#is itself a spoiler because the twist *is* that the game isn’t what it looks like and if you go in knowing that

[orpheuslookingback]

It’s sometimes a little tough to find good ways to recommend “go into this completely blind” movies/games/etc because you want to make sure someone doesn’t accidentally stumble upon a really great twist before watching/playing, but for some things even saying “make sure you go in blind” is itself kind of a spoiler, you know? Like there’s media where even putting the thought into someone’s head that something unexpected is coming kind of spoils it because while maybe now they won’t accidentally learn the specific twist, the media is such that it looks like one thing and is really something else and even knowing there is a twist automatically changes the experience. So you kind of have to look at something and ask “is it a spoiler if you know what the twist is? Or is it a spoiler if you know that a twist exists” before going “oh, make sure you don’t look anything up!”

[autolenaphilia]

Some thoughts on The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

I found out about The Coffin of Andy and Leyley from an ”antiship” blog that I was on solely to block, because these people are always violent callout culture transmisogynists. Them getting very upset about this game having incest in it piqued my interest. The art looked interesting, and if these people hate it, it can’t be all bad.

(Case in point about the transmisogyny, from my understanding some people tried to dox the pseudonymous and secretive developer of this game, Nemlei. And the motivation was to prove the doxxer’s suspicion that Nemlei is a trans woman, because “only a trans woman could create such degeneracy.”)

Sure enough, TCOAAL is actually a nuanced and well-written psychological dark comedy /horror game. This is going to be more of a preliminary analysis than a review so full spoilers beyond this point. It’s by necessity preliminary since the game isn’t finished yet. My review is: go buy it if you are a fellow sicko who enjoys interesting stories about cannibalism and incest and like visual novels.

TCOAAL uses a trick from more transgressive forms of horror fiction, where the protagonists are not the heroes, but the villains, and the story is from their perspective. Andrew and Ashley Graves are murderers who kill people, sacrifice their souls to demons and cannibalize their bodies. They would be the villains of a more conventional horror story, their crimes investigated and thwarted by some heroic detective perhaps. But in this type of story, you are denied the comfort of heroes, or even innocent victims as you watch the protagonists twisted psychology lead them to commit terrible deeds.

The tone of the story mostly isn’t really horror, but very dark comedy, kinda Jhonen Vasquez-ish. The horrors are portrayed with a gleeful flippant tone, and cute appealing art. The tone mirrors how especially Ashley feels about her crimes. The game’s tone gets serious sometimes, going for straight horror occasionally, acknowledging how heartbreaking yet insane the Graves situation is, but there is a deep vein of the blackest humor.

Andrew and Ashley

Andy and Leyley themselves have this co-dependent toxic abusive sibling dynamic. Ashley is emotionally abusive, extremely possessive and manipulative towards Andrew. But her beloved Andy is the only person she actually cares about, and the rest she is able to kill with gleeful abandon in her heart.

Yet Andrew is not purely a victim. I’m going to talk at length about him, because the gap between how he describes himself and what the game shows is fascinating. I’m not the first to point this out. And it even extends to the game’s promotional material, like this official art on the game’s steam page is actually subverted by the game itself.

His character is not "doormat extraordinaire" who just "exists", the words "very not good, in fact very bad" apply to him too.

He is a victim, and loves to point at times how exploited, manipulated and abused he is by Ashley and he’s of course right. But he also uses that as an excuse for the horrific violence he commits, that he is just a doormat has been manipulated and corrupted by Ashley. “I was just being manipulated by Ashley to do it” is his variation on the old Nuremberg defense for his crimes. He has no sense of personal responsibility, no understanding that even if someone else tells you to do it, you are still responsible for your actions.

And the game itself proves that “it’s all Ashley” is not really true. A lot of the violence and murder are definitely on Andrew’s own initiative. He is violent towards Ashley too, the abuse is reciprocal. And he like Ashley doesn’t care much about other people. He gets distraught about killing people, but if you follow his dialogue, he is mostly freaked out about the consequences for himself. He is dependent on Ashley as someone who he can lay all the responsibility and blame for his own actions for. And of course, there is genuine affection there, because things are complex. He was parentified to take care of Ashley as a child and still has the drive to be her caretaker and protector.

It’s a fascinating pair of characters, and an interesting dynamic to observe.

“Der Mensch lebt nur von Missetat allein”

And the game’s writing is smart enough to have them not be an individualized evil, that came out of nowhere. Andrew and Ashley are the products of a neglectful and cold parents. Their mother made Andrew the favorite, but basically in order to parentize him to take care of his younger sister. And their dad can’t even remember the names of his kids. Not that the cycle of abuse starts with the parents, the mother had Andrew and Ashley when she was 15 and 17 respectively. But that doesn’t excuse how they ultimately, sell their kids’s lives for money to an organ harvesting scheme. This scheme is strongly implied to be part of an hilariously over-the-top soda company, toxisoda (it’s implied their soda is literally made from humans, so the company is doing the same thing that Ashley and Andy does, but on an industrial scale).

This is the situation that pushes Andy and Ashley to become evil murder-cannibals horror movie villains they become. They are deliberately being starved to death, and decide human meat is preferable to that. And the point here is obvious. To quote Brecht, “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral” or in english translation “Food is the first thing. Morals follow on.” Andy and Ashley are bad people who kill and eat other people, but they are the product of an evil society. A family system where children are property of their parents to be abused and sold. And ultimately a capitalist system which kills people to feed others, a societal and systematic version of what Andew’s and Ashley does. They literally become cannibals to escape becoming literally or essentially cannibalized themselves by the capitalist system. Capitalism is a system which works on prey and predator dynamics, and they just fought to became predator instead of prey. To further quote the same song by Brecht, in capitalism, “Der Mensch lebt nur von Missetat allein” or in english “mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.” And in that broader view, Andrew and Ashley’s small-scale evil is dwarfed by the system they are born into.

Incest

It’s with all this context the game’s treatment of incest must be understood. It’s a horror game, about two siblings with a fucked-up abusive relationship. Of course there is incest, it’s far from being the worst thing these two do. The game only gets more explicit about incest in one optional ending, but it’s there explicitly and subtextually from the very start. Ashley jokes about it repeatedly, it’s there in the possessive jealousy Ashley feels for any of Andrew’s girlfriends, it’s implied in the casual physical intimacy of the siblings. Like it’s very obvious that their fucked-up but close relationship can lead there right from the beginning of episode 1. It’s a very natural conclusion to their dynamic. And the characters know it, Ashley definitely knows it, and their own mother accuses them of it. Andrew denies his mother’s accusation of fucking Ashley, and he’s probably not lying at that moment, but his relationship with Ashley leading there make perfect sense and he is not just capable of admitting that. Anyone who claims to have played this game and then claims be shocked that there is an optional incestous ending can’t have been paying much attention. This is the incest cannibalism game.

The Graves siblings are heading towards committing more murder as long as they stay alive, and incest is a minor sin for them. And probably not even the unhealthiest way for their relationship to develop. It definitely won’t fix them, but I doubt it will make things much worse.

And condemning the game morally is just absurd. This is a horror game, and you are outraged about the incest and not the murder-cannibalism? The Graves siblings relationship is not portrayed as healthy and the incest is part of that.

In fact the game portrays this double-standard in the actual story. It’s the possibility of her kids committing incest that finally makes Mamma Graves admit she is “the worst mother ever”, and not the whole selling the lives of her kids for money thing.

Sure, there is a fair argument to make that the incest is romanticized and fetishized. Ashley and Andrew are certainly drawn as attractive, and even the abusive elements can be part of the fetish. But the thing is, Ashley and Andrew are not real people, it’s fiction, it’s not real incest, so if people get off to it, I have no reason to see it as a problem.

The antiship blogger was actually especially angery about this official art from a devlog and honestly after playing the game, it kinda sums up my feelings about the incest controversy:

[tristomisto]

I didn’t know how much I needed Jonathan Sims to ridicule my decision making skill.

This game felt like a dream come true and was so my vibe, I can’t wait to find all the branching paths but man those endings…

Spoilers from my playthrough and the game’s ending below

TW: Some Gore talk

So my goal was to be as non-violent as possible (almost always choosing to leave the dagger), and while it’s likely you can get this dialogue anyway, it made me weak.

To have a divine entity tell me “you have a gentle heart” when I told it I didn’t want to hurt it anymore. Floored me.

The game also captivated me in the way the voices worked. Because it’s the same way I hear voices in my head. They don’t have control over me, (unlike the game) I know they are fictional and they are more of a nuisance then anything. They just pop in and out to say their piece, even if I don’t want to hear it. I prefer to think of it as my conscience trying to get through to me in a different way.

Any way back to the game, I made a save right before confronting the narrator and got to see most of the endings (I think).

My first was getting back to the cabin with the Voice of the Hero. I left the dagger upstairs to go to the Princess and figure out what happens next. I always asked for her name, and never got one other than then what the entity called itself, The Shifting Mound.

But the Princess gave me a name, she called me Quiet (due to you actually being a god called the Long Quiet, which was a really cool twist). I found the nickname adorable, so in my head I started calling her Shift. My choice, as always was ever the peaceful option.

I told her we could just leave, and she trusted me. I thanked the Voice of the Hero, who stayed behind to look for the others when we decided to leave. Then together, the Princess and I opened the door, and we’re left to interpret what happens next. I think this is the “good” ending or at least mine.

I also love any ending in which the Princess is given agency. If you bring the dagger downstairs to her at the last scene, she offers to stab you with it. Doing so will reset everything back to the beginning of the game, in the hope that things will be different the next go around and the world won’t end. And even if it isn’t, at least they will find each other here at this moment again and again, and both make the same decision.

I love this ending, especially due to the explore options before taking it. I remember saying something along the lines of “I’ll miss you.” And she says I won’t have to, because when I come back, she’ll be right there waiting for me, even if she doesn’t remember.

I also quite enjoyed the endings of becoming gods together. While it’s still good, I think arguably the ending I personally don’t like is the Narrator’s want which is slaying the princess at the end.

In terms of individual branching paths, I love the spectre ending where you let the princess possess you as a ghost, the “hey killer” really got to me. The one where she becomes like a demon girl and just wants to fight is really funny until it gets really sad.

I was also cooked from the beginning because my first path when she started to gnaw her arm off, it unnerved me for a few seconds before I was like “well if I was trapped with no way out I’d probably end like this too.” Then the huge puppy dog eyes she has whenever you’re helping her remove her arm.

Overall 10/10 I love this game so much, and having Jonathan sims as all the voices in my head was a real treat. Will get all the achievements eventually!

And the first romance ending was so funny because I hear Archivist Jonathan Sims narrating with a bunch “ews” the whole time. IM SORRY JON IF I MEET AN ENTITY I WILL GREET IT WITH LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING. I know she started to gnaw off her own arm but I get it!!!

[jazzajazzjazz]

My thoughts on DAV for anyone who gives a shit:

Heavy spoilers under cut (read at your own risk)

Stuff I liked:

* The abundance of book/comic characters that made appearances. I really enjoyed meeting a character and excitedly saying ‘oh it’s [NAME]!’ Evka and Antoine were absolutely wonderful and I adore them and would die for them

* The environments are stunningly beautiful, particularly Treviso. I also love how darkly oppressive and hopeless Hossberg felt. And the Necropolis are you KIDDING ME 😭😍

* Generally speaking I enjoyed the companions and how they were written. Emmrich was absolutely my favourite but I also loved Davrin and Bellara, and I found Neve and Lucanis very endearing also.

* Bellara being more than the token quirky girl was such a wonderful surprise

* The CC is SO fun to play with like wow

* Boss fights are pretty cool

* Act 3 battle in Minrathous was a lot of fun

* English fem Rook’s voice is fantastic and it’s so refreshing to hear a Geordie accent (my own accent, no less!) in DA

* Combat is a lot of fun and for the first time playing a mage in DA I actually felt dangerous.

* Ghilly is just so cool and utterly unhinged. I dreaded her next scene because I wondered what other abominable shit she could possibly do

Stuff I disliked:

* The romances are utterly lackluster. I romanced Davrin and while I adore the man and enjoyed the scenes I got with him there was barely any chemistry between he and Rook. By the time they slept together they had kissed twice (and that was in ONE scene). The flirty lines are barely even flirtatious at all. And why can’t we kiss our LI’s whenever we want? Why would you take that away???

* Why isn’t there any option to just….talk to your companions? Ask them questions? Ask Neve about her most infamous cases, her upbringing, who designed her badass prosthetic. Ask Davrin about his clan, how long he’s been a Warden, and about some of the monsters he’s hunted. Make the companions feel like they have….I dunno, lives?

* Why boast that your game has nudity when it doesn’t even make an appearance outside of the CC? Even then it was just tits?

* Where is the cruelty of Thedas? The injustice? The slavery? The racism? My Rook is an elf from Minrathous for goodness sake. (and don’t use this point of mine to accuse me of ‘fantasising about racism’ like one smoothbrained fuck on reddit did) But if you’re gonna establish that your world has these terrible things and then said terrible things just sort of vanish or aren’t mentioned then it looks like HR was in the room with the writers.

* Taash’s weird ass writing

* Inconsistencies in the quality of voice acting. I’m not talking about audio but the acting itself. Sometimes Neve’s performance was very weak.

* The music is completely forgettable and Trevor Morris should have been brought back. The theme that played during the boss fight with Ghilly made me exclaim (OUT LOUD) ‘The fuck is this shit ass music?’

* Why didn’t Maevaris have her gorgeous blonde curls what did you do to her

* Dorian was just there because Dorian. Same with Isabela. Thank god they didn’t bring Fenris back 🙏

* The Varric twist is just kinda dumb

* Solas doesn’t really act very Solas-y? 🤷🏻‍♀️

* Having to choose between Davrin or Harding felt so forced to me. Making it so the one you pick can die if you haven’t built up their loyalty? Okay, I can buy that. Especially since late act 2/act 3 of this game is very much a DA version of ME2. But I guess Harding will always be my choice because honestly even with the Titan stuff I found her boring

* Basically everything coming back to ‘it was the Elves!!!!’ is boring

* Rendering the previous games obsolete/pointless was a spineless decision made by the writers and I hope they feel bad about it

* The Executors twist is pathetic and ridiculous and I completely disregard it

* We could have had a quest where we rescue/encounter whoever was left behind in the Fade in DAI? Wow fuck you too

Companion Ranking

1 - Emmrich - everything I hoped for and more. He’s eccentric, he’s goth af, he’s almost excessively polite, and he is just an absolute delight to be around. He’s wonderful and I adore him. I will absolutely be romancing him next when I feel like doing another playthrough.

2 - Davrin - I’ll readily admit that I’m a bit biased because Davrin was my LI and is utterly gorgeous but that being said I love him to bits. I love his arc of basically working out how to be a dad to Assan. I love his confidence, and I’m a sucker for a tough guy character with a cute hobby. And I was HELLA invested in getting those damn griffons back.

3 - Bellara - I mentioned above that I was relieved that Bel was so much more than the token quirky girl and my god was she a breath of fresh air. At first I still wasn’t sold on her because of that tonal whiplash in Act 1 but once I gave her the time she needed I related to her more and more.

4 - Neve - Again I may be biased as I played a SD Rook and I love detective characters but I thought Neve was great. Her relationship with my Rook was like that of a big sister and I bought it completely. I love how she wonders aloud about problems and mysteries.

5 - Lucanis - I like Lucanis, don’t get me wrong. But I feel like he’s easily the most half baked and under-utilised companion in DAV by a country mile. So much of him just doesn’t feel finished, and Spite is just….barely there. He deserved better. Also, I get it. He likes coffee. Quit mentioning it all the damn time, game.

6 - Harding - Boring. Simple as that. I didn’t give a shit about Harding in DAI but at least she had a personality? Her whole thing relates to the Titans, one of most interesting pieces of lore in the DA universe, and they managed to make her completely forgettable. 🥱

7 - Taash - Felt like Taash’s entire existence is as an after school special/self insert. Their ‘growth’ was paced weirdly and their hypocritical attitude stinks. They came across so well in Vows & Vengeance and I was really looking forward to meeting them and was very disappointed. They do get better as the game progresses but it felt like it was too little, too late.

Final Thoughts

I don’t think this is a bad game, and I’m an OG DA fan who has been here from the very beginning. I think it’s a much better DA game than Andromeda was as a ME game and I maintain that there are plenty of things to enjoy about Veilguard. I will play it again.

THAT BEING SAID there are a ton of things I had to purposely ignore (retconning, weird dialog, characters acting out of character, etc) in order to enjoy certain parts of the game and I shouldn’t have to do that. It’s very apparent that long term fans of the series aren’t the target audience anymore and that ultimately feels like a betrayal. It stings.

I’m not giving a rating because I don’t do that but yeah those are my thoughts. I genuinely enjoyed most of my time with this game but I mourn what this series has become and what could have been. So much of this game just feels….unfinished.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

There’s always been something that bothered me about whenever I try to explain the concept of Hatoful Boyfriend and most people’s immediate reaction is “oh! Like Doki Doki!”. My response is always just “…I guess?” because I could never quite explain why that felt wrong to me but I think I finally can put a finger on it now.

(To be clear, I’ve played and enjoyed both games. They’re both fun - this isn’t a criticism at all! I just think they’re, at their cores, two very different things. Also I don’t spoil anything for either game here beyond the obvious; that is, that these games are not what they seem to be at first glance, which I’m pretty sure most people know going in. If that amount of spoiler still bothers you, then stop reading here and play the games first!!!)

When people compare the two games, I 100% understand where they’re coming from. It’s the same gimmick I suppose: cutesy looking or joke visual novel actually turns out to be a smokescreen to hide the horrors within. But. Like. I feel like that’s where the similarities end.

See, DDLC’s whole point is to be shocking. It’s intended to make you jump and disturb you. It’s primarily a horror game with you, the player, as its focal point, and as a result the characters are only really there to be used by the story. The majority of the characters, with the exception of one, are pretty straightforward and lean heavily on the tropes commonly used in dating sims so the game can later distort them in increasingly horrific ways - with the intent of shocking and scaring you. The characters are more tools to be used to tell the story and create the experience than fully fleshed out people, which I think works out well thematically for DDLC. It’s effective in the sense where the characters aren’t really what draws you in, but rather the premise and the anticipation of getting a good scare out of it, with some existential stuff mixed in there for a pretty cool experience. You came to get scared right? Well that’s what you got.

But Hatoful is very different because its intent is not to shock or scare you necessarily. Hatoful, since its initial development, has been designed to make you care. Hato Moa made the game intending for people to start it because of its ridiculous concept, but then to discover it’s depth along the way. Hatoful doesn’t want to jump scare you. It wants to tell you a story. It delves into horror, that’s true, but the horror is much more psychological and it stems from the character’s actions. It’s a character driven story at its core, and it does this by taking itself seriously. It knows it’s completely absurd and leans into the absurdity, but the character interactions are real, so that when actual plot begins to happen, you’ll wonder when you started getting so attached. The characters twist typical dating sim tropes again, but this time to ask “hey why is this character like this? maybe it’s not so straightforward as you think”. And then the game goes a step further and reveals that there is an actual in-universe reason for its insane setup of “a human girl goes to bird school which is for birds and dates pigeons”. Hatoful is less tongue in cheek and more completely unabashed about it’s ridiculous premise and plays it straight - which in turn makes its serious moments shockingly genuine. That, to me, is why it works. The point is to delve into the characters. The plot is driven by the characters. It’s horrifying at times because the characters will sometimes make or be forced to make horrific choices. It’s not a gimmick. It’s a cohesive story. It’s just asking you to dig into it a little further to get there.

Tldr; DDLC is a cutesy facade and Hatoful is unabashedly absurd. DDLC wants to scare you and Hatoful wants you to care. DDLC uses its characters as tools for the experience while Hatoful’s whole point is the characters.

Editing based off a reblog that made me aware I was not completely fair with DDLC here (again, still trying not to spoil too much): The experience in DDLC is heavily based on its thematic content. When I say “the characters serve the experience” and “it wants to scare you” I don’t mean this shallowly, and I think it can and has been frequently misinterpreted in this way. In DDLC, the horror comes from the situation. In that sense, it’s thematically appropriate that the characters are tools in that way - that’s actually part of it and you are meant to feel bad for them - their situations, issues, and personalities are thematically relevant and sympathetic. I shouldn’t have juxtaposed “to scare you” and “to make you care”; that was far too simplistic a summary to the point where it is inaccurate. They both want you to care - a story only has power if you care about it. But I do still feel strongly that DDLC’s draw is the terrifying situation it impresses on the player, and the self-aware questions it asks (in which characters are put through the existential oppressive wringer to emphasize these themes), while Hatoful primarily relies on you slowly but surely acclimating to the absurdity so it can tell what is simultaneously an off the walls story that is also genuine and believable for the characters you’ve grown to know.

[twisted-tech]

The Phantom Blot & Crowley’s Identity

Who is the Phantom Blot?

⚠️(Book 6, 7, & Glorious Masquerade spoiler warning)⚠️

Phantom Blot Similarities to Crowley

Overblots and Phantoms are closely related things in Twisted Wonderland, and based on the names, both are probably derived from the same Disney villain: the Phantom Blot. Given blot and phantoms are a major plot point, I wouldn’t be surprised if this Disney villain becomes an in-game character, maybe even a final boss? I want to point out the similarities the Blot has with Crowley to suggest they may be the same person.

The Phantom Blot was created in 1939 in Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot. This is right after the shorts that inspired Ramshackle Dorm: Thru the Mirror (1936) and Lonesome Ghosts (1937). Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was released near the same time. 

The timing may suggests that these things are related. I bring up Snow White because there’s lots of evidence to suggest that Crowley is based on the crow from Snow White (the school being themed on Snow White, his outfit being similar to Pomefiore’s uniform, the portraits in his office, etc.)

The Blot was first introduced in comics as a thief who only stole cameras of a “special type” and then destroyed them immediately. It was never said what was special about these cameras or why he destroyed them.

In the prologue, Crowley gives the Prefect the Ghost Camera, saying it’s “enchanted with a special kind of magic” to photograph both the body and soul of the subject. 

His appearance resembles ink, sometimes it even drips off of him. “In costume, the Phantom Blot wears dark clothes that make him resemble a living ink-blot, or a shadow, hence his name.” Since he is constantly disguised, his only defining features are his glowing eyes. 

Crowley is also always disguised, dresses darkly, and has glowing eyes.

The Blot’s abilities include- but are not limited to- disguise, identity theft, escapology, blackmail, bribing people with false promises, manipulation by using another’s greed/desire for revenge against them, high intelligence, and duping innocent people into acting as his unknowing agents.

Disguise/Identity Theft: Obviously Crowley is disguised with his mask, but he also proved he can change his form when he transformed into a ghost in the prologue. Though he claimed to use a transmutation potion to do it, we have nothing but his word to prove it. This is doubly suspicious since Azul has said that such potions are highly restricted and often illegal. Knowing this, it’s very strange that Crowley just happened to have a potion like that on him, and that he would waste it on a trivial battle with the Prefect and Grim. If he can pop a rare potion like it’s nothing, does that mean he has more? And why have them to begin with? What if he had it on him because he constantly uses them, and the Crowley we know isn’t his true form at all? Or, did he lie about the potion and he actually has an ability, item, or unique magic that changes his form?

The theory that he’s constantly transformed lends itself to many different “Crowley’s Identity” theories, and goes beyond what he looks like without the mask. I use it now to suggest he might be the Phantom Blot that’s taken a more humanoid form, but I also see compelling evidence in the “Malleus is Crowley” theory that this could work for too- but that’s for another post.

This also opens the possibility that he has been turning into other people/creatures and stealing their identities throughout the story. If so, it raises every interaction into suspicion. He could have easily spied on people or spread false information, who knows.

Escapology: I think this works into Crowley’s skill at avoiding his responsibilities and his dislike for the law. There’s less obvious evidence for this, but hear me out: in book 1, he escaped fighting Riddle in order to evacuate students; in book 5, you could argue he “escaped” dealing with Jamil’s overblot by leaving the school and not answering his phone; in book 6, he narrowly avoided losing his job when he was called to parliament. He has a knack for getting out of situations.

Blackmail/Manipulation: There’s too many examples to list them all, but to name a few: bribing Grim with tuna (and not paying up), bribing the Prefect with dorm repairs (only to not chip in at all and let the other students and the Shroud family pay for it), threatening to throw Grim off campus if he didn’t serve as a janitor, and deliberately withholding funding for food, dorm repairs, and a portal home from the Prefect to better exploit them and force them into doing tasks for him. He also only does this because he is aware of how completely reliant the Prefect is on him, having noted on their first meeting that the Prefect is “without a cent to their name” and doesn’t have any “ability to contact their guardian”. He straight up laughs after coming up with this plan so I think everyone already knows this.

Bribery: On top of “bribing” students to do things, he also accepts bribes. In Jamil’s overblot flashback, Crowley confessed to accepting a bribe from the Al-Asim family to accept Kalim into the school and make him a dormwarden. Interestingly, during this scene, Crowley’s tone of voice completely changed from it’s usual over-exaggerated one to a very serious tone. He also accepted a bribe from the Shroud family to allow Ortho to attend school as a student.

High Intelligence: The Blot is described as a master strategist. The trouble with this is that the game is not over, so I can’t really prove yet that Crowley does have some master plot in the works. He does seem to be hiding something though, which makes me think he probably has some plan going on.

Duping the Innocent: Once again, there isn’t really proof of this since the game is unfinished, but Crowley seems to know more than he’s letting on and has a tendency to manipulate other’s into doing things for him. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been using the Prefect or other students to carry out a more nefarious plan with them none the wiser.

Personality wise, “The Blot is very vain and his desire for money and power is only surpassed by his desire to immortalize his name in ‘the annals of crime.’" “He is very cunning and can come up with hundreds of different plans, from stealing all of the money in the world, to murdering Mickey Mouse.” 

Now I wouldn’t say Crowley has shown any murderous tendencies, but he fits the other traits to a T. One of his main personality traits is his desire for prestige and money, seen in how often he talks himself up and how he makes a point to tell people he’s the Headmage of a very famous school. He also hates being outdone by RSA.

The Blot isn’t just any villain-- he is the arch nemesis of Mickey Mouse (I didn’t even know he had one before now). He stands out from other comic villains by posing a true threat to Mickey’s life. “The best part (about Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot) by far is the Phantom Blot himself. Menacing and truly dangerous in a way most comedy adventure villains aren’t allowed to be. He’s a real threat while still being humorous and entertaining”.

Crowley definitely has the potential to be hiding a more sinister side. He’s goofy, over the top, and generally sleazy with no proof of being truly evil. However, he sometimes let’s slip the mask, such as when telling Jamil that he had to accept Kalim as a housewarden and his voice lost all it’s previous joviality, or when he seemed to know something was coming just before the CHARON attacked the college.

The Blot’s relevance to Mickey also caught my eye considering the presence of Mickey in the game. Mickey has a history of fighting inky, magic monsters in not only tv shows but games as well. I don’t fully know what the connection between Mickey and Crowley could be, but there’s more to Ramshackle’s history and magic mirror that I bet Crowley isn’t saying.

Magic is an integral part of the Blot’s character: he despises anything related to magic and often tries to steal it from others and destroy it. In some variations, he himself is a “powerful evil sorcerer” and gives his ink to other villains to make them stronger. More recent depictions of The Blot solidify him as a powerful, evil sorcerer who battles Mickey, uses ink to give others extreme power, kidnaps people, attempts to take over the world, and tries to eliminate all magic.

Despising magic is more of Rollo’s thing, so I think they’ll go more the powerful, evil sorcerer route. Crowley has shown a consistant interest in blot, from his explanations of it to the Prefect and later revealing that he searched for the blot crystals after overblots only to never find any because Grim ate them.

Idia mentioned wanting to find a way to “recycle” blot and use it as an energy source, and that STYX was working to research that. It’s possible Crowley is working with STYX considering he implied he knew CHARON was arriving before they did, he let them take him without a struggle, and he was in a private meeting with the two leaders of STYX. 

If this is true, then it looks even more likely that he somehow plotted the overblots of the students to better study them. It may be he had good intentions, such as to help research a way to make blot safe. And I’d he did find a way, maybe he’ll start sharing blot with some other people.

Sage’s Island is also the ideal place to do such experiments since it’s remote, and if anything went wrong it wouldn’t hurt the mainland. The game makes it a point to show how hard it is to get on and off the island without the mirror during winter break and certain events.

With the kidnapping people point, this could be applied to how STYX kindnapped students, and you could argue that if Crowley is working with them, he kidnapped them by extension. But even before that, I argue that the Prefect is technically kidnapped as well. Crowley shows no desire to return them home. In fact, he does the opposite and encourages them to get used to the new world and forget about their homeland.

One old theory is that Crowley is constantly in a state of overblot himself, attributing to his mask and the gloves he never removes in order to hide the markings. It is also strange that the Dark Mirror has overblot markings, and that in the trailer, Crowley’s mage stone turns black at the end and his cloak falls into a pool of ink, suggesting he might have overblotted.

The Blot once told his daughter a reverse fairy tale story that portrayed himself as the hero and Mickey as the villain before telling her to dream of “happy endings.”

In general, this fits the theme of the game. The villains are heroes, and history seems to have been altered to portray the villains virtues over their immoral behaviors. The title of the game is Twisted Wonderland after all, so we know there’s something going on here.

Interestingly, though history was changed, it does not portray the heroes as villains. It more of an “everyone wins” situation where all get their happy endings.

Not to get back on the Malleus-is-Crowley theory, but this is also remarkably similar to what Malleus said before putting the students to sleep.

To close off on, the Phantom Blot seems like a really cool villain and I recommend checking out the wiki if you want something to do. Even if I’m completely wrong with the Crowley part, I do feel pretty confident saying that he was the inspiration for phantoms and overblots. Thanks for reading!

Sources

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Phantom_Blot#Background

https://twisted-wonderland.fandom.com/wiki/Twisted_Wonderland_Wiki

https://twistedwonderland.miraheze.org/wiki/Twisted_Wonderland_Wiki

https://rachelbethhines.tumblr.com/post/174145090021/the-best-of-disney-comics-part-10

[docholligay]

The House in Fata Morgana: Door 2--1707

I have never reviewed a visual novel before, but iscahwynn made me a very generous offer and a long line of patience, knowing that we are trying something very new. To that end: Please don’t spoil me for the game at all! If you are reading this, I have only gotten through the part written above, and I don’t want to be corrected, even if I’m wrong, even if I’ve missed something, i don’t want to have anything confirmed or denied, and I don’t need any trigger warnings or extraneous explanation. Iscah would like my pure, naive experience of the game. Thank you!

Non-spoilery: This story was solid as a standalone horror story, though I think it took awhile to come around to whatever it was doing, and I don’t know if it needed to be as long as it was. What’s more I’m not sure it knows what conclusion it wants us to draw from the tale, and while I do personally kind of like that it leaves us with a bit of a hearty shrug about what the nature of a man is, I could see it being frustrating to some people. Weirdly, I was about to accuse it of being hamfisted and cliche halfway through, only for it to twist on me and me to go, “Oh. Carry on then.” This makes me sound like I didn’t like it but its bizarrely easier to tlak about its weak points without spoilers than its strong ones. 

Spoilers below: 

So before we even get into the whole door situation as she stands I want to talk about the fact that before we descend in to the cellar we apparently don’t have any reflection, and this is very interesting to me. Who the fuck is the Maid, is one of the great mysteries of this, and I have a handful of thoughts on that, none of which really coalesce in a way I love but it’s early days as far as the story itself goes. (Which is one of the great and frustrating things about these reviewlets) So, on that note, why don’t we have reflections and who the fuck are we? I would say it’s far too easy to say “ghosts” because if we’re ghosts I don’t understand what is pinning us here, and particularly what is not only pinning the Maid here but compelling her to serve? Are we ideas within the story itself? 

Because one of the interesting frameworks about this story is the nature of evil and specifically of savagery, and we see so many times that the house itself--though not the Maid--is telling Yukimasa that he is a beast, that he’s always been a beast, that he loves to kill, even when he is trying to escape from that fate, from that future. It’s not the Maid. The Maid serves the HOUSE, and so what is the house? Is the house the narrative itself, and is that why it attracted the violence to Yukimasa, and why he never could have shaken it? Is that why the house itself hungers for this sort of tragedy? The tragedy of Mell and Nellie and the White Haired Girl*? What is it about this place that drives PAIN? Because remember, in the first story Nellie found out about the incest from an accidental (sort of) ripping of a painting. I laughed about the convenience at the time, not unkindly, but what if it wasn’t convenience? Or rather, what if the convenience was the hand of the house, and this “writer” (I know I know I’m obsessed with the role of writers in their own stories) wants this house to be tragic, so it is? No matter what. 

But interestingly, the story goes to pains, as sopon as we’re feeling so sad for Yukimasa for being treated racistly by the big, mean, Spanish villagers, and that’s why he became cruel and mean, the story shakes its head and not only tells us, “nuh uh. Isn’t so.” but shows us. That he was not only tempted that way, but he was a killer long before he ever set foot on Valencian shores.** When this whole thing was playing out I was like, “Lol Valencia is right across from Algiers and while Tensions Are High it was only like 100 years ago that the Moors were living among you, I’m not sure beating a Japanese man for looking ood is all that likely in a port city” and then the story tells you that he was emaciated and all that, but more specifically they DID see this quality of beastliness in him, and he DID murder a lot of people, and that we are absolutely not doing an over-simplified version of this story. 

By the by, I am sure you could write a fucking DISSERTATION on the choice of having the protagonist and villain, all in one, be a third-generation European-Japanese man, who is obsessed with the idea of Japan as motherland, to the point of wielding a katana and going on about honor and the samurai class-- and coupled with this insane violence of his it puts me to mind of the way bushido was used by the government and military in pre-WW2 in similar ways as Aryan ideals to unify and create this notion of longstanding cultural value that’s not quite BULLSHIT, I don’t think I’d be comfortable saying that, but it’s not quite on the level either--and he is the beast, and he was always the beast, and he’s misleading Pauiline about having ever seen Japan, but he says it calls to him, he says it’s his heart, but it’s a place he’s never seen and frankly probably doesn’t even fucking belong anymore. I do not have the words to put around that, but I KNOW it’s something and I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted a writer to tell me everything about something but I do RIGHT NOW. (If you did not write Fata Morgana, please don’t attempt to explain this to me until I finish in November) 

Anyway, let’s get to the beauty and the beast aspect of all this. So, the Whtie Haired Girl shows up, is blind, apparently, an in fairness I do think sight prbnlems are more common in albinism, so, congrats I guess writers. I don’t know how much I love a “Love a man good” narrative, and I think I’m oversimplifying it a little bit to call it that, but I don’t think I’m oversimp0lifying why we’re supposed to back her play by a lot. She really doesn’t have a character? She lives to serve Yukimasa in the same way she lived to serve Mell, and is that another part of this too? That this house, this Maid, and this Girl, are all here to serve the Master and his larger story? I mean, it could absolutely be international, what’s going on here, but I’m just not sure. I love the incredibly boggling moment where she tries to convince him he’s not a beast with her literal pussy. I am not making a joke here, friends. 

The whole thing with Pauline is fascinating, because there could be so many things that make her appear a beast to him as well, but I THINK she is added in to tell us that Yukimasa couldn’t be saved by something as simple as love itself, that the White Haired Girl maybe is, in her own way, a witch, for the power she can command over others, much as she did Mell. Maybe she actually IS the villain here, that would be interesting, maybe all of this is about fucking with men and ruining their lives in twisted ways, and you know what I think that would actually fit into the whole Morgan Le Fay thing and I rather like it. We’ll see where it goes. 

And of course, we start at the very bottom of our nature, and we end there, because the house craves that, it wants the ruin to return. The damp and the blood. 

Wow! This is way more than 1000 words, sorry, I have gotten carried away with this whole fuckin thing. I really enjoy this VN so far, and I gotta say, I wasn’t even entirely aware there were VNs like this? A few more quick thoughts: 

“What appear to be many plants are all connected in the soil”--we’re talking about inhabitants of the house, it’ll come back around, I can smell it. 

Fascinated by the Maid’s hiding the ‘truth’ of Yukimasa from us, so she, too, has a role in how the stories are told, or maybe that’s part of the house’s control over her, I’m not actually sure. 

“A beast wants a tether” what a fucking great idea, that freedom is not all its cracked up to be, and that unchecked freedom is death in a sense? I dunno, interesting for certain. 

Yukimasa looks a little like Keanu Reeves 

*I’m going to assume for the moment though please no one tell me anything inany direction that we are the White Haired Girl and the reason her name is so frequently blocked out is that we aren’t supposed to learn our name yet. I do not love this paired with the “She is blameless, in this or any time” and frankly I don’t love that even if we AREN’T the poor widdle white haired girl, but it’s na interesting conceit given that she seems to not be reborn, necessarily, but always…there? Is she herself bound to tragedy? 

**Because though Rose Manor was in England, Weeping Manor is in Spain. So the manor can move. I don’t have a thought on that right at the moment, but I did not google “Where can you grow oranges in Europe and when was Spain unified” for nothing.

[memryse]

Au!Scott question! Wann give me the rundown? I've only seen some Fanart (which looked AWESOME) but I don't even know what au stands for >< so if u wanna give me an introduction...? that'd be epic uwu

ive tried posting this like three times now and i think it just doesn’t want to let me include a clip so you’ll all have to do without sorry

ausmp = area unknown smp! it’s guqqie’s server, i don’t know too much about it beyond au!scott bc i got into it just for him like a week ago and haven’t gotten around to watching much else but the vibe i get is a sort of dsmp level vibe of “friends fucking around but also heavy lore”. nobody is fully human on this server and if you think you are? think again apparently :D <- soupforeloise didn’t like that one! scott isn’t in the server from the start and when he does join he takes the role of the main villain.

au!scott is, in cc scott’s own words, what alsmp vampire scott would have been if alsmp had been more lore heavy. he’s a demon, the ruler of hell, and also aimsey’s brother. aimsey is also a demon, but was never as good (evil) at being a demon as scott. they had too much love in their heart, they were too human in nature, so they ran away to escape both hell itself and scott - until scott shows up and finds them :) scott is just. yeah. pure evil here. he’s manipulative and specifically delights in making aimsey’s life miserable. he refuses to do manual labour and everything that he owns is stolen from another player. he’s smug and awful and violent to aimsey’s face (and later eloise’s) but to everyone else he’s the new guy :) he’s lovely and friendly and everyone loves him. nobody would ever believe aimsey - a demon who already has a reputation for causing trouble - over him, right? :) he’s here to take aimsey back to hell, but he wants to stick around a bit first. for funsies. he’s smug, manipulative, lies in every sentence he says and is entirely used to getting his own way. he’s continually learning that very few things - and people - in the overworld are fireproof. he’s immortal and, unlike aimsey, is not afraid of water… no spoilers but let’s just say there is a reason au!aimsey doesn’t like water and it is not because it’s innate to demons. so no fucking wonder he’s smug he’s basically invincible for now (in lore this will change. Outside of lore owen is really fucking mad about this and keeps insisting au!scott is actually also allergic to water)

other than lying his hobbies include manipulation, twisting other people’s words to get what he wants, redecorating other people’s homes with nether items when they’re not in and more lying and making aimsey’s life miserable and more lying. the redecorating usually involves hiding corruption in their walls. incidentally he does canonically know xornoth and has said that this is similar to what xornoth used - he doesn’t personally usually use corruption, he prefers manipulation and outright brute force, but he’s curious about its effects on overworlders. however as i said he puts it in their walls rather than like massive tentacles lol.

he has a rlly fun dynamic with owen too imo. owen is a ghost with a very inconsistent memory, and scott is very interested in him because he senses something darker in him. he keeps pushing to corrupt owen by trying to get him to steal etc but they’re both playing mind games with each other because owen is also extremely sharp and is beginning to cotton on that scott is perhaps not the honest, kind and generous man he appears to be. If youve seen the axolotl thing you know exactly what i mean i watched that at like 6am because i couldn’t sleep and my heart was in my mouth.

in conclusion i love minecraft guys that are just the worst guys imaginable and au!scott is so so very up there.

[less-than-three-3]

Cereza and the Lost Demon is so beautiful

I’m going to be totally honest, I partially bought this game out of spite because people were being really annoying about how “it didn’t look worth the price” and “it isn’t bayonetta so it’s bad :/” (I was interested in it too but that definitely catalyzed it lol)

Were they right? Ok, I think it’s kind of a cop out answer, but I think “if this type of game looks up your alley” then it totally is worth it, and it really carves its niche out fairly well. No it’s not bayonetta but like.... obviously not lmao? Funnily enough, actually, amidst the revival of the dumb “give me back old zelda” with totk on the horizon, I think this game hits a lot of the notes of the more linear temple-centric zeldas... 

It’s also a very pretty game in many ways, honestly possibly one of the most aesthetically appealing games on the switch overall, though I do have my gripes with gameplay. Full thoughts below, with minor spoilers so be warned.

I’m just going to start with what I loved about it, because if I dig into the gameplay first it’ll come off worse than it is, because my only real complaints were gameplay-related. The music was absolutely gorgeous and always so fitting, and the adaptations of music from the mainline games to this new aesthetic were done excellently. It might honestly be my favorite bayonetta soundtrack, and I really like those soundtracks. From fully orchestrated, lush environments, to more jovial lighthearted moments, to serious heartwrenching developments, the soundtrack covers everything so well. 

The art, too, was great. In addition to the painted artstyle, they do the thing that I fucking love in animation where there’s like a still textured background, and as the characters move, they like, move past the background? I don’t know what to call it, and the internet doesn’t know what to call it, but if you’ve seen Chowder or Gankutskuou you know exactly what I’m talking about lol. The painted aesthetic also lends itself to like actually creative uses more than just looking pretty too, most notably a part at the very end that was so touching, when you play it you’ll know what I mean. If there’s any small nitpick it’s just that the storybook format of cutscenes leads to just a few “stiff” moments? But it’s like totally understandable. 

That said, I loved the cozy storybook narration and framing, and I honestly don’t really get when people say it’s tonally inconsistent with bayonetta (I’m going to avoid the worst case explanation of this). The mythological vibes, for lack of a better word, are still extremely present, so people must just dislike that it’s a story about Cereza as a young girl? Because like obviously she isn’t going to be a badass, sexy witch as like, a 12 year old, but it’s not like the game moves the needle in the complete opposite direction and becomes a super cutesy wholesome 100 vibe. The vibe is, like I said, cozy, mythical, maybe whimsical, and yeah it’s at a slightly slower pace than the mainline games, but it’s not so out of the question, especially for a game exploring the journey of a young Cereza.

Her journey is not the deepest thing in the world, really, and it is kind of in part due to the set up of the game, where you have to collect these four elemental cores to unlock powers and get to the heart of the forest. Kind of like zelda, in a way. There are a couple twists and turns, but I think the main element is the growth of Cereza and Cheshire, independently and together. There are some tropey elements for sure, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t still tear up after certain events occur.

And speaking of zelda, I really felt like the overall gameplay loop was very reminiscent of that kind of style, but with a twist. As you traverse through each region, there are obstacles that serve as “puzzles” to solve to continue your path forward, sometimes using some mechanic that you may get in the future (there are literally bomb flowers lol), and then you get the upgrade, and solve more puzzles or traverse new types of land with the powers you unlocked. And of course, there are Tir na nOgs which, like literally everyone says, are pretty much semi-required shrines from BotW. Many of them presented interesting puzzles, some of them were just like tests of strength?? (like botw!) And of course this is all on top of the unique control scheme of controlling both Cereza and Cheshire with each side of the controller which certainly takes a good bit to get used to. The parts where you have both characters separately doing different tasks were really fun.

But, honestly, I felt like there wasn’t enough of that. Like I said there was a lot of combat trials, and honestly, even though I really did enjoy the combat, I almost wished there was less of it? There is a lot of fluidity possible between the 5 different stances Cheshire can get, and light and heavy combos, as well as bind combos, but besides that the enemies were hardly really that threatening (outside the bosses, which were certainly very cool fights) so it just felt more like an annoyance beyond the honeymoon period after I unlock a new skill. And it felt like it took away time from doing puzzles, which I wouldn’t call sparse but I would call just a little deficient. Maybe it’s because it’s relatively short, or the difficulty was designed to a younger audience? And as a result, I really didn’t feel like I wanted to go back to find the other Tir na nOgs, because their main reward was getting spirit orbs fragments of health, which I didn’t really feel was super necessary. And that’s a shame, because maybe I did miss out on some really cool puzzles. There are also upgrade materials for special skills Cereza and Cheshire can get, but I felt like I more or less got the ones I got from the materials I could get more conveniently. Overall it just kind of felt, both from a combat and puzzle standpoint, that they could have and maybe should have really fleshed it out more and get those gears turning. 

I also just would like to mention that the opening of the game felt glacially slow. Not just like introductory stuff, but pretty much everything until your skill tree gets unlocked (and you get your first elemental core relatively soon thereafter). I think I get why, because they not only want to actually set the exposition and I felt that was paced fine, but also let people get used to the dual stick movement once you get to control Cheshire. But man the base combat without any additional upgrades is not that interesting, and the very early puzzles were, obviously, pretty simple to ease you into it. I absolutely think after that part, things start to really open up and feel much much better, but that opening segment has gotta be like, a couple hours or so. 

Besides those gripes, though, I do think it’s at least a very visually pretty game with great music and a cozy story and setting, and the gameplay, if you’re vaguely interested in a game like this, definitely works well. While the extra chapter of this game does tie into Bayonetta 3, a game that I actually still haven’t played and am not planning to play soon, oops, the actual main story is fully independent. So regardless of if you’ve played a bayo game or not, if you think you’d like it, or if you’re one of those people who just really really wants old dungeons back in zelda, then I’d recommend it. Not my favorite, but a solid spinoff that I think they could really expand upon.

[everythingfromdust]

What Homestuck is About

I don’t remember writing this, I never finished writing this, and I just found it in my drafts. If you asked me today to come up with what homestuck is about I would not be able to go into this level of detail at all. here you go.

the post;

As told by someone who hasn’t read Homestuck.

Before I begin, lets go over my Homestuck experience. At some point in like 2010 probably people got obsessed with zodiac symbols for some reason, and also candy corn horns. I saw them around and they did not affect me in any way. A few years ago I was commissioned to draw Homestuck fanart, I was linked a video of nonsense about some dude who controlled planets with his veins maybe. This was for inspiration for the drawing. I drew fanart, they liked it. After that happened I found out that I had been drawing other Homestuck fanart by commission, about a green planet or something, this was a surprise to me. I found this strange, told my friend who liked Homestuck and he told me to read it. I read the first few pages and got bored, I am sorry to your fandom, it just wasn’t my thing. What was my thing, was reading random-ass theories about Homestuck and looking at fanart as it came on my dashboard.

Now, with that in mind, here is what Homestuck is about...

Homestuck is a webcomic about 4 teenagers, Dave, Rose, Karkat (Online handle?) and Egbert. Egbert and Rose are the same age, they are friends by convenience but don’t have a lot in common. Dave is Egbert’s cool older brother who is also an asshole sometimes but only to hide his fragile ego. Karkat is a loner type who is sarcastic. Rose has a crush on Karkat but they have never met in person. Rose is also very sarcastic, but hers is more mean spirited while Karkat is just defensive with a kind heart. 

Karkat is way more into videogames than the rest of them, and ends up being the ‘leader’ of the group, ironically as most of her motivation is to be alone. However, Rose likes her, so she follows Karkat’s lead with regards to what games they play online, Egbert follows Rose because he doesn’t have other friends, Dave has to keep an eye on his little brother so follows them on their adventures reluctantly (but slowly learns to be part of the group). The first story arc establishes the characters and the world. The viewer interacts with these characters through the occasional videogame interface but mostly a webcomic format. The characters are very meta and self aware which is funny without getting into too much action before...

Suprise plot twist Karkat realizes they have been playing a game copy of their own lives within a webcomic/web-game thing. We find out later that she suspected this all along and only wanted to be alone because she thought everyone else was a simulation. 

Almost immediately Dave thinks that this plot twist is stupid, and the meta commentary on Homestuck itself reaches new sarcastic heights. The fandom takes this idea and runs with it, causing many fans to insist that Homestuck sucks. 

When they break into ‘reality’ Karkat is shocked to find that the other three have come as well. Thus begins her overarching subplot of learning to trust others and believing she can fall in love with Rose. Karkat and Rose question still if this reality is really the real one. Spoiler: It isn’t. While they try to discover the why and how of their situation Egbert is busy altering the code of the game to give himself insane powers and become ‘god tier.’ Dave is doing stuff to, but I think it’s mostly just fucking off and making jokes. 

There are monsters called trolls with candy-corn-horns at some point, but I’m lead to believe that they aren’t actually a big part of the story even though they are widely loved by fans. They probably happen early on in the story which is why they are fairly iconic for the series. The trolls are sentient too, each represents a sign of the zodiac, and each main character has a troll that is ‘them’ in an alternate game reality. So there are 4 trolls that represent the main characters, and this is symbolic somehow especially when you think about the 8 trolls who have no ‘main character’ components. 

Insane Clown Posse is involved somehow but I don’t understand if they are plot relevant or just a joke that the comic creator likes to fall back on. 

So anyway, eventually all the characters go god tier, they have to figure out their own personal way to get there and I bet it is really plot heavy and long. They can control the base code of the game, and they all start fighting with one another. 

The plot gets really huge in scope, as they find that their simulated reality 

[themovieblogonline]

House of the Dragon: Blood, Cheese, and Some Showrunner Squeeze

"House of the Dragon" Season 2 has set the TV world on fire again, and not just because of those dragons. If you haven’t caught up, here's a fair warning: spoilers are coming. We’re diving into the most gut-wrenching plot twist of the season, (the Blood and Cheese incident). and how the showrunner, Ryan Condal, gave it a twist from George R.R. Martin’s "Fire & Blood." "House of the Dragon" season 2, episode 1, hits you like a ton of bricks. It’s the kind of horrifying that sticks with you. Blood, a guard, and Cheese, a rat catcher, are on a mission from Daemon. Their target? Aemond, the guy responsible for Lucerys’s death in the season 1 finale. But Aemond’s not around, and Daemon’s orders are vague enough to lead to chaos. Instead of Aemond, Blood and Cheese go after young Jaehaerys, the heir to the throne. The scene unfolds with brutal intensity. As Blood and Cheese execute their plan, Helaena escapes with her other child to her mother Alicent’s room, delivering the devastating news. This scene is already earning its spot as one of the most harrowing moments in TV history. The Book vs. The Screen: What’s Different? In the original "Fire & Blood" book, the scene is even more twisted. Alicent is directly involved, watching in horror as Blood and Cheese torment Helaena. They force Helaena to choose which child will die. It’s a Sophie's choice situation, and Helaena picks Maelor, her youngest. But, in a final cruel twist, Blood and Cheese kill Jaehaerys anyway. Showrunner Ryan Condal had his reasons for tweaking this gruesome tale. Speaking to Decider, he explained, “The first season in the book would take place over more than 30 years. If we tried to do that, we’d have to recast every character. It would’ve been even more difficult to produce and dramatize than what we had.” So, Condal made some age adjustments. Helaena and Aegon’s kids, along with Rhaenyra and Daemon’s, are younger on screen. And Maelor? He simply doesn’t exist in this timeline. Why These Changes Matter Condal’s alterations are more than just logistical. They reshape the emotional core of the scene. By removing the forced choice, the show focuses on the raw horror of the act itself, without adding another layer of psychological torture. It’s a different kind of agony, more straightforward but just as gut-wrenching. These changes also impact the character arcs. Alicent, for instance, is spared the additional trauma of witnessing her grandson's death firsthand, which might influence her motivations and actions going forward. Helaena, fleeing with one child while losing another, portrays a different kind of desperation and loss. What’s Next in House of the Dragon Season 2? With such a strong start, "House of the Dragon" Season 2 promises more twists, turns, and fiery confrontations. The Blood and Cheese incident sets a dark tone for the season, hinting at the brutal battles and intense drama ahead. Ryan Condal’s vision is clear: while staying true to the spirit of George R.R. Martin’s world, he’s not afraid to make bold changes to suit the medium of television. This approach keeps long-time fans on their toes and ensures the story remains fresh and engaging for newcomers. "House of the Dragon" continues to prove why it’s a must-watch. With its blend of faithful adaptation and creative divergence, the show delivers the epic storytelling and complex characters that fans love. The Blood and Cheese scene, in particular, stands out as a testament to the show’s ability to shock and enthrall. As we look forward to more from "House of the Dragon" Season 2, one thing’s for sure: this series isn’t just riding the coattails of "Game of Thrones." It’s forging its own path, with fire and blood paving the way. https://youtu.be/KxU2brWbBX0 Read the full article

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

‘Progressive’ and ‘Perfomative Wokeness’ Aren’t the Same Thing (and, Apparently, I have to Explain this to Grown-Ups).

TRIGGER WARNING: Overexplaining; references to Marvel’s Eternals that can only serve to bring back bad memories; me going on and on about how great a movie Get Out was for bloody ages; Chris Chibnall (not just in the blog- I just thought I’d use this Trigger Warning to remind you that, sadly, he still exists).

Progressive media is great isn’t it? Good, solid lefty films and TV shows that actually have intelligent, well-thought political ideas woven into their plots in a way that makes you think and inspires an emotional reaction. They’re brilliant! I love ‘em, and we’ll be coming, by the by, to some of my favourite examples. But then there’s ‘woke’ media- media that usually has one very simple point to make- usually one it hasn’t thought about even slightly- and won’t fucking shut up about, bringing plots and even entire arcs grinding to a halt so that it can alternately insult and lecture its audience. That shit can fall down an endless staircase into a big pile of Lego that then gets melted into molten plastic by the that wildfire stuff from Game of Thrones. Today, boys and girls, we’re going to be talking about the difference. It’s a difference I’ve never articulated before, despite my well-documented political views and my equally well-documented views on the state of western culture. Largely because I didn’t think it required that much thought. To me, it’s an obvious difference- a difference that announces itself with a full blown song and dance routine and a fireworks display. But I’ve seen enough people using the terms ‘progressive’ and ‘woke’ interchangeably now to realise that I’m going to have to pull out my mortar board, rap the world’s knuckles with a ruler and do some fuckin’ ‘splainin’. Buckle in, dickwidgets, we’s gon’ get y’all some education. Yee fucking haw.

Let’s start with an example of one of my favourite truly progressive films of recent years- a film that takes one heck of a swing at modern racism and practically knocks its fucking head off. I speak, of course, of Jordan Peele’s debut flick Get Out, in which the protagonist finds himself victimised by a superficially forward-looking white family who make such a song and dance about not being racist that things seem a little off from the moment he first meets them. Ultimately (spoilers!) it turns out that they want to scoop out his brain and transfer one of their consciousnesses to his body because they’ve convinced themselves that, if they inhabit a black body, they’ll magically be ‘cool’ and ‘street’. It culminates with Chris (our hero) having to stage a violent escape/retribution-spree in order to save himself from his would-be bodysnatchers. It’s a brilliant film that works as both a piece of pure entertainment and a nuanced political argument. What does it do right? Well, aren’t you lucky? I brought a fucking list!

1) It tells an entertaining (and frankly bonkers) story that has never been done before, surprises on first viewing and intrigues on repeat viewings WITHOUT STOPPING THE ACTION TO OVEREXPLAIN THE MOTHERFUCKING SUBTEXT.

2) It allows its story and politics to feed on each other organically, with the politics lending context to the story and the story demonstrating the value of the politics. At no point does one twist wildly to accommodate the other or get in the way of the other.

3) It has a sense of humour about itself. There’s an entire comic relief character who (and this is important) is actually funny because their jokes aren’t aimed at continually reinforcing the political message or bullying certain viewers (as jokes in a lot of woke media often are) but are used to provide entertaining interludes that help to break up the main plot and enrich the tone, making the world of the film feel less one-note and more lived-in.

4) It clearly and fairly signposts its intentions. There’s no mystery box whose contents turn out to be a tedious lecture on race-hate; there’s no bait and switch; there’s no flipping of race or gender followed by an ‘ooh aren’t we clever and edgy’ moment from and for the benefit of the film-makers (and literally nobody else). No. You go in expecting a vehemently anti-racist film with a black lead who’s an original character created by the screen-writer and that’s exactly what you get. Bravo this film for not fucking me about.

The result of all this is that Get Out isn’t just fun to watch: it’s persuasive. It doesn’t just tell you ‘racism is bad, m’kay’, it focuses on specific behaviours and modes of thoughts, follows them to their logical conclusion and demonstrates what the problem is without insulting you, the viewer, in the process. It makes a compelling case without insisting that you’re the bad guy if you don’t agree with every single word- or just if you haven’t thought about it before. You can watch it as just a fun, quirky film, sure, but if you engage with it intellectually, you might find yourself thinking ‘Actually, that’s a fair point. I hadn’t given that much thought before.’

For the feminist equivalent, I’d invite you to consider The Perfection (one of only two films I’ve ever described as ‘transcendent’) which uses similar tools (but in a different way) to address the specific species of sexism that runs through the classical music world like a blue vein through cheese- a blue vein you think is just part of the cheese’s colour and flavour until this film dissect’s the cheese for you and exposes a rich seam of poisonous fucking lyrium. That metaphor may have gotten away from me a bit- but the point is that that’s another good film that’s actually progressive and makes its point in an intelligent way.

Of course, some films and telly shows are progressive incidentally- it’s just part of their DNA and their plots don’t depend on a specific leftist or liberal points. Case in point, one of my favourite films of all time, Annihilation, which just happens to have a predominantly female cast in a genre that, at the time it was made, was very male-dominated, but which doesn’t feel the need to make a big deal of it. It’s actually a film about humanity encountering a cosmic lifeform that blends and fractalises genetic structures in ways that are simultaneously beautiful and deadly. And its a love story that transcends species. And its a horror film that features bears with the voices of screaming humans. And its an art-piece that meditates on the beautiful yet unsettling character of perfect symmetry itself. And its a character study. And… you know what, just go fucking watch it. The big, obvious progressive element somehow seems infinitely less important once you’ve actually watched the bloody thing, because it’s really just a nice touch and is so far from being the main point that you just kind of stop noticing after the hand-wave that explains it in-universe.

See? These are all progressive pieces of media that I like because they’re good. And I could go on: there’s Snowpiercer (the film, not the series- the series lost me when it inexplicably decided it wanted to be a murder mystery), in which mankind’s final, world-destroying class war is staged entirely within the confines of a posh train. There’s that one episode of Peter Capaldi era Doctor Who when the Doctor helps put the final nail in capitalism’s coffin. There’s basically all the Alien films, which, aside from having an unconventional female lead way before it was cool, were also hypercritical of the military-industrial complex and the generalised exploitation of natural resources both on and off Earth. There’s Luther, which was mostly an apolitical crime drama, but which just happened to centre on a burly black cop whose race isn’t mentioned even once because it’s not the sodding point. Actually, at the time, I don’t think most viewers even thought about Luther being black- he just was. There was less need to dive into the subtext of every casting decision and line because the battle lines hadn’t yet been drawn in the idiotic culture war that every moron on the planet (on both sides of the political spectrum, by the way) simultaneously decided was happening. But that’s by the by. Frankly, we could be here all fucking day if I had a mind to list everything that’s either expressly left-leaning and liberal or contains a key liberal element and is also VERY GOOD. But time’s winged chariot and all that. I promised to explain the difference between progressive media and ‘woke’ media, so we should probably get on with that.

Well, there are actually quite a few differences, starting with whether the writers and actors have brains in their skulls or just an IOU and a couple of loose corks. However, one of the key points I’ve already talked about is that progressive media wants to persuade you. It gets you to invest in its characters and its world and, while it’s doing that, it weaves an argument that you can consider or not- and it credits you with the wit to do that for yourself and won’t make you feel like slime if you politely decline to engage on that level. Woke media, in contrast, has no interest whatsoever in persuading you. In fact, it will very often go out of its way to antagonise you. Then it’ll call you a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or a bigot for being antagonised. Then it’ll give itself a big, hearty pat on the back for striking a blow for INSERT HISTORICALLY MISTREATED GROUP HERE, even though what it’s actually done is create a wave of reactionary hate from people who were probably either undecided, indifferent or moderate regarding INSERT GROUP HERE until a pretentious bloody movie called them all cunts for no reason whatsoever.

My favourite example of the above phenomenon has got to be a film called ‘Bros’, which is a gay rom-com that’s very, very keen to let you know how down with da gayz it is. When I first saw it advertised, my initial reaction was ‘Oh, hey, that’s a neat, niche little thing. My trans gay friend S (real name deleted to protect the innocent) might get a kick out of that’. Then, when it didn’t perform as well as a typical, mainstream rom-com on opening weekend, the cast took to twitter to snidely imply that all the people who didn’t go see it were homophobes (apparently- I have to admit, this is second-hand because I haven’t been on Twitter in fucking years. I moved and now live near a Dunlop’s, so whenever I want to see a reeking tyre-fire, I just pop up there with a box of matches instead). Anyway, the point is that instead of persuading the audience it had and trying to recruit viewers through streaming platforms and DVD sales using, you know, advertising, Bros instead decided to brow-beat the audience it didn’t have (because, let’s be clear, the stars would have had their leashes yanked sharpish if those behind the film weren’t on-board with this bit of media drama). It was good publicity- it made it look like the film was taking a stand… but I don’t think it made one single person give a shit about LGBTQ rights. If anything, it will have put people off giving a shit.

But that’s a bit of a sketchy example, since the viewer-baiting took place outside of the film itself and was largely achieved through contrived social media furore. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest it wasn’t part of the original plan but just a desperate (and very stupid) reaction to a box office ranking that any other niche title would have been overjoyed about. No, for a real, solid example of where woke media prefers to bully than persuade, we really need to look at a show where the bullying happens in the media artefact itself.

The example that occurs to me off the cuff is the fucking trainwreck that started all this shit in the first place: the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot. And yes, I know WB did eventually apologise for it and that their apology took the form of the lovely Ghostbusters: Afterlife, so I can’t really stay mad at them. But it is a great example. The antagonising of the fans started early with the casting, which involved a complete gender-flip of the main cast (despite the fact that the jokes only really work on a metatextual level if the heroes are paragons of failed masculinity- but let’s leave the analysis at the door: that ain’t what we’re here for). The film-makers then underscored that particular bit of fan-baiting by making the only male character in the main cast a witless, ineffectual moron so archly caricatured that he’d only have made sense in a below-par MAD Magazine issue… or on the Conservative back-benches. They then decided it wasn’t even in continuity- meaning it wasn’t just a badly-conceived continuation of the franchise but a symbolic replacement of it. And finally, just give the screw one final turn, they stripped out all the word-play and cleverness that defined the comedy of the original and replaced it with slapstick. Really. Bad. Slapstick. This film was tailor made to piss people off. I don’t think that was it’s main purpose- I think some idiot probably legitimately thought it would be box office gold- but between the symbolic erasure of the original heroes, the ooh-look-at-us-being-all-feminist-but-not-really bullshit of the gender-flip, the bad writing and the direct insult to any self-respecting viewer with a penis, the effect was a belittling, degrading film that was always going to alienate a significant percentage of the audience. And then, of course, call them sexist for complaining that they’d gone to see a Ghostbusters film and been given a big ol’ turd sandwich instead. And before someone with a  really short memory accuses me of the same, just a quick reminder that one of my favourite movies of all time is Annihilation. And no, taste in movies doesn’t necessarily equate to political stripe, but if you insist on using that metric, you can consult the list of examples of really very good progressive media at the start of this blog to gauge my opinions using ALL the data.

For a more up-to-date example, I’d invite you to consider The Rings of Power on Amazon, which grates cheerfully against fans’ nerves by disregarding all of Tolkien’s themes and stylistic flourishes in favour of modern American attitudes and ideas (for a show set in a medieval fantasy world ostensibly based on books written in the 60s by a British man living in Britain. Who wants to play ‘Spot the Dissonance’?). Or Marvel’s Eternals. Actually, no. I’m not getting into fucking Eternals here. Even my filleting knife would get blunt trying to pick the bones out of that fucking mess.

In fact, let’s move on altogether! I’m here to explain the difference between woke media and actually progressive media- not provide a small mountain of proof that one sucks and one rocks. I feel that if I need to demonstrate something that obvious paragraph by paragraph, I might as well go and explain to a flat-Earther why the laws of physics forbid him from living on a space pancake.

I wanted to address another key difference between woke media and progressive media. Progressive, left-wing media has a consistent political ethos (see the more explicitly political examples from the first half of this blog) whereas woke media just kinda makes the right noises. Very often, its real politics are completely at odds with the noises its making, in fact. Which means- joy of joys- it’s time to talk about Chibnall-era Doctor Who. Again. And yes, even I’m sick of me at this point, but it really is the best example. Okay, let’s get this over with.

Chibnall-era Who is definitely woke. It has the first female Doctor (pity she can’t act)! It’s TARDIS crew is the most diverse in the show’s history (even bravely including a grown man who needs his Grandad’s help to ride a fucking bike. Wait, I said ‘bravely’. I meant ‘unnecessarily’). It’s got that one episode where the Doctor stops a time-travelling racist from fucking up Rosa Park’s big moment and therefore saves the Civil Rights Movement (never mind that the Civil Rights Movement was a complex, long-form struggle and the erasure of a single, admittedly important and famous moment within it still wouldn’t actually have effected its overall course by that much- it’s not like this show about actual fucking time travel that aspired, during Chibnall’s tenure, to be educational, has a duty to accurately portray the way history works. It’s totally fine to suggest that something that cost countless people their lives in a tiring, soul-crushing battle against systemic oppression ultimately boiled down to a bus seat. But I digress). So yeah. Definitely woke. But it wasn’t liberal or left-wing or progressive in any meaningful way. There’s that episode where Whitaker’s Doctor finds herself in the middle of a struggle between an evil corporation that kills its own workers and the guy trying to blow it up… and then she sides with the evil mega-corp. There’s that episode where the Doctor locks a bunch of giant spiders in a room to starve to death rather than DO LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE, breaking with a long tradition of animal rights activism that goes way back to Pertwee’s Third Doctor. There’s that episode where she gives a lecture putting the blame for climate change on individuals and completely ignores the corporations and governments who are mainly to blame. Need I go on? I fucking hope not. The Ninth Doctor once exploded the entire top floor of a space station just for putting out programmes that kept the masses dumb and compliant. That was progressive. The Tenth Doctor had an entire arc about fighting corporate-made Cybermen. That was progressive. The Eleventh Doctor… okay, I don’t have any Eleven examples because he didn’t have the attention span to form a coherent political viewpoint, but the Twelfth Doctor once literally ended capitalism and punched a dude he was supposed to be interrogating for making a racist comment, even though it didn’t protect history or anything- he just really hated racism. All that was progressive. Chibnall’s Whitaker-Doctor was, in contrast, a walking catalogue of moral failures not worthy of the name ‘Doctor’… and that’s not progressive.

All of which leaves us with one question? Well, two if you count ‘when will this blog entry fucking end?’ But mainly, it leaves us asking ‘why?’ If woke media alienates the people who’d otherwise pay money to see it and the people making it don’t even believe the messages they’re mongering, what possible purpose could it serve? If it’s not profitable and it’s not heartfelt, what the fuck is it even for? The answer, of course, is ‘search me, mate’. I suspect that someone thought it might be profitable at one point. Fuck, for all I know, it actually is making money- the algorithms that define these things got divorced from our puny human version of logic yonks ago. All I can say for certain is that it’s a trend and, like all trends, will probably go away eventually. Unlike progressive media, which will continue being made because the people making it actually believe things and have interesting points to make. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and cry over the squandered franchise potential of Annihilation- the film that deserved a billion sequels and got zero because western culture decided to shit itself instead. Fuckity bye.

[lightgirlification]

My God the Twisted Wonderland Manga

This manga portrays the pain that Riddle had to go through with so much more emotion then the game could portray.

The game does a fine job on it’s own, but the manga takes the story and RUNS with it. The expressions, the feelings, and again the emotions shine through brilliantly.

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Riddle was twisted (haha pun) by his mother so fiercely that he believed his way was absolute, it wasn’t his fault it was just how he was raised. But how she molded him turned him into someone that he never wanted to be.

Look at this boy, this 17 YEAR OLD boy. This is not a normal expression nor words for someone his age to have or say, but he’s held in so much pain, been held down by so much pressure by his mother that it warped him.

Even on the verge of an overblot, he still tries to prove that his way is right. Maybe it’s because he didn’t realize he was using so much magic, maybe it’s because he didn’t care, maybe it’s a bit of both. He needed to prove everyone wrong, that he was right. Because:

In his mind, if was wrong, then all he learned, all he’s been through was for nothing. All that pain he’s been through was for nothing. In his mind he’s been through hell, why shouldn’t he have a happy ending?

Because it’s not fair, life isn’t fair is it?

He was granted a family that never shown him love, and never thought about what HE wanted.

Lady. He just wanted ONE THING for his damn birthday and you deny him even that. He is 8 years old and you not only neglect his wants, but his calory intake is MUCH too low. 

Riddle should’ve been allowed to run and play with other children his age, eat what he wanted, just allowed to be a normal child. He didn’t deserve to be cooped up studying all the time; his mother living through him.

And Chenya and Trey granted him that reprieve. They didn’t treat him like a glass doll or a pampered boy.

They treated him as he should’ve been from the very beginning. And they bonded deeply despite it only being just a few days, and it’s what riddle needed.

And being able to taste the strawberry tart he wanted to for so long:

It made him so happy, and isn’t that what he deserved? Being allowed a normal childhood with childhood friends and abundant sweets But good things can’t last forever.

Can you see why I DESPISE Riddle’s mother? She treats her own son like an object, something to be used to achieve her own goals. She gave Riddle so much trauma that he felt that rule breaking would lead people down a dark path.

So that’s why he became hardened. Listening to a mother that caused Riddle so much suffering when all Riddle wanted was her to love him. 

But still, he calls out to her, books piled and hands bloodied; desperately asking what ‘rule’ would make the pain in his chest go away.

And there is none. The only way that pain was ever going to go away was if he let his emotions out, and he was never allowed to. To me, an Overblot is equivalent to a real life mental breakdown. All the negative emotions come out, your head is completely overrun, and you can’t stop screaming. 

Your senses dull, you can’t remember where you are or whose around you, and you end up not caring if anyone hears. You could say things you never meant to say, things that you’ve kept deep inside and never wanted anyone to hear, but after holding it all in for so long you are past the point of caring. You just can’t take the anxiety that squeezes your chest like a vice, the voices and memories that repeat in your head like a VHS tape constantly rewinding itself. It’s terrifying, and you lose the ability to even breathe, starting to see everyone around you as a threat. It’s why I looked at Riddle after he overblotted and didn’t see a tyrant. I saw a lonely, terrified child who didn’t know what he was supposed to believe anymore.

And the difference between Riddle’s mother and him, is that he genuinely cares. This whole time, he just wanted everyone around him to excel and succeed, that desire was never corrupt. Was the way he went about it wrong, absolutely, but he has that chance to change, to be better then his mother ever was. He has a chance to grasp that freedom, it’s not too late for him.

And the saddest thing to me, is that Riddle has to pick up those pieces that he never should’ve in the first place.

But you know what? With the people he has at his side, he’ll be okay. Because despite everything, despite all those lonely years, he won’t be alone anymore.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Reading on your thoughts of an otome version of TWST, to be honest, I agree and I’m making a romantic fangame of TWST.

That being said, I went through like four different drafts before I settled on one that I like which is:

It’s just a dream!

A dream where everyone plays what they were inspired by in the fairytale. And when the player character wakes up, their just friends with the boys.

Otomes and romance visual novels where the love interest(s) has heavy trauma, I can never finish it. An example is Obey Me, not only does it heats up my phone, it just doesn’t sit right with me that *Spoilers*

the Mc just forgive(?) Belphagor for killing them and that he only stopped trying to kill them because they are descendant of their sister????

It’s why for my self-insert on my Obey Me blog that Obey Me!Mieka puts the brothers at a distance even as they spent time together and is only really close to the angels and Solomon. Sorry for the slight rant about Obey Me.

Oh, and the TWST boys are in their teenage years so puberty, hormones, and attending an single gendered boarding school goes not go well together at all. Drama is happening left and right, on large and small scales.

 [Referencing this post!]

***CONTENT WARNING: I have put some of my response below a cut, as I will go on to briefly discuss self-harm and suicide.***

Oooh, how exciting ^^ Best of luck, and I hope that you’re having fun with the process of making it! Creating a game takes a lot of time, energy, and resources, so be sure to take proper breaks to avoid burnout.

Yeah, I think that the idea of a TWST dating sim (I’m going to avoid using the term “otome” moving forward, as that can be alienating for those that don’t identify as part of the “maiden” demographic that those games try to appeal to) could work as an “it was all just a dream” kind of thing. As I said in my original post, the main problems with “translating” TWST to a different genre is that a lot of what makes up the core and the identity of TWST (the realism of the relationships, the emphasis on friends and personal/individual character growth, and addressing darker subject matters and traumas, etc.) fundamentally clashes with the usual trappings of dating sims. In the circumstances of a dream, it’d be very possible to explore romance while softening the details of the original without necessarily erasing or overwriting the original events and characters of TWST. It’d also work really well with the “Wonderland” aspect of Twisted Wonderland--you, the player, are the “Alice” that has fallen into their “dream world”... but you’ll eventually have to wake up from that dream, just as Alice did. 

I definitely think that involving heavy trauma in dating sims isn’t appealing for everyone 💦 I think part of the draw of a TWST dating sim is that people are looking forward to “bettering” the boys with their presence and helping them with their problems, but that in of itself is a double-edged sword. If it isn’t done well, it can end up sending the wrong message to the people playing and make them feel uncomfortable, like in the example you gave. Once, I played a dating sim which (in the “true” ending) the protagonist stabs themselves in order to show their suicidal love interest that if he were to take his own life, it would also harm the ones he loves (with the stabbing being the protagonist’s literal demonstration of them “hurting” from their love interest’s actions). That somehow convinces the love interest to not attempt to unalive himself again????????? And then they live happily ever after, recovering in the hospital together???????? That does NOT sit well with me. It unintentionally sends the message that it’s “okay” to harm yourself for love, and that it’s “okay” to hold your own wellbeing hostage to prevent someone else from hurting themselves (which IS guilt tripping). It can read as incredibly insensitive to those who are going through similar situations in real life, and it oversimplifies the very complex matter of managing one’s mental health. I worry that a heavy focus on the protagonist “fixing” the TWST boys can easily lean into misunderstanding their issues and oversimplifying the solutions, such as in the example I gave.

I think that inexperience and immaturity come with dating for both teenagers and adults. Age doesn’t always necessarily correlate with experience and maturity in relationships (though it’s certainly more chaotic when you factor in teenage hormones and people just trying to figure out who they are and what they want to do). I’m not going to speak on the subject of all boys boarding schools and how that could factor into this, because I don’t want to make sweeping assumptions without any knowledge on them. Suffice to say, I think the TWST boys would still be varying degrees of messes when it comes to romance 🤣 (as we’ve seen in Ghost Marriage). That’s very much what a ‘real’ relationship is! Not being perfect, but learning to address issues and to compromise with your S/O--an interpretation which I think fits the spirit of what the original TWST is: a world with magic and wacky shenanigans rooted in realism.

[welshoot]

Ramshackle Dorm Thoughts

Just downloaded Twisted Wonderland (English version) and got part of the way through the prologue before my battery abandoned me. I thought it might be fun to do a touch of analysis/theorizing. I would like to state that I have lurked within the Twst fandom for a long time but, due to being unable to read or understand Japanese, had never actually played the game. Spoilers below cut, especially for new players that don’t know about all the past theorizing and what not the original fandom has done. (Oh and I promise I haven’t quit with Tears of Themis analyses, just haven’t found anything I want to work with right now.)

Alright, Ramshackle Dorm is pretty weird. Seriously, what is up with it? It’s old, haunted, and was abandoned  at some point supposedly because of the ghosts. But passed that we don’t know anything. Why are their ghosts? Why couldn’t the presumably magic capable students from before get rid of them? How old is it anyway? Is it older than Pomefiore? What we do know is the ghosts have similarities to Disney’s 1937 short Lonesome Ghosts (released the same year as Snow White). The dorm itself also has some similarities to the house seen in Lonesome Ghosts. Yuu and Grimm’s bedroom has similarities to Mickey’s bedroom shown in the 1936 short Thru the Mirror. (I would like to point out this short is older than Disney’s Snow White which was released in 1937. Whether or not that means anything I don’t know.) Thru the Mirror involves Mickey falling asleep after reading Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass. In the course of the short Mickey goes through a mirror and ends up in a backwards version of his house. A reflection if you will. He proceeds to have an adventure that, according to the Disney wiki, ends with him being chased by a jealous King of Hearts who saw him dancing with his queen. Mickey goes back through the mirror and ends up safe in his house. This does link back to the Wonderland part of Twisted Wonderland. Looking back at the dorm's similarities to Thru the Mirror and Lonesome Ghosts there are two connections. Mickey and they’re fairly old shorts. We don’t know how old Ramshackle dorm is in comparison to the other dorms, so age may not be a factor  here. But what about the Mickey connection? Could the Ramshackle dorm Mickey’s dorm? This is possible but also weird since all the others are villains and Mickey isn’t a villain.

Going back to the basics of Twisted Wonderland, we have seven dorms based on the Great Seven. The Queen of Hearts for Heartslabyul, Scar for Savanaclaw, Ursula for Octavinelle, Jafar for Scarabia, The Evil Queen (Snow White) for Pomefiore, Hades for Ignihyde, and Maleficent for Diasomnia. So if all those dorms are based on specific villains, what about Ramshackle? If you look at the names of the dorms themselves there’s often a clue, though it may be slight, within the name. So what about the name Ramshackle? There’s only a few buildings in disrepair that come to mind from Disney and none of them seem terribly likely. There’s the Horned King’s Castle from The Black Cauldron (Disney’s 25th film). This one would be an interesting choice especially since it’s the movie Disney tries to forget and Ramshackle seems to be the dorm NRC tries to forget. Kind of like “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” except it’s “We Don’t Talk About Ramshackle.” Another possibility is Fantasia (Disney’s 3rd film). The town from the “Night on Bald Mountain'' sequence is certainly dilapidated. This could explain why ghosts live at and come to Ramshackle dorm since Satan/Chernabog awakens ghosts during this sequence. Also, this ties back into the Mickey connection theory as Fantasia has one of the best known Mickey sequences ever, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” One could even argue Mickey plays a mildly antagonistic role in this film, even sort of villainous if you look at it from the broom’s point of view. He axe murdered the broom and even made the movie go greyscale. Another point for Fantasia is the fact the movie is completely musically led and Twisted Wonderland is a Rhythm game at its heart of hearts.

Anyway, these were just a few thoughts of mine. I would love to hear other people’s thoughts about the Ramshackle dorm and what its deal is. Happy Playing!

[makeste]

my biggest worry about the UA traitor is that it won’t feel significant as the major characters suspected in being it don’t play a big role in the story leading up to now.. like aoyama yes he might cause shock but hagakure?? she doesn’t done much imo but i do think she is the traitor i just wish hori given her some spotlight early on to lead to the moment and the suspense yk

fwiw, you're not alone, anon; I see this concern crop up pretty much every single time there's a U.A. traitor discussion. but the thing is, there's an underlying assumption here that the sole purpose of a plot twist is to shock people. and I would argue that's not true. imo, a well-written plot twist serves many purposes, and shocking the audience is only one of them, and far from the most important one. (in fact, I'd argue that it's not even strictly necessary.) here are four that I can think of right off the top of my head.

they catch and hold the audience's attention. this isn't the case for all plot twists, but it's certainly true for ones which the author chooses to deliberately dangle before the audience, as Horikoshi chose to do with the U.A. traitor plot. if he really wanted to shock people with the reveal, it would have been better for him not to call attention to it in the first place. there was no need whatsoever to have Present Mic bring it up back in chapter 83. but he chose to go that route because he wanted the readers to notice, and he wanted them to start thinking about it and to start speculating about the traitor's identity. it gets the audience excited, and it gives them an incentive to keep reading to see how the story will play out.

they encourage the audience to engage more with the story. the U.A. traitor plot is easily one of the most talked-about elements in the entire story. at this point I don't think there's a single teacher or student character who hasn't been the target of suspicion at some point or other. and again, this was a conscious trade-off on Horikoshi's part, because it would have been much easier to blindside readers with the eventual reveal if they weren't out here forming all of these exhaustive theories. announcing that There Is A Traitor pretty much guarantees that no matter who it ends up being, someone will have predicted it ahead of time. but the trade-off is that fans are paying closer attention to the story, and continuing to think about the plot even when they're not reading the manga, and engaging in more discussion with their fellow fans. and all of that is more than worth the loss of the shock element imo.

they add new layers and depth to the story. this is the hallmark of all of the most iconic plot twists. anyone can write a story and tag on some sort of half-assed unpredictable heel turn at the end in order to try and surprise people and make themselves look smart. but the best plot twists are the ones which actually make sense, and which have foreshadowing sprinkled in throughout the story, so that when you go back and look at everything a second time it makes you go, "ohhh, that's why." a good plot twist should be just as enjoyable to read the second and third time around, even after the shock value has expired, because the satisfaction of seeing a well-planned and executed plot development is still there. and with the very best twists, the story is actually even more enjoyable to go back and reread afterwards, because the knowledge of the twist adds new insight and context and perspective to all of the previous scenes.

and last but not least, they add suspense. there are plenty of ways to keep your readers on their toes that don't necessarily involve surprises coming out of left-field. and this is another thing that the author gains when they make that calculated sacrifice of announcing a plot twist ahead of time. the reader is no longer going to be shocked, because they're now anticipating it -- but that anticipation is a great consolation prize in and of itself. and so with this particular plot, for instance, there's more to the U.A. Traitor Mystery than just the question of who it is. there's also the questions of why, and most important of all, the question of what will happen when everyone finds out? and those questions add a ton of suspense to the story. when will AFO call on Hagakure again? what will he ask her to do? what's going to happen if and when she finally gets caught? how exactly is Aoyama involved in all this? and how will the other members of class A react?? each of these questions has enough inherent suspense that you could make a separate cliffhanger out of each and every one of them if you wanted to.

the thing that everyone always seems to overlook is that the reveal isn't the point. the reveal, when it happens, is going to be a one-time thing which will only be in play for a single chapter at most, after which the plot needs to still be able to stand on all of its other merits. so for instance, suppose that Horikoshi does go for shock over substance, and decides to go with someone "unexpected" like Ochako. sure, you get the shock value, because no one seriously expects it to be her. and maybe to some people it would feel more impactful, because she has a closer connection to Deku and the other characters. but the trade-off is that a twist like that would make absolutely no sense. it completely lacks the careful foreshadowing of the Hagakure/Aoyama twist. and it would detract from Ochako's character development, rather than adding on to it, because it would completely undo so much of what her character journey has been about up until now. all of that sacrificed just for the sake of a one-time twist, which a good chunk of readers would be spoiled for in advance thanks to the weekly spoiler leak cycle. ymmv, but to me that would absolutely not be worth it, and would be a huge waste of both Ochako's character, and of all the careful work that Horikoshi has done to weave this whole plot together.

on the other hand, the fact that Hagakure has had next to no spotlight up till now is exactly what makes her the perfect candidate. with her there's no need to worry about undoing years of carefully planned character development. there's no need to worry about the twist not making sense, or not holding up to the scrutiny of hindsight, because all of Hagakure's interactions with the other characters have always been curiously superficial. we know next to nothing about her family or history or motivations. her character is pretty much a blank slate, which makes her pretty much the only person in 1-A whose betrayal wouldn't feel awkward and forced and completely unnatural.

and as for everyone who's already made up their minds that her betrayal would lack any impact, I think they're both underestimating the amount of impact that any betrayal from one of class A's own would have, and also underestimating Horikoshi's ability to deliver when it comes to ninth-inning backstories. Dabi's backstory came pretty late in the game as well for instance, and that didn't take away from its impact at all. and the same goes for Hawks as well. just because Hagakure doesn't have any backstory yet doesn't mean she's not going to get one. and if you think Horikoshi doesn't have something good cooked up after all this time, then I don't know what else to tell you, except just, "wait and see."

anyway so yeah. and also just a reminder once again that even though fandom sometimes gets bogged down in this kind of discussion involving our personal opinions as to who would be the best traitor candidate, or the most shocking or meaningful or unexpected, etc., at the end of the day the actual evidence we have all points to Hagakure. I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but yeah lol.