death. This concept does not sing. It does not say anything substantial about the industry so far and does cohere in a way that justifies her being the final obstacle of the series. It’s a bad piece of social commentary and undercuts so much of what the series has been leaning towards for over a hundred and fifty chapters. The real villain of the series isn’t the industry itself, it’s the ones around you who are jealous of your success! Utter dogshit writing.

I can almost hear the complaints now. Niino showed up in the short story! She has tons of character depth there! Here’s a hard truth to swallow: It doesn’t matter. If you have to look at what is essentially supplemental media that not every reader will have read to get the gist of a character as important as the final antagonist of the series then you’ve failed in setting said character up to take the reins of the title of final antagonist. It’s like if you were watching a movie in a theater and this one character shows up during the last ten minutes as the real antagonist with little to no foreshadowing and she has an entire backstory and character that was shown in some supplemental material online that a good 90 percent of people haven’t even seen. That would lead to a box office bomb if I’ve ever seen one. You’d get thrown out of a Hollywood scriptwriter’s room for even proposing something like that! 

In any case, I’m very glad that the reactions of people online are finally turning on the writers for serving the readers this shitshow. With how people were talking about how the last two chapters were so good of all things I was quite surprised that there were still people around swallowing this shitshow on a plate uncritically because it’s more than obvious to my eyes that the manga is already spiraling downwards in terms of quality during these last few chapters.

It’s a shame, really. I wouldn’t still be doing these chapter reviews if I wasn’t invested in the series in the first place. Before the movie arc’s horrible pacing issues and the massive number of timeskips with these recent chapters I still held out hope that the series would give us a satisfying conclusion. Now I wouldn’t even be surprised if the next chapter just timeskipped us again to the graduation concert without dwelling on Nino as a final boss.

[rasoir-national]

This was bound to happen : I’m talking about immigration law

@ghostplantss i don't know v much about french immigration law would you tell me about it? i'm v curious?

Oh wow. First tea, and now this ? Either you are my secret Santa, or my enabler.

So let me tell you about the passion of my life, Immigration and refugee law, and the fuckery this country has made of it.

The way a city, community, country treats the “other” is one of the oldest legal questions in the History of Humanity. From Antique Greek cities to the Jus Gentium of the Roman Empire, laws concerning foreigners might be the first form of international law known to man. In many ways, it’s by acknowledging the existence of “others”, by giving and restricting their rights, that a social group both truly asserts itself as a “political community”, yet acknowledges the transcending quality of “humanity” of the outsider.

Nowadays, this question is as politically charged as ever : the way a country regards foreigners, welcomes them, rejects them, is one of the most interesting ways you can define the country, one of the ways the country sees itself. By the way we treat the one who is not “us”, we highlight which rights we consider to be inherent to humanity in and of itself, as well as which ones we consider intrinsically rooted in our identity as “citizen”.

And all this proud History, all this contemporary tension, makes Immigration law fascinating to FUCKING NO ONE.

Look, one thing you have to know about lawyers is how much they love intellectual wankery. A nicer way to put it would be to say lawyers love systems. And theory. And generalisation. And categorizing. They like to look at a set of rules and see a pattern, a logic, a paradigm. They like to be able to neatly present it in two titles, each divided in two subtitles, each divided in two sections, and repeat that until they run out of microsoft font points.

And Immigration law... It’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s the opposite of that. It’s a law that’s almost entirely dictated by conjoncture, by what a government needs it to say, by whichever concept they’re going to twist then to suit their needs. Whatever few theoritical concepts Immigration law might have been based on have been destroyed by years of either haphazardous or plainly malignant reforms, often both.

And not only does that mean that this at this point is an intensely, punitively complex law, it has also become - if it hasn’t always been - illogical and incoherent. The only “logic” behind it anymore is how much it can be weaponized against its subjects - foreigners. Because that’s the only thing that politicians care about, and because lawyers and especially academics have pretty much given up on it, leaving the terrain free for the former. You have to realize, in terms of pure numbers, Immigration law is the most practiced law in the country. It represents almost a third of all disputes. Yet it is taught in NO university in France. Not a single one. There are no courses, no grad school, no thesis program about immigration law in all of France. There is no money in Immigration law : almost all involved subjects are destitute. There is no intellectual curiosity, because the discipline, from a theoretical point of view, is pretty uninteresting. There isn’t even public interest, because deceptively, the general public hears so much about immigration from either ignorant or ill-intentioned people, that getting through the complexity of the topic is immensely complicated and unrewarding.

Lawyers, for the most part, have deserted the topic for selfish reasons, despite the fact that this is perhaps where they were most needed to make sure fundamental rules were enforced, that politics didn’t come in the way of good justice. They abandoned the most vulnerable subjects of law to the whims of lawmakers and political interests. That’s unforgiveable.

So as a result, Immigration law today mostly resembles a cat-and-mouse game where the law sets up as many traps as possible for the immigrant to fall into, with dozens of obstacles to navigate to finally, finally be able to legally settle in a country you might be have been living in for several decades. There are specific stay rules for retirees. That’s a thing. Every rule is meant to exclude as many people as possible. As a result, immigrants must get increasingly creative or even downright shifty in order to qualify for a stay. And in turn, public opinion will yell and say they are manipulating the system - well, duh. We’ve made a system in which it’s impossible to win fair and square and then we criticize immigrants for trying to game it.

Let’s have just one example : demands of admission because of sickness. French law categorizes different reasons for an immigrant to be admitted to live on french soil for a little while : study, work, family matters, and health. France has a very good health system compared to the worldwide standard, so many people come here to receive treatment they might not be able to benefit from in their country of origin for various reasons. Some people already don’t think that’s a reason for welcoming them, but fuck those people. Anyway, there are many, many people who will ask for permission to stay on the grounds of an “invisible” illness : depression, PTSD, personality disorder... all of which are very difficult to prove. Before 2017, the prefect had to decide based on the opinion of a doctor from the regional authority after they’d met with the author of the request. But the administration quickly realized that doctors tend to have that pesky thing called deontology or even - perish the thought ! - empathy. So there was a reform, and now the way it works is the ill immigrant goes to a doctor who writes a report, then mails it to the person’s lawyer, who then mails it to a doctor that will do a second report based on that report, and will send that second report to a group of 3 doctors who, on the sole basis of that document, will advise the prefect on whether or not the person is ill, and whether or not they could have access to treatment in their country. And when I say advise, I mean they mail a form with boxes checked. That’s it. No text. So we have a prefect, who’s not a doctor, making a decision about the health situation of a person based on a box-based form filled by doctors who have never met the person, who themselves are judging based on the report of another doctor who has no met the person either, this last doctor writing based on the report of another doctor who might have met the person once. And all of this can take up to a year. That’s time during which the immigrant cannot work, or receive benefits. And then, if the prefect decides against letting the immigrant stay, then they have only 2 months to challenge that decision, otherwise after those 2 months have passed, they can be arrested, incarcerated and deported at any time.

So given all that, is it any wonder that immigrants tend to “discover” illness after illness and constantly ask for stays based on that ? This system is so random and unfair, that all you can really do is try and try again hoping something will eventually stick. So now you have people complaining that immigrants are faking mental illness in mass, causing prejudice to the “real” mentally ill immigrants. And yes, that’s the effect. But make no mistake : the cause is how difficult it is for an immigrant to have their illness acknowledged when it’s not something “extreme” enough to have you cross the border on a gurney. Because it’s not enough to google “availability of x medication in x country” to make sure the person can actually access treatment in their country of origin.

So that’s the hypocrisy infusing (haha, tea joke) the whole system. And on top of that, the procedure is getting more complicated with every reform : miss one deadline, fill out one form wrong, and you’re out. And please remember we’re dealing with people who for the vast majority do not speak french (the ONLY language allowed in administrative matters according to the Constitution) and know nothing of our administrative system. It’s up to the person’s lawyer to basically map out the life of each of their client. And because there is no money in immigration law - you only get paid in judicial aid from the state - there aren’t many immigration lawyers. You have to do this out of conviction, cuz you’re certainly not doing it for the money or career opportunities. In the practice I interned at last year, each lawyer would at all times manage on average 50 to 80 active cases. And let’s be clear, a lot of them are assholes, because lawyers in general tend to be assholes. But the work they do in downright heroic.

So that’s where I come in to fix it all, right ? Yeah, no. This entire system is fucked, and given what the world looks like right now, it might be for a while. I’m under no delusion that I can do anything to change that. My goal is to help the way I can : I want to become an administrative judge, the ones who are in charge of examining administrative decisions regarding immigrants. This type of challenge represents roughly 50% of the activity of any administrative tribunal : every chamber, no matter their specialty, has to do a little of it, otherwise the system is so backed up it would collapse. Some of those judges do amazing work, and are some of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met. Some of them are not. Most of them are plain bored by this type of claim, because they’re repetitive, not really technical from a legal standpoint and always depressing. And a handful of them have ties to the far-right and are there just to expel as many immigrants as possible. So yeah, if all goes well I’ll be a judge in a few years, and I’ll be one of the only ones who came to the job because of immigration law, not in spite of it. It’s not bragging on my part, it’s just a sad fact. Judges at the tribunal where I’ve worked had a schedule for who was supposed to be in charge of new immigration claims arriving, and some judges would hide from court reporters in order not to get attributed cases that arrived right before their shift was over. So yeah, if I can be a small drop in the bucket and be someone who actually looks at these cases with the explicit intent of finding a reason to approve the claim, that’ll be good enough for me. Because Immigration law, or at least what we’ve made of it, might not be “interesting” but it’s goddamn important, and people should pay attention to it.

[waynekelton]

Spy Tactics Review

Let me start by stating unequivocally that I am a fan of puzzle games and inspired spin-offs. Every great game usually has a cluster of kissing cousins, throw a stone and find one. Bearing this in mind, most mobile gamers remember the recent Hitman- Lara Croft- ‘Go’ series of games, as much for their taut level design as visual polish. Well, Spy Tactics is supposed to be a dead ringer for Hitman Go, and it soullessly succeeds. It’s an incredible value, and has clearly been a labor of love, but it is irredeemably marred by confounding controls and an ultimately derivative design.

Just like in the Go series, each level is presented like a diorama representing a small objective. The spy moves along a series of nodes, silently disarming patrols whilst picking up that eternal McGuffin briefcase. Counting steps and cycles becomes paramount, as does establishing a causal sequence. Take out Guard A to open the door, extending B’s patrol such that my agent can grab the briefcase. So on and so forth, ad nauseum, unfortunately. As far as spatial puzzles go, the format is decent but also rather exhaustible, for each level can usually be solved by splitting it into chunks and simply experimenting with every possible move. To get around this, new levels frequently introduce new mechanics, like snipers or single-use weapons, which Spy Tactics uses to wrinkle what is otherwise a very uniform play experience. This by itself isn’t a fatal setback; Sudoku puzzle books are similarly predictable in progression but still compelling.

Nevertheless the level design feels boilerplate. Yes, it is at times vexing and challenging, but Spy Tactics as a whole lacks that spark, the galvanizing ‘aha’ moments which punctuate what at times can be a tedious and difficult experience. A good puzzle games taunts and leads its player to wider understanding. Spy Tactics does teach rules of thumb and tricks of the trade, but it does so haphazardly and mostly through rote repetition. Good design means intentional traps and breadcrumbs, basically creating what is very much like a mental dialogue with the player. Puzzles functioning like riddles, asking for specific insights to proceed and refusing entry to the unwitting. Well, some puzzles just ask you try again and again, and will give inches of progress as a reward for mute persistence. Spy Tactics is more the latter, asking for minor experiments and variations on the theme. Nothing to totally stump the player, nothing to totally delight them either.

String the levels together and you have something like a campaign, with an animated introduction to drive the narrative, like the first series of levels, which are ostensibly about ousting a corrupt police chief. The writing here is wonderfully punchy, brimming with do-or-die intensity. It is accompanied by the requisite espionage jazz. The flavor is welcome but nonetheless a little cheesy, especially as divorced as it is from the actual puzzle experience. As set dressing, though, it’s distinctive and shows an imaginative, if deadpan, take on domestic spycraft. Points for flair.

Because so much of puzzle-solving involves minute variations and experimentation, the lack of an undo function is nonsensical. It adds an arbitrary hurdle to the proceedings, especially when a puzzle is some forty-odd moves long to complete successfully but one miscalculates or misclicks at the finish. Some frustration actually builds concentration and engagement, but an excess really kills the buzz. In effect, the lack of an undo function means players must have a razor-sharp memory and foresight since any plan is set in stone from the get-go. It’s an odd limitation.

The controls are accurate but over-sensitive so that it is trivially easy to send your agent in the totally wrong direction. While the board and view can be rotated freely, the movement is tied to swipes along an invisible compass rose, and so even if you rotate the field 180 degrees, the movement stays the same, which is just begging for trouble. Also, the animations on enemies are a bit of a drag on the flow of play. None of these alone is a serious drawback, but taken together they make for a puzzle game that is harder to play than it is to solve, and this imbalance leaves an unpleasant impression. Ideally the controls and interface should be as transparent and smooth as possible, but this sadly isn’t the case here. More’s the pity, for the free rotate does actually show off the clean visual design in a rather nifty way. It’s actually pretty crucial to see past some terrain using rotation, so the fact that it jars with the static movement inputs is just maddening.

Then again, I’m a bit of a glutton for punishment, both from a mobile standpoint (Darkest Dungeon, Cultist Simulator) and a puzzle one (Baba Is You, English Country Tune). So a little pushback is good game philosophy, gets the creative juices flowing in the player. But here Spy Tactics runs into another mismatch: its puzzles are clear-cut and straightforward, if admittedly decent, but the physical act of solving them is the convoluted, protracted, time-consuming, unforgiving part. So the overall effect is a drag. Then there’s the clone issue to mull over. While the thematic dressing is original and piquant, the actual mechanics of Spy Tactics are lifted pretty much copy-paste from Hitman Go, which tiresome at best if not downright problematic.

Spy Tactics does indeed boast 40 levels and its gameplay is just like that other game you might also like, but in an age with a glut of affordable entertainment I would urge a little more discernment. It’s technically well-made and has some points in its favor, but overall does not merit a try unless there’s been a Franchise-Go-sized hole in your life.

Spy Tactics Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/