#like its actually so stupid and contrived and the characters make so little sense whenever i TRY to analyse why its bad

[uty-confessions]

whenever I see people talking about how bad the writing is and undertale yellow, I can't help but wonder to myself if we actually played the same game, or if I'm just the weird one. I tend to look at things from the bigger picture, so when people say that the situation with starlo turning against you is poorly written, or over the top, or contrived, I consider it actually in character--it's very clear that if we look around, clover entering town and becoming the main center of attention for starlo was the last straw, because we know that starlo has been going way too far for a while now, between things like the rock droppers, and the sandstorm fan. on top of this, he's been so wrapped up in trying to keep one person happy, namely ceroba, that he forgot to ask the opinion of everyone else. to the point where he's even forgotten to ask the opinion of ceroba herself, because again, he gets very very wrapped up into things. he's a flawed character that needs to LEARN. the same thing goes for his appearance in vengeance, where he brings rubber bullets to his dual with clover. this makes sense for him, even though it was a very, very stupid thing for him to do. he can't bring himself to kill clover--even in neutral/pacifist, he's literally CRYING when he's at his last bullet. but in vengeance, he hadn't learned the lesson yet that he needs to get his head out of the clouds, take things seriously, and acknowledge the opinion of others. and then we get to the people who absolutely hate ceroba and her arc. and yes I get it, her whole goal was to kill clover--however it's clear that she shows a lot of care for them throughout any route, because she gives them the benefit of the doubt in neutral if you kill starlo. she constantly asks if clover is okay with what's going on in town. and although she just dumps her own stuff onto them, it's not as if clover is one to freely share their backstory. everyone acts as though clover has been mistreated, as if frisk never was ever during their story, but a lot of the characters actually realize the error of their ways and try to ask for forgiveness and make up for it in some way. did we all just miss that part?? did we miss the part where starlo and martlet desperately try to defend them??? and yes, it does make sense for clover to want to give up their soul, and maybe even not regret it. I mean, their whole schtick is justice. they see throughout pacifist that monsters aren't as evil as they previously thought, and that there's no justice in keeping them trapped forever. I don't know, maybe I'm just giving the game too much benefit of the doubt, but undertale has its own contrivances and issues as well. like ceroba and undyne both have similar arcs in that they want to kill you, but all the other characters around you speak positively of them. how is frisk expected to want to be friends with undyne, besides just being the most special of special cases, and wanting to be friends with everyone? we have to allow at least a little bit of contrivances, and suspend our disbelief a little bit. idk. you don't have to like it, but let's not treat undertale like it's perfect and untouchable while looking at yellow like it's significantly worse, somehow.

☆

[lottieurl]

i think the plot of pretty little liars confused me less than s4 of killing eve. i cannot stress it enough-

[gch1995]

OMG! I’m watching the 2016 PPG reboot on reboot to make fun of its awfulness by comparing it to the far superior OG cartoon from 98’-05 version, and I just got finished watching the atrocious episode “Musclecup.” I know the girls are supposed to be very precocious for kindergarteners-first graders, and I know that Buttercup is the “toughest fighter.” However, I still am in awe at the sheer stupidity of the writers of this episode, who thought it would be a “genius” idea to write a storyline in which Buttercup, a super-powered little girl in the first grade, actually gets addicted to steroids because she wants to bulk up her muscles!

First of all, Buttercup is a child, so this storyline feels gross and unnecessary, even if she is the “toughest fighter?”

Secondly, it doesn’t even make any sense as to why Buttercup thinks she needs to bulk up her muscles to a beef-cake level since she was born with superhuman strength that easily allows her to overpower the average person, anyway.

Thirdly, it’s annoying that Blossom and Bubbles are yet again rendered to be completely helpless and ineffectual by the writers together against one villain together without Buttercup, the brash and brawny tomboy, there to swoop in and save them. I know I’ve complained about Buttercup occasionally getting the short end of the stick when she had centrics the OG cartoon in which she was either getting into trouble, getting punished, getting double standards, and/or suffering exceedingly and/or unfairly with the world getting turned against her, sometimes to the point of needlessly mean-spirited overkill of character derailment for either her and/or other characters in the episode she cared about. Yeah, the writers not knowing how to write Buttercup centrics where she was framed in a positive light, being treated fairly, and/or granted the same individual compassion and emotional support of her loved ones that she normally had otherwise, and that her sisters were granted individually in their centrics when they were in the wrong or feeling down, was an occasionally recurring flaw in the writing on an overall great show that started showing up sometime in her centrics in S2.

However, in the 2016 reboot, the writers seemed to have overcorrected the writing flaw of Buttercup’s occasional designated butt-monkey status in the OG cartoon by turning her into the main character Mary Sue of the show, who gets the most centrics, and who does all the saving by herself without the other two girls most of the time. In the reboot, this now has created a new problem of diminishing Blossom’s and Bubbles’ individual strengths and relevance in the story.

Not to mention the fact that reboot!Buttercup’s personality is pretty shitty. In the OG cartoon, she was generally portrayed as a jerk with a heart of gold. Here in the reboot, she’s been flanderdized into an openly arrogant, crude, exceedingly aggressive, disrespectful, loud-mouthed, mean-spirited, obnoxious, petty, nonchalant, and selfish brat. She disrespects Ms. Keane and mocks her when she’s teaching a grammar lesson to be a class clown in “Painbow.” In “Professor-Proofed” she gets her dad hurt by causing him to lose focus, sneeze, and get hurt when he’s working in his lab with a dangerous chemical by peppering her pancakes right in front of him, then doesn’t ever apologize to him for it, and even ends the episode doing it again with an evil smirk on her face right in front of him, causing him to get hurt all over again after sneezing when the pepper goes up his nose. She tries to steal one of Bubbles pigtails in an attempt to catch a crawdad in “ClawDad,” and didn’t apologize. In “Little Octi-Lost,” she steals Octi from Bubbles in the dead of night when they are all asleep to “teach her a lesson” for being so into it, which isn’t a good reason at all, then realizes she wants to go play with Octi herself, takes him to a state fair, and then tries to cover it up when she loses him, rather than tell the truth. In the episode “Man Up” she violently blows up in an aggressive rage, recklessly destroys an entire state fair, and accidentally gives Bubbles a black eye all because a villain calls her “princess,” and she hates being called that. The moral of the episode was supposed to be learning to temper her aggression, but unlike in the OG Buttercup centric, “Makes Zen To Me,” the lesson doesn’t actually end up sticking with Buttercup at all, and she ends the episode reverting back to being an overly aggressive and obnoxious jerk because “status quo is comedy gold.”

Granted, out of the three girls in the OG cartoon, Buttercup did have the greatest tendency to be the most aggressive fighter with the greatest instigator and rebel tendencies, and she had some ooc instances of suddenly being a very uncharacteristically greedy, sadistic, and remorseless jerk than usual to fit certain contrived plots in bad episodes, such as “Moral Decay,” though almost everyone in the fandom despises that segment the most of the OG series and pretends it never happened because it was such ridiculously out of character and mean-spirited derailing writing for both Buttercup and her entire family in order to turn her into the villain and punish her harshly in ways that didn’t feel fair or make any sense.

However, generally, og Buttercup genuinely did have the heart of a hero and love her family more than anything. While she did have trouble apologizing to Elmer for teasing him in “Paste Makes Waste,” she genuinely did still feel bad about it, even if she had some trouble apologizing for it, and she did learn to swallow her pride and do it at the end. She and Blossom tended to argue a lot because they both were very stubborn people, who had trouble making compromises, and admitting to it when they were wrong, and she liked to mess with Bubbles the most. However, she generally hated seeing either of her sisters getting hurt, and she was always quick to defend them in battles against threats. She generally felt bad about hurting her sisters, and apologized all the time.

Buttercup occasionally got irritated when the Professor became a doting, sentimental, and overprotective Dad™️ with her and/or her sisters in the OG cartoon in episodes like “Uh Oh, Dynamo,” “Mr. Mojo’s Rising,” “PowerProf.,” and “Oops I Did It Again,” especially because she didn’t like to be doted on. She got in trouble with the Professor more than her sisters, partially because she was genuinely caught being disobedient, making bad choices, or instigating fights with her sisters by him more often than they were, but also partly because the writers dealt her an unfair hand in the world in her centrics since they liked turning her into the designated butt monkey when she got in trouble in them in a couple of instances, such as “Moral Decay” and “Down ‘n’ Dirty.” However, even at her worst and most OOC, she would never have tried to deliberately hurt her dad for shits and giggles like she did in reboot episode “Professor-Proofed.” She and her sisters also never would have deliberately sabotaged one of the Professor’s romances for their own benefit because they wanted him to be happy in the OG cartoon.

Fourthly, I know he’s not in the episode, but if the girls are this irresponsible and stupid in the reboot, then why would Professor Utonium ever think to trust them to stay at home alone, while he goes to work for the day? Oh, right...It’s because he’s also been reduced to an idiotic, incompetent, irresponsible, neglectful, reckless, and selfish parent 9 out of ten times in the reboot, who has little to no knowledge of how to actually be a good parent at all, and usually only appears to make things worse whenever he does appear anyway by being a cliche and mostly unfunny bumbling bad sitcom dad. In the OG cartoon, it’s different because the girls are mature enough to handle staying by themselves for a few hours, even while he’s out at work, though he got babysitters for them when he was out at night to be safe, but in this reboot version, the girls shouldn’t be trusted to stay at home alone by him.

Finally, that’s the other issue in the reboot. All of the adults are morons who have no common sense most of the time. The writers really expect me to believe that an adult would be totally okay with giving a little girl steroids without any thought to just how gross and unethical that is? Yeah, I know it’s a cartoon, and even in the OG cartoon, the city of Townsville were complete idiots at times to fit certain plots, but I don’t believe any of them would actually ever be stupid and unethical enough to give steroids to a little girl with superpowers to help her bulk up her muscles, especially not without warning her first about how it could be dangerous.

[evelyn-carnahan]

Even before the madness, Jonerys season 8 was the worst.

I have never truly shipped anyone in GoT before.  I joked that it was because I knew not to, but it was also because, for most of them, I wasn’t as interested when it was pretty clear the character was brought in to be the love interest.  One was clearly more developed than the other, so I never got super into them.  (Except Braime a bit—but with them, I never anticipated or hoped for their scenes.  I just enjoyed them when they happened.)

And then Jonerys happened, and half of their time being together had to happen during the absolute shoddiest-written season ever where neither character really feels like they have agency because they are speeding through, I assume, two books of content.

 And it fucking sucks.  All of it.  The whole season.

They are two of the mainest of main characters who we have watched grow into adults.  After seven years of getting to know them both so well, when they fell in love, it just felt like a more complete love story ‘cause I get both of them.  I trusted that neither would be sacrificed to the alter of the other character’s story-telling.  And I love that they have such different leading styles.  Like, Davos said, “a just woman” and an “honorable man.”  One has what the other lacks, and vice versa.  But we never got to see that.  We never got to see them meeting in the middle and canceling out the other’s flaws in leadership. Jon stopped calling her out on her ruthlessness, and Daenerys never inspired him to dream big and ask more of his followers.  This is not what season 8 should have been for them.

When they fell in love in season 7, it was really very lovely.  Her strength and passion invigorated him.  His honestly and empathy inspired her.  (Note her reaction when, after she says “People enjoy what they are good at,” he says “I don’t.”  He doesn’t like killing, and she seems touched by that because she’s only ever met seasoned warriors who are proud of it.  It’s quite clear that her leadership style was massively influenced by Drogo, and she didn’t think there was any other approach, really.  Until she met Jon.)  Little things like that made their scenes so nice to watch.  That bit of tension and surprise as their leadership styles and life views play off of each other.

But when the going got tough in season 8, they both did jackshit in terms of leadership.  Episode one, they had a scene that felt like a token “They’re in lurrrve!" scene that made me cringe when it basically mirrored the Jon/Ygritte “Let’s stay in this cave/at the waterfall forever” dialogue and then they kissed and rode the dragons because that’s what the script said they had to do.  

I didn’t want to see them happily in love and talking about nothing in particular.  I wanted to see them sorting through leadership problems together in their dialogue, butting heads in their very different life views until they eventually learn to compromise.  And, dammit, I wanted to see the looming threat of death deepen their raw passion for each other because they were (supposed to be) facing the apocalypse!  We could have had THAT instead of the stupid waterfall scene where they seemed to have forgotten that there was this enormous undead army on the way!  (And, no, it wasn’t necessary for Jon to ride a dragon. Just the dragon liking him was enough to hint at his Targness.  Jon is the kind of leader who is right in the middle of the scrape with the others, and that’s where he should have been.  Good on Kit for calling that out in the BTS.  He was completely right.)

We should have also seen Jon actually commit to how he feels about how they are related and stick to it until something that might change his mind happens.  I didn’t want these contrived kissing scenes where he pulls back because, for some reason, he forgot for a minute that he didn’t want to. Jon’s convictions, this season, seem to be as firm as wet cardboard!  He doesn’t seem to be allowed to take a stance or do anything that means anything this season—which is so offensively out of character.  

And the conflict is unclear and frustrating between them.  It’s pretty clear he’s still attracted to her, as he holds her hand and cradles her face in his hands after he found out his true heritage.  But he rejects her advances even though it’s clear he isn’t grossed out by them being related.  So why?  Does he worry they might have babies that would be sickly or crazy because of their relation?  We don’t know.  He never says.  He just keeps her at arm’s length whenever she brings it up but cradles her face, holds her hands, and tells her he loves her.

And, as a result of this ridiculous confusion, we keep getting Dany try to get Jon to make love with her again and then get queenzoned.  It’s incredibly frustrating how the writers choose a cheap ploy twice to make their scenes intense.  It is such a huge disservice to both characters and their long, complex journeys.  They were supposed to be THE power couple of the show, but they seem to have no power or motivations behind what they say and do this season….  At this point, they are blasting through the abridged version of an outline of a story.  Their relationship dynamic is shallow and doesn’t come out of their characterizations, and their leadership dynamic is non-existent this season.  (Their leadership didn’t contribute to the death of the Night King at all.  Honestly, the larger size of the army against the NK turned out actually to cause MORE problems for them than they solved.  And Jon’s battle tactics seem to have contributed nothing toward their victory.  In BotB, I got why he made the mistake of rushing in.  He wanted to save Rickon, and to be honest, he was disenchanted with life and didn't care care if he died.  This time, what’s his excuse for the bad battle plan?  Why hasn't he learned?)

The only Jonerys part I thought was great was when a Daenerys begged Jon to not tell anyone about his heritage because it would take on a life of its own.  Daenerys knows how strong-and dangerous--the will of the people can be.  That completely made sense.  But the follow-up to her warning was very weak: Varys is a dunderhead and gets caught within ten minutes of the next episode.  Guess Dany didn't have so much to worry about, after all...  Looking back, that scene just becomes filler.

I am so disappointed.  So bitterly disappointed.  

I’m quite positive I am going to hate-watch the next episode because I just have to know what it will be like, and I hope I can appreciate Kit and Emilia’s acting despite the circumstances.  And maybe we’ll get a beautiful last version of their theme song “Truth” that I can enjoy.  But it will not be the real ending to me.

 I am only grateful in that this has inspired me to throw myself back into writing fanfiction for the first time in about four years.  My creativity is really flourishing right now.  Maybe I’ll finish the fic and publish it.

Also, if any of you have a favorite Jonerys fic to recommend to me, let me know because I have no intentions on leaving the ship.

[hope-faith-love-abide]

After re-watching season 7 of Heartland, I definitely feel like this is my favorite season. I enjoy pretty much every single episode in this one. There's only about one episode and a couple moments here and there that I would say I don't like as much, but overall I really, really like this season as a whole.

(Going to put the rest of this under a read more since it got pretty long.)

All the characters are great this season; I love all of the storylines, especially Amy's storyline mid season. Those episodes (710-712) were so strong with how they dealt with all the consequences of her accident. I like that this plot had a lot of room to breathe instead of just being confined to one episode or something.

The Ty/Amy scenes alone are especially good in this season, and I'm not just talking about those episodes only. I love the development they get this season - we see them band together with Ty supporting Amy after her accident, and we also see them conflict a bit with the money situation towards the end of the season. What I like about the latter is that it's not turned into an instant break up just because they're arguing. It's realistic for them to disagree on the way the other is handling this, and it's realistic that they're still a couple and they love each other and want to support each other and they talk about it, instead of it turning it into "oh we're having a fight and I'm mad at you, so we have to break up and stop talking to each other". I like that they're allowed to disagree here without it being overblown or over-dramatic. This season isn’t perfect though - (no season of any show is completely perfect anyway) - but I feel like its flaws are relatively minor in the overall season arc. But I do still want to talk about them because they do frustrate me a little. One of them being the circumstances surrounding Ashley’s character and her return. 

I just don’t feel like her character was done justice by having her come back, flirt and sleep with Caleb, and then reveal that she’s apparently already engaged to some off screen character and she “just wanted to see if she still had feelings for Caleb” before marrying him. I get that they needed a reason for her not to return after those two episodes since she wasn’t returning permanently, but I wish they’d chosen a different one than that. It drags down her character’s previous development from the earlier seasons, imo, and I wish it had been written better in those two episodes.

My other problems mostly revolve around Ahmed’s storylines.

Not with Ahmed the character though (at least in this season). When I watched the season for the very first time, and when I was re-watching it recently, I actually liked Ahmed’s character. He’s definitely irritating in the very first episode, but he is supposed to be, and I think the development his character gets even just in that episode alone was great. I liked how he starts out as the pompous, arrogant prince, but then we get to know what he’s like beyond that and why - he misses his father, and he feels a ton of pressure to live up to his father’s legacy, and he feels like he is failing to do that, so he lashes out and refuses to listen to anyone. I also watched the deleted scenes that were on the DVD, and I loved the scene with him and Amy where he admits he feels like he lost/didn’t inherit his father’s gift with horses. That’s such an interesting parallel with Amy, especially season 1 Amy where she’s doubting herself after her mom passes away and isn’t sure whether she has the same abilities with horses her mom had. I’m really sad that that wasn’t included in the episode because I think that would have been a nice addition to help us connect to Ahmed even more.

Anyway, I think the thing I have the most problem with in the first episode and then in episode 709 is Adrian’s character. I feel like it’s really, really abrupt how his character changes from 701 to 709. He’s so determined to have Amy help Emir, and he’s willing to even lose his job in order to let Amy help this horse...and then suddenly he hates Amy and basically ends up trying to kill her when we see him next? It’s just so weird. I think they meant for his drinking problem to be the explanation for why he changes, but I don’t think this problem was ever even mentioned before? I feel like his character could have been set up so much better if they wanted him to become an antagonist. It just felt so off and contrived to me, and it’s probably the only thing I don’t like about Amy’s accident storyline.

The other thing I have a problem with does have to do with Ahmed’s character - or, at least, what his character ends up leading to in season 8. I can’t entirely fault season 7 for something that happens in a later season, but I do want to talk about it here anyway since it’s relevant.

Again, I like season 7 Ahmed. Beyond just the first episode, I like him in Amy’s accident storyline, how he’s very supportive and willing to help in any way possible since he feels responsible. I also in general just like what he brings to the show. He’s a much different character than the Heartland characters are used to, and he comes from a much different lifestyle and a much different way of raising horses, and I like the challenge that brings. I like seeing his reactions to Amy’s way of doing things, and I like that she challenges him to look at things in a new perspective. I found his enthusiasm and admiration for all these new experiences to be so charming.

But they ruined all this for that stupid love triangle drama in season 8. It was and is an absolute disservice to his character. (It was handled pretty poorly with Ty and Amy’s characters too, but my focus is on Ahmed, since Amy and Ty recover from the drama, but Ahmed’s character doesn’t. [At least as of season 10, and it seems thus far pretty unlikely that this character will ever return to the show at this point])

I could have accepted him having a crush on her - I don’t really like it, and I don’t think it’s necessary, but I could accept it. I could have even accepted him still kissing her once, and her telling him she’s not interested - and then he backs off.

We could have still had Amy acting different and not like herself after the trip - it would make perfect sense for her to be like that, since I’m sure it’s a life-changing experience going overseas and traveling (especially if it’s not something you do often), so I can see it changing her, and there can still be conflict there between her and Ty and her and her family. But why did Ahmed have to go back to being pushy and presumptuous and demanding and refusing to take no for an answer? Why did we have to ruin Ahmed’s character for this kind of frustrating and annoying drama? There’s so many other ways to cause drama - drama that’s interesting to watch instead of something that’s irritating or disrespectful to characters’ previous growth. Sure, characters can regress, but this didn’t feel like character regression to me. It just feels like really painful, almost lazy writing - and I don’t say that lightly about Heartland, because the writing is typically excellent and consistent in this show overall. So it’s upsetting whenever it doesn’t, imo, match its usual quality.

I’m sure a lot of this has been said already, but I just really wanted to get it off my chest since it usually helps me process things and helps me move on once I write it out. Apologies that it got so long.

Anyway, I think that’s all I wanted to say. Still love this season (and the show!), even if I have problems with certain things every now and then. If anyone actually read all this, thank you for taking the time to read my post! I hope it was enjoyable or interesting in some way.

[tumblunni]

gettinG REALLY KINDA SALTY about digimon world next order u guys GOD GODDDDD its like the sequel we always wanted to digimon world... IN GAMEPLAY IN GAMEPLAY ONLY the plot is SO BAD its so bad in THE WORST WAY its a good game with a bad plto, so it frustrates me infinately more cos i WANT it to be good enough to live up to the rest of the game! and it has infinate spewing geysers of potential that went completely untapped cos of lazy bullshiT!

and its not like they had a lot to live up to or anything?? like.. the first digimon world practically DID NOT have a plot 90% of it was just free open gameplay with sassy dialogue yes but no real overarching narrative it had an excuse why the story started, and it had a very cathartic ending to it all. But it was all up to you to decide in what order our nameless protagonist did it all, who he met, how he won, what bits he might have missed entirely even! it was so fun cos it was a game where EVERY quest was a sidequest! the only real thing that would stay the same is that you needed to complete a certain amount of those sidequests to unlock the final boss quest, but which ones you pick is totes up to you. Except that there was an annoying bug in the PAL version that meant that one area had a random chance of being locked off thus the ending fight never spawns :P But even if i never actually finished the game I still had infinate enjoyment making my own story, yknow?

so the bad plot shenanigans in next order are annoying because they also made really foolish gameplay decisions to FORCE you to follow this main plot stuff is way less open, very very VERY commonly you can unlock a damn area, walk around in it, and every sidequest in it just refuses to start because you havent hit the right chapter milestone. and it gets to be increasingly stupid excuses too! most of the time the npc is just like ‘yeah i have a huge emergency but I DONT WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT IT’ *sits there panicking forever* How the fuck do they even know I’m ‘not worthy’ anyway, and why would it MATTER??? In DW1 if youre underlevelled for an area you just find out cos you fail the quest! you at least get to see what it is and KNOW what you have to work towards to be prepared next time! plus the plot is just a huge fuckin textdump of nonsense pseudo science that is never explained, its EVERYONE ELSE just doing stuff offscreen instead of letting you even see the potentially cool plot threads! and whenever anything has to happen they have some made-up excuse why everyone can just magically know what the villain is planning, due to this pseudoscience, and they HAVE to explain it EVERY TIME which just makes it far clearer that its a terrible plot hole??? and they waste all this time on this yet skip over vitally important stuff like ENTIRE CHARACTER ARCS and LETTING YOU ACTUALLY PARTICIPATE. All you ever fuckin do is be the one to defeat machinedramon cos everyone else is inexplicably weak and useless! oh and EVERY FUCKING BOSS IS MACHINEDRAMON AGAIN AND AGAIN goDDDDDDDDDD

anyway, The Awful Plot is that [insert made up magic excuse here] is turning everyone into Machinedramon clones with a virus and somehow this is bad because as well as digivolving to an arbitrary form they also turn evil for no reason and then its just YEARS AND YEARS of people explaining exactly how the virus must have been created and like five different contrived things we can do to slow it down and then after like FIFTY HOURS we finally get out first appearance of the fucking villain. as a silhouette. in the background. im at 90 hours now and i still dont even know his fucking name, or why the fuck he wants everyone to be machinedramon. but man it was vitally important to instead waste time explaining the ‘antivirus enforcer program’ and how it would totally be useful only to reveal it was taken out offscreen before the game even started and now it’s a villain. cos like we needed five more fake villain minions to delay this actual villain man’s appearance, UUUUUGH! none of them even talk! its just magic virus that makes you magically evil. and why did we need to explain the compelx metaphysics of an antivirus when ultimately you could have just said ‘its omegamon, he’s a big hero in this setting, he got turned evil and now we have to save him’. Why did we need a misdirect that this antivirus wasnt a person??? why did we need to go on a quest to find a guy who can make flower seeds and then plant the flower seeds in the most contrived way waiting 1 ingame day between each step, then somehow the plant is a clue that omegamon is evil SOMEHOW and then its still 30 hours til we fucking meet the guy... sorry, sorry, this probably makes about as little sense as it did to me. i just had to try and give an example of a particular main quets line that FUCKING PISSED ME OFF and i STILL dont know what any of it means so i cant even explain it to you! i got spoiled for the goddamn ending and i STILL dont know why there was an omegamon-predicting rafflesia that took one ingame month to get past...

BUT YEAH SORRY IM TRYING TO SUMMARIZE THIS

theres some mystery villain who’s turning everyone into machinedramon for no reason thats the plot and youre not really given a reason why this town needs you to recruit more digimon except somehow if you get [insert amount here] prosperity that’ll take enough time that jijimon will finish magically hacking [insert plot device here] to find the next location of [whatever the thing is]... i mean its vaguely mentioned once at the start that a machinedramon destroyed the town or something? so i guess maybe we can assume all the townsfolk actually died and we’re getting new ones/searching for their reincarnated selves or something. Man if that was ACTUALLY THE INTENTION and ACTUALLY EXPLAINED then it would have been pretty damn good! it’d add some interestingness to the sidequests if the digimon had to recover lost memories of being someone else in the city once. plenty of potential for interesting interactions if their new digiegg’d self is a wildly different form or something! Like that could have been a good setup for the one endearing fashion designer skullgreymon who’s super sad about looking so scary. Also seriously WHY DID SKULLGREYMON NOT GET TO OPEN A FASHION SHOP?? why did they remove that feature from reDigitize, this game is for a far more powerful console so it couldnt have been impossible to add in... (I still have no clue how they managed to pull off actual digimon customization on the first generation psp! WHY IS THIS THE ONLY UNDUBBED GAME) so yeah the original DW1 even had a more solid establishing plot here, even though it was 99% less text! ‘for some reason digimon are turning violent and losing their abiloty to speak, all my friends at this city slowly dissappeared into the wilderness, please solve this mystery and bring them back’. THAT WAS INTERESTING! That had an actual reason why recruiting shopkeepers equals plot progression, you were ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING, not just waiting for someone else to decode an ambiguously explained ‘frequency’ to point you at your next key item/FIGHTING THE SAME DAMN BOSS AGAIN :P

ALSO ALSO why no analogman WHY NO ANALOGMAN how does this make ANY SENSE?? why is it even machinedramon in particular, if not for the fact it was analogman’s digimon in the first game??? thats just getting my hopes up for no damn reason! why didnt we get to see The Very Original Villain come back and get fully voiced dialogue and maybe some more development on who he is and what his backstory is or whatever his plot was minimal back then because it was a very low tech game, now we have NO EXCUSE for it :P its just ‘yeah his entire presence in the plot is that someone on the writing team was inspired by his postgame sidequest, i guess’ cos a ‘machinedramon virus’ did technically exist, but it was more like just an excuse for why the final boss battle was replayable for your enjoyment. a random digimon would turn into the final boss battle (sans analogman cos he’s Mysteriously Vanished And/Or Potentially Dead seriously that was SUCH A SEQUEL HOOK and they DIDNT TAKE IT) so like seriously they took ANALOGMAN’S ACTUAL VIRUS POSTGAME THING THAT HE MADE and yet no analogman! WHY! and also it fucking sucks to try and base a whole game’s plot on a single dialogueless sidequest that was just an excuse for battle replayability some guy just probably took 0.2 seconds to think ‘yeah maybe the computer the villain left behind does a virus thing to make the boss replayable’ and some fuckin bright spark decided to make an entire game about it IT DOES NOT WORK hell, a good writer could have made it work! if theyd expanded upon the vagueness and explained things! or gave motivations! or used it as a reason for analogman to retURN AND HAVE A FUCKING PLOT seriously WHY did they have to make this game be marketed as A DIRECT SEQUEL TO THE FIRST GAME they were just setting themselves up for failure yo every fucking thing in the game is 100% unrelated except someone else is doing analogman’s signature plan and the protagonist from DW1 makes an entirely pointless cameo just to remind you its supposed to be a sequel and is FAILING

OKAY OKAY SERIOUSLY LETS TALK ABOUT *HIM*

mameo mameo poor mameo you literally only existed to trick people into buying the game with a fake plot that doesnt exist it was marketed as if he’s the villain, and it got everyone curious about it, and then no he isnt he’s just mistaken for the villain once in his introduction as an excuse to drag out another pointless sidequest instead of progressing the plot then he just becomes a mostl;y voiceless useless npc who does more magic unexplained science to magically amke the plot do whatever the writers need it to do without needing to ACTUALLy have a REASON why it HAPPENS, gaAAHHHH he’s just magically a super hacker now, like how jijimon is magically a super hacker now, and blablabla jijimon for some reason couldnt track down the next place the villain would strike but mameo can the end end of mameo’s entire plot gone. oh, aside from a brief mention again that he’s developed a prototype antidote for the machinedramon virus and then it fails. which just exists to be an excuse for another plot to happen without (AGAIAN) any actual reason it happened, or any form of development or player participation. blablabla oh no one of the hero’s friends’s digimon got infected by the virus so now you get a boss battle against them, and they dont have to leave the plot or change or grow cos magic antidote thing turned them back. But it didnt REALLY work, she’ll just turn back into machinedramon in like 50 days or something blah blah. please feel sad for this character you barely know, who is facing no consequences for what they did, but we’re telling you they might maybe sometime in the future, but of course they never will because the plot doesnt actually have a time limit. Also please believe that mameo is useful! and its just ITS JUST SO FRUSTRATING!!! cos mameo is still THE BEST PART OF THE DAMN GAME! he’s the only character who seems to have any damn effort or emotion put into him, his english voiceactor really stands out in a cast of bored-sounding people. It feels like whoever voiced him was maybe actually a fan of the first game? And he gets to sound so cool and act so cool and look so cool and have really good sassy moments and then HAVE NO PRESENCE IN THE PLOT AT ALL! GAHHHHH!! why must you waste EVERYTHING???

ultimately the only real thing this game gave us was finally having a name for DW1 protagonist, and getting to know that he grows up to work with computers and gets to retain his ability to visit the digital world forever, and he still loves his partner [insert name of whatever you called it when you played] but EVEN THAT is fucking wasted!!! They say that Mameo’s original digimon from last time was somehow cursed to be stuck as a digiegg, as an excuse for not.. yknow.. having to canonize any particular partner choice and upset the fans. Even though the postgame cutscene in the first game already canonized Mamemon as his partner and you literally named him for it! (the excuse in-universe is that Mameo is a nickname and we still dont know what his canon name is. also he has a cute mamemon patch sewn on his beanie hat this time! that made my heart melt even as i was grumping about bad plotlines lol) Oh and this is also probably just an excuse for mameo being sidelined with no plot role, like he’s too powerful to let him actually fight or anything :P its making me mad cos im kinda imagining how this game would have worked so much better if mameo actually was the protagonist??? like, have him summoned back to face this new threat, and his powerful digimon is knocked back down to a digiegg and has to start over. i mean the actual protagonist ALREADY HAS THAT PLOT! you literally start as someone who’s EVEN STRONGER than mameo, you have an omegamon and then machinedramon kills it/them and you start over. And like.. if they decided to make a new hero cos they wanted male and female options, honestly just give me a female version of mameo and im fuckin fine. Pokemon Crystal retconned in a female option to a game that didnt have one before, and nobody complained! Oh and they dont even need to justify why mameo is clueless in this setting, cos its literally a different digital world anyway. Somehow. he fell through dimensions or something, they explain it very poorly. (WHAT A SURPRISE) actually, THAT is a huge wasted potential too! cos it means he never even gets to have a tearful reunion with jijimon and other npcs he met last time, instead every digimon that was in DW1 is just explained away as being a parallel universe equivelant that’s never met mameo. SeriouslY WHAT is up with this game and explaining ridiculous excuses to justify their pltoholes instead of just NOT WRITING THE PLOTHOLES??? i mean you could have just said this is like the digital world of the future. just like how mameo’s original adventure had him return to the human world and only one day had passed, maybe the amount of time it took him to grow up is the equivelant of centuries in the digital world? so Floatia could still be a new town, and everyone could be like descendants/reincarnations of the old npcs, and the digital world could have gained a bunch of new areas and etc. EASY EXPLANATION it wasnt necessary to make up a FUCKING HOUR LONG PLOTHOLE VERSION WITH METAVERSE SCIENCE

ALSO why dont we ever get to have any character exploration of like.. anyone?? why doesnt anyone get personality or scenes where you can actually get attatched to them and stuff. why are they just silent floating npcs that do NOTHING and then suddenly are revealed to have had a plot offscreen while you weren’t looking?? literally you are not even introduced to the two male and female friend characters they just.. come into existance in the plot you dont really get a scene of their personality or them getting to know you, or anything?? its just ‘oh i guess two other humans fell into the digital world’ then they sit around as silent npcs for 30 hours while you do everything without them then they just add some miscellaneous comments at the end of a main plot quest and oh i guess its been revealed that female character’s salamon digivolved into gatomon offscreen with no real emotional reason why it had to happen now, or any sign she was even training in the same way you are?? and then that just continues oh i guess she has an angewomon now and then you find out that offscreen her and angewomon were arguing about a problem that was never mentioned before offscreen you dont even SEE them arguing and its like you dont find out what its about no you just get a literal text that her and angewomon had a fight offscreen and angewomon ran away offscreen and hey can you go find her cos for some reason I CANT EVEN DO MY OWN DAMN PLOT then its just ‘oh no please worry that the character youve never even reallY MET has been struggling from a thing never mentioned before, and now she might die from a virus we never saw her get infected with’ and YOU have to defeat her beserk form and cure her and calm her down while her tamer just STANDS THERE and also btw she DIGIVOLVED INTO ANGEWOMON OFFSCREEN IN THE FIRST PLACE so its ‘hey please find my digimon who ran away’ and she’s A DIFFERENT DIGIMON when you find her! its THAT rushed! and then she digivolves again immediately afterwards because somehow being saved by SOMEONE COMPLETELY UNRELATED helped her bond enough with her tamer to become mega level and also the plot of her having the virus is just magically discarded instantly cos WHY NOT And after ALL this bullshit, what is it that they even argued about? it was just The Oldest Trope In The Book, a stupid misunderstanding caused by people not talking about something even though there is no reason why they wouldnt. Angewomon got upset that her tamer wanted to go home to the human world, thinking she’d done something wrong to cause it. And her tamer had just NEVER MENTIONED to anyone ever that she had twin sisters who’re suffering from sitcom disease or something and she’s worried they might not be okay without her. And like.. honestly why did there even NEED to be an excuse why she needed to go home? its natural for someone to miss home, it could have been solved much quicker in like one damn conversation yo. ‘hey i dont want to leave because i dont enjoy having a digimon, its because i have other friends back home too’ And honestly its kinda contrived how angewomon would even not understand that to begin with? this angewomon has a personality like a very young child too, which just makes it even more of a shame that we spend barely any time with her as her rookie form and pretty much never even LEARN that she’s like a little sis figure until this damn sidequest. this is the longest screentime these two ever had, and the first and only time theyre mentioned to have personalities and backstory! and its THEIR FINAL SCENE T_T and seriously it DOESNT EVEN MEAN ANYTHING to see her digivolve into a mega when none of these characters ever actually get to fight, or even exist in the plot theyre just stated to be having their own adventures offscreen. EVERYTHING OFFSCREEN! i mean GAHH the new gameplay even woulda justified this?? like, instead of having two digimon partners maybe you could bring along an assistant character to fight with you! or hell, maybe you could have both! if they can prove they can handle two playable characters onscreen at once then why not three? make everyone like social links that get stronger as you befriend them! and it;’d be a big help to developing your own digimon too, yo! like, these characters are at preset levels to you’re always gonna be able to be more powerful than them if you try. but it makes it less painful when your digimon reincarnates, you could partner up with a champion-level friend and they could help you train out in the field! hell, maybe add a feature of them being able to join in with the training gym too?? that’d be a better excuse for the daily bonuses than just... there’s daily bonuses. why does one particular training gym give better results on thursdays? maybe cos a certain character is there on that day and helps out!

and anyway where was i OH YEAH WHY IS THERE NOT AN ACTUAL CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT PLOT FOR MAMEO IN PARTICULAR he at least got an establishing scene and some cool dialogue, so im more invested in him than the other empty presences in this plot! like, we could have examined his actual emotions about his childhood digimon partner being stuck essentially in a coma with no idea if he’ll ever see them again. a guy hugging the digiegg of his poor dead mamemon is something you’d think they’d give SOME attention to! but he just talks about it so casually as if we should all already know, and then its NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. It literally IS just an excuse to keep mameo from being able to fight alongside you! more plots! you could have an actual friendship sidequest of him being like your mentor, passing down the torch to the next generation of heroes. we could explore the plot of an adult digimon tamer more! what is it like, is it ever difficult? What is his day to day life even like? its implied that he’s able to go to the digital world at will like the 02 protagonists, so can his mamemon come to the human world too? did he have to take it to school and hide it in his bag like davis and co? did he basically live The Better Written Version Of That Season??? Did his parents ever find out? Does his mamemon still run on digimon world rules, like is the gameplay actually meant to be canon in-universe? does the protagonist digimon only live 10-20 days while everyone else gets to have a good ‘ol long life? has it been sad for mameo that his best friend keeps dying and reviving like 12 times a year, and never remembers him? i really hope thats not how it works, seriously. itd make for a good sad plot tho... And seriously why couldnt this have been the same jijimon in the same town and they get to meet again and we get nostalgic heartwarmingness???

oh and the other ‘friend’ character is even worse, seriously he does absolutely nothing except complain about how upset he is that other people dare to be better than him wah wah but a girl digivolved before me wah he started off looking like a normal cute nerd guy but then he deliberately infects his growlmon with the virus to try and become stronger, and he seems to get off scott free for it?? cos the plot is so vague and undeveloped it rushes through his realizing he’s wrong and it just seems so un-genuine. and we dont even get to see him meeting his digimon again and apologising once he gets reincarnated! its just you see him die horribly cos his tamer infected him with a fucking death virus out of ego that he’s so perfect and so strong he could handle the power. and then you just.. see him again and he’s a baby jyarimon and its all fine. you just see jyarimon following this tamer’s silent npc model around and its like DID YOU EVEN APOLOGISE AT ALL?? apparantly his digimon never even got mad at him or anything about it! it makes me feel so damn sad for the poor guy, i mean he spent so long trying to tell his tamer he’s not useless for not being stronger than the otehrs,a nd blaming himself for not being able to digivolve, and yet STILL tamer guy chose to ignore him and force him to virus-digivolve while he was begging not to! And we dont get to see the consequences for this! we get to see him learn his goddamn canned lesson of the day but we dont get to see him apologise and yukimura the guilmon just reincarnates and goes right back to being a silent mindlessly obedient npc who never complains when he’s mistreated :( and its so fucking stupid cos the plot even started off promising, it started off seeming like the problem was just ‘i’m not strong enough to protect people like you are, protagonist’. but its so badly written it felt like it derailed into him just being egotistical?? and whining about being blessed with this magical monster pal who isnt THE BEST magical monster pal so why even fucking bother. and the game acts like he’s justified cos he has ~a boring school life~. He has no problems at all but he’s just AVERAGE and not THE BEST, and oh gosh that terrible terrible fate has just worn down on him and made him have no self confidence. except yknow for all the scenes where he’s screaming ‘IM THE BEST, I DESERVE THIS’ throughout this fucking stupid plot... its like i can see what he was supposed to be, but they really failed??? i think i would have liked what he was SUPPOSEd to be... also it sucks that yukimura’s evil digivolution is inexplicably skullgreymon instead of megidomon (i think thats the name?) Yknow, the one guilmon actually turned into in tamers and it only had a one episode appearance but it was really scary cool! man it never gets to reappear in the games, no wonder i keep forgetting its name :P

aaaaargh and i just listened to the final battle music on the soundtrack and i havent got that far yet but i just know its NOT GONNA BE AS GOOD AS THIS SONG DESERVES im getting so much feels imagining what if the final boss actually WAS analogman from the first game, and if the supporting characters ACTUALLY HAD CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT and they could fight alongside you to defeat him once and for all! and what if this game’s status as the direct sequel to DW1 wasnt just a fucking baldfaced lie. seriously why didnt they just remove this nonsense plot and let it be its own original thing, if they werent gonna actually put effort into making the cameos actually decent.... MAMEO YOU DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER AAAAA