#introducing interesting concepts but only really understanding them on a kinda surface level and not having them reflect in the gameplay

[falmerbrook]

I need an elder scrolls developer to get really into ecology/biology. I am unsatisfied. Someone needs to pull a tolkein-and-languages with the ecosystems of tamriel. please.

[skinner17]

Dissecting Red Spider Arc-The arc that non shipper find it disturbingly (For those who mind) Shippy

I’ve been watching gintama for the past couple of weeks. And since lately I encounter sleeping problem, lets turn this energy to talk about one of my favorite arc. The controversial arc that invite polarized opinion among Gintama fans.

For  Tsukuyo fans, Red spider is a certain favorite together with Yoshiwara in flame and Courtesan of the nation.  This arc fleshed her background and deepen her bond with yorozuya, especially Gintoki

For casual fans, this arc is the first time they see a glimpse of gintoki past, The first time  gintoki in a berserk mode, the first time he act by his own volition. And somehow he appeared like a true shonen hero saving the heroine.

By then tsukuyo was far from heroine status. She just recently introduced a couple episodes back. Yoshiwara in flame focused more on Hinowa and seita story. But Tsukuyo already  rose in ranking because her unique character design (in sacchan word, she has a lot of ‘hooks’) aside being badass in general.

For naysayers, Red spider arc is that arc that destroy Tsukuyo character. Reduced her into damsel in distress, mere love interest and what not. Of course its people’s right to interpret a work however they see fit. People enjoying entertainment in a different way afterall. Maybe they are a strict feminist type who wanted a true xena like character?  disappointed when a strong female charachter ended up saved by the male hero? (Tho I wonder why they don’t care with preceeding events where Tsukuyo saved gintoki a couple of time)  

The other would say this arc is such a big jump from previous arcs. A sudden transition they would say. And heck they’re right. Red spider arc  Is different compared to other serious arc before it.  Its lustrously dark, whispery,  not much emphasis on family nor comedy, not much explosion nor machismo.

And more importantly, its uncharacteristically Intimate.  

What do you expect? It took placein Yoshiwara-The Red light District- afterall.

The curtain raised with Jiraiya, the ex teacher of Tsukuyo, the main villain of this arc, On his post coital glow pondering about his object of creation. After enjoying the service of yoshiwara, He looked at the moon and probably feeling another rush of excitement reminiscing his dear beautiful student and the plan he’d set for her.

Not long after, Tsukuyo feel someone dangerous infiltrating her city. She and her Hyakka squad has been working hard to push down the crime that on the rise after the city lost its night king. Nearing their limit, she turned to Yorozuya, wondering if they can help with the drug problem.

Somehow, Tsukuyo and Gintoki teamed up just the two of them investigating the shady group with spider tattoo trademark. The result was assortment of classic romantic comedy skit : To-Love-Ru type of ‘accident’ and pretend couple.

Ok at this point its just natural that people start to see the two as potential couple. When they bicker they’d scream their heart silly, forgetting  whatever  adult persona they had in mind. Yet when the time come, they play along really well with the others bullshit act. They are on the same frequency already.

Back to the story, Later, they found out the drug lord is Jiraiya who apparently the long dead master (teacher who take care of  protegee under their wing) of Tsukuyo. With his unique ability he nearly killed Gintoki and captured Tsukuyo.

Some Naysayers disappointed at this point because Tsukuyo who supposedly a good fighter became useless in front of jiraiya. Ok let me use this opportunity to explain the technicality of how that’s possible.

She was shocked.

It was a surprise attack

Jiraiya, knew his student fighting ability the best and knew how to immobilize her.

Even Gintoki Almost killed because of his weird technique

She used the last of her strength to saved gintoki from jiraiya’s final blow.

“Huh? But gintoki didn’t turned into a useless mess when he met his long dead master alive?”

Lol what are you smoking? The old master  would split gintoki’s head from his body if not because Kagura’s help.  Also Utsuro/Shouyo goal was to crushed the rebels and nothing to do with Gintoki. While Jiraiya’s goal was to capture Tsukuyo. Understand the difference?  

Ok now that its out of my system lets continue.

Later Gintoki learned about the nature of Jiraiya and what this student-master relationship actually are from Zenzou. She-who believed every word of him and followed his foot step- was his creation and his prey at the same time. This method is sickening for Gintoki who loved his master to death.

For Gintoki a master should be more or less like shoyo. Strong, kind, wise and selfless. The kind of sage who gave his life for his student. Its infuriating to learn that a good women like tsukuyo has a psychotic monster as a master.

“see..Its not because of Tsukuyo that gintoki willingly revert to his shiroyasa self. Its because the master-student thingie that made him mad af”

Was the stuff I read from naysayers.  And for this one, I kinda agree. The main thing that infuriate gintoki about Jiraiya was that he used  master student relationship for some psychotic goal. As we know later, whenever topic about his own master brought on, Gintoki turned into a different beast.

Even I can see this arc’s intent beside telling tsukuyo’s past and cementing her as one of the recurrent character was also to foreshadow  Shoyo related arcs in the future.

However among all of that baggage brought by this arc, theres this one dialogue that caught my attention.

G : "give up already, theres nothing in your web. This entire time there was only a pathetic little spider spinning thread into sky while gazing at distant moon"

J : "What are you babbling about?I already knew that long ago"

The ones who ascociate Tsukuyo with the moon are the one who cherish her like hinowa and the hyakka squad  or the bastard who obsessed at her like Jiraiya. It’s a secret nickname people gave to her beside Shinigami Tayuu / courtesan of death. Wt  

At that  moment, Gintoki  speak about what Tsukuyo is to Jiraiya existence : A moon to a little insignificant spider. This confirm that Gintoki understand Tsukuyo’s epithet-wich means at that point of story he is familiar toward  Tsukuyo more than the viewers aware of.

To add, This is probably just me but the way he said that stuff about Jiraiya, whispering  while gazing at the sky, as if its applied to him aswell.  

Well, I just think that because throughout the fight he keep rambling about being on the same level as Jiraiya.

G: Do you know how to survive the spider nest? By eating the spider.

G : She is stronger than you ever be. A coward like me is enough for a coward like you

To Fight Jiraiya, Gintoki  drew parrarel between himself and Jiraiya. And its not impossible that parrarel extended until that moment.    

I  came to the conclusion At that moment Gintoki  already  admire Tsukuyo. Wether  her virtue, her  face, her quirk  or her phisycal attractiveness, it could be anything. The fact is Tsukuyo basically embodies everything gintoki like in a women.   

However because of his mindset and his self sabotaging lifestyle, he understood Jiraiya’s point of view of admiring an existence that is too good for them.

The episode ended with Tsukuyo learning his master’s past  and accepting his flaw after killing him. The moment when Gintoki implied that he would never be a good student to their master as tsukuyo is pretty touching too.

The last episode of this arc is a short one with majorly comedic skits. Another To Love Ru accident. And  a classic wingman setup to force a couple to be alone together.

Lol too much couply stuff happening in this arc.

Later after the crazy terminator drunken stupor, Tsukuyo asked gintoki if she didn’t has this scar, would her life be any different?

At this point I realize the pain endured by her, even though she said she was fine, physically and mentally, she actually struggling with the realization that all her past was something different than she perceived to be, that rather than genuine student master relationship, its an elaborate plan by her master to kill himself.

Its like realizing that we are adopted after all this time living in a loving family. From the surface it might not changed anything because its all in the past, But it changed everything within. It changed the foundation  of what we stood upon all these time.

Gintoki then assured her that her life is one that she choose, No one make her choose that. wether it’s  driven by a psychotic manipulation or a trust in a teacher who wanted make her strong. The life is still hers to behold and cherish

Gintoki further assured that her face Is not ugly, Its pretty face carrying clean soul. Or something to that effect (since translation vary)

As you see “Soul” is the overarching concept on Gintama. Its like “Adventure” on One piece and “Hard Work” On Naruto. It’s the Idea that the shounen protagonist holds dear.  

Shoyo first teaching to Gintoki was  how to protect his soul. In the war Gintoki choose to kill Shoyo to save his master’s soul. Means he choose Shoyo over his friends and himself. In effect, one of the friend’s soul was corrupted. While Gintoki turned himself into a vessel  whose purpose was merely to protect people he deemed fit and procasinating on his own growth.

Gintoki speak about Tsukuyo’s soul in her face is another testament of how deep their trust and bond has formed. 

Even though Gintoki has innate ability to peek into the human character, its not his fashion to directly address it. He usually find a roundabout way to make the others understand that they are being understood. But with Tsukuyo, everything he do about her  is direct.

“Don’t be a stranger, Lean on me, laugh with me and cry with me. I’d be there, cry and laugh with you ” Said Gintoki to tsukuyo.

 The Gintoki who often avoid emotional baggage from a stranger.

In conclusion, Red Spider Arc is such an awesome arc. The vibe is cool, the soundtrack is awesome and its has an intense emotionally charged action.

It is also the breeding ground for gintsu shipper, wich probably gonna make some part of fandom upset. But it is what it is and we can just enjoy or choose not to.

[arkus-rhapsode]

I was wondering if you were planning on doing EZ reviews. I personally think if you get past the Erza clone and the similarities in looks with some characters that the story is very well and actually has a better plot than FT did.

So I’m going to give my surface level response on this and I will be fair on my stance like I usually try to. In the most general term, I don’t really review a series I don’t care about. If you notice I haven’t done a review of Black Clover in a while, its mainly cause this current arc is something I don’t really care about and it would feel like a drain on both me and my audience to here that each week. I’m sure my audience and EZ fans probably don’t wanna hear me belly ache about the series week to week.

This series really does show me that its made for people who like Hiro Mashima’s work. And if you do, more power to you, but your probably not going to enjoy my usually dissecting review style.

So right here I’m going to give my thoughts on the series to this point, and I wanna start positively. I do agree that the plot to Eden’s Zero is much better structured than FT’s once you get past the Elsie stuff. The four star shine robots plot to get to Mother actually seems like a good plotting out of how to take this story. It really reminds me of finding the four rave’s.

I also think I’ve mentioned this back in my former reviews, but the setting to is also interesting too, and forces world building. Though, I’d like them to experience the world rather than Witch just read of a synopsis of the world. Yeah having an internet in the world does kinda kill the sense of adventure.

And I will also say that I’m happy that most the cast has motivation unlike most of FT.

And with that we lead into my problems with the  story. First as I mentioned, the the plot does have better structure once you get past the Elsie stuff, the problem is that before that the pacing and plot seems really really slow, very confused, and then introduces such a high concept like time being eaten and going to other worlds in the past. While I do appreciate Hiro trying for a slower pace in the beginning, he’s doesn’t use it interestingly. He could take this time to explain the government or how these cosmos work? Is there king of space? Could the cosmos be cut up like the blues in One Piece? Or how about my biggest question, WHAT THE FUCK IS ETHER GEAR?! No we need more time travel and friendship!

Then there’s the first arc with this whole sister stuff. I will give credit that Rogue Out as villains aren’t too bad. Jin is obviously the best because he might heel turn, the sumo looking guy isn’t overtly evil, which was nice, and I could kinda get into Sister’s whole thing of just doing what she is paid to do as a motivation. But all villains except them are the usual Hiro Mashima bland weirdos with no characterization.

This Illega guy, I was expecting maybe a twist with him and why he has a collection of girls was maybe something subversive. Maybe he is trying to bring back tourism to his planet and by kidnapping B-cubers he was going to make them make the planet more entertaining, I mean Rebecca had a whole chapter praising them as coming up with fun things to do. Maybe he has a child who has an ether gear that made them look human and left him after the planet got closed off saying they’ll become a B-cuber, so he’s kid napping B-cubers to see if that one is her and that stuff that makes them stone should make his child reveal her true form.

No, he’s just a creep who likes turning women into furniture. Because… And that guy Wise’s intro arc who is just a common thug with his leg fetish brothers.

So I can’t call that story well done. If it takes till the Elsie arc to actually get to the plot actually moving forward and that this current arc is this bland and boring arc with everything being in the morally black, its not interesting.

How about the characters? Well, Shiki I’ll at least be fair, is actually gotten better than Natsu mainly cause he’s trying to be proactive. I’ll even give his gravity power at least seems to have more creativity than the generic fire dragon magic. But he’s such a confused and bland character. I mentioned this in my review chapter 1, Shiki’s strongest aspect is his social awkwardness and how that related to being raised around machines in a fantasy park. But he wants Shiki to be like your usual big damn hero whenever the time comes for him to look cool.

I recently watched an interesting piece on how My Hero’s Deku and Black Clover’s Asta represented two different types of shounen protagonists and ways to take a story. With Deku being a representation of the protagonist who needs to grow physically and emotionally into the pillar of his world that can inspire and fufil his dream, while Asta already is the pillar of his world who already can inspire and needs to earn recognition. Both of these types of protagonist are fine, but Shiki is trying to be both of them and it results in none of them. He seemingly needs to grow into a person who can actually get a ton of friends, but he also is apparently the kid who will rock the universe. It just results in a confused character, why does he act like such an idiot when he’s completely competent in action scenes?

And what makes him endearing? Say robots have a heart? Dude all the robots in this series have shown the ability to make expression and have emotion. We saw an android walk the street in chapter 2! Why do machines act like Shiki just told them the word of god after he says they have a heart, they all emote. Look at Pino and especially Witch, they’re displaying a range of emotion. Its not like they look like a cyberman who talks mechanically.

He’s just confused and unfortunately falls always back into that friendship shit as his only motivator instead of possibly addressing the trauma or adding a layer on how he won’t lose other people and what that feels like for him. The only time it really felt like he was living up to that emotionally stunned guy, was when he was beating the shit out of Illega to the point that Pino needed to shut him off, because I’m sure this kid can’t handle the emotion of anger quite yet in this situation.

Rebecca I think is worse though. I don’t know why people like her other than her design. Her personality is essentially jelly that can be morphed into whatever you want to fit the situation. She’s perverted in some scenes, but then doesn’t like perversion? I mean, she gets two guns in her hands and looks like a moron shooting randomly. Like is that badass? Is this what a female character has to do to be considered cool now?

I don’t consider her a rip off of Lucy, because Lucy actually had a character. Had a personality. No she is more a rip off of Elie from Rave, right down to the shooting shit up part. Only Elie made sense cause she was actually really unhinged thanks to the fact that she had no memories. But she got over it! She developed. Outside of her one past flashback with Happy, nothing about her is that interesting. I’ll also give her that she now just gets ether gear and its something she clearly can’t control yet, so there is room for improvement.

Wise, is actually an okay character. He’s got a cool concept of a guy from the past who is an inventor living in the future. I think his only weakness is that his ether gear is stupidly OP.

Pino is… Just and ornament that looks cute. You want your daughteru character to latch onto Shiki, here. Hell, I have bet going with a friend of mine that Pino will get some upgrade and she’ll have the body of a hot teenage girl. Its not that I hate here idea of having her memory erased, but the more I see of her and to more I hear about this robots have a heart makes me wish Michael came along.

Yeah, missed opportunity, cause Michael is not only a foil to Shiki and his adoptive brother, but he also doesn’t have a humanoid face. Meaning he doesn’t get convey true emotion so he actually seems like a robot. He actually seems like he’d have a character arc about discovering wanting to be more and more human. People would call Shiki weird calling a robot his “brother” and Michael never thought about it and we know there are multiple models of Michael. Imagine how fucking devastating it would be to see yourself mass produced. Imagine he actually gets to the point that he wants a humanoid face, because he wants to emote.

No we get Pino, who basically is Carla, but lacks any of thee enjoyable sass. Because we didn’t have enough sidekicks on this cast. Also we learn EMP is how to shut off ether gear, great, this is like if Usopp just had sea-prism stone on him at all times.

Then there’s Homura, she’s awful too. I’ll at least give Rebecca that she’s likable, but Homura she is personalitiy-less and has the worse character gimmick I think I’ve seen. Its not funny, its dumb. She can also use this ether gear too, and its a sword that was apparently passed down-its fucking 10 commandments. She also just walked into this story, like wha…? I’d be fine if she was like hunting the Eden’s Zero ship and watched it take off on Bluegarden, but no, Homura just came along cause she conveniently met Wise.

I’ll give her credit that the sword fighting looks cool, and I understand why people might like her cause that actually seems like something badass, but as a character she just feels tacked on.

Then there’s witch who is basically just the older sister character.

Elsie is not awful actually. She actually is a lot different from Erza and I actually would like to follow the space pirates more than I would want these random travelers. Also quick question, why do they still have the Eden’s Zero looking like a pirate ship? I mean, it looks cool, but these fuckers are not pirates, not even close. Oh wait, I know! We needed to rip off captain Harlock some more.

I’m not going to even talk about the potential love square with Shiki, Rebecca and Lavilla/Labilla, possibly Esie and Homura (?) cause one credit to FT was it wasn’t a harem, and Rave used a character like Celia and Beruka to more add an extra layer to the relationship of Elie and Haru. SO hoping Hiro avoids that.

So yeah if this rant has probably showed you, I don’t think EZ is all that great. But if you like it, fine I get that. I just have no interest in really talking about it week to week as even though I got down on FT, the beginning of the series was still something I enjoyed and I wanted to talk about how the current stuff had turned out. But EZ has no, beginning I liked. So I just don’t feel like I should be talking about it week to week.

[captainscominglookbusy]

rant about Dead Space 3!!

Let’s just take this part by part, shall we? I could go stream-of-consciousness style, but then we’d be here all day.

Without further ado, why Dead Space 3 is the most disappointing video game of all time. Full spoilers below, for Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect 3. 

THE STORY

The story is sad because it’s a worse version of Mass Effect 3.

Our grizzled hero, despite his heroic actions, is now stuck back in the midst of civilization until he is whipped back into the action by a big strong Latino man, who helps him get off the planet just as it is attacked. He must leave behind his civilization in order to save it.

He must then reunite with old and new characters alike in order to find some crapshoot plan where no one knows how it works - they just know it’s the only way to stop the Eldritch Abominations that are threatening life as we know it, the ones that show up once a civilization has advanced beyond a certain point and then wipe them out for Generic Evil Reasons.

People needlessly die along the way, the hero must confront the pain of failing to save his friends, and in the end he must sacrifice himself in order to give the war An End Once And For All. Except also he might not be dead.

Despite my tone, that story’s alright on the surface. I actually really liked Mass Effect 3. Say what you want about the ending, the game as a whole is pretty solid. Dead Space 3 just executes all of those things worse.

At no point are you given a really clear idea of what’s happening on the moon in the first level, or in humanity’s civilization at large. Have the Unitologists taken over? Are they ALL militant? Is it moon-wide, or just in the city Isaac’s in? Or just a few city block’s worth of revolution? What’s their goal? Are they just trying to create more Markers, or are they trying to kill Isaac? Does Isaac know any of this before Carver and Norton show up? If so, why is he just sitting in his apartment? If not, WHY NOT? Nothing ever gets explained. Instead, never mind that, we must now venture forth into space.

There’s some derelict ship exploration for the first third of the game - the ships all have the same design, so it’s really boring, but the concept is fine. If it got diversified and revamped, it would have made a solid base for Dead Space 4’s gameplay, which I believe was kinda the plan if Dead Space 3 hadn’t been awful and tanked the franchise.

Then you go to the scariest place of all places you could go in a horror franchise - Hoth. And you spend the rest of the game there. You just walk in circles around this one snowy science base, trying to figure out what happened. Oh wow, they got killed by Necromorphs. Whoa.

At one point I actually started to appreciate the story’s twist on certain things - up until now in the franchise, Big Establishment Things like the The Church and The Military were the bad guys, whereas the good guys were generally normal people, often with the power of SCIENCE on their side (you come across several evil scientists as well, but the general trend still stands). And for the first while of DS3, it seems like the opposite is true - you find out this science division was trying to turn on some Machine that might lead to an outbreak, and the military general is the one trying to stop them. His way of doing this is by murder, but still, I found it to be an interesting twist that the military seemed to be fighting against scientists for what was best for humanity this time around, a reversal of what the Dead Space universe has catered up to this point.

But then it turns out that turning on the Machine is the right thing to do, science was right, the military were just being jerks and not listening to reason, because why explore different angles of the same themes the franchise has already covered. Let’s just do the same thing again but worse. I love it.

Eventually you find out that there was an alien civilization that did the exact same thing humans are doing now with the Markers, and that they tried to stop the Markers from taking their final form…A MEATBALL MOON MADE OF ALL THE ZOMBIES PILED TOGETHER LIKE IT’S KATAMARI DAMACY. HOW SCARY.

Why would the Moons work like this? Like, on a biological level? Why design a Marker that creates deadly vicious monsters, if building more Markers through non-zombified people is required for the process to work? How could a species evolve to function in such a way? Don’t worry about it, aren’t you scared?

So anyways, after you’ve found the Codex to turn off The Machine (no, those are not made up names for the MacGuffins, those are the ACTUAL generic names they decided to go with), you let the bad guy activate the Moon beam (instead of just shooting him once he gives up his hostage, which the heroes have at least five seconds to do without any risk), and then fight the moon. And fall from space back down to the planet. And live.

*sigh*

Moving on.

THE CHARACTERS

Dead Space has always had two separate schools of bad guys; the Marker side, and the human side. In Dead Space 1, you have a deceptive hallucination manipulating you on one end, and crazed scientists and secret government agents on the other. In Dead Space 2 you have Nicole, no longer hiding as a messenger for the Marker haunting you at every turn in a fantastic representation of PTSD, and you have a provincial overlord willing to contain a deadly outbreak at any cost, not to mention an INCREDIBLE character in Stross, a fellow inmate whose scrambled brain and his tendency to lash out can’t overcome the fact that he truly does want to help make things right.

In Dead Space 3 you fight evil people with guns and a moon. Such depth.

Danik is this game’s main antagonist, and he just shows up to make things more complicated and less fun. He’s sane enough to taunt Isaac with generic evil monologues, but insane enough to believe that necromorphism is the ideal form of humanity. They try to have their cake and eat it too, and in doing so they’ve curb stomped the cake. None of his ideology is any more interesting than what players already found out in the Unitology church in DS2, and that didn’t even require a living character to give us exposition.

I should reiterate that Danik, also, has no idea what THE MACHINE Macguffin does, but he’s convinced he’ll be able to activate it the EVIL way, instead of the GOOD GUY way.

The Brethren Moon twist is an attempt at cosmological horror, a stab at Lovecraftian abominations, but it falls completely flat. There’s nothing intimidating about a moon, aside from I guess being big.

Cthulhu is not scary because he’s big.

Cthulhu’s scary because his very presence can drive you insane, can take you into the abyss, can make hallucinate and rave and kill. Sorta like the Marker we’ve been dealing with for two games. An effective, creepy looking icon inherently tied to the franchise. So what’s the point of revealing the Marker’s Final Form?

The Moons add nothing to the story, aside from providing something that can technically be considered a plot twist and giving Isaac something bigger to fight and upping the ante so that the final boss of Dead Space 4 would probably be just fighting space itself. Dead Space. OoooOOoooOOOOoooh.

The good guys are only slightly better. Isaac’s character, while not developing all that much (he’s just mopey the whole game), isn’t completely sabotaged, and Carver is a fine character in his own right, particularly if you play co-op (so I’ve heard). The two have some decent dialogue with each other - their sort-of-friendship feels unearned, but looking at it on its own, it’s written well.

And then, Ellie…

The game flat-out tricked me. Ellie, the awesome cool amazing standout character of Dead Space 2, becomes a complete damsel-in-distress in this game, and I say it tricked me because I didn’t even notice. When she first showed up as “stranded and in need of rescue,” I figured “okay, once we finally find her she’ll start kicking butt and taking names again,” but I was SO DISTRACTED BY HOW BAD THE REST OF THE GAME WAS THAT I DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE how nothing of a character she is in this game. She gets rescued, she gets upset with Isaac, she cries, she talks to him over the intercom, she has A BIG FAKE SACRIFICE FOR NO REASON, then gets captured, is used as a hostage and bargaining chip, and then she gets sent away on a shuttle. I don’t think she fires a gun once in the whole game. She’s there for Isaac and Norton to fight over, because that’s right, Dead Space 3 has the AUDACITY to introduce a LOVE TRIANGLE AS PART OF THE MAIN PLOT. I understand that emotions are heavy in stressful scenarios, and that people act irrationally even in important, large-scale moments, but some of the dialogue plays out like a fricking soap opera.

“I know you two [Isaac and Ellie] had a “thing,” but she’s mine now.” - actual dialogue from Norton. THE DRAMA.

As far as the other characters, even Isaac and Carver don’t care about them.

At one point Isaac finds the corpse of Rosen, a former squadmate, and says “Oh thank god” because it’s not Ellie’s corpse. What kind of monster do you have to be that THAT’S your only reaction to seeing your ally’s dead body? They don’t become good friends, but good Lord, Isaac, show some sympathy. The guy drove you around space for the first third of the game.

Another side character, Buckle, the group just leaves to freeze in a building, even though it takes Isaac about 2 minutes to find the heater for the building and turn it on (AFTER said character dies). And the other side character, Santos, Carver actively tries to stop Isaac from saving because “it’s too risky.” 

Let me clarify: Carver (and also Ellie) just stand and watch Isaac try to help her for about 30 seconds, before stepping in and forcing Isaac to stop. Santos falls off a cliff and dies because Carver decided to criticize Isaac’s sense of morality instead of actually helping. These are the heroes, let me remind you.

And Norton’s just stupid. He’s an annoying a-hole, who is then revealed to be a spy, whose life you then save, who then tries to BLAME YOU EVEN THOUGH HE KIDNAPPED YOU TO COME ON THE MISSION IN THE FIRST PLACE, and then you shoot him. And Ellie’s sad about it for ten minutes, despite all of the above.

Wouldn’t it be cool if the spy was a character you had grown to trust and like, like in Dead Space 1? Or even one that you were mostly apathetic towards until the twist, when his character suddenly becomes ten times more interesting, like in Agents of SHIELD?

But no, they just picked the character you already hated. Because that makes for a GREAT character and a SHOCKING TWIST.

There’s nothing satisfying about it. The character is a jerk to Isaac the entire game, then is revealed to have sold you out to Danik, then gets starts trying to shoot you, and you’re STILL somehow supposed to feel bad when you kill him.

What?

Also, there’s just…dumb stuff that happens.

Isaac has a gun pointed to his head. Point blank. You want to know how he gets out of that situation? This genius engineer that has survived by the skin of his teeth for two games?

He waits. And waits. And then right as the bad guy’s about to shoot, he just moves really fast out of the way.

Kinda dumb, right? A pretty anticlimactic way to resolve a supposedly tense scene?

What if I told you he does that THREE TIMES throughout the course of the game?

*shuffles cue cards* alright, what’s next? Oh, right, yes-

THE GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is the scariest part of the game.

Because it’s bad. Everything that feels crisp and neat and unique about the first two games is gone.

You know things are going wrong when the first weapon Isaac shoots is an automatic pistol. Not a plasma cutter. Nope. One of the most interesting things about the last two games, where Isaac the engineer is forced to improvise mining tools in order to create efficient weapons? Out the window. Here’s a normal regular gun. And also all the ammo is the same. That inventory management that actually created an effective level of anxiety in the last two games? The one where you had to cleverly balance how much of each type of ammo you carried based on what you were expecting to encounter, and how comfortable you were with each gun, and how running out of one type of ammo would challenge you to confront the situation differently than you normally would? Gone. Shoot whatever gun however much you want. Which begs the question, why even craft more than two guns?

WHY EVEN CRAFT MORE THAN TWO GUNS?

WHAT’S EVEN THE POINT?

There’s no point, is the point. I created a plasma cutter and an assault rifle on my first play through. And I pulled out the rifle like three times. One gun was enough, and I felt no desire to try out anything else. Because what’s the point. It’s all the same now.

And not just the ammo. Every enemy encounter feels the exact same. Within a single side quest I lost track of how many times I entered a room and three to four Slashers crawled out of the vents, one by one. Every room felt the exact same. After a certain point, the game just stops trying to surprise you.

In boxing, an uppercut can take you by surprise, if it’s thrown in at the end of a chain of jabs and crosses. But imagine you’re sparring with someone who only uppercuts.

Ever.

That’s not a challenge. It doesn’t matter how hard the uppercut is. You just lean your chin back a few inches and counter.

Every. Single. Time.

Every element of spice and variety in Dead Space’s 1 and 2 feels gone, or at the very least watered down.

And speaking of variety, let’s talk about the enemy design.

Dead Space 2 was fantastic about upping the ante with enemy design. It added at least five new kinds of necromorphs, and every one of them was a change in gameplay. The Pack can be killed in a single shot but swarm you in massive numbers. The Stalkers rely on predatory, velociraptor tactics; every new enemy introduction is cool.

Even Dead Space: Extraction has Grabbers that hide under the water and Fliers that soar around the room and swipe down at you. (For the record, Extraction as a whole is a little cheesy, but still a lot of fun and clearly trying out new ways of exploring the Dead Space universe that are fun and interesting. Unlike a certain other entry in the franchise).

Compare all that to Dead Space 3, which outside of bosses, introduces two enemy types: the Fodder, which are essentially slashers that can turn into Lurkers by exploding into tentacles, and Aliens, which are (to be fair, legitimately scary) minibosses in the last few levels of the game.

Everything else is either the exact same or a slight redesign. The Lurkers are dog zombies, not baby zombies. The swarming enemies are now emaciated adults instead of children. But everything still feels…the same.

There are even little swarmer necros that, this time around, can take over a body and start haphazardly shooting the gun its holding.

But that’s made entirely moot by the NON-haphazard gun-shooting human enemies you fight in the first level! What’s interesting or scary about a zombie that can’t aim?

Oh, also, that satisfying squishing noise when you killed a Swarmer that was crawling on you? It’s just gone. Isaac just swats them off silently. No sound effect at all. Minor gripe, but it’s stupid.

There’s a recurring Giant Enemy Crab that is just annoying to fight, and one boss sequence against the Nexus that’s legitimately fun. Because it’s just the final boss of Dead Space 1 with a bit of a twist. Almost everything good about this game is lifted directly from previous games, and almost everything new and innovative about it falls flat.

There’s three new types of puzzles, and only one of them is decent.

And also, one more random note - and by random I mean it felt just as random to me as it does in the middle of all this - Dead Space 3 is incredibly proud of its ladders. It’s weird.

Someone real high up the corporate Ladder (heh, ladder) was really pleased with how the ladder mechanic worked out.

In case you’re wondering, the ladders are nothing special. They’re fine, they didn’t ever glitch for me or anything, but like…there’s ladders everywhere.

Dead Space’s 1 and 2 handled elevation through stairs, inclines and lifts, but someone was REAL happy that they came up with the idea of adding ladders. They’re bright blue, they’re generally required to use in order to progress, they halt momentum because Isaac climbs ladders slowly, and did I mention they’re everywhere?

At one point there’s a wall of ice, or rock, or tightly packed snow or whatever, that comes up to a bit above Isaac’s head.

A fairly physically fit person could pull themselves up. And you’re playing as Isaac. Who can curbstomp limbs straight off of bodies in a single go.

But nope, we need to throw a ladder in there for no reason.

Don’t have an animation where Isaac can pull himself up. Don’t just desiGN THE LEVEL WITH A SLIGHT INCLINE. GOTTA REALLY MAKE THE MOST OF THIS HOT NEW LADDER TECH.

It doesn’t ruin the game. It’s just bizarre. And it’s bizarre that someone’s proud of it. And once you’re looking for it, it’s blatantly obvious that someone is DEFINITELY super proud of it.

So now we can go into glitches.

Let’s start small. Sometimes there are just little hiccups, like environmental elements loading in late.

Other times you take damage from, shall we say, plays that the coach should challenge. Here’s one where I defeated the boss, but (without touching me) it did damage to me as it sprinted over to where it needed to be for the next cutscene to happen.

Oh, also, every time you walk up to a wall and try to melee it, Isaac’s arm and shoulder JUST GO THROUGH THE WALL. For EVERY SINGLE WALL. I’ve programmed games in Unity that avoid that glitch. It looks and feels so lazy, and I don’t think it happens in any of the other games.

The game introduces a combat roll, but doesn’t expect you to use it. I accidentally rolled into a cutscene, and instead of just having Isaac roll in place and complete the animation before standing up, which would have looked fairly natural, I watched in shock as Isaac, like a photorealistic version of Samus’s morph ball, just uncurled in midair and teleported into position so the cutscene could play “normally.”

At another point a cutscene started as I opened a door, and for no reason (unlike the above, which was caused by my rolling), I watched two dead bodies take life and snap into place for the cutscene like extras in the freshmen musical forgetting their cue.

Also the game has these invisible threshold walls that enemies can’t cross. There are points in the game where you’re fighting enemies, and if you back through an open doorway or across a bridge, the enemies will just FORGET YOU EXIST. They literally run the other direction and then just stand there until you cross the line again. It’s ridiculous AI design that I only saw once in any of the other games, but I found four blatant examples of in Dead Space 3.

I didn’t encounter the infamous “main characters get their limbs shot off in the middle of a cutscene” glitch, but I recommend looking that one up as well, because it’s hilarious.

REDEEMING QUALITIES

I never said Dead Space 3 was the worst game ever made. Just that it was disappointing. So here’s everything they did right, that I can remember.

-Isaac’s character, thanks largely to Gunner Wright’s performance, is still pretty good.

-Carver’s character, while a little shallow, still feels “lived-in,” if that makes sense. I got the feeling that this guy had a story as long and complicated as Isaac’s even though we only hear bits and pieces of it in-game.

-Isaac and Carver’s evolving dynamic throughout the game, while feeling unearned in single player, is still well-written if you look at each scene without context.

-Apparently in co-op, the player playing as Carver will hallucinate and see enemies that aren’t actually there, prompting the player playing as Isaac to ask “What the Eff are you shooting at?” A really neat concept.

-The graphics, particularly in the space scenes, look solid, as long as they’re not glitching out.

-While not executed well, the idea of scavenging in a spaceship graveyard is a cool concept. Apparently that was gonna be the basis of Dead Space 4’s gameplay, and provided they make it more interesting, less linear, and more focused on survival instead of just advancing the plot, I think that would have been a good move.

-The scavenger bot is cute and I’m glad it was there.

-The boss fight against the Nexus is a modified version of the boss fight against the Hive Mind in Dead Space 1. And since it’s something stolen from Dead Space 1, it’s better than pretty much everything else about the game.

-The last portion of the game takes you into an underground alien temple. It feels cheesy, like you’re watching a 70’s horror movie, but it adds some change-ups and I actually enjoyed playing through it. They also clearly focused on making that part of the game scarier than the rest, because I actually got unsettled a few times.

IN SUM

All in all, though, Dead Space 3 is a mess of an action game despite having two masterpieces of the horror genre to use as rungs on the Bright Blue Important Dead Space Ladder. The story is cheesy, the characters are good at best and just awfully written at worst, the gameplay mechanics have simplified all the interesting parts of the franchise [re: enemies and inventory management] and complicated the streamlined parts [re: upgrades and crafting], and there are glitches and technical hangups galore. It all adds up to an uninteresting, non-scary, non-fun adventure that sends the franchise out on a note so low the basses in the choir would strain to hit it.

I have my own thoughts on what a Dead Space 4 could and should be, but that’s a separate essay. More than anything I just want it to exist and I want it to be good, so that passionate Dead Space fans who were disappointed by 3 can wash the sour taste out of their mouths and play at least one more game worthy of the first several entries in the franchise.

It’s a long shot, but trust me, EA, you’ll be doing the world a favor.

Because after Dead Space 3 you left a lot of us feeling like this.

Shameless plug for my Let’s Play of Dead Space 3 here. As of the time I’m writing this, the upload schedule is only a little ways in, but rest assured, I saw this monster through to the bitter, bland end.

[crazy-grrrl-on-the-computer]

Ok I didn't understand anything of this Flight Rising business other than that it's about dragons so would you like to talk about your dragon au Kazutake and Wario? Maybe with 5, 39 and 45 and/or something else if you want to get something out :D

Bless your heart, truly! ;;3;;

Flight Rising is a dragon petsite (kind of like what Neopetsis except with dragons) that has a lot of really cool lore and worldbuilding,so it essentially became an outlet for another AU for me. //bricked Most of my lairconsists of Boueibu dragons and their children (because I have no chill), butthere are some OCs as well and they’re all extremely special to me~

I have a lot of posts in my FlightRising tag, which is pretty much all worldbuilding and character notes forthis AU, but if you want the gist of it you can read thefirst post I made about it (with a lot of helpful links introducing theconcept) and thisother post that kinda explains some more about it (with more helpfullinks).

In this AU, Chikuis a type of dragon called a Fae and Wariois a Mirrordragon. They are a mated pair and they’ve successfully had a nest of 4beautiful children whom they love very dearly~ Because that was part of my plangoing into this, Chiku is a female Fae and Wario is a male Mirror. (I chose thebreeds, but I let the genders and elements of the dragons for this AU bedictated by chance based on what was available in the Auction House at the timeand that’s how it turned out.) You can read more about them in their linkedbios if you’re curious. There isn’t much there at the moment, but it gives youa basic idea of their roles in the AU and how their relationship works. ^^

Also, I swear I didn’t forget about this. I was having sometrouble flexing my brain for Wario at one point, but @purplerose128 helped me figure it out.

Pleasesend me more questions about my dragons~

5. List 3 fears; one“surface level” fear, one “repressed” fear, and one “deep dark” fear.

Chiku has many fears, but one surface level fear is probablybeing around much larger dragons. Faes are very tiny (one of the smallestbreeds) and she’s kind of easy for other dragons to intentionally overlook tobegin with… so it wouldn’t be too hard for a larger breed to accidentally sit/stepon her because they “didn’t see her” or something like that. Also, onthat note, Imperials terrify her because of their sheer size (considering theyare the largest breed, essentially giants compared to every other breed) and ifone sneezes or coughs in her direction she could get launched across theregion. (Also, I’m sure she’s lowkey-highkey scared of one accidentallyinhaling her.)

One of Chiku’s repressed fears, which became a deep darkfear for a while, was realized when she and Wario were planning to make a nesttogether. She had been terrified that she would never be able to find or have afamily that would accept and appreciate her. Her own birth family treated heras something flawed and abnormal, so who would even want her?

At first, she was thrilled and overwhelmed with joy whenWario expressed interest in starting a family with her because it was all sheever wanted. But then it started sinking in more and she began to fear that shemight not live up to Wario’s expectations of her as a mother. What if sheproduced an odd number of eggs and he got upset? What if there was somethingwrong with the children and he blamed her because she wasn’t as perfect as hethought she was? She had never been able to live up to anyone’s positiveexpectations of her before. All she ever did was disappoint and Wario believedin her so much that she was terrifiedof the risk of letting him down. But most of all, she was worried that thiswouldn’t be the happy family she wanted for herself, for her children… forall of them.

Of course, the fear subsided when she laid four eggs andeventually all of them hatched and Wario was happy even though there wasn’t aneven split of Faes and Mirrors, proving that Wario loved them anyway becausethe fact that this was their familymade it perfect. All fears reassured.

Wario, on the other hand, is afraid of curses and cursedobjects… which there just so happens to be plenty of in Sornieth. The clanhoard alone has a surprising amount of ominous trinkets lying around, some ofwhich no one is quite sure of the origin of. The energy emitting from themdoesn’t mix well with his own and he is put off by the knowledge that suchthings exist in a concentrated location. Every time someone drags one of thosestrange objects in from a day of gathering, he eyes them warily from a safedistance because it makes his skin crawl in all kinds of unpleasant ways.

Unfortunately, Wario has a similar background of not fittingin with his birth clan or his own breed. He already didn’t fit in with otherMirrors because of his quirks/habits making him practically impossible to workwith and his birth clan didn’t trust him for similar reasons. So, after acertain point, he just decided he was better off alone. He left them first before they could leave himand told himself it was his own decision, repressing a fear that he will be abandonedby any clan he tries to call his own in the process, even though he couldalready tell they didn’t want anything to do with him. Now that he has found aclan and a family that actually accepts him, this fear could creep up at any timebecause it’s there below the surface waiting to bubble up at the slightestdoubt that formulates in his brain.

But Wario’s deep dark fear that he hasn’t quite fully acknowledgedto himself yet is losing Chiku and being unable to see any beauty or balance inthe world again. Chiku hasn’t been a cure-all for his habits, but she has madethem easier to live with by being a positive influence on him. She calms hismind in a way just by being by his side. But in the back of his mind, he fearsthat maybe it really isn’t possiblefor him to feel this way forever – because how can he fight off the only thinghe’s ever known when it’s still very much a big part of his life? – and one dayhe might let his habits get in the way at the expense of his loved ones.

39. Have they everbeen accused of something they didn’t do?

Considering they are both oddballs of their breeds, it wouldhave been very easy to blame them for anything that went wrong, mostly due tocommunication issues.

In Chiku’s case, dragons of other breeds tend to ignore herand go out of their way to avoid interactions with her at all costs. Faes arehard for other breeds to understand to begin with because of their monotonespeech and all of their expression being conveyed with their crests, but Chiku beingeven more monotone and less expressive than the average Fae makes her almostimpossible to communicate with. Most dragons are unsettled by this and don’thave the time (or patience) to dedicate to figuring her out, so they just…don’t.

Other Faes tend to find her weird and unsettling because shedoesn’t communicate very well, so Chiku usually ends up feeling like she’sscreaming from inside a box and no one can hear her. No matter what she does,she just can’t get through to anyone and she kind of stopped trying after apoint, which just made things easier for others to say “oh, she’s not normal. she can’t even speak right. she must have messed upsomehow.”

As for Wario, he doesn’t get along with anyone. He doesn’tget along with other breeds, especially in mixed clans, because they’re all toodifferent in size, diet, and aesthetic sense (among other things). And thisunsettles him greatly because he can’t understand how creatures that seeminglydon’t mesh well would want to spendtime in the same proximity. But he doesn’t even get along with his own breed, which is very unusual for aMirror, since Mirrors prefer to live and hunt in packs together rather thanbeing alone… except Wario refuses to join a pack where the number is continuouslyshifting, and he doesn’t like constantly being on the move and having to buildtemporary lairs that break down too easily, and it’s impossible for him to bearound strongly aggressive personalities like his own without getting into afight… so he prefers to be alone than deal with the added frustration ofother dragons.

Mirrors that pick up on these quirks/behaviors of his tendto avoid him because they also would prefer not to deal with him on a regularbasis or at all. And other dragons find him unpleasant to be around: some areintimidated by his mere presence while others just outright don’t like hisattitude or think he’s too complicated to try reasoning with. And this makes Warioan excellent scapegoat for anything that goes wrong as well. Something weird orunfortunate happens to the clan hoard or one of the lairs? Just blame the angryguy over there. He probably got irritated and wrecked it to “prove hispoint” or something.

45. What is theemotion they most commonly experience?

For the most part, Chiku is overwhelmed with a forebodingsense of shame and hopelessness born from being “abnormal” and feelinglike she has no impact on the world around her. And Wario, being a naturallyaggressive and off-kilter individual, tends to be stuck in a loop offrustration and anger because seemingly everything agitates him. Once they getto know each other and become mates, they help each other work on these issues,but it’s still hard to beat. At least they make each other happy.

[mittensmorgul]

I think one of the things about SPN that is so interesting is... characters lie. All the time. And we aren't always given obvious reasons to suspect they're lying until later when they say something contradictory. I saw a post the other day about Rowena and how she'd mentioned Crowley was conceived during an orgy (something I'd forgotten) and it occurred to me with later information we had... that doesn't sound likely if she knew who the father was and was abandoned by him. (1/2)

This has a point that's relevant, sorry. What I was referring to is the post about Becky and how we don't know why she and Chuck broke up because there is conflicting info, so we have to make our best guess. In a weird way, "canon" isn't canon, because a surface text reading doesn't account for characters being disingenuous. We aren't told which is the lie and which is the truth every time, we kinda gotta figure it out for ourselves using what we make of the characters and additional context(2/2

Hi there! And if this isn’t a potentially loaded question, I don’t know what is. And it’s something that’s even been raised as a question in text on multiple occasions, which makes it a valid thing for us to question and carefully consider. You may have seen this old post I reblogged a little while ago with an addition about context:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162709800125/mittensmorgul-i-offer-this-up-as-a-metaphor-for

Congrats, you’re the anon I was referring to in the little blurb at the bottom of that post :D

I’ll start by saying that yes, we know the characters are capable of lying. In 6.03, Dean tells this to Ben in plain words:

Dean: Ben, I know you're lying... Because I lie professionally, that's how. Now tell your mom that you broke the damn thing and take it like a man. Okay? Okay.

He lies professionally. In 5.03, he explains why he lies to Cas, by lying about it:

Dean: Seriously? You're going to walk in there and tell him the truth?Castiel: Why not?Dean: Because we're humans. And when humans want something really, really bad, we lie.Castiel: Why?Dean: Because that's how you become President.

Dean’s explanation of why they were going to lie to the cops was also a lie. Walking into the police station and politely informing them the gas station explosion was caused by an archangel taking his vessel would’ve resulted in them being either laughed out of the police station or locked up on a 72 hour involuntary psychiatric hold. Yet Dean didn’t need to explain that to the audience, because we’re supposed to understand that fact. That’s where critical thinking skills come into play. We understand the humor of what he said to Cas anyway, without having to be led by the hand and told that Dean was joking there.

So I’d argue with your assertion that “Canon isn’t canon because characters lie sometimes.” It’s all still canon, because the characters DID say these things, but it’s up to us if we accept or reject the surface text reading as honestly intended dialogue, or sarcasm, or humor, or a misdirection, or a warning that there’s something deeper happening beneath the surface layer text. Sometimes the surface layer text sets off alarm bells because it directly contradicts other facts that have already been established, and in those moments we’re SUPPOSED to react by yelling out at the TV, questioning the character’s motives for saying something we already understand to be incorrect, you know?

It’s still incorrect to assume that EVERYTHING the characters say is a lie, or untrustworthy, or unreliable. Just because a character CAN be unreliable as a narrator doesn’t mean that they’re ALWAYS unreliable as a narrator.

It’s our jobs as viewers to apply critical thinking skills, combined with our previously established understanding of the characters, and the information we already have about the situation the characters are dealing with on screen, and then interpret the subtext and visual narrative cues the show has established over more than a decade of telling us this story, and not just make willy-nilly random assumptions about scenes, but incorporate ALL of that into an educated assessment of what’s most likely.

Because despite all of that ^^, and the fact that multiple interpretations are certainly possible, and character motivations and unverifiable statements (like Rowena’s story of how Crowley was conceived, or even Crowley’s story of having sold his soul for “an extra three inches below the belt” since that’s another character statement I’ve personally always doubted) are more open to potential interpretation than things like entire plotlines and situations that are directly contradicted by events we have seen or will see with our own eyes, not all interpretations of those larger events are equally probable.

It reminds me of the scene in 2.14, after Sam-possessed-by-Meg told a very one-sided and hurtful version of the story of how her father had died, having been shot in the head by John Winchester, leaving room for Jo to doubt whether it had been an accident that her father could potentially have survived if John had tried to save him instead of shooting him. Meg was deliberately trying to upset Jo, and it worked, to an extent:

JO: I know demons lie, but ... do they ever tell the truth too?DEAN: Uh, um, yeah, sometimes, I guess. Especially if they know it'll mess with your head. (Another swig.) Why do you ask?

Thing is, your very first assumption there, that the characters lie all the time, is equally untenable. Because just as often as they lie, they DO tell the truth. Not everything they say is equally open to interpretation or doubt. For a random fun-fact, like the situation in which Crowley was conceived, didn’t affect the larger narrative. It only provided characterization for Rowena. This was how she CHOSE to present herself when we were first introduced to her, but then we watched her character develop over the next few seasons. We began to understand her, her history, her motivations.

We saw her less as a carefree villain and more as a woman who’d been used, abused, wronged, and who’d reinvented herself multiple times as she amassed the power to not only take back control over her own life, but in search of revenge against those who’d wronged her. In 11.09 we learned the painfully harsh truth about why she may have originally been so flippant about Crowley’s father. And again in 12.11 we learned yet more reasons why she’d carefully crafted her cool facade, during her conversation with the witch who’d once thought of Rowena as little more than a disposable sex toy. So understanding Rowena’s history with the benefit of later canon and context, it not only helps us understand that her original self-narrative was a lie in the first place, but it gives us the ability to understand why she would’ve told that particular lie about herself. This is how you write complex, three-dimensional characters with depth.

Now with the Chuck and Becky situation, we have learned many things over the years about both of those characters, as well. Ultimately it doesn’t matter to the narrative why they broke up, nor does it matter whether Becky was telling the truth about why. The only thing a varied interpretation on whether she was lying there could potentially change is how we feel about her as a character. Do we sympathize with her? Do we have a greater insight into her as a “person” and what her motivations in life may be? Does a varied interpretation also affect the way we view Chuck as a character, especially when taken through the lens of late s11 Chuck episodes where it’s confirmed not only that he was God all along, but also in 11.20 we see through Metatron’s questioning of him, his motivations, his entire autobiography, that Chuck was sort of veracity-impaired as well? Being able to question the veracity of Becky’s statements all those years before lends us a greater understanding of Chuck as a character, too. Especially once we understand the depth of his denial over the original act that made all of creation possible in the first place.

Ultimately it doesn’t affect the larger story, other than to support our understanding of the characters, and offer a depth to explore the characters more fully.

That’s just good writing. It forces us to question things, forces us to really think about things, and hits us on an emotional and sympathetic level that colors our interpretations.

If the narrative just came straight out and told us all these things, it would be boring. The characters wouldn’t be three dimensional. We wouldn’t be able to think about them as if they were real people. They’d just be paper cutouts with words written on them telling us exactly who they were and what their motives and intentions were. There’d be nothing to actively engage us in the narrative.

That said, this is why looking at isolated incidents out of context of the rest of the things we already know and understand about the characters will often lead to wonky interpretations that don’t really work when viewed in context with the rest of the narrative.

I think this kinda-sorta addresses your question? I hope? This is such a difficult topic to discuss, because it does introduce subjectivity into the narrative. The thing is (and this is partly where the concept of “meta” differs from “headcanon” or “speculation”), at least the way I approach it, meta is grounded in postmodern literary critique, and not just random commentary on random things without a foundational understanding of how stories are told.

Not everything is as open to interpretation as everything else. There are rules to this gig, and actual meta will at least acknowledge that those rules exist. :P

[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

Rookie Impressions of the Big ADA Conference - Lost in Translation?

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/rookie-impressions-of-the-big-ada-conference-lost-in-translation/

Rookie Impressions of the Big ADA Conference - Lost in Translation?

Too many medical professionals are disconnected from us people with diabetes (PWDs) and they're missing the point on how to help us manage our diabetes. Yet, they are passionate and so want to reach us.

That's my main takeaway from the American Diabetes Association's 72nd Scientific Sessions, as a newbie attending this mass diabetes conference for the very first time.

Rookie observations are what you'll find here, now that I've had a chance to stop sprinting around downtown Philly — a place that seemed like the hub of the diabetes universe for five days, where circa 17,000 professionals converged (60% from outside the U.S.) to talk diabetes.

This conference showed me I really need to brush up on my diabetes science lingo, rather than relying only on my 28 years of experience of living with type 1. You know, the insider baseball stuff that gets lost in translation between these conferences and the offices where we go to visit our docs. These doctor-to-doctor and research-heavy mass meetups are full of stats and conceptual scientific mumbo jumbo, and it's never been aimed at the patient to get as much out of it as the professionals. This is just the nature of the conference.

But as a patient-blogger, I did manage to find some gold nuggets and interesting tidbits scattered throughout the sessions. And individually, many of the speakers seemed very excited and brilliant about whatever the topic might have been.

Being a non-science-type, it seemed to me that the most dynamic aspects of the entire conference happened in the evenings and outside the convention center meeting rooms, where brilliant minds came together to actually discuss issues that really resonated with me on the patient-level. Abbott, Taking Care of Your Diabetes and the Helmsley Charitable Trust and T1DExchange were some of the forums I checked out, witnessing great discussions about how progress in science, technology, patient care, and the development of the D-community are making real changes for patients living with this thing.

The rest of the "official business" during the day? Kinda boring in the context of my average PWD eyes.

The Missing Point

My observation in attending a dozen or so sessions is that many of the questions researchers seem to believe are unanswered or need more study come down to a simple point: we PWDs aren't stats, slides or textbook scenarios. We are people, with lives that are complicated by many more things than just diabetes.

As inspiring as it was to see the mind-power and passion of thousands of people working on diabetes, my heart was a bit sad that it didn't feel like the medical community is connecting the dots — even some very obvious dots.

I heard multiple times: Peer support seems to help, but we don't know why and need to study that more. Online resources appear to help, but the "quantifiable evidence" doesn't tell the docs why and so they only scratch the surface (I suppose many never heard of the supportive DOC or are threatened by its lack of physician involvement?!).

A quote from Dr. Kevin Volpp, in a talk on how to motivate PWDs to change their behaviors, sums it up for me: "We need a more effective way of hovering over patients that will be well-received." He wondered if health care social media could be a way, but left it at that.

To me, it was like watching my favorite baseball player hit the ball and seeing it soar into the outfield toward the wall, only to have it fall short and stay inside the ballpark. What a letdown!

(OMG, isn't it OBVIOUS why peer support helps? Apparently not, to people who've never had to struggle with BG control, day-in and day-out)

Another obvious point: please don't hover over me! Unless you want to be kicked, or you're auditioning to be my butler. Instead, try talking and listening to me. And not being threatened when I don't agree with you or question the wisdom of your medical guidance. Know that often talking to my PWD friends who "get it" can be just as powerful, if not more, than anything you might tell me.

Others talked about the wonders of the Internet being a way to reach patients, and the need for peer support, but no one seemed to recognize (at least in the sessions) that you can connect the two without the doctor and that has so much potential to change behaviors and help PWDs on every level (!)

Grrr.

Cynicism aside, though, what shines through that disconnect is the passion packed into every corner of the conference, a desire to help PWDs that radiates into clinic's offices throughout the U.S. and world. That can't be ignored. Maybe they're missing the point in presentation, and not really understanding how to bring this home to us, but every single person I encountered seemed passionate and caring. I do believe they're in this for us, and they're making a difference.

Translating Good Intentions?

Some presentations and talks I attended were outstanding. Just a sampling of those I saw talk throughout the sessions include: Bill Polonsky in San Diego, Bruce Bode in Atlanta, Korey Hood in San Francisco, Lori Laffel in Boston, and Julio Rosenstock in Dallas. There are probably many more who really know diabetes. Some of them live with it, so they know it's complicated and so many psychosocial issues play into every aspect of our management.

But when you go up to presenters or audience members after the sessions, introduce yourself and ask them how they plan to take the scientific info back to their patients, and a majority of those brilliant minds can't adequately translate the stats and science into "patient-friendly" terms... There's something amiss.

The poster hall was also a great place to get the nitty-gritty on new research and concepts, but most of the boards had large charts and loads of stats that were often difficult to understand unless you had the presenter right there to explain it simply. Or you already knew what you were looking at.

Even if this conference isn't "for the patient," you have to wonder if this stuff will ever trickle down to us PWDs in the trenches in ways that mean something to us...? That's how I would define success, if anybody asked me.

News-poolza

Everyone had news to share. Seriously. Did you SEE the number of press releases sent out before, during and right after the conference? This is prime time for those wanting to unveil anything D-related, but c'mon people... Spread things out. With everyone coordinating their announcements with this conference, one of my tasks was to attend the press briefings, the nuts and bolts of which can be found in the June 8-12 releases online.

The briefing room was slotted right next to where the ADA Press Room sat, where dozens of reporters from various publications hunched over PCs to plug out stories and updates. Some were PWDs and pump users, but most of the media folk didn't seem to have any obvious D-connection and a couple could be even be overheard asking each other basic questions about differences between types, the meanings of basal/bolus, and whether the term "diabetic" should be used (he, he).

I couldn't help but think of all the coverage in papers and on TV stations throughout the world exuding from conference, and how so many accuracy issues might arise... seems like something Diabetes Advocates might be interested in getting involved in for the future, as part of our push for media awareness about diabetes.

Oh, did I mention that the exhibit hall was HUGE? With elaborate company booths at every turn where you could find their particular gadget, gizmo or med in all its glorious hype?

But you know what? There wasn't anything really "new or novel" that I haven't seen before in some form or another. Lots of meters, pumps, CGMs and programs that all seem to basically do what every one of their predecessors have done. Except some are fancier, more colorful and modernized for the 21st century. But even those weren't anything that hasn't been announced before. I was hoping for the "next coolest thing you've never heard of before," but just didn't see it.

You had to go behind the scenes to talk with the execs, not the fleets of sales reps on the exhibit hall floor, to get the real story. It was like finding Willy Wonka inside a factory full of candy and oompa loompas, who really only sing the songs they're scripted for and aren't allowed to tell you anything about the real impacts of the candy they're making because of regulatory push back. (And yes, a Pharma company sales rep tells me that there are FDA "secret shoppers" who visit the Pharma and device-maker booths to listen to what's being said to people on the exhibit hall floor and make sure nothing off-limits is being pitched).

So, while the experience was a lot to absorb, much of it seems just for show.

It all seemed kind of disappointing, even if you could do cool things, like get your taken photo and transposed onto the cover of the newly-redesigned Diabetes Forecast magazine, visit any of the dozen or more free coffee stands scattered around, or get the usual kind of flashy propaganda about the newest products and services.

Value = Relationships

In the end, the biggest value of this conference is networking, IMHO. It's a giant mixer to help diabetes pros establish, maintain and strengthen relationships. It's about recognizing each others work, and hopefully acknowledging that it takes everyone's voice to achieve greatness.

We need the science exploring the theory. But we also need the translation to the real world. We need Pharma and device-makers to give us the tools to do these jobs, and we need both the docs and us patients to communicate clearly about what works and doesn't. We ALL have to listen to each other.

I'm excited and energetic about the brilliance, passion and desire to help PWDs. Now, I just hope the dots get connected.

So, that's that.

Back home in Indiana now, I'm finally starting to see "normoglycemia" rather than the stream of lows caused by the fast pace of covering the conference. Never a dull moment for us PWDs who are always on our feet (literally and figuratively!).

Oh, and I should probably mention there's one other golden truth that can't be ignored about the conference:

Next time, I need to listen to that old adage about wearing comfortable shoes for all the running around; this year's conference left me flat-footed in addition to brain-fried!

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article