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rachelbethhines · 4 years ago

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Tangled Salt Marathon - King Pascal

This is, in my opinion, the worst episode of season two and I’ll get into why under the cut.

Summary: The group is stranded on an island after a storm. The tiny islanders, the Lorbs, mistake Pascal for their mystical ruler; the chameleon loves the adulation, until he’s expected to protect his people from a vicious monster.

Since When Did You Learn How to Sail, Rapunzel?

So they hit the storm and Rapunzel starts doling out orders like she always does, but like, she logically shouldn’t know what to do here. She’s only been out of the tower for a little over a year and sailing takes time to learn. There’s been nothing to establish beforehand that she’s learned this stuff. If anything Eugene and Lance should be the one giving the orders here as their backgrounds could feasibly included sailing as they’re world travelers.

Here lies part of the problem with Rapunzel’s characterization, and I’ve already touched upon it back in The Alchemist Returns, but Rapunzel can’t and shouldn’t be magically good at everything. She can be incredibly skilled in some areas, like acrobatics and the arts, but she also should have lapses in knowellage just due to a lack of experience and expertise.

A female character isn’t ‘weak’ just because they have to sometimes rely on other characters. They shouldn’t be written to be magically better than the male characters just because they got boobs. That’s not empowering; that’s condescending. Women are people, and real people have varied skill sets and weaknesses that match their interests and backgrounds.

So Why Is the Island Tropical?

According to what few maps we see in the show (and yes, they are inconsistent, but bare with me), Corona is somewhere in Northern Europe near an ocean or sea. According to dialogue at the end Forest of No Return, they’ve been traveling east, and according to the map in Rapunzel’s Return, the Dark Kingdom is north east of Corona specifically. Meaning that they must be somewhere in the northern Baltic Sea right now, which is not tropical at all.

This is part of the problem with Tangled’s ‘throw it all into a blender’ style of approach to worldbuilding. If traveling the world is going to be a major plot point for a season then we kind of need to know where things are in relation to each other. Climate should help determine such things, but if you’re all willy nilly about culture, which climate affects, than nothing is going to make sense.

My only guess is that the island is suppose to be magical so it has a different climate to the surrounding environment, but that’s just a headcanon and not actually stated by anything in the show itself. I shouldn’t have to be doing the work of the writers for them.

So Why are We Separating the Guys Again?

Back in Freebird the writers needed to get Cass and Raps alone in order for them to have their bonding time and a heart to heart, but here, it’s just lazy writing. This is a Pascal focus episode and it requires that Rapunzel interact with lots of other characters, so splitting the group up doesn’t benefit the story in any way.

The writers just didn’t want to fool with writing for eight characters at one time (I’m not counting Fidella or Owl, though logically they should be considered characters in their own right and not just props for the story, but oh well); which begs the question of why they wrote in so many characters to begin with.

It’s also an excuse to make the girls seem more competent than the boys, which, as I explained above, is not real ‘girl power’; just bad writing.

Let’s Talk About the Outfit Changes and How Marketing Affects the Story

The entire point of this episode and indeed this whole island arc, is just because of marketing stipulations. Every season is required to have one Pascal focused episode and one Max focused episode, because Disney marketing wanted to sell cute animal toys. Another requirement of the story was outfit changes for the mains so that once again marketing could sell dolls and variants and such. It’s why Rapunzel, Cass, and Eugene get so many alternate costumes, while Lance doesn’t despite being with them on this journey too.

Which is understandable to a point. American television animation has always been about selling toys and merchandise. It’s how these shows make most of their money back. If there’s a show that you enjoy and you want to support it being on the air, you need to buy the toys. Priating doesn’t do jack to the bottom line, it does not affect ratings as most people don't own a nielsen rating box. (an increasingly outdated method to calculate popularity anyways) But whether or not the toys sell is the make it or break it point of every show.

However, there are better ways to implement these stipulations then how Tangled goes about it. You want to give Max and Pascal focus? Then actually give them focus that relates to the overall plot and not just meaningless filler. You want to the characters switch up outfits and have that tie into the story? Then make sure it fits all of the characters and don’t drag it out more than it needs to be, because this island arc it too damn long.

And you want to know what the biggest kick in the teeth is? There’s barely any merchandise for this outfit. There’s like one paper doll set and that’s it. The toys for Tangled the Series did not sell and they stopped merchandising the show after season one. Now add in the rating plummet during seasons two and three, and we’re incredibly lucky the show didn’t get canceled outright because it’s by all accounts a financial flop.

I suspect there was an upfront contract that guaranteed them three seasons no matter what, and that’s the only reason it managed to escape the chopping block and why Chris and Ben weren’t let go sooner from the project. Because Chris at least no longer works for Disney. He left as soon as production ended on the show.

The False God Trope is Over Played

I can find examples of this trope dating all the way back to the early 60s, and arguably even sooner than that. However around the 80s, after Return of the Jedi hit theaters, the trope was inescapable in children's media. Every cartoon since has had this same plot shoved in somewhere. It also became paired with the ‘liar revealed’ trope (the bane of my existence) more often.

And that’s what this is; an incredibly stale take on an incredibly by the numbers story. I kept waiting all episode for the other shoe to drop, for some sort of twist on the usual cliche, but it never came.

This episode is boring, aggravatingly so. It’s the main reason why it’s in my bottom five. Because while you could argue that really little kids wouldn’t be as over exposed to the trope like an adult such as myself, the writers themselves desperately tried to distance themselves from that targeted audience. They’re the ones that yell ‘it’s not a kid show’, while feeding us crap like this, and I just have to roll my eyes.

Tangled doesn’t know who it’s audience is. It should be pre-teen girls, but the creators want shoot for an older audience, teens, while marketing wants this to be a preschool show. So the series careens wildly all over the place in terms of tone and winds up satisfying no one. Older audiences are frustrated by childish filler such as this, while younger audiences are exposed to themes and messages that they probably shouldn’t be. I know several parents who have stopped their kids from watching the series because they don’t approve of the toxic values the show prometes in its incompetence.

It bungles so many of its attempts to be mature because it won’t actually explore the complexities of the plot. Either cause it’s wasting too much time on filler, it can’t explore it’s more disturbing elements to their natural conclusions due to the audience, or it just mistakes ‘shocking’ as deep.

King Pascal isn’t mature or deep. It’s pointless guff that adds nothing while actively taking away from more interesting storylines. I say skip this dreck and go watch Doctor Who’s The Aztecs instead if you want to see this trope done right with maturity while still being all audience friendly.

It’s also has the added bonus of featuring two well developed strong female characters who hold their own with the equally capable guys while actually developing all of those characters simultaneously, and was co-produced by an actual woman. If they could pull that off in the early sixties than Disney and Chris have no excuse today.

This Is the Same ‘Lesson’ As Pascal’s Story

In addition to being boring and unoriginal, this episode is also redundant. Rapunzel already learned to show appreciation to Pascal back in season one. Why are we having her relearn this lesson instead of giving Pascal a new arc?

It’s not even consistent as Rapunzel only acts this way towards him in his focus episodes. It’s also not a lesson in behaving condescendingly in general because Rapunzel goes on to be condensing to everyone anyways.

So Did We Really Need This Episode Just to Introduce the Island and the Firefly?

Yes both of these things come into play later, but not in any significant way. We’re here on this island for four whole episodes and it only comes back for one in season three, and only to further a side character’s story; not the main plot. Also the Firefly will help resolve the plot in five episodes time, but it’s just given a reintroduction there anyways. Why couldn’t this information have been condensed down and repackaged into another episode entirely?

That’s what I mean by poor pacing. Tangled is not efficient in its storytelling. It drags things out only to give us rushed endings or no resolutions at all. Stop drop feeding info in the backgrounds of filler episodes where it’s not relevant and actually give us stories that focus on the plot, dang it.

Once Again, Rapunzel is a Hypocrite

Just like in Pascal’s Story during season one, Rapunzel is quick to show consideration for her oldest friend but can’t be bothered to admit fault to a teenager that she abused. One that she knows is currently facing horrendous and inhumane treatment inside of a jail cell right now and still does not give a damn.

You can’t claim Rapunzel is a kind and compassionate person so long as Varian and his story exists.You just can’t. Because no matter how you slice it, being a minor means that there is a power imbalance in how adults and the government treats them. A power imbalance that is constantly being exploited by the mains.

Conclusion

You won’t miss anything other than the shipwreck itself if you skipped the episode. Which is aggravating because it means it’s technically necessary to the on going story without actually adding anything substantial to it. It’s like the series opener all over again, only made worse by how boring and redundant it all is. Worst episode of season two; and now I just want to go watch Doctor Who instead.

#tangled #anti-tangled #anti-rapunzel #pascal #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure

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thatgamefromthatad · 4 years ago

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I found another Merge Mansion-type game that was just put on the App Store recently but I’m worried about Tumblr messing up my old post if I try to edit it to add this in so I’ll review/rank it here and you can see my full descriptions of the other games I previously ranked here.

Game: Merge Life

Developer: HippoTap, LLC

Release Date: March 21, 2021

This game is obviously really new and it is kind of janky, it definitely gave me the initial impression of being a cheaply-made ripoff with no love or care put into it that was tossed onto the App Store for a quick buck. However it’s not really that bad, it does feel like it’s on the cheap side with the kind of doughy 3D art and the fact that there is absolutely no sound in the game (no music, sound effects, nothing), but it does have its own personality and it doesn’t throw any ads at you which subverted my expectations.

Probably the most unique aspect of this game compared to the other games (other than the fact that it’s the only one with 3D graphics) is that you get to watch the kid grow up as you unlock more upgrades which adds a little more payoff to completing the objectives (you can only watch dead gardens come back to life so many times before it loses its charm). Since this game is so new maybe it will be updated to include more elements like sound and music, a shop (other than the diamond shop) and maybe improved art as well.

Full scoring and ranking below:

***

🖍 Art: 2/3 (Although the kid is kind of ugly after he grows out of his baby stage and I’m not a fan of this 2D/3D combo the art isn’t quite as ugly as in Merge Villa and I give it points for being the only one I’ve played that does try to use 3D)

🖍 Story: 2/3 (I like that the objectives all correspond to life events the character would be having at that age and that the game is focused around the growth of the character rather than some old mansion your family left you, but there isn’t really a fleshed out storyline since there’s no dialog or narration)

🖍 Gameplay: 3/5 (There’s nothing new here with the actual merge mechanics and I didn’t realize how much not having any sound would take away from the satisfaction of merging, but it really put a damper on it, one way I could describe it is like throwing a bouncy ball to the ground and instead of bouncing it just lands and sits there. It feels so empty without the sound. But I do like getting to watch the kid grow up and I haven’t had any problems with running out of room on the board yet. I also like how the off-board world is confined to the one room instead of some sprawling mansion property you have to pan around.)

🖍 Variety: 3/3 (I only played this game for a couple days and there’s already a decent variety of items, the items are also more fun items than the usual tools and plants, like toys and art supplies)

🖍 Playtime vs. Wait Time: 2/4 (Like most of these games you can only play in short bursts but I was able to enjoy playing this during some short breaks at work)

🖍 Overall Enjoyment: 3/5 (I did like it a little better than Merge Villa mostly because it had more variety and you don’t have to wait as long for energy to refresh but the no sound thing did really bother me, I hope they add sound at some point and I would definitely enjoy it more)

🖍 Total: 15/23

🖍 Ranking

Travel Town

Merge Design

Merge Friends

Miss Merge

Merge Mansion

Merge Life

Merge Matters

Merge Villa

(Although it scored the same as Merge Matters, I can hardly bring myself to play Merge Matters anymore, my board is always completely full and the spawners run out so fast I can’t remember the last time I completed an objective)

Thanks for reading! 🥳 If you see any more of these 2-item merge games that I haven’t ranked yet please let me know, I’d love to keep an up-to-date list plus I really just like this style of game in general.

#merge life #merge mansion #merge games #mobile games #game reviews #full review #life simulation games #games ranked #new games

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nobeliumoxygenoxygenmisc · 6 years ago

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Kagaminette headcanons

just a few headcanons i came up with because i love these two too much ajskjask someone send help (also my first time doing headcanon things so I hope they’re good??)

Ships: kagami x marinette and some adrien x nino

first of all, they definitely indulge in each other's hobbies

kagami teaches marinette fencing and a bit of martial arts because "you never know when you might need to defend yourself" and when mari is better than she expected she's just ten times more impressed but also "how did you get so good?? those skills are not beginners luck" and mari just...sweatdrops

but they have a few fencing rounds together and yes kagami defeats her every single time but mari is surprisingly decent so it's not too one-sided. it's thanks to her superb reflexes

of course, when they stop and kagami runs a hand through her hair mari melts and is like ohhhhhh no she's hot

kagami knows what she's doing come on this girl never hesitates

and when it comes to fashion, mari helps style her girlfriend for events where she's usually the plus one herself

she always makes kagami shine though and kagmai's always like "hey save the best clothes for yourself" "nope they're definitely yours"

kagami is the best model in marinette's opinion

she's unnervingly still when mari takes measurements and mari is so thankful for it until she looks up and meets kagami's intense gaze and is like oh no she's hot x2

kagami is just thinking "how is she so cute when she's focused oh my god stop great just great she's bleping she's bleping like a cat"

she barely even notices mari's noticed her but really even if she did, she wouldn't care because like...this girl is sure of herself and loves any opportunity to fluster marinette

sometimes tho, kagami talks about ladybug when ladybug and chat noir do a particularly great save that day

and she unintentionally goes on - well not on and on but mari knows her well enough to know when kagami really respects and admires someone

and when kagami talks more than like, five minutes about ladybug, mari just slowly gets more and more flustered

warning bells are ringing and of course tikki in her purse can hear it but she's not worried about anything other than marinette's obvious flustered reaction. it's quite funny

kagami notices and is like "oh i didn't mean anything mari. you're the only one i have eyes for" and mari's not sure if it's better or worse that kagami thinks she's jealous of...well...herself

still she finds it amusing that her 'competition' is .... well. herself once more

kagami is a flirt too

they go on another ice skating date this time with just the two of them and the ice rink is much more crowded but it's fine because kagami's got her hand in mari's or her arm around her waist and she spins mari a lot and gives her a lot of intense stares

And if its a movie date kagami doesnt even bother with the yawning trick she just wraps her arm around maris shoulders nonchalantly and basically forgets her arm is there but mari does NOT forget poor girl is burning up and then kags is like "are u okay mari?" And she takes her arm off to better turn to her and mari is like "yep im fine totally fine!!!" But inside shes like "..pls..put ur arm back.."

mari hates and loves it because half the time spent on dates is just her blustering and blushing

but

on the rare ocassion that mari gets kagami flustered

oohhhh boy

kagami is Shocked and she's thinking "thank you lord that this girl is my girlfriend how did i get such an amazing girlfriend thank you" and she tries to hide her shock but it's not working

mari is sooo proud of herself in those moments

she's thinking "i actually made her flustered omg!!!"

tho really, it was all alya's idea - alya's pick up lines and 'training'

alya: girl we need to get your flirting game up

mari: i...really dont think we need to

alya: hustle up. alya's flirting lessons one oh one have begun

it's a mess of smolders and smirks and two-eyed winking but by the end, alya's lessons pay off and mari pulls off a smolder that gets kagami fuming in love

on the other hand, kagami is the one to give lessons to adrien

"first lesson, adrien. learn to figure out if they're just a friend or more than that for god's sake"

adrien is SufferingTM

kagami offers firm advice but... this boy doesn't really... want to use any of it

and his firm insistence that "nino is just a friend!!!" just makes kagami want to rip her hair out

but when adrien and nino finally start going out, the two fencers talk about their significant others loads during matches

it's a mess

"marinette made me another scarf today it's so cute" kagami says as she thrusts forward with her sabre

"really??? that's great!! nino made me a playlist of songs. i still don't understand how he gets them to be so right" adrien replies as he flips backwards in the air to dodge (because he obviously can)

the rest of the class stares in wonder

and if mari and nino come to watch

if it's mari there, kagami defeats adrien effortlessly and vice versa if it's nino

oh but heaven help if they both come

they did once

and the two were so desperate to Impress that the match went on forever. it was more intense than the first one they ever did

mari and nino both pledge never to watch together again

also concerning lila and chloe and stuff

Kagami does Not Tolerate Any Of Their Crap

if they so as much as glance in mari’s direction wrong, she’s whipping out her sabre that she keeps somewhere because reasons and mari’s like nooonn onono it’s okay

hell hath no fury like kagami when she learns that lila threatened mari ooh boy

(and this is since i believe that chloe would have gotten a better redemption arc if well...certain people had cared about the storyline and actual character development)

so even after chloe is ‘redeemed’ and working to become a better person and even if marinette is like “it’s okay now kagami. that’s all in the past!!” kagami does not trust her yet

if they have a group outing kagami subtly makes it that chloe stays on the opposite end and that the two are never left alone

but she really makes sure that no one is left alone with chloe because marinette’s friends are...welllll not really her friends too, but marinette’s friends are people to care about at least

so kagami’s a bit protective but when she knows the extent of how much marinette is used for her kindness she’s just....she does not want her girlfriend to be used anymore

they help each other in that account

kagami helps marinette be a bit more ‘selfish’ and learn to put her happiness equal, if not in front of other’s happiness and to ‘never hesitate’ and marinette helps kagami to be a bit warmer to those she’s just met and have had a bad first impression on and to wait things out a bit just in case because whilst never hesitating may be good sometimes it’s not good for all things

so from what we’ve seen i think we can gather that kagami’s family is like, high pressure and all?? if that’s the word because of kagami saying stuff like “second chances don’t exist in my family” and all (i’m paraphrasing tho...oof reminds me of adrien too much. are all the rich families in miraculous just gonna have bad homes....)

so i think when kagami meets tom and sabine she’s shocked

she hides it well but it’s so....different from home... especially when they all have snacks in the lounge and they all eat on the couch whilst talking and it’s so informal but so....nice

and kagami learns a bit of baking

she’s stiff at first because it gets messy

and marinette notices a bit of dough on kagami’s face and it’s so out of place from her girlfriend’s usual neatness that she just laughs and kagami starts to laugh as well and it finally breaks the tension in her and then baking becomes fun and they do it like every week because kagami lowkey demands to do it and she buys all the ingredients herself

they make some new products for the bakery actually!! after a lot of experimentation and adjustments, tom and sabine find one of their cake recipes too good to hide away

and the two spend a whole afternoon trying to name it

or more like, kagami puts in loads of suggestions because again she never hesitates (im sorry i mention that too many times) and that’s great for brainstorming and all but half her suggestions are.....

“the sabre” ��will people actually...eat something like that...”

“the ladybug” “the cake isn’t even red and black themed!”

“the marinette” “no” “!! why not??” “...why”

in the end, they name it something relating to chat noir because it’s chocolate and dark enough to pass as black

kagami secretly sulks because she really wanted to honour ladybug

(chat is ecstatic and was once seen buying a whole cake of it. nadja had lots to report that day)

so marinette responds with helping her make a ladybug themed cake

both of the cakes become a hit with birthday parties

and marinette would never have realised how much trouble it would’ve actually brought her

because when chat made one appearance at a party using his cake, paris went wild

it was never spoken aloud but then ladybug was expected to show up so now she and chat have ‘surprise’ appearances at parties - not all of them of course but they make an effort and marinette knows when a party is happening because the parents obviously get the cake from their bakery

kagami is lowkey so happy though that something she made had such an impact and connection with ladybug

mari is so happy seeing her girlfriend happy but they are not doing that again

#miraculous ladybug #kagami tsurugi #marinette dupain cheng #kagaminette #marigami #marinette x kagami #kaganette #kagami x marinette #kagami tsurugi x marinette dupain cheng #my work #headcanons #th sksks this posted before it was ready #fhsjlakfkald never using the app again

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theangrypokemaniac · 5 years ago

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Your whole Contest rant read almost like a parody. The Contests were the most popular goal for female companions in the anime, and the vast majority of fans of Contests were female fans. Likewise Misty had already gotten stale and dull in Johto, and Contests brought in better battles, storylines and character development. Saying they're all about being girly makes me think you have no idea what they're about, since most are abut battles and combinations. I doubt most will agree with you.

Oh, but Nonny, you don't believe in what you're saying since you won't put your name to it, so why should I listen?

It's a 'rant' because you disagree, not for actual content.

The nature of a rant is crazed disorder, but this comes in numbered sections clearly laid out.

More aptly, the first three words of that post were 'I hate Contests'.

If this view is such an anathema, why did you keep on reading?

Who's the fool here?

Whether anyone agrees with me or not is immaterial. Truth isn't a popularity contest.

It's still my opinion whatever anyone else thinks, no lesser or greater.

If you want to be liked, then lie.

I tried this method, keeping my feelings to myself, never daring to speak my mind, and where did it get me?

• Unfollowed

• Ghosted

• Insulted

• Blocked

• Shunned

Where is the incentive to hold back if that's the reward?

Might as well say what I want. I think I've a right to on my blog.

It is you who misunderstand. I complain Contests are vacuous and girly, and your defence is that they are for girls and most fans were girls.

Well, yeah. That's what I said. A show once having universal appeal downgraded itself to be toddler fantasy pap:

The anime began aimed at everyone, especially children and teenagers, but now, when its concern with fluff and sparkles takes precedent, it's a fantasy for toddler girls.

You tell me I'm wrong by concurring it's for girls, then you insist considering it to be girly means I know nothing about it.

Eh?

Girls got along fine watching Pokémon for years without being pandered to and infantilised by shallow spectacles like this.

Pokémon used to be for everyone, although because game-players were, and still are, mostly boys, what one saw of the fandom was largely their input.

• Letters to magazines were mainly from boys.

• If you knew of any fans at school, they were boys.

• Attendants to downloading Mew were nearly all boys.

The exception were fan sites, shipping and art, which were dominated by girls.

Then along came Contests, and that balance tipped, until we get to the point now that I doubt many viewers of the anime are male, because it no longer holds any appeal.

Why should they put up with a monotonous fashion parade when they watched it entirely for fierce showdowns?

We started with tough girls like Jessie and Misty, then along came the Contest blender, and we ended up with feeble vessels like Mallow and Lillie.

Ultra girliness is all very well on the periphery, or as part of an ensemble, but when it's the only stock feminine character available, it's boring to the point of paralysis.

Why should I be pleased a series with edge devolved into a mess of pink and cuddly cushions?

With whom were Contests the favourite female occupation? Fans?

What were the options?

• Tagged along because she was going that way (Misty/Iris).

• Contests/Showcases (May/Dawn/Serena).

• Lives nearby (Lillie/Mallow/Lana/Chloë).

I'm not really surprised at the result. I still don't see why this invalidates my take.

Amid your ravings, I am told that 'most are about battles and combinations'.

Most? Some aren't then?

What are these few about then? Vietnam?

By your own admission, a few are nothing but vacuous posturing.

Again, you agree with me. What's the complaint if I'm right?

What storylines? New Ribbon or no Ribbon?

And what character development? May and Dawn began wanting to be champion, and finished wanting to be champion.

Since that was the close of their story, any 'lessons' they learn are redundant as we'll never see them put into application.

Better battles? Better than what?

Have have you the nerve to lie that Contests are about combat?

The entire premise is showing off how pretty attacks are, not the strength.

Were it a display of power, as a normal fight is, people would be entering with teams of enormous hulking beasts, leaving the likes of Piplup bloody lost.

Some ugly Pokémon, like Gabite and Ambipom, are included, but because they've got some shiny move up their metaphorical sleeve.

Come on, man! The first round is decided on who's bustin' out the sparkles!

Every subsequent round may pose as battling, but you don't succeed by beating the opponent unconscious as usual.

You win if your 'energy bar' is highly than theirs, bought about by pulling off attention-seeking stunts.

Knocking 'em out is a blessing as it assures a win, but it's not the goal.

How is that battle in any legitimate sense when the very markers of victory and loss are removed?

Since beauty is subjective, the winner doesn't succeed because they are measurably superior to their opponent, or at least capable of thinking on their feet.

They win just on the whim of this set of judges liking their performance more. Another day, another panel, and it'd be different.

A real fight in a proper competition doesn't depend on arbitrary standards like that. You take 'em down here, you'd take 'em down in any stadium, any country. It is thus a quantifiable achievement.

In real life, we don't class a sash from a beauty pageant as of equal value to a black belt.

It's okay, but we know it was a matter of luck, whereas any sporting trophy comes from clearly out matching the rest, with hours of strain, sacrifice and suffering paving the path to that moment.

Contests involve no such effort. You pick what glitters and the rest is rehearsal. No need to enter a single fight to hone your skills.

Why isn't Ash eager to get in on the action then, if it's 'truly' such a test of combatants?

The answer is because it's nothing to do with his career as a Trainer. If it were, we wouldn't need the separate term of 'Co-Ordinator' to describe entrants.

Trainers train Pokémon, Gym Leaders lead Gyms, Co-Ordinators co-ordinate routines to be spectacular.

Why have different descriptions if it's exactly the same?

Martial arts, both in fantasy and reality, have a spiritual element. Those who dedicate their lives to it are regarded as having reached a higher level of being.

Battles share that quality. It's not about brute force, focus is place more on inner strength, in heart, courage, determination and loyalty.

A Pokémon which, on paper, is weaker than its foe, can still come out on top if it's prepared to go the distance and want it at all costs, compared to an apathetic opponent.

Simultaneously, the Trainers have their own battle of minds, picking up on style and mistakes, always ready to pounce.

Contests have no such deeper consequence. They are wholly fixated on what's flashy and external. Ice shards are no more glassy just because you really mean 'em.

Combinations are a couple of attacks put together to look nice. How is this refuting my assertion they are but ephemeral bits off fluff?

Why should I be interested in a career so hollow, and ultimately futile, since neither girl won, and now never existed?

Your also claim the ejection of Misty is warranted since she became 'stale and dull', as if refuting my words.

If you'd bothered to read it properly rather than twisting yer knickers, you might notice I wrote exactly the same thing.

Perhaps it makes no difference. By Hoenn they'd rendered her a leaden blandness sucked dry of all that made her special.

I am not saying a Hoenn Misty would've been a more interesting companion. Her personality had to be erased before being allowed back at all.

I was mocking the excuse given for her exit, that she had no longterm goal, when there was no reason she couldn't participate in Contests.

A. If featuring them is intended as promotion, the audience is more likely to invest in the activity of a familiar face.

B. Just ruin her character if it's an obstacle, as they did everyone else.

C. Contests are a rip off of a competition Misty entered!

The truth still stands that had Misty stayed, we'd have no May, and in turn, no Max, and that's a bad thing?

In conclusion, you disagree with me by agreeing with me, so what exactly is the issue?

Since you fail to object elsewhere, I take it that the remainder is to your taste, and you also think Jessie was shafted, resembles a backwards country cliché and that May and Dawn should have won.

Not a bad dissection then.

#pokémon #contests #misty #hoenn #inbox

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loopy777 · 5 years ago

Note

You've got me curious now as to what anime youve seen, enjoyed and why.

Oof, I don’t track that type of thing. I’ve been asked about anime I like previously, and I feel like I always forget something. I suppose I should start a MyAnimeList one of these days, just for reference.

So let’s list everything I can remember, as well as a pithy reaction.

Baccano!This one is just so much fun. It’s violent and crass in a classy way, it’s funny in a weird way, and it’s a great example of a non-linear narrative. I love it.

Code Geass (Season 1)Ugh, I only watched this one because people solicited my opinion on it. Well, my opinion is that it’s not as smart as it wants to be, there’s too much contrived melodrama (and considering the wild premise, that’s saying something), and Kallen would be a wonderful and interesting character if she wasn’t always being demeaned for fan-service. I quit when the first season finale kicked off, because I felt things were just getting too contrived. I hear it really fell apart in the second season.

Cowboy BebopI found this a bit pretentious. It had good episodes and bad episodes. The production quality is good. But I'm not sure why it's legendary. Still, I liked its sense of humor, and enjoyed it when it wasn’t trying to be super serious. My favorite character is Ed.

Demon SlayerI'm mainly watching this because my brother wanted to give it a try on Toonami, but I kind of checked out when it unceremoniously removed everything difficult about the sister being a demon and made her into an order-following sidekick that fits in a suitcase. Now the latest episode introduced a loud annoying side character, so we may quit. I have no idea why this one is so popular.

Fullmetal AlchemistCovered

Gatchaman CrowdsI was asked to watch this one, as well, but it went a lot better than Code Geass. It’s a bit weird, and I think it's naively optimistic about the internet in many ways, but I still found it's exploration of Internet-age superheroes to be interesting, and it's the best, most mature take on the Power Rangers-style ‘sentai’ genre that I've seen. I don't know how well it matches up with its Gatchaman legacy, but as its own thing, it's pretty good.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (including 2nd Gig)This is another legendary one that I think is good but a bit over-rated. It's a good piece of modern Cyberpunk, but it's very talky, and very jargon-filled. I'm almost convinced that the viewer is not meant to follow half of the conversations, that they're just part of the ambiance. I tended to like the stand-alone episodes better than the storyline episodes. Still, it’s a very smart series, and probably the best thing in the franchise, from what I’ve heard.

Log Horizon (first season only)I’ll tell you what- I think it’s possible to make a good anime with the premise of people from the modern, real world entering a fantasy realm (either another dimension or a VR video game). Log Horizon did not end up being that ideal. The main character is a Gary Stu, his romances with girls who are either ten years old or just look like they’re ten years old are creepy, and it got boring seeing the protagonists’ plans always succeed without much of a hitch.

Lupin III (series 4 and 5)I like this franchise when it's being clever, when it's springing a twist while playing fair. Sometimes, though, it doesn't play fair with its twists, leaving me underwhelmed. And while the regular cast is amusing, they're fairly shallow characters; this isn't always a bad thing, as that allows them to slot into all kinds of genre fare, but does limit the storytelling ambitions. It’s fine.

Macross franchiseSuper Dimensional Fortress MacrossI still like the original, despite how dated it is. It's probably the best possible implementation of 'soap opera in space.'

Macross PlusI'm not sure why this one is so revered. I feel like it doesn't play fair with its mystery, despite being such a short story, and whole thing with the killer popstar AI just left me cold.

Macross 7I like the music, but the story really drags for the first half with a formula that’s repeated far too long, and then falls apart in the end. The love triangle isn’t resolved, and in fact I’m of the opinion that two of the participants didn’t even know they were in competition. The bad guys are allowed to sail off into the sunset, forgiven, despite still inhabiting the bodies of kidnapped humans. But this isn't a series you watch for the story; this is a series you watch because you like the idea of a rockstar flying into space in a transforming mecha, controlled by an electric guitar, to sing at alien invaders. Personally, I think the idea is dumb. Plus, this ruins the premise of the original series by adding in what is effectively magic.

Macross ZeroThis is pretty good and has the best dogfights in the series, but it has one of those weird arty endings that anime sometimes likes to do where no one can tell what actually happened and we need to find translated interviews with the creative team to get it explained.

Macross FrontierBy this point, I was wondering why everyone is so eager for the Macross franchise to get American distribution. It’s better than Macross 7, but feels like a first draft of the intended story, and the creative team lost track of their own subplots. The two AU movies do a more satisfying take on the same basic story, but sometimes they come across like an abridged recap of the series, so you really need to watch everything to get a satisfying experience. That said, the final experience was indeed fairly satisfying, making this the second best thing in the franchise for me. Still, I wouldn’t say it lives up to the original in any way.

Macross DeltaBoy, this one was dumb. Everything wrong with Frontier is worse here, with none of the good stuff.

The Melancholy of Haruhi SuzumiyaI still want an ending for this, despite nothing worthwhile coming from it since 2011. It wouldn't even be hard to pick it up again; set it in modern times, and explain the fact that everyone has smartphones now to be a result of some weird off-screen Haruhi antics.

Mobile Suit Gundam franchiseMobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded OrphansI've only ever experienced the Gundam franchise because my brother wants to get into it and he keeps trying to find a vector. This was my first experience with it, and I found it very 'teenage boy,' in both tone and story. I was underwhelmed.

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn RE:0096Another case where the storytellers reached the end only to have forgotten the rest of the story. Why does that happen so often in anime? And I think it assumes the viewer is familiar with the whole rest of the franchise, because there was a lot that just went straight over my head but didn't seem like it was supposed to. Nice animation and art style, though.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin - Advent of the Red CometEverything I said about Unicorn, only more.

My Hero AcademiaCovered

NichijouThis thing is still hilarious, even after a rewatch. Stick with the sub, as the new dub's voice-acting doesn't have the same range and power of the original, losing a lot of the humor.

Outlaw Star I'm struggling to remember a lot of this one. it’s another I watched because my brother was interested in it. I do recall that it was a fairly standard Space Western that ends in a way that's more like serious science fiction, and that for some reason a Japanese swordswoman in classic clothing was part of the cast. Now I wonder if that was an homage to Lupin III. Or maybe Japan just really loves throwing classic samurai into everything, regardless of setting or genre.

Pokemon (part of first series)I was in high school when this franchise first came to America, and for some reason all the geeks in my high school thought it was the greatest thing. The games were good, yeah, but the anime? I don't think it's bad for a kiddie cartoon, but it obviously has no greater ambitions than pleasantly occupying the kids for 22 minutes. Personally, what I really want is a series about Team Rocket done in the style of Cowboy Bebop.

Princess TutuCo-owner of the Best Magical Girl designation. I forget who asked me to watch this, but I owe them.

Puella Magi Madoka MagicaCo-owner of the Best Magical Girl designation. I still haven't bothered with anything but the original series, and I continue to be happy with that choice.

Samurai ChamplooI liked this better than Cowboy Bebop, but only because its ambitions were lower. It leaned more into its genre, had fun with its style more even when being serious, and as a result became more enjoyable. I overall liked going on a journey with these rascals, but I think it ended at a good point. I don’t need more.

Spice & Wolf (first season)I watched this on someone's suggestion, and found it a little underwhelming. What I really appreciated were the two main characters, especially that they seem to be into each other, romantically and sexually, and aren't freaked out by it while at the same time not being in a hurry to become a couple. It was just a kind of, "Yeah, this could really be something if we ever find the time." It was so amazingly mature and real. Too bad the main Economics plotlines just wound up being tepid.

Tekkaman BladeMy thoughts haven't changed on this.

Tiger & BunnyI'm still fond of this one, and I'm actually kind of curious to revisit it in light of My Hero Academia.

Transformers ‘Unicron Trilogy’These three cartoons are true anime, produced by and for Japan. (The other cartoons in the franchise were written, and sometimes animated, in the west.) It's garbage that assumes its child audience are morons, and on top of that the first two series wound up with laughably bad dubs. How this trilogy revitalized the franchise, I have no idea, and thankfully I'll never have to worry about it.

Volton (original)Either this or Robotech/Macross was my first anime; I was too young to say which I discovered first. I'll admit that the original Voltron isn't good, despite the toy being neat, but I have a soft spot for it. I tried the Netflix reboot, watching the first three episodes, and found it to be vacuous junk. Maybe some day a version of this will come along that will do justice to the toy.

And I think that’s it. If I remember anything I left off, I’ll reblog with the addition.

#Anonymous

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dicecast · 5 years ago

Text

Blast to the Past: Planescape Torment tutorial

Ok so if we really want to talk about

Now planescape torment as a game is mostly strongest in the start, the game reaches its peak once you leave for the Outlands and doesn’t really recover until the very end at the return to Sigil, something which I wish the enhanced edition would have fixed. But I think one of the reasons why this game is so beloved is in large part due to its strong opening. And whats funny at first is that it is actually closer in structure to the Pathfinder:Kingmaker situation than the Baldur’s Gate I opening. You awake in a crisis and need to escape from a building with different rooms having different mechanics be introduced. And while it is a lot faster if you don’t do the sidequests, you can’t just finish the tutorial in 5 mins the way you can with Candlekeep. Despite that, I think Planescape surpassing even Baldur’s Gate in its opening. Lets talk about why

1) Aesthetic. One of the most powerful thing about Planescape is that it has a very specific art direction, one which I have not seen in any fantasy before or sense, this philosopher hobo view of cosmic metaphor. While PS:T is undeniably part of the D&D universe and is just as much fantasy as Baldur’s Gate, it feels wholly unlike the former, even though both games are canon in the same universe. The game specifically removes most of the trappings of fantasy, there is a single sword and a single suit of armor in the whole game (the suit of armor is a companion), there are not dragons, there are no goblins/orcs/giants/drow/Mind flayers, you never explore ancient ruins of a lost civilization or restore a monarchy, you don’t even defend a village from monsters.

This game abandons the conventional trappings of fantasy instead having an aesthetic of...well a slum. Your initial weapons include an iron spike, a scalpel, a plybar, a severed arm, and a crunch, you travel to sewers and are murdered in like 40 different ways. And the Morgue is an absolutely great to place to set the tone, the whole place is full of images of emboldening fluid, dissected corpses, and body parts, but rather than being used to be creepy or evil it is actually rather nice. They aren’t enemies to be destroyed...they are you. This place of corpses and preservatives is where you belong, because you are after all, a corpse who keeps refusing to die.

2) it sets the tone, specifically in not judging a book by its cover. The Mortuary could easily have been a sinister realm of necromancers with their zombie servants doing experiments among the dead, but the tutorial puts you in the framework of not assuming that the sinister is evil. A floating skull can be your friend, you don’t have to attack the zombies, and the weird necromancers in robes talking about True Deaths are just stoic goths. In a Planescape setting and especially in a game that is as role-play heavy as this one, it is important to communicate to the player that they need to take the weird stuff on its surface rather than assume things are going to follow a standard fantasy storylines. Maybe the two demon ladies can be your friend, maybe its best to talk to the creepy hag, assumptions will not help you in this game

3) Its not entirely linear. A lot of the content is optional If you want, you can get through this tutorial in maybe 10-15 mins if you skip the side content. Also much of the content has multiple resolutions depending on your play style, making it much more an example of self expression rather than “I need to pick the locks now”

4) It is an actual story segement. My issue with Kingmaker or Bloodlines is that the tutorial is just....a place you learn the mechanics and nothing more, while the Morgue is directly related to the plot of Planescape. You need to learn about yourself as the Nameless One, you get to meet and learn about Morte, you meet Dhall and find out more aobut the story, You meet Deionarra, and most importantly where you wake up is also the entrance of the final boss. The Tutorial level is absolutely necessary to understand the story of the game and is infact more necessary than the whole Curst nonsense. \

5) It establishes the mechanics. Despite using the same engine and being set in the same universe as Baldur’s Gate, the experience is totally different in terms of gameplay. PS:T needs to introduce how important dialogue options are, that your stats can effect the various conversions, that you are immortal and that htis game has a much more visual novel/adventure game feel to it than the more combat oriented BG. lets contrast some points real quick

In Candlekeep, you have to do an errant for a guy and normally he gives you some money but in one of my playthroughs he gave me a +1 dagger. I didn’t know why the difference until I looked it up and was like “oh I had 18 charisma”. Meanwhile planescape torment, it informs you about the different stat and their effect on dialogue in order to let players know to plan their stats accordingly

To use another example, in the Mortuary there are a bunch of giant skeletons chilling around in the upper level. In BG that would be a challenge to defeat, but in PS:T, talking to them while having this one book and a high enough Int means you can deactivate them, getting XP for each one and looking their armor to learn spells. This is going to be a hallmark of PS:T and it is established here

The fact that you can get through this whole level only killing a single zombie is right away a major different from BG, where you kill like 90% of the cast.

6) It sets the tone of Planescape. One of the reasons why this game is so beloved is that PS:T kinda delivers on the RPG promise. There are like 20 zombies in this level and almost all of them has a different way of interacting with them and unique appearance. One of them has stitches that you can cut with a scapel to find a not, one is holding a book, one losses its arm that you can lose as a club, there is a zombie who is actually a human spy dressed up as a zombie (who can dress you up too) almost everything in this level has a unique method of interactivity, and that is before Morte tries to hit on them. Honestly one of hte failings of PS:T is that no other part of the game is as interactive as this particular level.

7) You can return to the Motuary throughout the rest of the game, making this place useful. Even if you do every single side-quest you can first time through, there will still be more to do. You come back here when you die, you need to go here for the final dungeon, some quests take you but most critically there is a whole zombie sidequest here. later in the game a crying zombie will give you the power to talk to the dead. If you think of it, you can return to this place and talk to every single zombie here, each of whom has their own story, a few of which are quite elaborate, and one of them is your old buddy who has some items for you.

In short, PS:T is to me the ideal RPG tutorial (though I do wish I could get through it a bit faster on a second play-through) because it feels like an actual part of the game rather than simply “the part where you do the mechanics”

Next time I might finally talk about why the tutorial for Pathfinder;Kingmaker is so bad...but I might not bother, its boring.

#Blast to the Past #Planescape torment #Dungeons and Dragons #Dustmen #Nameless One #morte #Rolepalying Games #RPG #D&D #Tutorials #Game Design

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moonbeammuses-a · 6 years ago

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Mobile About

Yeah, there’s a decent bit here, but this is info to help YOU know what to expect from ME. Please, take the time, just once, to read over this. I’m a bit wordy for the sake of clarity and leaving as few unanswered questions as possible.

My Rules and About may seem strict, but I am honestly very chill and happy to chat.

► Mun is of age, so are nearly all Muses. I am 26, and nearly all of my humanoid muses are of age, though I DO have child-verses for several of them. I specify humanoid because I will not ship or smut animal or creature muses that are not capable of giving proper informed consent.

►NO MINORS. I WILL NOT WRITE WITH ANY MUN UNDER 18. PERIOD.

►RP stats

I go by either Kitty or Moon on tumblr, though I prefer Kitty.

You'll probably never find out my IRL name.

I have a Discord but it is for mutuals only. Please IM me for it

I have been RPing for over a decade in various forms

►I am Selective- I only RP with Mutuals(I say selective, but I follow people back left and right so please don’t be intimidated)

-I am selective for my own sanity, as I am a fairly nervous and generally private person. I have to FEEL the ship/story/roleplay in general to be able to write it well. If I cannot write something well I don’t want to write it at all.

►I am Multi-verse and Multi-ship. Nobody is cheating on anyone. I will “connect” verses(threads) with each other if its discussed and WANTED by the other Mun, but this is rare and I have to be comfortable with the Mun to do so.

►Speed may Vary - If I am really feeling a thread, I might reply in MINUTES

But I may also take days, sometimes several weeks to reply to a thread. It depends on interest, muse, availability, and general life things.

It is not impossible that a reply can take over a month, or that I can lose interest in a thread because I've been unable to write a reply for so long. If this happens, I will tell you, and I will likely feel like shit as I apologize profusely. But I can't force something that isn't there.

I spend more time writing than most any other hobby, but RP is, and will always be, just that. A HOBBY. If you are expecting me to consider myself obligated to you in any way, don't follow me.

►VERY IMPORTANT:

Regardless of what is going on in my life, @theirvoices is my IRL best friend and I will ALWAYS prioritize replies with them. I may be entirely inactive at times with all other mutuals, but writing with them. PLEASE do not take this personally. I could be sitting in my closet having an anxiety attack and writing with my best friend to take my mind off of it. PLEASE do not make assumptions that I am ignoring you. They are my RP wife and my best friend and will ALWAYS be a priority, even when my activity on other threads is very slow. If that is a problem, I recommend not following me.

►I Drop Ask-Threads- If a thread was started with an ask, I WILL eventually drop it, likely with no warning, unless we plot out and make a defined storyline for it. This is because I recieve new asks and sentence memes EVERY. DAY. and it is beyond unrealistic to keep all of them.

If you want to KEEP an ask-thread, tell me.

►Following

-I will not follow you if you do not have at least semi-detailed Rules, About, and Bio pages. I also will expect to be able to find examples of your writing on your page without scrolling for ten minutes. -I need to know that our writing and posting styles will mesh. -I need to be comfortable writing with you. -I need to know that you are of age. -I need to know enough about your character to write with them. -I need to know that your expectations of other muses mesh with what I do/don't do.

-If I am following you, it is because I feel your muse(s) and mine may have some chemistry or potential for a story.

-IF I AM NOT FOLLOWING YOU, IT MAY BE BECAUSE I DO NOT KNOW THE MUSE YOU PLAY (example: I am not even remotely up to speed on any of the CW shows like the Flash, and have yet to see the Kingsman movies)

-PLEASE don't take it personally if I am not following back. There may be a multitude of reasons. For example, it can take me a long time to read over your blog properly. I don't follow without extensively checking out a person's blog.

-Additionally, IF I CANNOT READ YOUR BLOG I WILL NOT FOLLOW YOU. I have bad eyesight, and if you use tiny ass font or similar colors so that I can't read your blog even after zooming in until your theme is unusable, I will NOT follow you.

►Unfollowing- I will unfollow/not follow you if:

-If you do not tag your posts, I will unfollow you. I will not apologize.

-You send hate to people. Constructive criticism is one thing, but being a dick is unnecessary and I wont even say anything about this, I'll simply block you.

-You ignore my rules. Depending on the rule, I may warn you, I may simply unfollow, or I may block you. Respect people's rules. We are all here to write and enjoy ourselves, and respecting each other is an important part of that.

-You pressure me. An occasional nudge is fine but if you pressure me to reply i will drop the thread and unfollow. I've got enough IRL anxiety, I’m not here for more.

- You don't cut your posts. Seriously, there are several options, for desktop or mobile. I don't want to scroll for ten years to get to the next post. I'm not a major stickler for this, but be reasonable with your post length

► When I unfollow you for breaking my rules, I will:

Immediately drop all threads/delete all drafts and asks between us.

-Softblock you, so that you unfollow ME as well. This is to help ensure you do not presume we are still writing partners.

-Ignore any correspondence you attempt, including Asks, IMs, comments on my posts, etc. Excepting certain circumstances.

-If you repeatedly try to interact with me despite this, I will block you on all known blogs.

►Tagging

Personal posts are also tagged: #Kitty whines, OR #Kitty rambles

Smut/nudity/sexual imagery is tagged as #{{ NSFW }} OR just #nsfw . I try to use both.

if sexual acts are insinuated but not SHOWN, I use the tag #{{ nsfw-ish }}

-I sometimes forget to tag. Please remind me if you like, but be aware that this blog IS NSFW-THEMED and NSFW things, including smut, gore, character death, violence, torture, and a variety of other things will occur.

That’s not to say I won’t respect your triggers, because I will, I simply need to know if you need something tagged.

In general, NSFW smut, Death, Rape, and Torture are always tagged. Beyond that, I dont tag blood or gore or injuries, because they are rampant in my threads. Please use your own discretion to decide if this is a blog you should be following, because I DO NOT want you to be uncomfortable or threatened by myself or my content, but I also will not change how I RP.

-potentially triggering content will be tagged: {{ tw: tag }} example: {{ tw: non-con }}, {{ tw: Torture }}, etc.

►Icons

I am 100% okay with icon-less RP. You do NOT have to have icons or special formatting to RP with me ♥

- I use GIFs and Icons in MOST of my replies. Usually sized 100 pixels, I do occasionally go up to 150 pixels for gif icons. I have bad eyesight, and therefore need GIFs I use to be at least 150. If this bothers you, I can refrain from using GIFs in my RP with you. Please let me know.

-I RARELY, and ONLY with certain people will use larger GIFs or stills for specific scenes. I won’t do this without asking, but it does occur on my blog.

-I generally edit all of my own GIFs, unless otherwise stated in tags or a character's bio. If you want to use an image I edited, PLEASE check with me, and if you find that I have improperly credited/forgotten to credit someone please let me know.

Icon Credit

Almost all still 100x100 icons images that do NOT have a PSD come from the Hollow Artists, either at the Hollow Art website, or on their tumblr page, thehollowedartists.tumblr.com

My icon PSD with the crescent moon in the corner was made by @phasiiingxshadow, as was my Harley Quinn PSD.

200x110 icons with the moon in the bottom right corner were made by Snow: @writteninthestcrs

I have also used PSDs from the pack HERE for headers and graphics, and have used other free PSDs from @darkrpsd in some of my iconing ( check them out and see if you can support them!)

#{{ Mobile About }}#Kitty says Meow #{{ Supernovas }}

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gghero · 7 years ago

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🔥 pokemon and SU

OKAY THIS IS LONG. WAY LONGER THAN I EXPECTED. MORE THAN AN UNPOPULAR OPINION POST, IT TURNED INTO AN ALL-OUT OPINION POST

putting it under a cut; the pkm one is way longer and more detailed, SU is a plain ol unpopular opinion post and shorter so im putting it first.

SU:

honestly, i’ll be the first to say that the show is not perfect, that the characters cant stay on model (its still not enough to bother me or ruin everything because, cmon, im getting to watch the show for free) that the crew have made mistakes, that certain characters deserve better/worse, that certain lessons felt out of place, and all that jazz.

but hey, its not the worst thing to ever happen. i found SU while it was at its peak (late season 1 - early season 2, the best SU has ever been IMO) and even though im trying to not interact with the fandom anymore because of some toxic stuff that happened, i find myself enjoying the storyline, the worldbuilding is great and everything about the art style that is not proportions (backgrounds, palettes, character design) is arguably some of the best in current animation.

my beef with the fandom and most critical blogs is that the discourse sounds like the same stuff over and over and the general attitude is very snarky and condescending. my rule of thumb is that if youre going to critique something, you have to also give your ideas on what you would do in their place. i also felt talked down to everytime i interacted with them, and most people dont even know how to discuss things so any valid points they might bring up didnt phase me after rolling my eyes at their behavior. they also tend to treat their opinions as the objective truth - or only reblog from their fellow critic blog friends.

pokémon:

oh, pokémon. one of my most beloved video game franchises of all times. yet theyre not exempt from criticism. of course, none of what im about to say ruins the experience for me (otherwise, i wouldnt still play the games and making fanarts, DUH)

the games. first of all i have to say that theyre incredibly engaging. i find myself caught up in the hype before a big reveal, preordering and picking up the new game as soon as it comes out, and then playing non-stop until im satisfied with it... and usually thats it. yeah. one of my biggest complaints about pokemon is how replayable the games COULD be, if only gamefreak did the simplest thing of just adding more save slots. of course, ive ended up deleting old save files in order to replay a game, and thanks to pokebank i can keep my babies, but cmon. all the items you collected, the complete pokedex, how far you went in the battle chateau/battle tree/etc... its all lost forever. the game would also be infinitely more replayable if the post game were more extensive (rather than being like “here, go to the battle building of this generation and battle”). i think implementing side quests or achievement unlocking that gives you in-game perks would add so much.

ALSO GAMEFREAK please stop adding and changing and removing features that we like every single generation!!!! i was not bothered by character customization being removed in ORAS because i understand its a remake and they wanted to keep something similar to the original designs of may/brendan but!!!!! The PSS was GREAT, but you replace it with festival plaza that was... not great!!! you take away pokemon amie, which allowed more experienced players to farm hearts very fast via the minigames!!! you took away the super training!!!!! it makes it look like they dont know what theyre doing, and i understand that they want to shake things up, but i stg if we dont get ride pokemon in gen 8 and instead we are back to HMs, im gonna scream.

my next complaint is how... small the games feel. im not asking for an open world yet (short answer; yes i believe its doable) but the amount of hand holding and tutorials in the last games bothers me, not to mention how limited the exploring feels when compared with older games? dont get me wrong, the gym/trials system is not bad per se - its mostly the map, its soo so so tiny and easy to navigate. i feel like they could look at earlier zelda and mario games and do something similar; an exploration mechanic like twilight princess’s would work so well. you have huge areas to explore while keeping it closed-world, and i never found myself getting tired of roaming around hyrule. in comparison, routes in pokemon feel very small, towns especially are SO tiny, and pokemon is a franchise that would REALLY benefit from the sense of adventure that non-linear larger maps offer.

next is the art direction. im definitely not a genwunner; i think some pokémon designs are good, others are not as good, but i dont have a huge bias towards, say, kanto (kanto’s good designs are good, but kanto’s bad designs are the worst, if it makes sense?) if i had to choose, i’d say gen 2, 3 and 4 are the ones that better represent what i want pokemon to look like in general, but that might be because i love monster-like pokemon like ampharos, swampert, garchomp - huge and bulky-looking pokemon - rather than pokemon that look too much like regular animals or inanimate objects.

human character design is also good. they have been doing great in terms of racial diversity lately, but i do wish there were more “not-paper-thin skinny” characters (especially women) (and the ones that are fat/obese dont look suspiciously more cartoony/comic relief-y than the main characters); and older characters as well, specially women.

i think my fave art direction is from black/white (1 and 2), the stylisation, clothes design and especially color palettes were gorgeous. i like a lot how the eyes and highlights/shading looked in black/white (1 and 2) - i think it was Take who did most of the art, instead of Sugimori and Ohmura.

(im sorry but im feeling the top image squad look much more)

my biggest complaint about pokemon’s art direction is that the 3D simply doesnt look its best as of now. im not a fan of the pixel-y black outline all models have, the colors of most pokemon in their 3D models look so washed down in general, and the backgrounds really suffer from this. i must say that changing the angle from a zenit POV to a third person camera in sun/moon was a step in the good direction, you get to see further in the distance and feel like the world is immersive.

the color palettes for backgrounds could be better too, they have definitely taken a step in the wrong direction and went from this:

(pretty, muted but not extremely pastel or washed down; nice colors, those greens and browns are gorgeous - and yeah sorry about the bottom pic having a slight filter on, but cmon, its not like base game looks much different, remember?)

to this:

(aggressive colors, dont give me a sense of harmony, that extremely orange dirt and sky and almost neon green grass make my head hurt)

i have to say i preferred how the pixel-y, half 2d half 3d style of gen 4 and 5 looked, imo its the best pokemon has ever looked, but they clearly dont have the technology to make breathtaking, fully 3D games yet. i’d say its a necessary evil though so im hopeful for the future. and no, i dont want hyperrealistic textures or pokemon designs either (pokken style is so detailed it feels a little uncanny valley at times, specially with less realistic pokemon like gengar or gardevoir). ideally, pokemon will look like breath of the wild’s 3D character models, with that watercolor-ish style, the cell shading and the vibrant vivid colors. AND NO OUTLINES PLEASE.

finally the last point about the games is the storylines. I generally like pokémon storylines. they’re very good when you are caught up in the action, specially as of late, theyre adding cutscenes and dialogue-heavy scenes that dont feel out of place. but i cant bring myself to LOVE THEM as much as i love other videogame storylines. they still feel a little basic (this is not a problem because of the game’s formulaic nature, mind you) and while they havent shied away from more mature elements in the past, the overall tone is a little immature at times with a big huge plot heavy climax thrown in, and thats it. (and before you tell me pokemon is for kids: i know, but other shows and games for kids dont fall in the same plain secondary characters rut as pokemon does.) i would love for the Main character to have some sort of agency too because i feel like im following what other characters decide for me (at least give me dialogue options that, you know, DONT YIELD THE SAME DIALOGUE NO MATTER WHICH YOU CHOOSE).

thats about all i have to say about the games themselves. not gonna talk about anime or manga bc im not really into those

as for the fandom... its generally chill. its huge, but its divided in so many sub-groups that you never feel overwhelmed. the competitive community might be more toxic ive heard, but im more into the plot and characters anyways.

i do have to call out the huge p///edophilia problem there is. being a franchise most people grew up with, characters like idk, misty, may, dawn (its girls more often than not) were older or the same age as most of the older fans were back in the day. as a result, they have obsessed with their image since they were kids, and this obsession has continued now that theyre grown ass people, and they have no problem consuming and producing huuuge amounts of porn for these characters. as for the latest games, these disgusting people have even less excuse (not that they ever had) there’s tons of CP and adult x minor ships out there, and its allowed to thrive more often than not because of the sheer size of the fandom, too.

PHEW.

#gg's stupidity #ask gghero #the-writing-jellyfish #ask meme

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renaramblesaboutcomics · 7 years ago

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Wednesday Roundup 13.9.2017

Well, it’s obviously Sunday and not Wednesday but I finally got the Roundup out. My apologies if anyone was anxiously awaiting my Roundup this week but due to both the huge number of comics I had to go through and the fact that I had a lot going on this past week in my personal life, including two seven hour car drives, this was a bit difficult to fit into the schedule.

But I managed and late is still better than never so let’s get into how the second week of September’s comic yield treated us!

Marvel’s All-New Wolverine, Marvel’s Defenders, DC’s Detective Comics, Marvel’s Elektra Vol. 1, DC’s Harley Quinn and Batman, Marvel’s Immortal Iron Fists, Marvel’s Runaways, DC’s Titans, IDW’s Transformers: Lost Light, DC’s Wonder Woman

DC’s All-New Wolverine (2015-present) #24 Tom Taylor, Leonard Kirk, Michael Garland, Erick Arciniega

I love this comic so much that I’m certain that me even talking about another issue in one of these Roundups probably sounds hilariously repetitive at this point, but I just so love this book, and even my disinterest in comic space operas didn’t take away from the amazingness of this book because Taylor understands how to make a comic compelling.

Story: We come to the end of the contagion/space opera storyline with the emphasis that this book works best with, which is the unendingly positive relationship between Laura and Gabby. Laura’s attachment to Gabby and their belief in each other is unlike anything we’ve ever seen for Laura’s character before and it just never stops amazing me. They are the defining part of this book and, more importantly, they are the defining part of each other’s overarching character arcs -- Gabby teaching Laura to take care of herself (literally and metaphorically), Laura giving Gabby the encouragement and support she never had herself. There was no other way this book could have ended but with these two proving to beat the odds again, and that makes the resolution feel deserved, as well as how the healing factor they both share has been a driving part of this storyline to begin with.

Art: Kirk does solid work throughout this issue, particularly with the expressionism you see in Laura’s face throughout, and I really liked the alien designs. But that all being said there was some off model panels and the such which is just to be expected from working on a monthly comic. It still is very good art and the colors helped make each change of scenery.

Characters & Dialogue: Of course I covered our titular Wolverines, but it needs to be said that I actually really appreciate Jonathan unexpectedly beginning to speak English? Because that’s hysterical but it also fits, and I love that he still spoke with perspective of a Wolverine. I also thought Taylor did a good job with the voices of the Guardians, too,

Marvel’s Defenders (2017-present) #5 Brian Michael Bendis, David Marquez, Justin Ponsor

*long heralding breath* So just one week after my epic Bendis rant, I.. reveal that I’m also following his run on the current Defenders. Which... I mean in my defense, if I want to keep up with just about anything going on at Marvel that isn’t the crapshow that is Secret Empire, I have to concede to the fact that Bendis is still the writer on half of those books too. Which... I mean if you’re like me and you have that super complicated relationship I have with BMB then you understand why this is both a necessity and a blow to your standards. I know, I know. I’m disappointed in myself, too.

Story: As much as I really could have done without the cliffhanger on this issue, this continues to be one of the comics that Bendis really manages to perform at his best on, and arguably that’s because he’s invested so much time and work over his career into developing most of these characters -- particularly Jessica, Luke, and Daredevil.

The pacing has remained on top, Frank Castle’s actually respected as a character but also portrayed as incredibly dangerous to everyone involved, and the humor has been true to the characters and situation. All of which is very commendable... if not .... a bit annoying and repetitive at times. Like yes, Marvel stupidly retconned that Matt had a public identity because they can’t commit to anything that disrupts the status quo. It doesn’t make it less annoying that half the dialogue involving him is lampshading everyone not knowing his identity.

There’s also the patented Bendis rhetorical advice where you have two or more panels of the exact same panel for ~dramatic pauses~ which I think only long time Bendis readers have burned into their alert systems. But overall, when Bendis is good he nails it.

Art: Marquez and Ponsor are honestly some of the best talent in the industry right now and I like that they don’t just sit back on their laurels but adapt their styles just enough to match the tone of every book. It gives the Marvel universe a consistency without sacrificing the individuality of books. And it really makes a difference on this title, I feel.

Characters & Dialogue: There’s the punchy dialogue you expect from Bendis writing but like I said, you can definitely tell where his investment for character lies. Which... makes it conspicuous when his writing for Luke always tends to be a bit worthy of criticism. But this villain Diamondback? gahhhhhhhhhh I legitimately cringe at some points. like nooooo let’s not.

DC’s Detective Comics (2016-present) #964 James Tynion IV, Christopher Sebela, Carmen Camero, Ulises Arrelo

I have such a love-hate relationship with this comic, I swear. There’s probably not a single comic I cheer on more and want to be at its very best but there’s also no other comic that receives my critical ire the way ‘Tec does. Is it all fair? Eh. Arguable. Is it all with love? Also arguable. We’ll see where that takes us for this particular issue.

Story: Look, it’s as obvious as can be at this point that no one’s as critical and just simply not on board for a Clayface redemption storyline than I am. I don’t want it at all. I was never on board with it. Never will be. And... in that way it felt like Detective Comics was actually addressing me and readers like me through this issue. The entire plot with Clayface is ... questionable at best to begin with, but to have one of his victims fully lay it out for him and us just how there’s so little he could ever do to undo the clock for himself or others. And he proves that even more by how poorly he reacts to this news and blows his second chance over it just... feels deserved after SO LONG of them just ignoring it.

And then they had it tie into Cass’ character arc in the end by her deciding that she and Basil are the same. And they’re not!!! They’re just not. It’s amazing that it can feel like such a slap in the face. Especially when this is such.... a B-story and yet it got the cover? Sure. Whatever.

In any case, the main story is Steph, Leslie, and Harper all apparently drinking the kool-aid that Anarky is giving them. And then Bruce coming and subtly pushing Steph out of her moments of happiness, even if it’s for the right reason and I’m just here wondering “uh. Tim’s back next issue why is this not resolved yet?” These issues would have worked so much better if Steph’s story was not taken away from by constantly giving Clayface’s story panel time that should have just been kept on Steph. She deserved more development before Tim got back, and her arc should be more satisfying by now.

Also. When is Detective Comics going to bother to actually have, you know, detective stories? Mysteries? Ever? no? great.

Art: The art rotation on this book is always great, even when it’s not my favorite artists it’s still just beyond fantastic and some of the best getting published at DC right now. Which makes you wonder how they manage it with a bimonthly title like ‘Tec. It’s good, and even its splash pages are easy to read and follow which is such a relief these days.

Characters & Dialogue: I feel like the characterizations and development was the weakest it’s been in ‘Tec for a while, especially since it’s usually the high point of the comic. This time around, though, there’s just too much that feels unresolved and unsatisfying. Like.... why didn’t Bruce go after Steph and make sure she knew that Tim was alive? At the very least.

And again I feel like this comes down to the fact that Steph’s time was split on the page with Clayface’s even though their storylines didn’t intersect thematically or literally! And it’s ridiculous considering we just came off of several issues where Azrael’s arc got center stage and even though there was a B story (CONCERNING CLAYFACE AGAIN) there was a majority of time spent with Jean Paul and his perspective.

Marvel’s Elektra: Always Bet On Red (2017) Matt Owens, Juann Cabal, Antonio Fabela

If there are two characters at Marvel who I have a more complicated relationship with than Arcade and Elektra... Well, honestly, it’s just probably because I haven’t read enough of the characters that would meet that criteria for me. Elektra, on paper, is the type of female antiheroine/villain that really truly love, with plenty of pathos but also a lack of only being an antiheroine through redemption or changing her methods. A Bad Woman who is allowed to be a Bad Woman. Arcade is a character whose general MO and abilities are a cross of three of my favorite villains in general -- the Riddler, Toyman, and Calculator -- and has been the villain for a few stories I greatly love. But I don’t love them because... Well, it feels like most of the time writers don’t know what to do with Elektra because they only know how to make female villains likable by either giving them a redemption arc or by making them a love interest -- things that either would not stick for her established character or would make her tied to Daredevil inseperably. ANd Arcade has been given Joker-levels of mass murdering -- especially of children in the Marvel Universe -- to the point that it’s hard for me to really enjoy his presence on its face anymore.

So. That leaves the question of how this story works for me as a whole with quite a steep slope to get up on its own.

Story: For being about two characters who I have, at the very least, very high apprehensions about, this story managed to be fascinating, compelling, and altogether rather satisfying in the use of both Elektra and Arcade for what they can contribute to a narrative. The stakes were high throughout, especially once Elektra was trapped within the Murder World, but it all benefited from her unique perspective and the general unpredictability that Arcade brings to any story as a villain.

The back drop of Las Vegas for the adventure, too, was a stroke of some brilliance because the characters both fit there and clashed for the parts of the “mythology” of the city, as it were, that they represented.

Still it was far from perfect, and while I’m obviously no huge defender of Arcade or a fan by any means, the weak point here was actually the side characters, especially on the “first level” of the game that Elektra encountered or how disposable the majority of her opponents and teammates were. The stakes were high for Elektra to survive, certainly, but it clashed with her new code of ethics -- of taking life to save life -- to have her not even familiarize herself enough with the people on her own team to take their deaths to heart. Which is why the “next” level where she had to race the clock and save her newfound friend more engaging than the Saw-like devastation we saw on display when she had a larger group who were all taken out one by one. Mostly without reaction from Elektra herself.

And if this team were mostly not fighters and not compelling, then what attracted Arcade to them enough to put them in Murder World? Did he think that feeling responsible for them would weigh Elektra down enough to make the competition more even? Obviously not since he went through the trouble of kidnapping the only person in the city that Elektra had remotely bothered to make a human relationship with. So the entire “first level” was just very confused in my book. I would have either had Elektra working with a small group who all died immediately, or have been the only one in the initial level to make it seem like Arcade took her as a serious enough threat and thus sicked an entire group against her. Either of those would have made the story more compelling.

Art: The art is amazingly beautiful and consistent throughout the trade. This really does prove the point that I and so many other comic readers and reviewers have been making a while now with a consistent art team truly enhances the visual and narrative cohesion of a story and can make a much tighter and easier to follow along with. And here it not only works but it provides for some truly beautifully done and well controlled action sequences that remind me of straight back to the Dylan Horrocks run of Batgirl (2000-2006)

I also want to shout out to the shear inventiveness that was allowed for by the environment of Murder World. Like in the panels I posted here for example, the meging of this house comic style with retro gaming honestly worked so much in the favor of this comic it’s unreal. I really enjoyed it

Characters & Dialogue: While Arcade is... well, what I expect from Arcade these days, xnd honestly that’s more than I can ask for at this point because.. Agin, literal mass murderer. But Elektra really does come off the bst here (as she should in her own title). Still very much the antiheroine, Elektra for once is given a lot of motivation that centers -- albeit subtly -- on the ideas and pressures of unity in womanhood and the protectiveness she can grow toward other women. It’s the deaths of a shipment of entrapped, trafficked women that set Elektra off on this quest of self discovery, and it’s the protection and comforting of a woman she befriends in Las Vegas that prompts her motivations within this particular story. And honestly? It really works for me. She has always been a character most defined by the loyalties she holds, and they have never been many. But it’s nice to see her even reluctantly discovering herself through these non-romantic relationships with other women for once. It was really enjoyable and, like I said, subtle.

DC’s Harley Quinn and Batman (2017) #3 Ty Templeton, Luciano Vecchio

Hm. I won’t be going into this subject in the bulk of the main review due to how I section things out and because I’m not going to completely judge this story before it’s completed, but I feel like here’s as good of a place as any to discuss the issues of queerbaiting. I have very complicated feelings about Ivy and Harley as a couple. I enjoy their dynamic, I enjoy the ship, and I want it to be canon and receive plenty of focus more than almost anything else to do with the two characters. But I can’t be joyful when it’s dangled in front of me -- especially in scenes like the one above, because it is such a queerbaiting classic to use these two or to, at the very least, have the question the creative teams behind them because a good percentage of the time it’s fetishizing a flf relationship for the sexual gratification of men without ever committing to actually canonizing a sapphic relationship. And I’m one lesbian who’s pretty damn tired about it honestly. And that’s what this issue felt like to me -- queerbait by hinting and innuend os for the relationship between Harley and Ivy when being blatant in allowing Harley to hit on Nightwing and Catwoman to hit on Batman in the scene right before this.

And now I have to be even more on guard for this comic to follow the plot of the animated movie and be worried that this all is just setup for a pointless and literally out of nowhere sex scene between Harley and Dick. Great.

Story: Much the same here, though I have to admit that the turn of pace right at the end by having Harley realize her status as seen among the rest of Gotham’s crime community is that of “Queen Hench” and thus declaring that she was going to take charge and no longer play second banana was a great moment. Especially since Ivy is strangely cold and dismissive of Harley in this story, compared to usual at least. It must have something to do with our weird mystery man. Or the writers just deciding that we’re now going to write Harley and Ivy’s relationship with the exact same tones and beats that they did for the Joker and Harley despite FINALLY canonically having Harley call his abuse of her what it was. And the scenes with Bruce and Dick I’m... just of two minds about, I don’t love or hate them. They seem to be there for comedic relief B story to Harley’s main story which is... hilarious in a meta sense but, hey, it gets me more puns.

Just don’t let it all be setup for whoopee with Dick and Harley. For the love of god PLEASE.

Art: Wow holy crap. Every complaint I made about the previous issues is addressed and fixed. The lineart’s crisp, the coloring is bright and variable, the characters don’t go off model nearly as much, and it’s still very much that identifiable DCAU style but also has that mark of belonging to its artist. Who is not Rick Burchett anymore. Maybe every couple of issues we’re going to get a trade off, but I have to say, for my personal tastes this was a stunningly crisp evolution of the art for the story and I appreciated it almost immediately.

Characters & Dialogue: Harley is great as always, and I liked Selina’s characterization and the details put forward about how she’s actually on parole and whatnot. but I’m still not sold on Ivy’s characterization here. After all she’s the one who went to Harley and saved her, not the other way around. So why is she suddenly being so weird and mysterious.

The only other major characters are Bruce and Dick and... it’s just weird. There’s this disconnect with their personalities where I feel like this would make a lot more sense if Dick was in the Robin suit. I mean, why not? He was older and more mature in the Robin years of the DCAU anyway, he had this same rapport with Bruce. He didn’t have this kind of relationship with Bruce in his Nightwing years of the DCAU. So I’m just confused all over. I’m sure it’s just because the movie did it this way which probably means sex which probably means you’re going to be getting a lot of screaming and angry keyboard smashing from me in the future *le sigh*

Marvel’s Immortal Iron Fists (2017) #4 (of 6) Kaare Andrews, Afu Chan, Shelly Chen

Will I ever stop enjoying this comic to the utmost extreme in spite of all my Danny Rand reservations and general apprehension with the whole Iron Fist concept? It’s still questionable, but not in this issue at least because I still love the heck out of Pei, Danny, and general ridiculous adventures of middle school and Kung Fu.

Story: Pei’s still trying to find her spot among cliques and within the realm itself, with Danny in her life, and with her destiny as the future Iron Fist. And she also won the dance queen because she beat up the people that were going to cheat for her nemesis. And I love it. I love all of it. But I most of all love that Pei’s perspective is not admonished or treated as childish by the narrative, even when she’s not being the most reasonable. Danny and the scroll storyline also got more concentration mostly because we’re narrowing in on the Big Bad and only have two issues left. So it was all pretty positive. Especially since the end brought both storylines together at long last.

Art: It’s precious still and fits with Pei’s story perfectly. But there were plenty of panels where this same style’s take on Danny was... gruesomely ugly and terrifying. I can’t tell if that’s a a bug or a feature.

Characters & Dialogue: Pei and Danny are as great as always, but I really want to thank this comic for having a children’s, all-ages story which prominently features an undeniable queer romance featuring kids. It’s so refreshing and lovingly done that it genuinely warmed my heart. Much like the short film “In a Heartbeat” we need more unsexualized queer romances for younger children to attach to. I’m glad to see it here.

Marvel’s Runaways (2017-present) #1 Rainbow Rowell, Kris Anka, Matthew Wilson

This is incredibly exciting, because I actually never read Runaways while it was being published in any of the previous iterations, but thanks to the recommendations of close friends, I started and finished reading the previous volumes in time to get excited for the comic’s return here under a promising new team and fantastic, beautiful art.

Story: Being the first issue, this is a lot of set up, especially with Nico’s circumstances since the previous series and the team’s apparent breakup. I love that the scars are deep but the comic goes out of its way to be inviting to old and new readers alike in introducing Nico, her powers, their limitations, and the Gert and Chase and their relationship as well as their relevance to the team. I’m very curious about all the set up -- especially how the current storyline seems to be setting up that Nico’s running out of spells with the Staff of One and it’s a legitimate problem that will be needing address. Hopefully the story won’t drop it where it is.

Art: Wow I was really wowed with just how beautiful the art was in this comic. Kris Anka hadn’t been on my radar before this but they definitely are now. The character models were great, the apartment felt lived in and fully thought out, and everyone in general just seems to have properly aged and their current iterations are exactly how you would imagine they would be from the previous volumes.

Characters & Dialogue: We haven’t rejoined the entire cast of the Runaways just yet, but the work with Nico who was central to this issue was phenomenal set up and really appreciated. Chase is as obsessed with saving Gert as ever, and the love between him and Gert seems to have been where the previous left off. I liked the ingenuity that was on display from all the characters and the genuine love and concern they obviously had for each other. Just great all around.

DC’s Titans (2016-present) #15 Dan Abnett, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Andrew Dalhouse

Everyone else learns that Dick was the traitor and Titans manages to actually subvert everyone’s expectations. In all honesty, I’ve been blown away by how surprisingly good this comic has continued to be despite everything that should have been working against it.

Story: Like I mentioned above, Dick being the traitor was completely subverted by having Roy immediately discover it and the rest of the team ready to take him on as a result, only for Dick to prove that he was thinking ahead and using his position to undermine the HIVE, unlike in previous New Titans stories where Dick was under the control of Brother Blood or others. And I like that as tested as the relationships feel like they are at the moment, there is a real sense that the team’s built on something stronger and more durable. And I like that Mal and Gnarrk’s storyline is getting more prominent in the story as well. And I would say that this is going to prove that they’re stretching the current storyline out just a bit too much... except for that ending. The idea of Wally actually having a heart attack has completely changed the story for me because this feels like an actual game changer.

Art: Once again I’m in the position of not knowing really what to say about Brett Booth’s art for the comic that I haven’t already. He’s surprised me with his character art lately, but I still get extremely annoyed with the over use of slanted and action-styled panel layouts that really don’t match what’s going on in the story or the art. Dynamic panels just don’t fit pages of dialogue in between action set pieces and that’s all I have really to add. It’s good! The layouts could be better, but the art itself is just fine.

Characters & Dialogue: The relationships and characterizations are so closely tied to the narrative of Titans -- like my favorite team books usually are -- that going over the story beats tends to cover the characters and dialogue. That being said, because there are so many characters and so much change going on that it’s hard to say who has the most impact on this particular issue, and I’d argue that it’s going to prove that Titans is a book that might be better read arc to arc rather than issue to issue so that the overall feel of whose story this is would be more apparent.

IDW’s Transformers: Lost Light (2016-present) #9 James Roberts, Priscilla Tramontano, Joana Lafuente

It’s strange only be subscribed to one Transformers comic at a time right now, but as much as I miss TAAO even now, I’m greatly excited by how much Lost Light seems to be JRo and the team getting back to that amazing stride they had prior to Season 2 of MTMTE, and of course by that I mean that this single issue managed to bring me so much emotion and end me on both a positive note, fridge horror, and complete heartbreak all at once.

Story: There was a small part of me that wanted to see the return of Skids, but I honestly feel like Lost Light maintained a good and consistent idea by not bringing him back and instead focusing on the relationships of the cast that are still available. This really was a two-issue storyline and it utilized every moment of it as well as every unique opportunity afforded by being about Transformers to begin with -- revival after death is possible, removing someone’s memories or emotions is possible, altering the factitious part of what someone is is a horrifyingly real possibility as easy as deleting a computer file -- an entire friendship, an entire love, gone in a moment. And of course there was so much emotion to gt through for our conclusion -- love, grief, friendship, betrayal, selfishness, selflessness, humor, and ultimately a supremely foreboding sense of what’s to come from the Lost Light’s adventures to come given that ominous conclusion.

Art: Priscilla Tramontano is just... genuinely one of the best artists to work with Transformers and I’m so grateful to have her on Lost Light right now because it definitely helped ease some of that disappointment I’ve had with TAAO ending. Her art is gorgeous, her coloring is fantastic, and the expressions that are under her control are just fantastic start to finish. I liked how diferent everyone’s build looked even without color corrodination. Though, I will say, the brighter and shinier art did have some odds with Roberts’ patented darker elements in the storylinethat I think a change in coloring style may have helped at different points

Characters & Dialogue: I would argue that when it comes to characterization and when it comes to dialogue in the medium, there’s probably no one in comics more clever and ore fascinating than James Roberts. Every bit of dialogue is important, every change in tone is purposeful, and so much is fit into every issue it’s hard to not be starstruck. If there are readers who are not as invested in Nautica, Velocity, Anode, and Lug, I could see how these two issues may have been disappointing, but for me personally I liked narrowing down on our already lessened cast to get more ideas about their personalities and personal arcs.

DC’s Wonder Woman (2016-present) #30 Shea Fontana, David Messina, Romulo Fajardo Jr.

I am honestly kind of in shock that.... DC is ending Shea Fontana’s run after only three months. Like, finding out about her being replaced by James Robinson of all people... and that he is starting off the bat with an arc centered around Diana’s new brother has almost eclipsed what should be my summation of this Wonder Woman run. So I’ll give a shout out to Fontana now.

She had a nearly impossible task of taking over for Greg Rucka hot off of one of his best received and most acclaimed comic runs in years and she managed to rise to the occasion with an emphasis on Diana’s character, her relationships with the modern world, and her love for people but also her defiance of allowing her abilities to be misused by the wrong people, so she’s powerful and she’s in control of her autonomy. I greatly enjoyed her storyline and really appreciated her voice being added to Diana’s history.

Story: We come to the end of “Heart of an Amazon”. It felt like a very quick wrap up of her storyline and I hope she wasn’t cut short on a run she thought would be longer, but the inspiration and the seriousness of Diana’s impact on the world around her was at the forefront with a healthy amount of good points for Steve and Etta in the climax. I wish we had more time to fully understand what parts of the government were a part of this plot against her, but it seems like that’s a line that will be dropped now, unfortunately.

Art: The art has been somewhat inconsistent with Fontana’s run, but Messina is probably my favorite of the rotation. He has powerful anatomy for almost all the characters but especially with Diana, and her height was always emphasized. The colors were also really great for contrast and much appreciated.

Characters & Dialogue: I went over this for the most part, but the best part of this storyline was Fontana really understanding the difficulties of Diana’s relationships with her loved ones in the modern world -- her protectiveness, but also the loneliness she feels being alone, and fears being left by others’ mortality. And I felt this had a decent resolution to that point that I really appreciated by letting Diana not necessarily be saved by Steve and Etta but her being reminded of how much they are there to take care of her, too. I really loved that emphasis and it made the ending feel that much better as a result.

There were a lot of fantastic comics in this Roundup, but it’s hard to understate what an absolute home run, straight over the fences, that Runaways ended up being this week. It’s a shockingly great start to a series I’m now enthusiastically looking forward to. There is a lot of love that’s obviously there for the original Vaughn run and what it managed to do, but this comic also showed no fear in confronting many of the aspects of the series before it that could be more criticized and could use greater address. I have a lot of high expectations after this issue and I hope it can maintain its momentum.

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chroniclerwabba · 8 years ago

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it’s 5AM and i’m pissed about warcraft (mostly lore) again

I have a personal chip on my shoulder against Overwatch for reasons that might not be wholly valid. Project Titan (original OW) was started, and Blizz started to shift people around. Jeff Kaplan switched from working on WoW to Titan, and the game eventually got cancelled in 2014. Cataclysm’s released heralded a downturn for the quality of the game, not just in terms of lore. The xpacs had a few good things in them (MoP is one of my favorites, the pandaren have great lore), but there was a lot of shit in there too. WoD was barebones as shit in terms of content with a completely nonsense storyline that took a huge shit on the lore. Titan was cancelled and recycled into Overwatch, a move that divided developers and even caused Metzen to quit. I don’t blame or hold anger at Metzen for quitting (the guy had a fucking baby on the way, he needed to be a dad), but when he announced he was retiring, that’s when Warcraft really lost its magic to me and when I fell out of love with it.

So I blame Overwatch for what happened to Warcraft, which isn’t necessarly fair. Overwatch is fun and well made (in terms of art style that is, everything else is debatable). Maybe it makes more sense to blame the writers for losing their touch. But I still hold that slight disdain for Overwatch, even if it’s unfair. But enough about that; let’s talk about shitty lore.

Cataclysm is where the game just became bogged down with bad lore decisions, consisting of forced conflict and characters acting against their established selves to make said forced conflict happen.

Garrosh being made warchief was the first in a long laundry list of bad decisions. There was no reason Thrall would’ve logically made him leader even when being Grom’s son. It was evident he was not suited for this position and someone like Vol’jin or Saurfang should’ve taken the reins. He would’ve either kept him as a high ranking general like Nazgrim or waited until he matured a bit more and mellowed out to give him the mantle. It’s such a bullshit promotion that exists only to force conflict and have lore why PvP is still a thing (because it’s not like we can just have pvp be noncanon like bungie did with classic halo jesus fuck blizz you’re not 343 you don’t need to give pvp lore validity of fucking course the racial leaders aren’t really dead despite me killing them smh)

Garrosh is a bumbling inconsistent mess. In the books, Garrosh is smarter, but in the games, he’s a goddamn idiot and a brat with no sense of responsibility who blames Thrall during their fight in Nagrand (despite the fact that thrall literally left eitrigg, vol’jin, saurfang, and cairne behind to help him deal with shit and he tells them all to fuck off. also blaming thrall for him having to pick up the pieces is bullshit when he almost broke the horde because he literally kept trying to push the other races down into subservience, to a point where he tried to assassinate vol’jin). So Garrosh had no accountability as a leader. His whole plan to establish orcish supremacy and “make the horde great again” shows he has no fucking clue about orcish history despite his dad being IN THE SHIT. Orcish supremacy was all a lie concocted by Ner’zhul to fearmonger the draenei as evil invaders. Before the Horde, all the clans did was just live separately and fight the ogre empire who just wanted to enslave them. The Horde only exists because Kil’jaedan manipulated them into becoming one to wipe out the draenei. Garrosh doesn’t even know his own people’s fucking lore. Oh, and an extra special fuck you from when he said Thrall is no longer an orc. Nobody in the entire Warcraft lore has any right to tell Thrall he isn’t an orc. Thrall was a literal child soldier raised by Blackmoore to fight like an animal in his colosseum (his fucking name literally means SLAVE). The only human friend he had during his childhood was raped and beheaded and even lets Blackmoore’ men go free after he kills him in honorable combat. Thrall has the most validity out of anyone in the Horde to be against the Alliance, but he just wants to give his people a home after the Legion stole it all and turned them into murderers. So anyway Garrosh can go fuck himself (except none of what I said actually matters because warlords of draenor established that all orcs are evil murderers even without demon blood so everything warcraft 3 was about means nothing i guess fuck you blizzard). Also, miss me with that bullshit about honor™ when you use a bomb to vaporize your enemies and not fight them by yourself on the fields of battle like your dad would’ve.

The Alliance hasn’t been written as morally grey or written to have flaws since Warcraft 3. Aside from Arthas’ and Jaina’s storylines, the rest of the Alliance is a bunch of assholes. Grom is forced to drink from the demon pool because the night elves started murdering them after they went to Ashenvale to cut down trees so they can build settlements to protect the orcs and their new tauren allies. The same allies the night elves just up and abandoned to be fucking murdered by the centaur almost to extinction despite how Cenarius himself blessed Huln Highmountain for his bravery for the tauren helping fight the legion alongside the kaldorei ten thousand years ago. So big fucking lore oversight, right? Also, since the kaldorei can just grow trees everywhere, why is there a logging crisis with the Horde? They can literally replace the trees right there. In fact, they could literally have solved the Horde’s famine crisis, but they don’t because they’re a bunch of stingy fucks who never get their shit called out. When people complain about Alliance favoritism, this is what they mean. The Horde always has to be the villain in some way, and the Alliance are always the good™ guys who never do anything wrong ever™. The closest we’ve gotten to the Alliance being somewhat morally grey was Camp Taurajo (which is swept under the rug with the biggest bullshit handwave by baine saying ehh it’s okay because that’s a realistic reaction). Jaina just straight up lets her men burn down and kill a bunch of native farmers whose race has lived here for years and never has to acknowledge this directly.

Jaina is almost as mishandled as Garrosh was. In the early days of MoP, they screwed up her being the anti-Horde character but could’ve salvaged it. Now they’ve just made her near irredeemable trash. So after Garrosh blows up Theramore and kills all her men, she’s pissed and out for blood and justifiably so. You want her to kill that motherfucker, but Blizzard doesn’t know about this thing called “moderation” or “reasonable chracter development” so they just decide to crank her up to 22 and have her be a stone cold murderer. She’s just gonna drown Orgrimmar and kill all sorts of innocent civilians inside, including an entire fucking orphanage of children she knows good and well exists since she’s visited the city many times before. Completely missed her the first time (because someone who watched her ex-fiance burn down an entire city including the children would be okay with killing children i guess). Thrall shows up and tries to tell her “hey, child murder is fucked up” and she doesn’t bother listening (apparently thrall isn’t allowed to be upset by children being victims of war despite having been a child slave himself but it’s somehow his fault because he made garrosh warchief even though there was no way he could’ve known this would’ve happen but whatever conflict i guess). So Kalecgos then shows up (who apparently is just her token love interest now and will never show up in the game to do anything useful so all that development he had in cataclysm is now moot. like fucking aggra at least helped thrall at the echo isles kalecgos didn’t do shit) and tells her “hey, child murder is bad” and it finally clicks in her head (so it took three times for her to figure out that she shouldn’t let small children die). Then we flash forward to Legion where Blizz has just decided they just don’t give a shit. Jaina shows up to Stormwind Keep and is pissed that the Horde abandoned the Alliance at the Broken Shore. So a grown ass woman in her 30s proceeds to be condescending and talk shit to a seventeen year old boy who just LOST HIS DAD about not wanting to fight two wars at once and risk crippling the Alliance (because apparently kul yiras no longer exists so she just can’t fund her own damn war i guess. also jaina apparently possesses a teleportation spell established since wotlk to exist that would’ve allowed her to save varian wrynn before he died so thanks a lot for the pointless death that could’ve been avoided for lore reasons, blizz. also we’re just supposed to forgive her racist piece of shit dad for wanting to commit ethnic cleansing and kill little orcish children because jaina needs to angst). Then she gets written out of the plot so Anduin never gets to call her out on the bullshit she tried to pull and so Blizz can shelve her for another forced war conflict. So Jaina has literally developed backwards to the beginning of Warcraft 3. Thanks, Blizz.

Sylvanas has angsted since WC3 that undeath is a curse and nobody should be subjected to it, only for Blizzard to keep turning her into Lich King 2.0 when we get Warlords of Northrend™ eventually (undeath is bad and i angst about it 24/7 so let me use all these chemicals to raise these people into zombies and plague the land but it’s okay because i think slavery is bad at least. also she’s afraid of going to hell to be tortured forever when it’s like “hey you dumb bitch maybe you wouldn’t go to hell if you didn’t keep raising people into zombies after establishing it’s a LIVING HELL TO BE A ZOMBIE”). So Sylvanas has also developed backwards. Thanks again, Blizz.

I’ve written this twice before, but Illidan is the biggest load of bullshit ever. In Warcraft 3, he was a great antihero. Kind of a dick, but you admired that he was out for himself. Now he’s the greatest™ hero™ ever™ that did nothing wrong™. He’s like a worse Anakin Skywalker.

All of WoD

anyway i’m going the fuck to sleep and then wake up in 5 hours to write wow fanfic to fill the hole that blizz’s nonsense created

#mine #saltposting #World of Warcraft #long post

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ah17hh · 5 years ago

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Series recommendation: 'Devilman: Crybaby' - What are your thoughts about it? via /r/satanism

Series recommendation: 'Devilman: Crybaby' - What are your thoughts about it?

One day, I was browsing the Internet when I found this series with really good reviews about it, and after seeing some pictures and a brief description about the story, I decided to give it a try because I thought the art style was pretty cool and the characters' design caught my eye.

Oh boy, if only I knew how broken my heart would be after finishing it.

'Devilman: Crybaby' consists in a 10 episode show of Netflix based on the 1972 manga 'Devilman' by Go Nagai. The animation tells the story of a shy kind-hearted boy named Akira who learns from his childhood friend Ryo that demons are planning to reclaim the world of humans and, as Ryo suggests combining a human with a devil to fight this, Akira becomes possesed by a demon and becomes a "devilman", a being with the power of a devil and the heart of a human.

When you first read this, you would probably think of the typical 'shonen' show kind-of-hero themed thing, but, what I really liked about it and what makes it different from others, is how well the show tries to give the spectators another point of view on how society works, how it makes us question about what is considered "good" or "bad" or what is actually love. The criticism the series include and the storyline itself with its plot-twists and script, not to mention the aesthetic art style and amazing soundtrack, are what really got me into it. Although the ending left me with a sensation of impotence mixed with the regret and sadness of the situation feeled by a character, I completely enjoyed the series and thought maybe you would too.

Of course, I wouldn't call the show a "masterpiece" at all and it has its own flaws too (for example, the development of Ryo's character, which happens to be more fluent and slow in the manga while in the anime was like "whoop, there you go, we just unraveled this whole character in the final episode, surprise"), but it is one I would definitely recommend to any one who is interested in this type of themes and isn't bothered by some gore and kind of fucked up scenes (I warn you, if you're sensible, just don't).

I decided to write about the show on this subreddit because I thought maybe some could be attracted to the story line, even though it is a biblical based story, and have an enjoyable time watching it, as I did doing so! And if any one has already seen it, I would love to know about your opinions and thoughts about it!

Submitted January 21, 2020 at 09:28AM by Lau013 via reddit https://ift.tt/2NP9m1j

#IFTTT #reddit

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recentanimenews · 6 years ago

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Hold it!! Ace Attorney is Back, and We’ve Updated the Court Records!

When Capcom offered me a chance to review Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, I have to admit that I did a little fist pump at my desk. Ace Attorney is a series that’s very dear to me, and in many personal ways is responsible for where I am today; without it, I would have probably never met many of the important people in my life, or maybe even be working here! So it was with excitement that I jumped back into the original trilogy of games on the PS4 to take a look at how the games have held up, as well as what this trilogy edition brings to the modern console market. The Ace Attorney Trilogy is itself a bit of a re-release, having originally come out on iOS in 2012 and then 3DS in 2014. This new version contains the same updated art that the previous versions had, and spans the entire first 3 games, including the extra 5th case added to the original game back when it came out for the DS. But how does the game hold up today, and does the new trilogy really offer anything that we haven’t seen before? Well… the answer is a bit complicated, and just like any good court case, we’ll have to take a look at the facts as they come!

The games themselves have aged pretty well—the mechanics were always simple and intuitive, and although no longer guided by a stylus or touch control (at least, except on the Switch), the game has few menu options and controls to really confuse the player with. In many ways, the Phoenix Wright games are visual novels with some added adventure game elements, with the slightly nice bonus that the games are somewhat easy; the only real way to fail the game is to incorrectly object in court room settings over and over. By today’s standards, it would probably be true to say that the games have limited gameplay at all, and the later games in the series were the ones to introduce more complex mechanics into the investigation procedures. But that was never the true charm of the series, instead placing the emphasis on character interactions and the pleasure of presenting just the right contradiction at the right time to nail the criminal for their false testimony. And in that regard, there really is nothing like Ace Attorney.

The magic of the Ace Attorney games is seeing each individual character reveal their personality and quirks over time, whether they’re one-shot characters or returning protagonists, each and every character in the games oozes life and vivid personalities. As I was replaying the games, I was shocked by how much of it I immediately started to remember, or certain character quirks that I had forgotten that immediately burst back to life in my mind. The game especially hinges on the depiction of Phoenix Wright himself, and the writing of the game does an amazing job making Phoenix into an intimately reliable character that you want to see succeed, bolstered by the equally amazing Maya Fey, with their banter really driving home the charm of the game and making both endearing characters.

Each game is broken into chunks, episodes usually given a title that starts with “Turnabout”, with the first and third games having 5 cases, and the second game having 4. Each of these episodes are somewhat self-contained, in the sense that you play each case from start to finish and nothing really carries over from case to case in terms of gameplay. However, character arcs progress over time, with each case giving more and more of the dynamic picture of the Phoenix Wright universe, meaning that details from the first game will slowly become more and more important in the later games, with some of the biggest, most rewarding reveals coming in the third game, calling all the way back to the very first cases of the series. Even taken on their own individual merits, all of the cases have memorable, unique one off characters that make you fall in love with them.

These games live and die on their ability to tell their story, so some may find the lack of challenge a bit odd at first; there really isn’t any way to ‘fail’ the game, like missing specific evidence or needed clues. There are ways to “lose” during trials, but these generally just result in you reloading the game (with a few exceptions that can lead to a “bad ending”, but still results in you reloading the game). One thing that becomes a bit odd if you play the games in marathon style is that every one of the games has a “tutorial” case, which is due to the fact that the original games came out years apart from one another and needed to teach players how to operate the game’s engine. Here, it just sort of becomes routine, and thankfully the cases are actually important and entertaining the storylines, so they aren’t a big deal, but it is worth mentioning that you’ll spend at least 3 of the 14 stories learning how to play the game again (with no real changed mechanics).

This is only really an issue in the second game, which has 4 cases, meaning that 1 of them is a tutorial, and the other is… Turnabout Big Top, which is quite frankly the worst case in the entire series. I won’t spoil anything and your mileage may vary here, but personally I found this case so stilted, slow, and annoying that when I originally played this game on my DS I nearly quit the game for good. Here, is isn’t so bad because there are so many cases to play through, but even still I found myself groaning—and not just from the script’s legendary puns—as I chugged through this case; of all of the trilogy, the second game is by far the weakest, so just be forewarned. That said, the games as a whole are an amazing set of fun storylines and good writing; the Ace Attorney games have had some memorable localization changes to make the games accessible to non-Japanese audiences, and they actually do go a long way to make the games stand out instead of just straight translating a series filled with language jokes that wouldn’t make any sense in English. Some of the most obvious are puns, but the English writers need to be given some real props for making the game as memorable and charming as they did, jokes and all, giving the characters depth and charm.

You’ll want to turn your speakers up too, because the music in the Ace Attorney games is perhaps its most unique, secret charm that tops off the entire package just right. The colorful characters (both in personality and in art design) fill your screen with their personalities, and the audio that accompanies each scene of the game does its best to keep up with that level of engagement and personality (the Steel Samurai theme is still stuck in my head after all these years, as well as the tune of a certain coffee loving prosecutor…). All of the tracks are enjoyable and they add a certain sense of completeness to the overall game. You’ll become uniquely acquainted with certain tunes as you play through the three games, and each one brings a certain sense of familiarity and comfort with them. And then, of course, is the high-strung courtroom music, which always hits at just the right time as you present that case winning contradiction or piece of evidence, making Phoenix’s victory feel all the sweeter.

If anything, I would say that I’m maybe a bit sad that this version of the game didn’t get a fully reworked or updated soundtrack and sound effects to go with it, but the original music score is so solid that it isn’t a huge problem. The somewhat dated soundbites for the “Hold it,” and “Objection” portions of the games do stick out a bit in their weird, mono audio quality, sounding a bit out of place on modern systems. Don’t let that bother you too much, though, as it isn’t a huge problem, but it did stick out to me enough that I felt like it was important to mention. Although the games are approaching nearly twenty years in publication.

And, really, that does bring us to some of the problems with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy: there really isn’t anything new here for returning fans. The games do have updated graphics for all of the characters, but if you played the 3DS or iOS versions of the Trilogy, you’ve already seen those before. There aren’t any real bells and whistles to the game, with nothing new to unlock or see; as far as ports go, it is pretty bare bones, simply providing the games as described and not much else. This is only a problem depending on how you look at the issue: if you’ve never played the Ace Attorney games before, this is absolutely the best way to get into the series, and if you have played them but not for a while, you’ll have a great time going back through them. But if you’re a die-hard fan that replays the games often, you won’t really find much new in this release that you likely don’t already have at your fingertips.

Also, I will say that the console versions of the game look great on a TV, but the games were originally made to be portable, and in many cases I feel that the Switch version wins out a bit on the other releases in this regard, still allowing you to take Phoenix and Maya on the go with you, and coming and going from play sessions with the game much easier than the console versions. This isn’t really a negative, but it is worth mentioning; it’s probably worth considering how you’d like to play these games before deciding on which version to purchase if you have options.

Although there isn’t much new in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, what is here is weighty enough to justify a purchase and playthrough, especially if you’ve never experienced the games before. Seeing the memorable cast back in action again made me fall in love with this series all over again, and I honestly can’t recommend the experience enough to people who enjoy visual novels and mysteries, and frankly I’d say that anyone who enjoys good characters and storytelling would probably find a lot to love in the Ace Attorney series. Ironically die-hard fans might not find anything new to attract them, but at the same time those same fans are probably just as excited as I was to revisit the beginning of the Ace Attorney series again, so the game is pretty easy to recommend to everyone. If you can tolerate some of the obviously dated aspects and somewhat bare presentation, you’ll find three games filled with charming characters, tense stories, and the best courtroom action in video games. I’m already looking to dig up my copies of the future games to play through them now after this review, since I’ve rediscovered my apparent love of judicial activities! So, with that said, go get yourself a copy of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, as court is adjourned!

REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Amazing characters and storytelling make this series shine with charisma.

+ Simplistic play mechanics put all of the focus on characters and story, keeping things moving.

+ Games 1 and 3 are amazing, having some incredible emotional payoffs for character arcs.

+/- If you already played these games, you may not find much new to be interested in, as there aren’t any extras or new content.

- The Circus Case.

Are you an Ace Attorney fan? Curious to try the series out of the first time? Which game is your favorite one? Let us know what you think in the comments!

----

Nicole is a features and a social video script writer for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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talkingsquidphd · 7 years ago

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Review: Ian Bogost, “How to Talk About Video Games”

I’ve been a gamer since I unwrapped my first Gameboy on Christmas morning 1999, but it only occurred to me to write about video games the way I write about literature last year, when I finally finished Mass Effect, Bioware’s landmark series of sf RPGs. Eager to jump into the fray of video game criticism but wary of being the proverbial “man saying ‘And another thing…’ twenty minutes after admitting he’d lost the argument,” I started doing some searching to determine where the field was at these days, and a single name consistently popped up: Ian Bogost.

By his own humble admission, if he can’t be credited with launching the field of video game criticism outright, Bogost has brought a lot of attention to a burgeoning body of contemporary work on the subject. A skim of his selected bibliography suggests he’s been writing the same smart-but-accessible monograph on video games for about ten years. He started with Unit Operations: An Approach to Video Game Criticism (2008) and Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (2010); briefly escaped double-barreled academic titles in the early 2010s with How to Do Things With Video Games (2011), How to Talk About Video Games (2015); and took his most recent stab with the newly released Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Secret of Boredom, and the Secret of Games (2017). No doubt I’ll work my way backwards through Bogost’s ouvre eventually, but for my first dive into the deep end of video game criticism, I chose the comfortingly colloquially-titled How to Talk About Video Games. With it came a reading experience that began with a deep sense of camraderie and ended in frustration.

First impressions run deep, and my first impression of Bogost came from his brilliant five-page introduction to the book, “Nobody Asked for a Toaster Critic.” I was immediately struck by his style – casual and conversational, peppered with thornier academic language and non-sequitur humor in equal measure. But more than that, I felt an immediate comradeship with Bogost as he laid out the problems often encountered by academics working in a budding area of popular interest. As the title suggests, Bogost compares being a critic of video games to being a critic of toasters, as video games and toasters are consumer objects we generally agree need recommendation more than artistic analysis, review more than critique. But the jokey, self-deprecatory playfulness of the first couple pages turns into a rallying cry for any scholar of video games unsure whether their object of study is “worthy:”

And with a toaster or a gallon of mail-order milk, there is something preposterous about writing criticism – particularly criticism of objects we use as much as experience. This is probably why whenever I write criticism of videogames, someone strongly invested in games as a hobby always asks the question ‘is this parody?’ as if only a miscreant or a comedian or a psychopath would bother to… Really, nothing was ever immune to the preposterousness of committed attention that criticism entails. Not literature, not film, nor theater, art, food, wine. We just stopped noticing that the criticism of forms like these are just as bonkers as critiques of toasters or video games. (xii)

To be fair, the field of science fiction criticism has been around forever compared to that of video game criticism; sf’s first academic journal popped up in 1959, with more springing up in the 60s and 70s, while video games have only seen consistent academic interest from their users rather than their creators in the last two decades or so. Still, I understand the awkward walk Bogost has to walk to write academically about something with a popular following and about which a lot of shop has been talked by industry pros. I am, after all, just getting up on that balance beam myself, and every day I have to resist the urge to walk around with a chip on my shoulder, defensive about what I study from the moment I first shake someone’s hand. Having had this experience – the moment of “really?” and “you get paid for that?” – I admired the firm, measured confidence in his subject Bogost expressed so clearly in these opening pages. In fact, despite the brilliance of some of the collected essays, the introduction proved to be my favorite part of How to Talk About Video Games.

Perhaps I should have seen it coming, then, that my least favorite part of How to Talk About Video Games would be its conclusion, in which Bogost’s easy confidence crumbles and he indulges in some counterproductive rhetoric and metaphors I find sadly familiar as a scholar of sf. The trouble starts in the collection’s final essay, “Perpetual Adolesence,” which reviews indie walking simulator Gone Home and its debatably pat queer coming-of-age storyline. Recounting the controversy surrounding the game – namely, an all-together-now chorus of praise for its storytelling and representation followed by a handful of secondary reviewers claiming the emperor had no clothes – Bogost throws his hat into the ring on the side of the naysayers, claiming the game’s characters and premise are “too archetypal to become truly literary” (176) and comparing Gone Home‘s sycophantic reception to the hype and praise of ultimately adolescent triple-A games in the industry at large. The punchline?

…what if Gone Home teaches us that videogames need only grow up enough to meet the expectations other narrative media have reset in the meantime?… What if games haven’t failed to mature so much as all other media have degenerated such that the model of the young adult novel is really the highest (and most commercially viable) success one can achieve in narrative?… Perhaps the coming-of-age story told in Gone Home is not just Sam’s but that of videogames themselves. (178-179)

I’ve heard this story before, and it never ends well. Sf has struggled for literally decades to free itself from the mire of this “adolesence” argument and its implications. At least once every five years, someone in the sf community comes out with some bold manifesto which:

claims sf as a genre is like a hedonistic teenager – quickly approaching adulthood but refusing to accept it, and therefore becoming part of the problem of mindless mainstream media

dismisses anywhere from forty to a hundred years of the genre’s history as some sort of awkward gestation period we should forget ever happened, and

urges the genre to grow up, shed its cocoon and emerge as a beautiful butterfly with gossamer wings made of pretension and formal experimentalism.

This argument is toxic for three reasons. First, it claims a whole tradition of media is morally or artistically bankrupt when it never really is. Second, the fact that these arguments always seem to hinge on throwing a huge part of the genre’s history under the bus never sits well with the dedicated creators, fans, and critics to whom that history is still hugely important, which creates further hostility and distance between the academic and non-academic communities. Third, the call to arms to help the genre reach maturation always seems to involve mimicking some other genre rather than blazing new trail – see, for example, the debates around the increasingly “cinematic” landscape of the triple-A game industry of late. In the eyes of these manifesto writers, to “grow up” requires a genre to discard those things which uniquely characterize it rather than doubling down on them, and that never struck me as the right move for any genre, ever.

Bogost’s argument is one half-turn beyond this tired one. He sidesteps the call for video games to “grow up,” but only by arguing that they don’t need to anymore, because all the other mainstream arts have stooped down to their level. Instead of video games ascending to the marble throne of “art,” they’ve been joined on the jungle gym by mainstream fiction, television, and film as these media have degenerated into a juvenile identity they once escaped. Bogost’s account of these downfalls is practically apocalyptic:

Gone Home reveals a secret that turns out to be an obvious one, and one much bigger than videogames: today, narrative writ large is mired in a permanent adolesence that videogames can now easily equal, the modest, subtle pleasures of the literary arts melting under Iron Man’s turbines, impaled by Katniss Everdeen’s arrow. (180)

Besides the insulting and frankly lazy use of superheroes and YA as shorthands for immature, empty pleasure – a trend I thought died in the early 2000s with the rise of geek chic – Bogost’s dismissal of all games as fundamentally adolescent here disappoints me because it reveals the loopholes and unfortunate undertones to his triumphant introduction. After all, Bogost never claims in his introduction that video games are worthy of study – he in fact argues everything is equally unworthy of study. Bogost’s calm acceptance of video games forever being stuck in adolesence leads to an equally nhilistic conclusion which hopes for the dissolution of the very field he’s helped create, in addition to a few others:

There’s not enough land to till in games alone. Nor in literature alone, nor in toasters alone. God save us from a future of game critics, gnawing on scraps like the zombies that fester in our objects of study… Eventually, we might hope, books like this won’t be necessary or even possible, because games will no longer make sense as a domain unto themselves… (188)

This is yet another bad argument I recognize from sf – the “death and reincarnation through absorption” metaphor. The basic idea? Genre X is on its deathbed; perhaps it used to be good and isn’t any more, or perhaps it was never that good to begin with and the jig is up. Either way, it has two options: die, end for good and be remembered by no one, or die, be reincarnated as some sub-iteration of a more popular genre, and live on in some small way. Obviously the second is more appealing – better to leave a legacy than nothing at all, right? But the “absorption” metaphor is always, always a scare tactic used by those who are themselves scared. Video game criticism will never run out of things to say, and doesn’t need to worry about securing that legacy, especially if it must do so at the expense of its current energy and success. Despite games criticism being poised to be the next big interdisciplinary pursuit which bridges previously disparate fields of study, Bogost somehow ends How to Talk About Video Games with a placid bashing of the medium which amounts functionally to slinking away with one’s tail between one’s legs.

I had high hopes for finding a cross-disciplinary ally in Bogost; I still hope to find that ally either in early Bogost, before the cynicism set in, or in his most recent publication, which may move past it. But for now, all I can suggest is that the scholar of the popular – especially those looking for a fellow academic willing to give a pep talk and help hold the line – give How to Talk About Video Games a pass.

#video games #reviews #criticism #how to talk about video games #ian bogost

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inkwatch-blog · 8 years ago

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Twilight Princess: A Game Stuck in Time

(AN: The following is an unproduced script for a proposed video series called BKLG (pronounced Backlog), which I unfortunately had to put on hold for the time being. It has been slightly modified to read as an article, but the writing below is perhaps a bit more conversational than it otherwise would be.)

Allow me a bold statement upfront: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess would not exist as it does today without a demo reel shown at Nintendo’s defunct trade show Spaceworld. At Spaceworld 2000, a demo reel for the upcoming Gamecube was shown to attendees to represent the graphical power of Nintendo’s new console. Twelve seconds of an unannounced Zelda game were shown and the fanbase lost it’s collective mind. IGN wrote a five paragraph essay about the clip, writing, “There's far too much detail to believe that Nintendo would scrap the models and make new ones. So, we think it's safe to say the new Link will look a lot like this. Overall, we're very happy with his new immaculate hero look.” Right.

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IGN might’ve lost their minds, but behind the scenes, director Eiji Aonuma wasn’t pleased; in fact, he actually hated the design. A decade later, he told IGN it wasn’t the game he wanted to make at all. To him, it wasn’t Zelda.

So a year later, at Spaceworld 2001, Nintendo announced The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The internet revolted. This wasn’t their Zelda, they said. This was Cel-da. This was kid stuff. Where was their mature, grounded take on the series? I do wonder if that sounds like any other fanbase out there today.

Wind Waker was released in North America in 2003 to critical praise. Wikipedia has it listed on twenty-three separate Best Of lists. The HD re-release on the Wii U only gained the game further acclaim. The visuals have stood the test of the time, aging far better than similar games released around the same era.

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But all of that didn’t matter. To fans, the cartoonish visuals meant the game was meant for children. As a follow up to Ocarina, its sales were disappointing, selling less than half of what the first 3D Zelda had sold. Nintendo directly attributed this slump to the reaction of fans in North America after the graphics were first shown in 2001. So, despite accidentally announcing in 2004 that an upcoming GameCube Zelda game had the working title of The Wind Waker 2, Aonuma became concerned that the game wouldn’t sell well in North America. After the game was announced at E3 2004, Shigeru Miyamoto told IGN that the art style of the new Zelda adventure was created to fulfill that customer demand created six years before Twilight Princess was even released.

So why spend a massive amount of time detailing the history of a decade old game? Because in a lot of ways, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and its HD remake, feel beholden to the demand of its fan base in a way not a lot of Zelda games are. Despite the preceding two games in the series, Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask, featuring spectacularly different play styles, Twilight Princess feels like a reimagining of 1998’s Ocarina of Time, and while this doesn’t make Twilight Princess a bad game by any means, it certainly makes it feel more derivative than any adventure game starring the Hero of Time deserves to feel.

So, in the honor of Zelda, let’s divide this into two needlessly convoluted timelines. There’s also one where I die while writing this, and it never comes out, so if you’re reading this now, please assume you aren’t in this timeline.

One.

Twilight Princess is a good game doing weird things.

Yeah, really, it is. All the fun of Zelda, right there, baked into it. It’s got some dark, goofy undertones and the game is weird as hell. The wolf segments are mostly fun, especially once you gain the freedom to turn into a wolf whenever you please. The characters are all really memorable in a way that I think is underplayed when people talk about Zelda. The Snow Yeti couple who are secretly possessed. Zant is a weird Twilight villain who is being played by Ganondorf. Colin’s storyline of overcoming the bullying and taunting of the rest of his friends makes him my favorite of the four children by far. And Midna is the best - the best - Zelda assistant ever. That’s a really low bar to clear, sorry Navi and Fi, and Tatl. Y’all can buzz off, because Midna has you beat for days. She is excellent, and never really a bother, even when she tells you something you already know.

The swordfighting in this game, particularly when fighting the Darknuts throughout the last chunk of the game, feels spectacular. I’m assuming this is less true with waggle controls on the Wii, but playing through the HD remake felt pretty spectacular. Some of the dungeon design is the best in the series - Snowpeak, for all its flaws and played out ice block puzzles, is perfectly built, and the Temple of Time’s reversal after the miniboss felt really refreshing. It also, and I cannot overstate this enough, had my favorite minigame in all of Zelda: snowboarding.

That’s not to say Twilight Princess is a perfect game. There’s plenty to nitpick - the puzzles don’t feel like puzzles! Why are half of the puzzles just shooting objects on a wall with an item! Why aren’t there more snowboarding levels! Why do half the items have almost no use outside the dungeon! Why aren’t there more snowboarding levels! Why can’t I ride the Spinner everywhere! Why aren’t there more snowboarding levels!

So instead of nitpicking on small things like, why aren’t there more snowboarding levels, let me go ahead and lay out the biggest flaw in this game, the one that everyone probably saw coming before you even clicked on this article: the opening.

Here’s how the opening tutorial for 1992’s The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past plays out: There’s a short cutscene before you gain control of Link. You leave bed and you grab the Lamp from the nearby chest. The guards don’t let you into the castle, so you head around to the right and you move a bush to let yourself into the dungeon of the castle. Your uncle, who has been defeated, gives you a sword and shield. Then you begin your journey through the first dungeon of the game, Hyrule Castle.

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Cool. Easy. Done. Now here’s the opening tutorial for Twilight Princess: You talk to Rusl, you watch a cutscene, you run to the Ordon Spring, you talk to Ilia, you get Epona, you run through Ordon, you get to the ranch, you herd some goats in what is one of my least favorite mini-games in all of Zelda, you run back to Ordon, you talk to the kids, you talk to Uli, who can’t give you the fishing rod because she lost her cradle, then you talk to Jaggle, you summon a hawk, you shoot the hawk at a monkey, you bring the cradle back to Uli, and you get the fishing rod. From there, you go fishing, you catch a fish for the cat, you watch the cat run around town and back into the shop, where you can now get a free bottle. If you haven’t already, you run around collecting rupees until you reach the magical number of 30, in which you buy the slingshot and you show the children that you’ve bought it. Now you can re-enter your house and, would you look at that, the sword is there. The kids teach you how to use a sword. Then the kids chase a monkey into the woods. So, you summon Epona, you get the lantern, and you enter the North Faron woods on your quest to find Talo. You make your way through the woods in what is sort of similar to a dungeon, you free Talo and the monkey using your sword, and Rusl thanks you for saving Talo. Then you herd more goats - 20 this time, thanks Fado. Ilia claims that you hurt Epona or something, and she steals your horse. She’s also locked you out of the spring where she’s hidden Epona, so you sneak into the spring in a crawlspace, which triggers a cutscene, and boom, you’re a wolf stuck in prison.Technically, the wolf section is also a bit of a tutorial, but I think the point’s been made.

The opening of this game is terrible. It slows progress in the game down to a crawl right when the game should be trying to get you to sink yourself in. It takes hours to complete, and even longer if you haven’t played the game before and don’t know what you’re doing. And, in some ways, it’s indicative of a larger problem in the more modern era of Zelda games - not trusting the player to figure the game out on their own.

A quick note on the other divisive aspect of this game: tear collecting. I won’t comment much on it because it’s been talked to death and, to me, the tutorial is far more problematic in terms of game structure, but the tears fetch quest isn’t a whole lot of fun. At best, it’s inoffensive; at worst, it’s boring and yet another way to get players to put the controller down before the game reaches its second half. The HD remaster fixes the quest somewhat, lowering the required tear count from 16 to 12. It’s still cumbersome, but ending 25 percent sooner helps alleviate the negative feeling each section leaves on the player.

Two.

Twilight Princess is a good game unable to move beyond its past and its fanbase.

Majora’s Mask was released to critical acclaim, but it sold about half of Ocarina’s numbers two years earlier. Perhaps, Nintendo probably thought at the time, this had to do not with the quality of the game or what the fanbase wanted, but the required usage of the Expansion Pak and the impending launch of the GameCube.

As mentioned earlier, it was Wind Waker’s sales that scared the creative team into redirecting their efforts from a sequel to Wind Waker to an entirely new game with a new, more realistic design.

But Wind Waker’s struggles didn’t just change the art design of the new game. It ensured that the next Zelda game would be more like Ocarina of Time than both Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask, a direct sequel, ever would.

And they did it. Twilight Princess, more than any other game in the series, plays like a reimagining of a former game, in this case, Ocarina of Time. Especially in the first half of the game, both play out in incredibly similar ways, from your humble beginnings in a small village to your travels to Hyrule Castle, to the similarly themed opening dungeons, to your new companion following you around, offering advice. Majora’s Mask was a game that took chances, shook the Zelda formula up in ways no one had seen since Zelda II. Wind Waker stayed more true to the classic Zelda road, while still thinking up new ideas, from its presentation to its high seas setting. Twilight Princess is a good, safe game, seemingly designed to make sure that everyone who owned a copy of Ocarina of Time and had seen the Spaceworld 2000 demo would no longer feel disappointed about the cartoon stylings of Wind Waker.

And it worked. That feeling of nostalgia for Ocarina, combined with the success of the Wii, ensured the game would become the best-selling title in Zelda’s history, assuming you don’t include the 3DS remake of Ocarina into Ocarina’s N64 sales.

Of course, unlike Ocarina, nostalgia for Twilight Princess hasn’t fared quite as well. The game received an HD remaster in 2016, both as a 30th anniversary celebration of the series and as a pseudo-apology from Nintendo for delaying Breath of the Wild to 2017 in order to simultaneously release on the Wii U and the Switch. The HD remaster of Twilight Princess sold a little more than a million copies globally, a similar number to 2015’s forgotten spin-off, TriForce Heroes.

It took nearly another decade to get Nintendo to take more chances on changing up the Zelda formula. Ignoring the portable titles for a moment, 2011’s Twilight Princess follow up, Skyward Sword, was critically acclaimed at launch, but has, for the most part, been largely forgotten about in the five-plus years since its release. Skyward Sword often appears near the bottom of best-Zelda lists, and often doesn’t appear at all when the list is limited to ten games. That game has similar flaws to Twilight Princess, with a drawn out opening section and frustrating collect-a-thons like the music note section late into the game.

All of this is to say, I think we’re about to entire a new era of Zelda, or at least, a return to classic, pre-Ocarina of Time adventuring. Next week’s Breath of the Wild promises an open world with plenty to explore. The opening of the game seems to draw from the original and from Link to the Past far more than from Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword. What we’re looking at isn’t the end of Zelda, but the first of a new chapter.

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