#excuse the mega long rant in tags i just have a lot to say when it comes to the itoshi bros

[baeshijima]

the itoshi brothers through the years ...

[randomingoftherandomness]

Hi, I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I was wondering about your distaste for S*a*g C*i. I’m not very familiar with the comics or the characters. Your post caught my attention because I try to be knowledgeable about the media I consume, especially coming from Marvel/Disney(being Jewish Rromani, I’ll never forgive them for what they did to Wanda). I tried googling information about it but couldn’t find much. I was just curious if your post had a deeper meaning or if it simply isn’t to your taste. Obviously feel free to ignore this if you don’t feel like getting into it or don’t want to answer.

Hi! First up, thanks for taking the chance to ask and being willing to listen. I appreciate that a lot.

I am going to preface this by saying that I am part of the Chinese diaspora. I have never read the comics in full but I have seen enough to formulate my own thoughts. All my opinions made here are my own and I’m not looking to debate or be persuaded or to shift my point of view. I have my mind about these things and you have yours. I do urge you to keep opening avenues of discussions as I should not be the only person being asked.

Also, heads up, I will block any sort of argumentative bs-ery.

SC is obviously made with the perspective of the Asian American lens in mind and I have seen it been pointed out that it isn’t meant to be ‘representative’ but let’s be real here. How many people in the tag have already been hyping it up as Asian rep and stuff? I’m just saying. I just want to say that the experiences of Asian Americans do not reflect those of the diaspora. Yes, we can relate to a certain extent, but to generalise and distill all experiences of all members of the diaspora into that of Asian Americans is unacceptable.

My issues with SC (not gonna bother with spelling the name out and we are going into the whys) are as follows:

I would recommend starting out by reading this article on cbr.com that goes a little further into detail on the history of the character

The tl;dr is this; SC started out as an insensitive East Asian stereotype character created to capitalise on the 1970s fervour for anything Kung Fu. Sure, Marvel has done their best to retcon some of the less stellar parts of his origins, but the funniest thing is (legend. big bro. uncle Tony) Tong Leung, a renown Hong Kong actor has been casted as The Mandarin while Simu Liu, a Canadian Chinese actor, was casted as SC. Make of that what you will.

Okay deadass I’m not saying Simu Liu won’t do a good job because at this point all we have to work on is a teaser trailer but I’m all saying that is, was Arthur Chen Feiyu not available or something?? Idk. He didn’t pick up the phone?? Did Marvel even ask?? This is nonsensical salt and I digress

Then there’s the name. What kinda hell name is S**** C**??? This is some Cho Chang level bullshit. Yeah, sure we can say, oh they just want to make sure the branding is right. Ok. This coming from the studio that amalgamated the characterisations of Ned Leeds and Ganke Lee. Sure, Jan.

Full disclosure, I did like some of the vibes given out by the teaser. There were some very wuxia and xianxia inspired shots and scenes and if I do watch, I’ll be very keen on these bits. Awkwafina already looks like she is set to be etched deep into my heart and Uncle Tony looks to be gearing up to kick this out of the park because goddamn he looks good in that armour. Haven’t seen Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh’s character, but I’m sure she will be kicking ass and taking names for sure too because I am very sure veterans like her and Uncle Tony will look good doing wire works. But this isn’t a movie about them, is it? It’s about SC and right now with this teaser trailer, nothing about SC makes me want to froth at the mouth to watch.

Yes, I am saying that that subway scene does not impress me. We live in a world with stunt teams from China can work on a peanut budget to make conversations flow in a fight scene. Do better.

Again, I am very aware that this teaser is to hype people up. I know. I am still waiting for the proper first trailer to drop. I have actually deliberately kept myself oblivious to the production of this movie so as to not give myself any sort of preconceived notions. When that first trailer drops, then I will formulate my thoughts again.

Okay, I know it’s a teaser but some of the cgi just looks... very uncanny valley? It looks unfinished, is what I am getting at here. For a mega conglomerate verging on industry monopoly, even a teaser trailer should look 1000% better than this. Every beat of this should be flawless. It should look on par with the trailer. People who follow will know that I won’t ever fault a product because of shitty cgi (re: Word of Honor) but when you are the people behind the Live Adaptation of Mulan (which I hate) and Raya and the Last Dragon (which I categorically DETEST because that shit is bullshit mishmash of SEA cultures with fucking made up words being painted as *representation* and that is some fucking bullshit and as someone from SEA I’m sorry Queen Kelly Marie Tran BUT NO) I will hold you to the fucking standards of the high heavens as the House of the Devil Mouse deserves. Do fucking better.

I am not clairvoyant but I can already see how it is going to go when this movie doesn’t “do as well as expected” in Asia; you’ll hear people going on about how the Asian Asians don’t support these types of stories, how we don’t put effort into hyping movies and shows that push for representation. But can I ask whose representation are we talking about? I saw it with Crazy Rich Asians and Mulan, I saw it with Raya. Whose rep are we talking about? If someone out there, some little child sees themselves in these media products, sure, great! Empower these next generation for the push for a better hope. But whose rep are we pushing for? Because I definitely do not see myself in the Asian American lens of representation and I’m very sure I won’t ever and I know that I am not alone in this.

Hollywood needs to do better. To borrow the words of a friend, excusing mediocrity for ‘cultural appreciation’ is no good.

This rant has gotten long enough and I’m so sorry to everyone seeing this on your dash. I have a lot of salt today.

[cheesedoodlesurprise]

Dragon Age 2 Rant

Someone brought it up in some random Facebook Group and it got me thinking that I should finally just put it down in words.  

Dragon Age 2 is so horribly underrated that it hurts.  

The game gets so much hate that people didn’t understand what it did right

–BUT let’s get this out of the way fast: The below rant does NOT include the Level Design.  The same 4 locations used over and over.  There is no excuse for that.  It is bad and it should feel bad for it.  However much the points i will make can also be transferred over to this failure as well, that is just warping a point to excuse lazy or rushed design.

The people I have spoken to tend to cite one main example of its failure as a Role Playing Game(barring the above shit level design) and that is simply that it fails due to its action-style gameplay when compared to the original Dragon Age:Origins.  And I understand that.  There’s two radian wheels(unless you have a computer) and you’re running around and there’s not really much Party Maintenance like it had in the original.  It is not what a traditional RPG should be, and the party direction system was not the best(it reminded me way too much of Kingdom Hearts and Donald’s proclivity to use mega-elixers every time he loses one bar of mp unless you jump in there and hit him with the no-no can) especially when you realize that capitalizing on Condition Statuses is a main feature in felling your enemies.  It is just a gross departure from what a Role Playing Game should be, compounded by the fact that this was the Second Installment and it was already deviating so much from the turn based-lite party management norm.

The answer to this is simple.  Think back to the beginning of the game.  What happens?

The Hawke family gets attacked by a big fuck-off dragon and the story immediately cuts to Cassandra giving Varric shit for telling her something as stupid as “A Dragon Appeared” and you see that this whole game is now a narrative work; a retelling of events by someone being interrogated.  

Not just anyone, A FUCKMOTHERING BARD!!!!

Have YOU ever played a tabletop with someone rolling a bard?

You can’t believe a word they say, because the truth is boring and never makes for a good story.  So when asked what they did when separated from the party, instead of ‘Oh, there was a goblin so i stabbed it in the back” you’re told of a daring battle with a Bugbear King, where after felling the horrid beast, you found the princess he was holding prisoner and after releasing her from her bonds, she then had you free her from another trapping: that of virginity.

The point is this: Bards Lie.

If you take nothing else out of not just this long, badly punctuated, rant, take that.  Bards Lie about everything and anything.  It is who they are.  The story is all that matters.  So what is a Bard to do when being tortured by a bunch of Zealots, demanding knowledge on what to expect when they track down and try to kill one of your best friends?

Punch. That. Story. Up!

You make what originally is just a standard-if not slightly above average-fighter look like a whirling dervish of death to any who would cross him.

That’s what makes the story so well, this isn’t just an unreliable narrator, it is THE MOST unreliable of narrators.  One that tells you, right off the bat, that a lot of this never even happened.  You never know what really happened to Hawke and his Band of Merry Murder.  So, yes, the gameplay is a lot more action-oriented and you don’t have nearly as many combat options(especially if you are a mage) but it’s punched up to 11 the whole time because the person conveying the story is giving it all a nice sheen of ‘this is what happens when people cross them.”  You are not watching the Story of Hawke in this game.  You are watching VARRIC’S story of Hawke.

But that only answers the main issue people have with the game.  The change in controls.

What I never got is this: How can you rip on an RPG about its controls?  They are just mechanics, nothing more, and I have to say Bioware games always kinda sucked at their Turn-Based-But-Not-Really Mechanics.  KOTOR had a lot of issues and the crux of it was the clunky interface and squad controls.  I would love to have a party on a set it and forget it mechanic and not having to constantly pause the gameplay to switch over to one of the characters because they chose to not move out of fire.  How is that better than a little bit of AI that will give your party even SOME autonomy?  Because if you wanna talk about immersion, a character who is, in the narrative of the story, talked up as the quickest cutpurse on this continent and can never be caught by anyone but for some reason can not even fathom the idea of moving away from a giant spike pile he can see on the ground and instead walks right through the damn thing and kills himself is example 1:3 under the definition of Ludonarrative Dissonance.

….My point is this: Combat in Traditional RPGs is kinda trash to begin with and the main reason you play them is not combat.  It’s story.  The story is the big pull.  And this game has story falling out its ass.  It suffers in some places, sure, with what you can tell is rushed design and you are pigeon holed in a lot of places.  Case in point:I was a Mage who hated Blood Magic but put a lot of faith in the Apostates, so when every time you choose to help runaway mages and they come back and, whelp, looks like they are Blood Mages now I was so VERY angry at the game.  Livid.  I honestly don’t think people who played Rogues or Warriors and got DEEP into their characters(@meonlyred, I’m looking at you) can really match that level of anger and disappointment in the story of a game.  No matter what I try, these people just kept failing me.  

But that is the point.  I got so invested into this story that I was disappointed in 1s and 0s.  Here I was, trying to change the whole of Kirkwall by action alone: proving that having Magic does not mean you will become a monster(and, yes, i HATED the goddamn teaser trailer because in it, HAWKE USES GODDAMN BLOOD MAGIC JUST BECAUSE THE FUCKING BULL MAN WAS TOO MUCH FOR HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and yet every one I was putting faith and and having others trust my judgement on have been utterly betraying that faith and trust.

Because this land never functioned on the same as me.  I was the outsider.  The Fereldan immigrant, assuming that this world will function the same as the one I left.  Granted the land I left also had a jihadist attitude to my way of life, this new one in Kirkwall had a civil and social structure completely Foreign to me.  There was no way to change the way they viewed the world because I was just one person.  One Outsider, no matter my lineage, who couldn’t change anything.  This land was going to burn itself no matter what I did.  

And that was the point of Varric’s Story.  Hawke wasn’t the cause of the things that doomed Kirkwall.  The Expedition, the one that found the artifact that corrupted everyone?  Hawke just helped with the last leg of its setup.  They would have got it together eventually.  They would have found it.  Bartrand would have found it regardless.  And Anders still would have…. You know what, let’s save that shit til the end because I don’t want to upset myself early.

Anyway…. All of this would have happened no matter what(maybe a few things would have changed slightly, but not by much) Hawke did, but he was still in the middle of it all.  I know a lot of people like their stories to be centered around them, but those can get boring. Let’s use Fallout as an example: The Sole Survivor, wandering the wastes of The Commonwealth? When you spend your first 100 hours farming Duct Tape instead of finding your son, you come out to be an asshat.  But The Courier?  NOPE!  He was just a guy living in this world.  He isn’t the center of any story, really.  He is just a guy out for revenge, but he has no idea where to get it so him wondering around and dealing with random crap isn’t nearly as a disconnect as the game before or after it.  They are really fun and enjoyable protagonists.  Heck, one of my favorite Final Fantasys is 12: the one where you are NOT the main character of the story.  Thats the Sky Pirate and the Princess.  You are just tagging along for the ride, experiencing their story like a good audience surrogate.  

The only reason you are always being thrust into the middle of everything is because the Powers of this Town are throwing you at them.  The Qunari menace?  You are asked(told) to go deal with it, and it all blows up in your face because of someone else.  Hell you even tried to STOP the hellscape to be with Anders(that motherfucker) by being a good person and talking to him.  But nope.  He had his crappy agenda and nothing you could do would stop it.

….you know what, sure let’s talk about it now. That whole ending arc just pissed me off to no end.  There is Anders killing the ONE person in this whole city trying to hold everything together and treated people with even an ounce of trust and faith JUST TO PROVE A POINT THAT SIMPLY BY DOING IT DISPROVED HIS GODDAMN POINT!  

“Mages aren’t evil so I’m going to kill the beacon of peace in this whole shitty city which will lead to EVERY GODDAMN MAGE to just flipping a ‘whelp guess i’m an abomination now, time to murder everyone, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee blood magic is fuuuuuuuun!’ switch and I guess completely dismantle my entire point.  It’s a good thing Hawke stabbed me for being a fucking idiot” and then you come across the Mages who are holed up to protect themselves but, wouldn’t you know it, their leader turned himself into a Tentacle Death Monster and now you have to kill the one mage who had your back and was a beacon of not being a dickhole.  

All of this just constant “Mages are all evil dicks, lets torch them all’ just upset me so much.  I was playing the entire last part of the game with a giant grimace.  Angry at this whole damn city and making me kill all these people I tried to make better.

Yes, me.  I got so deep into this game(if you read up, I dropped the possessive pronoun a bit when talking about the story) that I was upset that they were betraying MY expectations of them as people.  Not Hawke.  By this time I got way into the game and imprinted.  

No matter what faults it has, in the end its story caused me to become so engrossed with it that even when it took a turn I did not like, I was so invested I was still hooked and responding to it as if it were happening to me.

I know it was a long rant that just sort of cut off, but Anders will do that to me.  Hell, I hated what he did so much, I even tried making a toon to romance him so I could see if there was more dialogue options or how it would shape with him actually having a loving relationship and nope! He still acted the same.  Just pleaded more for me to understand.  

I STILL had to gut him.  I was still so damn pissed off at him I had to kill him even as a character romancing him!

[nothe: wrote this up at work when I was bored so there is a very good chance I have odd stops and idea changes due to the nature of writing something while also having to work  on projects so it may be updated frequently]

[tonedpins]

One rule for the cunts and one rule for everyone else.

I received this lovely ask today and now is the time for me to answer…

To put you in context, I received an anonymous message 2 days ago (to which I’m pretty sure this one is related to) that I decided not to reply to for a couple of reasons. The most important reason being that it’s related to one of my personal friend, named in said message, and I don’t want that person to feel like they have to address it publicly if they don’t want to, the choice is theirs to make.

The message was asking me about why I had not said anything about my friend meeting Catherine when I had been so quick to judge people at the stage door in Bath, and then went on to say that my friend followed Catherine to have a conversation with her and feel like she’s better than everybody else, the message also said ‘‘that’s like not overly familiar at all’’.Here are the twitter post I made about the stage door situation;

I’ve just witness the most ridiculous behaviour from people that call themselves fans, since when backing someone in a corner is acceptable?

I felt so bad for Jemma, she was clearly feeling stock and wanted some room to move… and Jules was just a sweetheart trying to help

I wish I was, and honestly I don’t care that this might make me hated by some of the fandom but it needed to be said!

I dont know how anyone could feel good about taking a picture with them in that kind of environnement

My Twitter is x0xmarie0x0 and the post where made on April 1st, 2017

(To those wondering, I checked and I didn’t made a post on Tumblr related to this, I thought I had but apparently not) 

I still stand by what I said that day, now, if you were there and have a completely different feeling about how things went, it’s your opinion and I respect it, but this is how I personally felt and it’s not going to change. This was not normal stage door behaviour, I get being excited but it doesn’t excuse invading people’s personal space like some did. I also know I’m not the only person who felt that way. I have personally waited at a stage door for a mega movie star in the past and even that wasn’t as intense as what happened that day.

Like I said, I’m not going to name or tag the person about whom those messages seems to be related to because I want them to be able to choose to address it or not, it’s their choice, not mine to make. (I have deleted posts that would have made it clear as to whom it is for this exact reason) What I can tell you about them is that yes, they indeed had an ‘‘out of the ordinary’’ moment with Catherine and I’m one of the few that person chose to share it with. I’m not going to give any specific details about it, not only for them but also to respect Catherine and what she decided to share or not share with that person. I don’t know how the words got out and how this anon heard about it, I’ve personally shared a bit more details than what I’m writing here to some friends I trust wouldn’t have said anything. The only thing I might have told (or been overheard sharing) is how Catherine told that person Jemma was going to be at that specific representation of WTBS, it is the only way I could see as to how that anon knew I knew about my friend and Catherine meeting. The last thing I can had about this meeting is that they have not followed Catherine anywhere in the way the message implied, I know for a fact that person was thinking about not meeting Catherine at all during their trip.

I want to make it clear that I do not think my friend or myself are perfect, or that my opinion (or theirs) is better than anyone else. I’m also not doing this just to defend someone I care about, I’m doing this because I’m sick and tired of fandom wars and people not being respectful towards one another. I don’t believe in going into people ask box, using the anonymous feature, to call people names (in this case c*nts… really, what are we, 10yrs old?) and try to start fights. Don’t you think maybe people would feel more free about sharing their experiences if they didn’t have to be scared some people would get jealous and start harassing them or their friends? I have heard about private messsage boards/forums where people actually ask members to harass others because they said something they didn’t agree with or felt like something someone said was disrespectful towards Catherine or Jemma. That’s what I call online bullying and being someone who was the victim of this specific kind of bullying I cannot stay silent about this.

I know that I am a really opinionated person (I mean, look at the size of this post) and sometimes I understand how people could interpret it as me thinking I’m better than others (which I swear I don’t) and I sometimes react a bit too quickly and don’t take time to process things before publicly saying something. I made friends in this fandom with people I don’t always agree with (including the friend I’m specifically talking about here) and, in all honesty, I sometime even feel a tiny bit of jealousy when it comes to my (berena) friends having opportunities or experiences I don’t or didn’t get to have. I am far from being perfect and definitely never thought me or any of my friends are, I’ll be the first to admit when I was wrong about something (even if it hurts my ego) and am ready to talk things out with people when needs to be. I certainly don’t know everything but one thing I do know is that no one deserve to ever feel like they are less than others or that they don’t have the right to enjoy things because others don’t think they should.

I’m also going to take the time to rant (because let’s face it, this is partly what I’m doing here) on a couple of different things; 

Catherine and Jemma DO NOT have to do all the things they do for us, it’s nice of them to take the time to share part of their time and lives and I think it’s our responsibility to make sure they have a great time doing it. I’m not saying we have to agree with all they do or say, but we can make sure that even when we don’t we all stay polite towards them and each other.

One of the particularity of this fandom is how much we try to support both Catherine and Jemma but also their friends and family. I personally follow most of their family members on most social media, and I’m the first one to admit I shouldn’t interact with them as much as I do, but I think it’s important to remember that some of them are less comfortable with the attention than others and they don’t have to deal with their mum/wife/sister/friend fans like they do and we should all stay respectful of their boundaries. I’m just trying to say that maybe we should evaluate the reasons why we support them and then adapt our support accordingly. There’s nothing wrong with you going to see one of Sam show because you really find him funny (I’m planning on doing it next time I’m in London), nothing wrong if you love Poppy’s music and poetry (I know I personally love all of it) and want to tell her about it, nothing wrong if you are excited about Gab’s new/latests projects, but all of it isn’t right if you do it only to get recognition from Catherine and Jemma. These people are their owns entities and they deserve to be loved and respected for who they are and not because of whom their parents are.

Conventions season is here and a lot of lucky people will get to meet both Jemma and Catherine in London (sadly I won’t be able to attend), and the week after, Jemma in Birmingham (I’ll be there), so please people, make the experiences enjoyable for not only Jemma and Catherine but for all the other fans going. This includes not screaming random stuff to get their attention while they are meeting up with people (I’ve seen this happen, I should really say experienced it, in Bath and in all honesty those people are really lucky I didn’t want to cause a scene), some people might be more nervous than others, some might take a bit more time with them for a lot of reasons, some might choose to share private things with them they don’t want to tell everyone else so please mind your own business until it’s your time with them. I would also encourage people to help eachother out, if it’s not your first time at a Con and you realize it’s the first time for someone else and they don’t really know how it works give them pointers, if you see someone being so nervous they feel like running away, they might simply need for someone to be there and tell them it’s going to be alright. If it’s your first time doing this kind of thing, please do a bit of research, it will help you and others in the long run (I know it did for me). Last thing, if it’s not your first time meeting them, be mindful of that and let others have their moments with them too, we want as many people as possible to be able to experience this at its fullest and to have fun doing it. At the end of the day, what we want is for them to continue doing these kind of things with us, isn’t it? So please, don’t be an a*shole.

Catherine is really open, and I mean REALLY open about stuff online which means that we also are pretty open in the way we reply to her (me the first) but I’ve seen some weird and maybe a bit to personal and inappropriate things being said to her on Twitter, so for the love of god (or whatever you believe in) please remember that this is public and for everyone to see and that she’s human and even though I’m sure she doesn’t get shocked by much maybe they are things she shouldn’t or doesn’t want to know.

I could definitely go on and on (as you can probably tell by the length of this post) but I will stop after these few words;

The Berena fandom was (and still is) a really special place for a lot of people and it pains me to see that yet again a fandom I liked can’t seem to stick together because of different opinions on multiple of subjects. We have the chance to be in a fandom that connect people from different part of the world, coming from different backgrounds, different age groups, and we all connected with Berena for so many different reasons. Shouldn’t this be enough?

And to this lovely anon (I’m pretty sure I know who you are) next time you have something to tell me, please come off anon and let’s have a nice and civilise conversation (in private or publicly) but please know that I do not respond well to people calling me, or my friend, c*nts and I won’t let anyone try to intimidate me (been there, done that, not gonna let it happen again) so, you can stop this right now. And to anyone who doesn’t like me or what I have to say, it’s fine, you have the right to, ignore me (that’s what I usually do) or even block me if you need to but please don’t try to pick fights with me or the people I care about. (Collectormania won’t be the moment to try to speak to me unless you have something nice to say, I’m going there to enjoy myself and spend time with people I love and to meet Jemma not to create drama, leave me alone!)

On this note,

Good Night!