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straw-beret · 1 year ago

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The significance of the claw machines in the opening of season 2

This is the first theory I've ever really posted or even MADE, and I haven't seen anyone else address it so apologies if I'm just repeating what someone else has already said; but yeah, these are just some observations I made recently, and they mostly have to do with the the intro to season 2 and how that potentially relates to the future of a rather significant main character.

More under the cut! And spoilers for season 2, if you haven't already guessed.

Every week I tune in to watch Link Click with my friends, and only at episode 10, i.e. a week ago, did i notice that in the opening, all the stuffed animals surrounding the claw machines are bunny rabbits.

It's a bit hard to see on account of the dim lighting, but I assure you that every single plush on the outside of those claw machines (and inside, at least in this shot) is a bunny rabbit. You can check the OP out on youtube if you want as well, if you want to confirm.

At first I thought, "Maybe the animators were just trying to save money on the budget!" But then I remembered that in the very next shot, we see other stuffed animal models that aren't rabbits:

This is the interior of one of the claw machines, presumably the one from episodes 4-5, and we can see 3D models of plushies such as bears and cats, alongside the rabbits of the outside.

And even in episodes 4-5, which are conversely animated in 2D, we can see there are a variety of other animals in each of the claw machines. And although the outlines aren't the clearest, it's still easy to discern they aren't ALL the same plushies as in the machine Tianxi is focused on:

From left to right as seen in the second image, I'll call each claw machine CM1, 2, and 3.

In CM2, we can see there's many different animals, majority with tails. I had a theory that they might be related to the animals of the Chinese zodiac, but you can't see them too clearly, so I'm not too sure.

CM3 isn't clear either, but the plushes/toys are definitely different to the other ones. On close inspection, I think there are bears and rabbits, but coloured red and white instead of pink, brown and greys/whites, like in CM1.

So clearly they didn't just have just one bunny plush model they had to reuse, and they put in the effort of hand drawing different plushies in the other claw machines. Plus, the budget for the intro must have been enormous— they weren't exactly pinching pennies. So why pile ONLY rabbits on the outside of the claw machines in the intro?

My theory is that it has something to do with my beloved Qiao Ling.

From the very first episode season 1, the show has set up a recurring rabbit motif in relation to Qiao Ling. We see this first in her phone case:

I put in a second photo of her phone for reference, and that one is from season 2, either episode 9 or 10.

So, bunny ears on the phone case. Big deal, probably just a fun piece of visual storytelling to add to her character— maybe she's into 'meng' culture. She's about the age to be into it, right?

Well, let's look at the chibi spinoff, Daily Life in Lighttime!

I don't think it's at the end of every episode this animal segment appears, but after the main events of each episode, we get to see the main characters as animals, doing animal things. Pretty straightforward— LG is a cat, CXS is a dog, and QL is a rabbit. Another thing connecting QL with the motif of rabbits.

In the official art by INPLICK, who did the character designs for the show, Qiao Ling is also commonly depicted with rabbits/a rabbit motif, and the boys with their respective animals as well.

On top of that, we know the show is set in 2021. Based on her character profiles, we know Qiao Ling is 22 years old, making her birth year 1999 (March 16th, if anyone cares). This makes her, you guessed it, year of the Rabbit!

So, let's tie this back to the claw machines. We've got a character who is established in show and in official art to be associated with rabbits, and we've got an abundance of rabbit plushes on the outside of the claw machines. Link Click is always very intentional with their imagery and mise en scene, this isn't an accident. So, what exactly does this mean?

My theory is that Qiao Ling will come to play a very significant role in the finale and upcoming season 3.

Initially, when me and my friend discussed this (shout out to Lara if you're reading this); we figured it might just be another reference to how Qiao Ling is metaphorically on the outside of the supernatural happenings. She is the only main character without powers, she didn't know what CXS and LG were doing with the photos, she was the first of the mains to get possessed by red eyes, who we now know are a wombo combo of Li Tianxi and Li Tianchen. But why go to such lengths to compound on something we already know?

So then I started to wonder, maybe it means she is less protected than the others? After all, she was the first to get possessed, she is the only one without any supernatural powers. I thought it might mean imminent doom for Qiao Ling— which would suck, because (and this is especially applicable if you've seen the most recent episode, i.e. s2e11) Link Click is not the best when it comes to leaving female characters alive!!!!!

It adds up— the animals on the inside of the claw machine are "safe", metaphorically and literally. They are protected by the glass (and also the impossibility of winning anything from a claw machine). But on the outside, they are up for grabs, easy to be destroyed or harmed. The claw machine ensures safety, and when you're outside the machine, nothing is guaranteed. So when we see the inside of the claw machine in the shot of that pink cat plush, i.e. the second image in this post, we see that there aren't as many rabbits in the claw machine, meaning less safety for QL.

(also if you want to strengthen that argument, that stuffed cat that liu lan and li tianxi won from the claw machine was torn apart by li fan when they got home).

((and even in the est. shot where we do see rabbits on the inside, there are much less than on the outside.))

So, Qiao Ling the outsider in this situation, who has as far as we know no powers and not much of a clue as to the supernatural happenings (and who let's be real only became plot significant recently, as much as i love her), her animal is on the outside of the claw machines. Simple.

And then the trailer for the finale of s2 dropped, and we got this lovely frame:

My friend and I thought it might be Qiao Ling's powers awakening, some others think it might be Tianxi transferring her powers to Qiao Ling. However, if you watch the rest of the trailer, you'll notice that Qiao Ling is left entirely defenseless, just sitting by Tianxi's body.

While the rest of the fight is presumably happening. These characters have guns and tasers! Why is she turning her back on them when she has no natural defenses of her own (save for those sick martial arts skills)?

Especially because Qian Jin, who has been established to want to harm QL and even rigged up a god damn BOMB to set off for when she and CXS went to retrieve LG:

Is on the scene with a gun!

I think that something bad is going to happen to Qiao Ling, the "outsider", either in the finale or in season 3. Could be death, could be a major injury, but whatever it is, it will have been foreshadowed through the stuffed rabbits and the claw machines.

kudos if you read this much lol i'm not sure if i structured my arguments well but i got really into this theory. and maybe i might make a post about the symbolism of the pacman machine in the intro as well? idk. lmk what you think!! i'd love to know if there's anything i'm missing or if there are any other interpretations to glean from this :)

#link click #shiguang dailiren #link click season 2 #link click theory #shiguang daili ren #cheng xiaoshi #qiao ling #lu guang #link click spoilers #sgdlr #sgdlr spoilers #时光代理人 #fan theory #theory #speculation

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covenofwives · 2 years ago

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Your comment about the God siblings needing a big sleepover together made me slightly insane soo…a few concepts that I think would happen in a God sibling and dteam + punz sleepover🫠

HD has a godly amount of pillows and blankets- no one is going to be uncomfortable

4K and Sap are the designated heaters, everyone just piles on top of them

pretty sure this isn’t cannon to the AU right now but…OP has wings. Big fluffy wing blankets that also tickle :)

XD and 4K are cuddlers and just wrap their arms around everyone

Dteam + punz end up (comfortably) squished in between the gods

HDs helper hands make sure everyone’s comfortable and he definitely didn’t tell them to do that

And when most of them are awake, they wake the others in the best way possible :)) sleepy tickles

Elliot if I could print out these words, turn them into liquid and inject this liquid into my veins I absolutely would. That is how much I love this.

Everything you have described here is perfect. I will happily go on to gush about each of these points

HD having the perfect pillow for everyone and every situation. You like firm pillows? He's got them. Soft squishy? Absolutely. You want a satin blanket or a fuzzy wool blanket? He's got a thousand of them. All in different colours so you can pick out your favourite. I imagine the start of the sleepover it's XD, 4K and OP going to collect their siblings and bring them to HD's place where he and George have set up the NEST and laid out everything to be picked out.

Absolute yes for the heaters and the best part is 4K is SO HUGE like he could hug all of the dteam and punz in his arms and it's not uncomfortable. He probably does, stealing them away from the others who go after and tickle him to release them (which was of course his plan) but he does and then it has to be decided that he and Sapnap are evenly spaced to give the most amount of heat to the nest.

The wiiiiings. The softest wings. And he has 6 of them! Six wonderful wings to absolutely blanket them all, and give soft tickles under everyone's chin and trace ever so lightly over their tummies. But it's also a risk because OP's wings are SO ticklish. If he pushes the tickles too far all anyone has to do is grab his wing and give him a good tickling to calm down. Which for sure happens.

XD and 4K being absolute cuddle monsters. I could see them trying to cuddle as many people as possible away from each other and then talk about trading between them ("I'll give you HD if you give me Sapnap." "Only if you'll trade me George for Dream then.") while everyone is trying to break free, giggling that their idiots and of course tickling their way to freedom but only to be snapped up by the other one. Eventually it's decided the cuddle/laying position has to have the dteam and punz in the middle so they're between all the Gods and XD and 4K can have equal cuddling shares.

The helper hands going above and beyond with the sleepover. Someone is thirsty? Here's a helper hand with some water for you. Thinking how a massage would feel right now? Here's a helper hand soothing out that muscle for you. HD is calling them annoying but his one thought is to make sure everyone is feeling safe and comfortable and cosy and the hands will make sure that happens.

The wake up omg We all know it's HD and George the last to wake. Maybe Sapnap and OP as well. Gentle coos lead to tickles under the chin and soft kneading into sides and bellies. 4K is running his tail up and down Sapnap's foot. Dream and Punz are tickling OP's back, especially at the base of his wings. XD using two hands on each, tickling HD and George's bellies.

Absolute perfection a 100000/10 sleepover

#godsiblingau #elliot tword #i swear to you elliot it may take years but I will make this be canon in the au

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ladditt · 2 years ago

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V9 Ep1

okay! Chores are one so its RWBY time lessgo

1) okay right off the bat the first person perspective, music and editing are top fucking notch for this opening. The rising panic is palpable and it gets across how it must have felt to be trapped in a situation that’s getting worse by the second without having time to process the last horrific life changing event before a new one happens. I haven't seen something that well made from this show in a WHILE full props to the creative team for this one.

However, I do really want to see a behind- the-scenes clip of how this was animated from a third person perspective. Hysterically, shots like this are either animated by having two disembodied arm models fixed just behind the camera, or by using the actual character model but either distorting the neck or removing the head entirely so you don’t get any clipping. Either way it’ll be fucking hilarious.

2) that water is fucking beautiful, we sure have come a ways from the flat blue plane of V1

3) two suns? Is that a metaphor?

4) I’m not gonna point out every well crafted shot because from what I’ve seen so far I might be here a while, this episode in particular seems to be going out of it’s way to have varied, intentional shot composition but this shot?

Rubes tiny and isolated in a strange world? Physically surrounded by a dark unknown forest? That some good shit right there.

5) oh god the plant models. They’re excellent and the set design for this forest is perfect but I really hope that the staff were given adequate time to design and model them all….

6) aye, rubes. I don’t think that “keep moving forward” is the best way to deal with this one.

7) I will withhold my judgement until they’ve had more screen-time but, yeah little is really annoying.

8) “what happened after we fell?” nothing good blake, nothing good.

9) again, top notch animation, and the gang is back together way sooner that I was expecting. I’m gonna say that’s a good thing. Following four different plot-lines probably wouldn’t have worked.

10) don’t dodge the question weiss. I know you’re trying to be kind but you’re not gonna be able to put this off forever, and the longer you wait the worse it’s gonna be.

11) is that the jabberwocky? It’s… fine. The muscle texture looks cool but beyond that I’m not getting the “nightmare fuel”. according to the op it looks like it’s going to be more of a consistent antagonist though so there's still time for it to grow on me.

12) “if you thought we wouldn’t come for you, you must have forgotten who raised me” my HEART

13) also shout out to barbra for the line delivery on that “damn it” that was excellent.

14) if it were 2015 and I were still a 14 year old bee shipper I would have lost my mind at that hug. So for now I’ll just be happy for the people who ARE losing their minds.

15) “it must have gone pretty bad, huh?” Oh they’re addressing this NOW? I was expecting at least another episode of weiss tiptoeing around the topic before we got the reveal

16) oh shit ruby just went out like a lightswitch. Yeah that’s a pretty realistic reaction to hearing something like that, on top of the fact that volume 8 took place over like, what, four hours? No one here has had a chance to stop since salem showed up, they're all exhausted.

Considering this place is mindfuck central and we’re got a murderous shapeshifter milling around down here as well it’s really not going to take much for people to start losing their minds. And I mean, If this is wonderland “everyone’s mad down here” might end up being relevant.

17) blake stepping up as leader while ruby is out of action? Love to see it

18) ruby passing out from stress and then instantly pretending that nothing happened and refusing to let herself feel a human emotion? that’s my girl.

19) oh good fucking god. Yeah I understand completely why this took an extra year to make. I though the new assets for the forest were going to be it, but no it looks like we have five or six completely unique zones to this place. again, i REALLY hope that this wasn’t as hard on the animators as we’re all assuming it was.

20) i’m not gonna analyze the op because as a rule, i’m not a fan of them. but yeah, it looks like this is the beginning of the “ruby has a nervous breakdown” arc

aye, consider my thoroughly impressed. the filmaking for this episode was above an beyond what i was expecting. i can’t say i’m completely sold on the talking mice but i’m also not sure how literally we’re supposed to be taking what we’re seeing. from a lore perspective wonderland is... interesting to day the least. is this a separate world or a lower layer of reminant? was this created by the brothers or does this world have a different set of creators? humans and grimm don’t seem to exist here but the emotions of the characters do seem to have a physical affect on the environment, on top of that, the relics were explicitly created by the brothers to help humanity and atlas is the one that created those portals that brought us here in the first place. and atlas at least seemed to have some knowledge that wonderland was here considering he mentioned that falling would be bad. so, does this place have a connection to the power of the relics or was taking a detour through an alternate dimension just the quickest way to connect two portals?

my current theory as of episode one is that wonderland is the brother’s “WIP folder” so to speak, weird ideas and not quite finished creations that the brothers are keeping stored for a rainy day. like, the jabberwocky looks a lot like a first draft of what the grimm ended up being.

#RWBY #RWBY9 #RWBY Spoilers #Ladd watches V9

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heat-sink · 1 year ago

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10 mutuals I’d like to know better

tagged by @shepgarrus and frankly, when I saw I was tagged, I went:

thank u I'm honored

putting all under the cut because I have a heart

Last song I listened to: Anhedonia by Chelsea Wolfe featuring Emma Ruth Rundle WOW it had to be one of the most depressing songs I've got in my spotify playlist

Favourite content to watch: (hold on max I LOVE that you watch kpop stuff tell me your faves) I watch a lot of historical costuming (love 2 watch people make stays and corsets???) and I watch a decent amount of automotive journalism (growing up, I was a Top Gear fan, and yes, jeremy clarkson is a POS). I like some tarot stuff, too, dance/ballet, aaannndd I like to watch gaming play-throughs, especially of games I don't actually want to play but I'm nosy and want to know what happens/goes on.

Favourite games: other than ME, I don't really play games anymore. Older Tomb Raider is great (I think Legends is my favorite). It's absolutely military propaganda, but I enjoyed playing The Division and its sequel, and if I can mention board games, I'm a big fan of Dixit and any of those co-op detective games.

Favourite colour: hot red--red so warm some people might call it orange

Favourite animal: I can't choose one... Corvids (mainly crows and ravens, but I like jays too!), cats, snakes, and I could go on because of who I am as a person

Favourite food: Honestly, i could eat phở gà everyday. I'm also a huge fan of most dishes with rice or noodles of all cuisines.

Sweet, spicy or savoury: I need them all. Also TART.

Current obsessions: my current hyper fixations are inhaling romance novels, listening to ethel cain, and coming up with weird designs to paint my pottery pieces.

Last book I read: I finished the YA book by The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight (good god that title is longer than the novel) by Jennifer E Smith.. It was........ ok. I don't normally read YA but every time I do, I am reminded why: I'm too old for it. Anyway, all of you should go read Naomi Novik's Scholomance series, starting with A Deadly Education. Bro. That shit? Bro. It's so fucking good.

Last thing I Googled: the author for that YA novel

Relationship: single pringle (delusionally dating taz skylar in my fantasies)

Fun fact: OK MAX IF U READ THIS LET'S GO TO SOUTH KOREA (also much of the food is spicy, but I recommend bibimbap as a ~safe introduction~ or, of course, any kind of gogi--samgapsyul, galbi, bulgogi, dak bulgogi, etc. All excellent choices. Or if you want noodles, japchae!)

ok my ACTUAL fun fact: I've written a novel (romance, no smut) and I'm still working up the courage to even figure out how to write a query letter to send it out to a billion agents or publishing houses open for submissions :') the insecurity and fear of failure is REAL

uhhh honestly I don't have mutuals OTHER than shepgarrus/max because I am a tag crawler instead, I am Truly Unhinged.

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itsbenedict · 2 years ago

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Haven't played the vidya since being a teenager but getting a family Switch for Christmas, top new and classic recs for kids (7 years old), family, couples (casual!), and me whose favorite was always Zelda games?

Ooh, I am delighted by the opportunity to put a vast and largely-useless body of knowledge to work. One set of game recs, coming right up:

For the kids:

Picking out games for kids 7 and under is tricky, because kids tend to be bad at video games at first. I don't know what kind of experience your kids have (is this their first game console? have they played a lot of games on computers or mobile devices before?), but I'll assume they're fairly green.

My top rec is going to be New Pokémon Snap, for a lot of reasons.

First, it's pretty easy to control. Each course is mostly on-rails, with the player inside an autopiloted vehicle that moves forward and navigates the course by itself. The player only has to worry about controlling the camera, which can help acclimate a kid without much experience with joystick controls to the idea.

Second, which may or may not matter to you, it's nonviolent. Sometimes the wild pokemon will get in altercations with each other, but the player never gets attacked. Super G-rated squeaky-clean.

Third, the courses are fairly short- they range from 5 to 10 minutes long, and have decisive and natural stopping points at the end. If you're planning to have any rules or restrictions on playtime, or need to regulate whose turn it is with the Switch, this is a godsend. (As a parent who's introducing a video game console to a household with multiple children, you will presumably need to be ready for trouble with sharing and appreciate any assistance the game can provide.)

Lastly- the original Pokémon Snap for N64 was my first videogame, which I got when I was 5, and I am biased would love to share that experience with a new generation.

After that... any Kirby game is probably a good option. Those games are actively made for little kids, being very easy and designed to acclimate new players to controls and concepts ubiquitous in other games. Kirby Star Allies I haven't personally played, but it's well-reviewed, looks like every other Kirby game I've played, and has 4-player local co-op- it's a pretty safe bet.

There's a couple mainline Pokémon games on the Switch, too- Pokémon as a series is pretty good for kids, thanks to the turn-based battle system with deep but approachable mechanics. Sword and Shield (one of the two, they're basically identical, Nintendo still haven't given up on that two-versions sales gimmick) aren't my favorite entries in the series but the baseline is pretty high. (There's also Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, which I haven't really looked at, which might be simpler and better for kids?) Turn-based battles are good for kids who maybe don't have the kind of reflexes or hand-eye coordination for real-time combat systems yet.

Another angle on that- it doesn't matter if kids are kind of bad at video games if their opponent is on the same level, so there's PvP type games like Super Smash Bros Ultimate or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe which, although pretty difficult and skill-intensive against CPU opponents, have simple enough basic controls that they'll be fun for the two of them going at each other, not worrying about all the advanced stuff.

For family:

I assume you mean, like, for the whole family to play together? Kirby, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart all fit that bill, for sure.

There's also Snipperclips, which is this adorable little physics puzzle-platformer where you play as... these two little walking archway-shaped thingies, except they can overlap their bodies with each other and clip each other into different shapes, which they can then use to solve puzzles. It's only two-player co-op, but it's a good one for parents to play with kids.

Also I hear Ring Fit Adventure is good, though I haven't tried it myself- it's a motion-controlled workout game that requires a peripheral device, except the exercises and stuff you do with the ring are, like, the way you attack and cast spells and defend yourself in a turn-based RPG. I don't think it's co-op at all but it's not a bad one to have around if you want to tire someone out before bed keep the kids active and healthy.

For couples:

This one's tricky, since I do not know your wife or her taste in video games, but- any of the aforementioned multiplayer family games work fine in two-player.

The game that always comes up when people talk about games for couples is It Takes Two, which is a mandatory two-player co-op game about... two terrible neglectful parents going through a messy divorce, who- when their daughter wishes on a magic book for them to stay together- get shrunk down to the size of toys and have to go on a wild Honey I Shrunk The Kids-style adventure through the house to get back to normal. By all accounts it's beautiful, extremely well-designed, and fun- but features a lot of very weird, dark, and questionable writing decisions which make it... probably not something to play around the kids. They announced literally today that it'd be getting a Switch release on November 4th.

Oh, but- hey, you haven't played any videogames since you were a teenager, so you probably haven't already experienced...

Portal 2- included in the Portal Companion Collection on Switch- has a fantastic co-op mode. I'm sure you've heard of Portal via all the memes about the cake being a lie, but there's a reason it's so beloved and influential. Basic premise is- you have a gun that shoots portals, and you have to use it to solve physics puzzles while a passive-aggressive robot heckles and/or threatens you over the PA system. Portal 2's co-op mode is continuity-free, available from the start, and features two players each with their own set of portals, which makes for some pretty mind-blowing puzzles. (And the single-player of both games is more than worthwhile, too.)

For you:

Alright, so recommending games for people I don't know is challenging, but for someone I do know but whose taste in video games I don't, that's a horse of a different color. Just starting from what you've given me here- that you liked Zelda growing up- the obvious rec is Breath of the Wild.

Pretty much everyone besides the Ocarina of Time GOAT holdouts agrees that BotW is the best Zelda yet, though it's very different from the earlier games in the series- it's totally open-world, and does a lot with physics toys like bombs and a magnet beam and stuff. It's huge, there's tons to discover, and so much of it is designed to be open-ended and allow for multiple solutions without making puzzles trivial. It's just really impressive on a design level, and there's so much of it.

Zelda games are a lot of things to a lot of people, though, so it's hard to say what the active ingredient was for you back then without more info. If it was about the exploration, then yeah, BotW will scratch that itch for sure. The puzzle-solving stuff, BotW also has plenty of (albeit in these scattered, self-contained mini-dungeons instead of huge expansive temples.)

If you were more into the feel of the progression, getting new items that gradually expand your options and open up more of the world, I'd actually look at Hollow Knight- a pretty-difficult 2D metroidvania-type platformer with a lot of Zelda DNA, where you play as a little bug with a nail in a world full of other, mostly larger and scarier bugs.

But what are the best ones?

Outside of those specific criteria you gave me, there's a few Switch games that are a) too advanced for seven-year-olds, b) not multiplayer, and c) nothing like Zelda. But I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend them anyway, because they real good.

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is the latest in the Ace Attorney series- and a reboot in a new continuity, so IMO it's the best jumping-on point. (The original trilogy is also on switch, but... this one's just better.) AA is a franchise of detective games where you play as a lawyer trying to get defendants acquitted of crimes they didn't commit, and so you've got to figure out what really happened by investigating crime scenes, cross-examining witnesses, and pointing out contradictions. TGAAC takes the series to early 20th-century London and gets Sherlock Holmes Herlock Sholmes involved, and it's just wildly entertaining from start to finish.

I remember mentioning Return of the Obra Dinn when you were looking for games for that volition study you were planning (did that end up happening?), but it's on Switch and I'd recommend it just to enjoy for yourself- you play as an insurance investigator whose job is to figure out exactly how everyone on a boat died, in order to figure out how much the insurance company has to pay out. You do so by finding corpses and then using a magic pocketwatch to go back in time to a frozen instant of the moment they died, inspecting the environment to figure out who's who and how they bit it from a limited number of snapshots of the incident. Really satisfying bit of deduction that'll consistently make you feel clever.

There's also a Pikmin game on Switch- Pikmin 3 Deluxe- which is a series I really enjoy. It's a... weird one to explain. You control a small squad of tiny astronauts who've crash-landed on an alien planet (not-so-secretly post-apocalyptic Earth), and are trying to reunite and repair their spaceship with the help of a small army of inexplicably-obedient ambulatory plant-creatures that decided to follow their orders. It's a weirdly compelling mix of time-management, action, strategy, puzzle-solving, and alternate-ecosystem worldbuilding. Not really comparable to anything else I've played, but really fun and fascinating. I'd recommend it for the kids if the controls weren't so weird and demanding of precision.

Also,

I don't recall if you played it when it came out for PC/Mac/Linux, but I have a game on there now! Partnered with a guy who does ports from the framework I built it in to bring it to Switch last month. It's this short little ~2 hour mystery thing, but people seem to like it and I'm pretty proud of it!

So yeah! There's probably some other good stuff I'm forgetting because I played them on other platforms, but hopefully this gives you some good options to pick from.

#game rec #shlevy

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6ad6ro · 3 years ago

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now that i've beaten elden ring, i'm ready to talk about it. i'll be vague in order to not spoil anything.

so it's in my top 10 favorite games ever, something that no game in over ten years has managed. it is BY FAR the best open world game that has ever existed. it's a game that ACTUALLY deserves the sort of praise that people were giving things like zelda botw a few years back. whereas zelda was maybe a little overrated, this actually goes above and beyond it's reputation. i can safely say that it's the most important game in the world right now.

that isn't to say i didn't have the occasional issue with it. but it just did so dang much to improve on the souls series. i always said that the souls series had the potential to be a masterpiece on the level of things like "zelda oot", and elden ring proves this.

anyways here are the things i think er did to vastly improve upon the souls formula (or are just good in general):

• more reasonable difficulty for most of the game.

• ability to "grind out" of areas that were too hard. leveling is so much more meaningful!

• the nature of it being open world means cheap bosses no longer act as artificial "walls" keeping you from playing the game. if something is too hard, you can go do something else and return later.

• most bosses are more fair, and often have spawnpoints or bonfires RIGHT before their fights. no more stupid runs to the fights.

• summoning ash. the permanent ability to summon in an ai cooperator for most tough fights is just amazing. you can still solo if you WANT, but this just makes the game way more fun and accessible for newer players.

• multiplayer is so much easier in general. co-op especially. less choke points for invaders to target low level players. and less opportunity for harassment by the worst players on the planet. invasion is way less frequent in general. invaders are now the ones at the disadvantage, rather than the invaded. as it should be.

• no more "hollow" mechanics to create unnecessary additional punishment associated with dying. being invaded in co-op is less stressful and more fun because you don't have to use a limited and valuable item every time you die just to play with your friends again. this was always a bad mechanic and good riddance.

• the inclusion of traditional souls areas in addition to the amazing open world. it feels like they combined the old formula with the new and nothing was lost. only gained. map design that puts even ds1 to shame.

• not only does this game feel like 10x bigger than the other souls, it feels bigger than ANY game. imagine a game larger than skyrim where every bit of content was actually DIFFERENT from each other and generally compelling? imagine if castlevania sotn had so much map that it was almost TOO much.

• FUCKING MUSIC! fucking actual music in the world and in dungeons. and it's good! sorry but "minimalistic sound design" is code for "i hate music". maybe they realised how badly breath of the wild was criticized after the fact for it's sparse music??

• more weapons and spells and abilities etc than anyone knows what to do with. they took the same approach as castlevania sotn did and said "throw everything in there". tho it's all fairly balanced (but not so much that it's boring).

• every build is fun and viable, often from the start. no stats are dead.

• poise is actually good but also optional.

• little things with how your player moves around and interacts with the world keep you from dying unfairly as often. player mistakes, rather than input mistakes, are what tend to kill you.

• JUMPING. thank god. a jump button. adds so much. fixes so much.

• removed the "press up on the analog stick as you attack" to do certain moves. nobody liked accidentally kicking in the older games. it was sloppy and thank god it's gone.

• enemy groups (and certain enemies) recharge your health and mana flasks. so you're rewarded for continuing to play rather than punished.

there's probably other good stuff i'm forgetting, but i also wanted to bring up my few complaints. if these were changed then it could have been even better:

• STILL NO DIFFICULTY SETTINGS 🙄... i cannot comprehend how anyone can defend this. even just having an OPTIONAL "casual" mode alongside the normal mode? would open this game up to tons of new fans. miyazaki's whole "joy of overcoming hardship" is frankly a moronic philosophy. and elden ring is actually objective proof that more people like souls games when they're easier. even the most insufferable ds1 tryhards ADORE this game and consider it the best. how can that be possible if an easy mode would "compromise the game's vision"?? the answer is simple. it fucking wouldn't.

• still no pause 🙄. most of us are adults. shut the fuck up and put a pause in your game so i can answer an important call without dying. hell, you can make pausing a toggle and disable it when online. stop making excuses for lacking basic functionality.

• while i still enjoyed some of it, the last 15% of the game is comparatively flawed and unfair. basic enemies suddenly soak up and dish out 10x more damage. the world design can feel obnoxious. and i'm being way less critical than most. a lot of people HATE this part.

• a couple of the bosses are pure shit. IT'S ONLY LIKE TWO THO! the first (and worst) offender is actually near the start of the game and it blocks off progress. it just doesn't make sense for it to be so hard considering where it's at. i know it was the final boss of the network test, but it should have been nerfed/moved/removed in the main game. the second was at least an optional endgame boss, but it was SO cheap. nothing about it felt fair. the fight is so bad that the main strategy used to beat it is "just respec and cheese it, then respec back after". to be fair, that's only two bad bosses in like... what... 70?!?

• still no way to make invaders optional. even if it wasn't nearly as much of a problem this time, it's still annoying. because most ppl who invade always try to cheat or exploit because they have no honor (or skill).

• nobody likes your poison swamps, miyazaki.

• a few other annoying mechanics too, like one hit kill death chariots. or teleportation chests.

• stop nerfing things via updates... you're gonna ruin a good thing if you overbalance. this is a single player game first and foremost. it doesn't really NEED a lot of balance patches. it certainly doesn't need to be any harder...

most of my complaints are fairly minor in comparison, and made less frustrating due to all of the vast improvements elden ring brings to souls. tbh most of the divisive aspects of the souls series are gone. and i finally have a souls game that i adore without compromise. i'd recommend this game to anyone who can play games. and if you can't play games? watch someone play it. because it's one of the most wonderful games ever made.

#i cant wait for the dlc #elden ring #long

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colorful-horses · 3 years ago

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💐 ?

💐 - who’s your favourite mlp blog?

I don't know if I have a Single favorite blogger, so heres a list of some of my absolute favorite pony bloggers:

🎨 MLP Art Blogs

@cassettepony - Such a unique art style. Cannot stress enough how unique her art style is! It's very stylistic and the colors are POPPIN- they're so saturated and pretty! Her art reminds me of jolly ranchers,, I also absolutely love the exaggerated expressions and how she draws EYES (when the corner of the mouth slightly clips over the bottom of the eye.........immaculate) + She does something really special that I never see any other pony artists doing, which is giving the ponies little chin hairs or 5 o'clock shadows (I. i don't know what it's called please forgive me). It is so special and cool to see, and it's so recognizable! I ADORE Cassettes art and I've always been too shy to say hi so uhhh. Hi! 👋

@msponies - ponies drawn in mspaint. HIGH QUALITY posts here. I am so inspired by their use of colors- the RANGE in some of these posts is crazy. Some of these drawings have such extremely unique color combos that you wouldn't think would work so well together, but msponies is just a master at using a color palette to its full potential its actually crazy! Their Trixie drawings are some of the best, and I cant help but admire how bold their backgrounds are (yea I know that kinda goes hand in hand with the whole color palette thing but i just really like their art); the bold colors and the dark outlines are so scrumptious

@celebrationcastle - They don't update extremely often, but when they do, you kno its gonna be a top tier post. They have a very flexible artstyle, and they post fanart for every generation. They were the ones who made that Valentines Pinkie Pie design that popped off a while ago, and for good reason; they are extremely good at drawing and designing. Like, they've completely mastered the artstyle of g3 and g4 (and probably every other gen. its nuts), and their g5 fanarts art probably my favorite I've ever seen (sunny starscout, my beloved). Everything they post is a banger. Their blog is just such a big inspiration to me :,)

📖 General MLP Blogs

@yodawgiheardyoulikeponies - absolute FAVORITE pony collecting blog. OP is SO sweet and her collection is AMAZING! I absolutely adore her photos and her posts, and her enthusiasm about collecting is so infectious. The positive energy on her blog is absolutely pure sugar, and I just really cannot stress enough how much effort she puts into her posts. She makes little pony photo shoots! And makes little stories out of them!!! It's so fun to just sit and read through. I always check her blog after new merch is released just because it's it's interesting to read about a Pony Veteran giving their input on modern toys. 1000/10 I love this blog

@ahorseofeverycolor - I only have notifications on for like. 5 or 6 blogs? And this is definitely one of them. They regularly post about ponies and horses (okay, they mostly focus on Breyers, but thats not a negative to me at all- I got my first Breyer the other day BECAUSE of this blog, lol), and their blog is just so clean and organized! They post about so many different kinds of ponies, whether it be comparing flat-footed release to concave foot releases, or custom ponies they made themselves, or just really cool pony finds that aren't necessarily obtainable (prototypes, special custom ponies commissioned by hasbro by professional artists, etc) but are really cool to look at!!! I really like this blog!!!

@mustcollecthorses - This is a blog that I have a super bad habit of opening and then scrolling through for like. 2 hours straight, lol. It's a mix of reblogs and original posts, so it's really my Ideal pony blog; usually when I hear about pony news, it's because he reblogged it! It's a very focused blog, so it's definitely a good one to follow if you need some more horses on your dash! He recently made an edit of Hitch from the new 5 pack to give him brushable hair, which I absolutely love (why did they gotta give him sculpted hair umu) I also like that OP leaves tags on the posts he reblogs! I don't know if it's just me, but I always like a blog more if they add tags with input about the toys and news and things like that. It adds some personality and a Vibe to the blog and I just really like it!!!

ok thats all! i of course follow a bunch of other pony themed blogs, but those are some of my top favorites, and ill limit it to 3 per category for the sake of simplicity. please consider following them! They're all so cool and talented!!!

send me pony themed asks

#if i tagged anyone on this and they want to be taken off i can totally do that for you!#these are just some of my favorite pony blogs #its definitely not all of them #I just didnt want the post to be a million miles long. lol #ask game #not art #if i got anyones pronouns wrong im super sorry #ill fix them if aby of them are wrong #i used they for some of these because sometimes i wasnt sure or maybe i forgot? sorry about that

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colorisbyshe · 3 years ago

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your taste in music intrigues me. some of the songs are a bit much for me but its cool to see songs from artists besides the three musicians tumblr constantly cycles through. what else have you been listening to this year? could be released whenever

Hmmm, this is much tougher because my taste in music is so scatter shot it's hard to say what music I've been listneing to "this year" cause like I'll get reobsessed with a song I listened to 20 years ago for 2 days and forget it exists.

That said, my music taste isn't particularly exceptional. If you wanna find good music on tumblr, just follow people with good taste in music! I follow some people with TRULY amazing taste in music but I'm not mutuals so I don't wanna tag this but if you message me off anon ajnd tell me what music I like that YOU like, I'll share their urls

But hmmm 10 songs I've been listening to this year will be ten songs I've added to my phone this year (but did not come out this year) and they are:

"Listen!!!!" by Aly and Aj. The whole album blows me away but this song has such a bittersweet quality while still being energetic. I really wanna blare this song while driving on a warm but windy day

"Baby Don't Play" by Wonder Girls. Kpop song with beautiful, full vocals. I love when there are songs that make you want to dance while also like clutching your chest because the lyrics/vocals. Great use of bass and synth.

"Anthonio (Designer Drugs Remix)" by Annie. This is like THE most generic blond girl europop (if you know waht I mean) and that's what makes it so fucking GOOD. Sometimes, if it isn't fucking broke, don't fix it!!!!! OH ANTHONIO MY ANTHONIO DID YOU EVER WONDER WHY OR WHERE AM I NOW? DO YOU EVER FEEL ASHAMED, DO YOU EVEN FEEL A THING?

"Everblue" by Omoinotake. It's the Blue Period OP and it's soooo jazzy and smooth. Again, upbeat music meets a bit of sadder, nostalgic lyrics and it's just... so fucking good. Makes you feel like you're in a movie where you're running through the rain as the sun slowly breaks through the clouds.

"All my Friends" Madeon. Idk. It's electropop... it's a madeon song. The energy and BPM are great to exercising too. Like... yesss make me move on that elliptical thank you Madeon. Again, sometimes music that follows all the genre conventions are exactly what you need. Like yesss milk that formula and dont even try to perfect it!

"All Night" by Bree Runway. Godddd, this song is so sensual. I feel like sometimes sensual songs can get boring and repetitive but this song just continually draws you in and shakes you up a bit.

"Nuclear Seasons" by Charli XCX. I listened to this song obsessively when it first came out, dropped it for years because I acutally hated a lot of Charli's pop music, but this song fucks. It feels like if Birthday Massacre did more pop vibes. The dark vibes with the fresh chorus and tinkling bells. I'm glad Crash made me revisit Charli songs I actually liked because this has stood the test of time.

Talking about throwbacks... have y'all listened to Aaliyah's "Are You that Somebody recently?" Sound of the summer babes

"Password" by Shinee. I just realized this list was lacking kpop which is INSANE (but okay this is a Japanese song by a kpop group but please let me have this). Anyways this is THE most cinematic, dramatic song of all time. It starts off intensely and racks up even more intensity as it goes on, AYYYYYYY OOOOOOOOOO WOOOOOoooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCK THIS SONG IS SO FUCKIN GGOOD genuinely top ten of my entire life. If you do not have time to listen to ANY other song or ANY full song on this list, PLEASE at least listen to Jonghyun at 2:40-3:30... god... beautiful vocals. Brings a fucking tear to my eyes. Onew all DELIVERS On this song but fuck.... god

And Iskaba by Wande Coal. Just great music to dance to but you probably haven't heard of. I've rec'd it before but it's just that good

BUT SERIOUSLY CAN Y'ALL LISTEN TO PASSWORD BY SHINEE PRETTY PLEASE

Bonus songs I'm too lazy to describe: Every Night by Exid, Attitude by Alien Ant Farm (but listen to their smooth criminal cover instead), Vixen by Ayesha Erotica, Mukanjyo by Survive Said the Prophet, Violin by Cookiee Kawaii, Misshitsu by Buck Tick, Ntozabantu by Lebo Mathosa, Artifical Love (Chinese Version) by Exo, Step by F(x), Chocolate Disco by Perfume, Kemosabe by Everything Everything (which was on my iphone before but I had lost the file and had to redownload lol), Future Starts Slow by the Kills, and I see Girls by Studio b

WAIT also listen to Lost & Not Found by Chase & Status its the source of my blog title lol

BUT ALSO IF YOU ONLY LISTEN TO ONE SONG LET IT BE PASSWORD BY SHINEEEEEE FUCK

CAN Y'ALL PLEASE TELL ME WHAT GENRES YOU ARE INTERESTED IN. It'd give me mcuh better focus in sharing what music I like that you might like

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hedgewitchgarden · 4 years ago

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In 1992, a Canadian ecologist named William Rees coined the term “ecological footprint,” a measurement of how much any entity was impacting the planet’s ecology. A decade later, British Petroleum started promoting a new term: “carbon footprint.” In a splashy ad campaign, the company unveiled the first of its many carbon footprint calculators as a way for individuals to measure how their daily actions—what they eat, where they work, how they heat their home—impact global warming.

BP did not adopt the footprint imagery by accident. In the 30 years prior to the carbon footprint campaign, polluting companies had been using advertising to link pollution and climate change to personal choices. These campaigns, most notably the long-running Keep America Beautiful campaign, imply that individuals, rather than corporations, bear the responsibility for change.

“It was done so intentionally,” says Susan Hassol, director of the nonprofit science outreach group Climate Communication. “It’s a deflection.”

The universal adoption of the term “carbon footprint” hasn’t just changed how we speak about climate change. It’s changed how we think about it. Climate change has become an individual problem, caused by our insatiable appetite for consumption, and therefore a war that must be waged on our dinner plates and gas tanks, a hero’s journey from consumer to conservationist.

Yet the reality is that the future of civilization is being decided at a political and corporate level that no individual can impact. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. Fossil fuel giants are funding climate change skepticism while simultaneously lobbying for tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. Big corporate names like Costco and Netflix are loudly committing to reduce emissions but unable to set meaningful targets or put plans in place. The Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules and regulations.

The reality is that the future of civilization is being decided at a political and corporate level that no individual can impact.

The same way that you give your child a toy to play with so you can finish your task uninterrupted, everyday citizens are busy changing out lightbulbs and buying electric cars while the true cause of global warming continues uninterrupted: a civilization dependent on fossil fuels. As Mike Tidwell, the executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, wrote in a 2007 op-ed, “every time an activist or politician hectors the public to voluntarily reach for a new bulb or spend extra on a Prius, ExxonMobil heaves a big sigh of relief.” A complete paradigm shift is needed—both in the way we conceptualize our individual climate impact and in the ways we calculate the emission impacts of those ultimately responsible: corporations and governmental systems.

One of the challenges with the carbon footprint measurement is how few of the factors an individual controls. Most of us have limited options for where we live, how far we have to commute to get to work, what kind of energy is available to heat our homes, etc. If we don’t own our home (and more than 30% of Americans don’t), we may not be able to properly insulate or install high-efficiency appliances. One research report from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that roughly one third of a city dweller’s carbon footprint is determined by public transportation options and building infrastructure. “We build our cities this way,” Hassol says. “It’s system change that’s really needed so that people have better choices.”

The inadequacy of our carbon footprint as a driver of change is painfully highlighted when you look at single-use plastics. Much attention has been given to how much plastic Americans consume (35.3 million tons per year, enough to fill the 104 million-cubic-foot AT&T Stadium in Dallas every 16 hours) and how each individual should be changing their behavior to help combat this waste. Everywhere you look, there’s a campaign to recycle more, or use metal straws, or bring your own bag to the grocery store.

In contrast, there are no public campaigns about the fact that packaging, an area where consumer control is limited, is the top driver of plastic production by a significant margin. The emissions impact of plastic manufacturing itself is rarely mentioned, along with the fact that much of our recycling still ends up in landfills. Some of the poorest nations are left to deal with hundreds of thousands of tons of soft drink bottles. The plastics are often just incinerated, creating serious environmental and health consequences. It’s a question as to whose carbon footprint is making a deeper impact on the environment: the family whose lettuce comes sealed in plastic (and who pays, not only for the product, but also for the waste collection and management services), or the company that is continuing to package food products in plastic materials, and then opting out of responsibility for their disposal.

Even if we just wanted to measure individual impact on climate change, the carbon footprint falls painfully short: “The current concept of a carbon footprint is too narrowly drawn,” Hassol explains. “It’s only the things I’m actively using and doing in my personal life and it doesn’t draw on other actions that are perhaps more important in the big picture as far as addressing climate change.”

For example, the average American has a carbon footprint of 16 tons. The average individual footprint globally is 4 tons. But that calculation doesn’t include who you vote for, how you invest your money, who you work for (and how much you travel for work, versus for leisure), or how you talk about climate change and influence others to get involved. “All of that should be part of the way we conceptualize our impact,” Hassol says.

Instead of obsessing over a single metric, Cameron Brick, a social psychologist from the University of Amsterdam, says he urges people to have an ongoing and evolving conversation between themselves and their chosen lifestyle. “It’s not a single number, because anytime you pick a metric, then we will begin to game it,” he says. Instead, a minimal-carbon lifestyle is a process—one that involves community-building and continuing to make improvements over time, he says. “My lifestyle is not perfect either, but probably better each year.”

Hassol points out that one of the most important ways that an individual can impact emissions on a wider scale is also the hardest to calculate: social contagion. “When people do something, it affects others around them and their emissions,” she says.

Studies have shown that energy-related behaviors are heavily influenced by peer groups, even more than cost or convenience. A study in California showed that every time a solar panel was installed within a certain ZIP code, the probability of another installation in that area increased by 0.78%. Similarly, if you know somebody who has given up flying because of climate change, you are 50% more likely to also reduce your own air travel.

“Your individual footprint is not the full measure of your contribution because you’re encouraging other people through your personal actions,” explains Hassol. She recommends that people who want to do more should research community solar options and ways to buy into clean energy in their communities, and then publicize those options among their families, friends and social networks, in order to create that initial momentum for change.

But what could system change look like? For starters, using measurements that actually hold the decision makers responsible for their emissions impacts, for the entire lifecycle of their product or service. That might look like Big Soda being held accountable not only for the manufacturing and transportation of their single-use plastics, but also for each and every bottle that ends up in somebody’s recycling bin (Coca-Cola is the top producer of plastic waste in the world). The shift also might look like emissions information being printed on product labels and unbiased regulatory bodies certifying the accuracy of corporate emissions reports.

On the policy level, interest in a carbon tax is growing. The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act was reintroduced in Congress this year (as Senate bill 984 and House Resolution 2238), and would force a temporary moratorium on virgin plastic production, require minimum recycled content, and ban some single-use plastic food service items. Many states already have some form of a producer responsibility program, where the producer of hard-to-dispose products such as paints, batteries, and other hazardous materials, must finance proper disposal. This creates an incentive to design reusable or less-toxic products.

When we shift the focus from changing consumer behavior to changing producer behavior, we see where true change happens: in corporate boardrooms and among political leaders. The irony of the carbon footprint is that individual action does have the power to change the world, just not on the lightbulb and recycling level.

“This problem is too big to solve voluntarily one person at a time,” Hassol says. “We need to change the system and you have a role in changing that system.”

#The Fallacy of Our Carbon Footprint #big oil #plastics #environmentalism

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deltaengineering · 4 years ago

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What remains of Fall Anime 2020

You might have noticed that I haven’t been keeping up with my season impressions, mostly (but not exclusively) because it’s really boring to come up with new ways to say “it’s isekai, which means it’s garbage for stupids”. So here’s what I ended up finishing, in ascending order of goodinosity.

Hypnosis Mic -Division Rap Battle- Rhyme Anima

Ostentatious rap battles in an insanely stupid universe are very fun. The thing is that this doesn’t want to be a good anime, it wants to sell us on these characters, and the characters are pretty terrible on account of all of them being one-word gimmicks. So, let’s give them three rounds of introductions and have them solve lame, generic crimes for 8 episodes instead of setting up the rivalries that everyone suddenly has later, when the show gets good - because it does start delivering towards the end, and becomes really all I wanted. So I can’t even say I’m disappointed, but the first half of the show is almost entirely worthless. 4/10

Assault Lily Bouquet

I don’t want to be the guy that’s all “I’m mad at this show not catering to what I want”, but I do have to say that Salt Bucket is much better at being a goofy, lighthearted yuri comedy than it is at action (though there are a few choice cuts) and at having an engaging storyline. This is again just an ad for some game or other, so it’s no surprise it has about two dozen characters too many, but it also has quite a lot of superfluous plot - so much so that I suspect it was initially planned to be twice as long. Apart from that, it’s cool and all that some Gainax old hand got to make his own Gunbuster-like, but it’s just not very good at that and all I wanted was Kaede antics and bath scenes, of which 1 per episode is clearly too few. 5/10

The King's Avatar 2

King’s Avatar got a sequel and overall I have to say, I kinda like it more than the first season even though it looks much less ambitious and even the character designs were changed towards the bland. But I honestly don’t care much about the esports aspect of this and much of S2, especially in the back half, is more about schemes and social engineering - as close to an Eve Online anime as we’re ever going to get, I guess. It’s still very chinajank (why the hell does every episode come with a redundant chibi summary of itself, etc), and while I can’t call that “good” it does remind me of a time when I wasn’t filled with useless knowledge of anime tropes and was just enjoying the weirdness. Also, Ye God’s antics is as close to “looking for anime with OP MC” as I’m comfortable with getting. 6/10

Heaven Official's Blessing

Now how about some Chinimation that isn’t very janky? I only became aware of Heaven Official’s Blessing when it suddenly rocketed to the top of the MAL charts, so I gave it a looksie and oh boy. The first few episodes of this show are flat out gorgeous, quite funny and very very gay. So I was ready to agree with MAL for once, except it then launches into an arc that mostly consists of our dudes sitting in a dark pit telling each other stories that aren’t very interesting and seem barely related to the setup. Yeah, the back half of this just isn’t very good at all. And the subs are hot garbage. Still, the beginning is so impressive that I would recommend this show despite the middling rating it’s about to get. 6/10

Ochikobore Fruit Tart

You know the problem that these 5girls4koma stories have, where one of the characters is an annoying pervert, yeah? Well, in Fruit Tart every character is that character, and they’re rather cultured as well. Yes, it’s often of questionable taste and it has a terminal case of 4koma storytelling but dammit if I didn’t enjoy it. It certainly helps that this show’s greatest asset by far is Broko and it seems to be aware of this, because there’s a lot of Broko material. It would have probably have gotten a 6 but the last episode is just so... maximum Fruit Tart. I’m down for some trash if it’s as well made as this, and I do like my kiraralikes spicy, so thumbs up over here. YMM definitely V on this one. 7/10

Majo no Tabitabi

Speaking of things that are hard to recommend despite me liking them a lot, Elaina here challenges the very notion of what a TV show even is supposed to be. I assume most people tune in every week expecting to get something roughly similar. Not so with this one, you could get everything from slice of life antics to Higurashi-style gore, or reasonably deep character study to pervert comedy. I would say that the only unifying thread is the presence of Elaina, who is a very fun character, but there’s an episode she’s not in, so there you go. But I’m a connoisseur of the weird and I also have to say that I enjoyed every episode in its own way. Also, each episode stays remarkably consistent by itself, and in the end it wraps it all up with a sort of neat “life is like a box of chocolates” thematic bow, which isn’t earthshatteringly profound but hey, it’s there. Just don’t go in with expectations, especially not expectations based on the first episode. 7/10

Love Live! Nijigasaki

It’s Love Live. Good old reliable Love Live. Really not much to say about this one, any discussion of what makes this different from previous iterations is going to end up in minutiae only people who already watched this could possibly care about. I do have to say that while the musical numbers are as good as Sunshine’s were towards the end and there’s also a lot more of them, “looking budget deficient outside the CG” is the one thing I didn’t expect from something that’s ostensibly a Sunrise premium product. So boo on that one, apart from that it’s idols (an anagram of solid). 7/10

Garupa Pico Oomori

The chibi SD shorts based off Bang Dream are still better than the main show. Even if S3 was actually quite good, this is just the best thing you can do with 30+ characters that aren’t that deep. Garupa Pico specializes in absurd humor setpieces that at points is better at being Pop Team Epic than Pop Team Epic itself was. Take that, memelords. 7/10

Fire Force S2

Fire Force is just weird, man, and it’s sort of great. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a property of this magnitude show this much of the ol idgaf spirit. How about an episode where the A plot is the most evenhanded exploration of religion i’ve seen in anime, and the B plot is about blowing up a tryhard edgelord by exposing him to panties? How about a subplot where Batman and Thor infiltrate the vatican to kill the pope, only for that to lead into a gay rape backstory, only for that to be resolved by dank weed and dismemberment? It really is quite a thing, as they say. Now, Fire Force certainly delivers hard at points, but it’s also very scattershot, even if S2 is somewhat more consistent than S1. The weakest parts are unsurprisingly still the ones where it’s remembering its fighting shounen template, and that’s not only because I don’t like that, it’s also because it’s particularly and consistently bad at scheduling these huge, simultaneous multifight setpieces it often crescendoes with. But hey, at least these tend to look super cool. In short, Fire Force is a land of contrasts and still the only fighting shounen I give a damn about. 7/10

IDOLiSH7 Second Beat

Did you know that I think Idolshi7 is the best one of all of these huge-ass commercial idol franchises? Yeah, I think it’s better than Love Live, and as of Fall 2020 also the better looking one because Troyca still delivers where Sunrise apparently can’t. I guess still don’t like the music much, thankfully there isn’t a lot of that. It also still specializes in gigantic drama, and to its credit S2 is now much better at either getting to the point or at least making it silly and fun. You show that door who’s boss, Sou. Still fantastic Tsumugis all over the place as well, in fact I think I like all the characters now. Even Banri gets his big moment in this season! Yeah, this stuff is pretty cool. 8/10

Adachi and Shimamura

So here’s the AOTS, and it’s the lovechild of Bloom Into You and Tsuki ga Kirei. While it definitely isn’t as good as either of these two, because it lacks the “about more than just teenagers being hyperbolic about a crush” part from Bloom and the part where it has an actual ending from TgK, it carves out its own niche with its loopy, almost stoned tone that’s full of side weirdos and yuri hyperspace. It’s also uniquely focused, with a tiny core cast and even Shimamura doesn’t really matter all that much. This is all about Adachi, and thankfully Adachi is amazing. Amazingly awkward, that is. It’s very cute. So yeah, this is a bit too lacking in substance to aspire to classic status, but it’s a great time nonetheless. 8/10

#anime #review #fall2020 #Hypnosis Mic -Division Rap Battle- Rhyme Anima #Assault Lily Bouquet #The King's Avatar #Heaven Official's Blessing #Ochikobore Fruit Tart #Majo no Tabitabi #Love Live! Nijigasaki #Garupa Pico Oomori #Fire Force S2 #IDOLiSH7 #Adachi to Shimamura

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theredherb · 4 years ago

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The Red Herb’s Top 10 Games of 2020

Hey, fuck 2020. You might notice that many of the “Best Of” lists you read this year and last can’t help but mention how terrible 2020 was. That’s because every day was like hitting a new, splinter riddled branch on our 365 day plummet off a shit-coated tree. The year brought with it a viral pandemic that served as a pressure cooker for the societal and systemic issues boiling beneath the surface of our every day life. And we’re not out of it.

At least one positive holds true of 2020: the games were pretty darn good. One has to wonder, though, if 2020 was the last year of what can be called “normalcy” for the video game industry. Now that the remainder of titles brewed in pre-Covid times are out in the wild, what will the future of gaming look like as studios shift to work-from-home and distribution models migrate to digital as the primary bread winner? What will games look like going forward?

I have no fucking clue. We’ll get there when we get there. But looking back, I’m glad to have had such solid distractions from the stress and strife. If 2020 is any indicator for the industry going forward, then my takeaway is that games will continue to grow in prominence because of their ability to help us cope and, more importantly, stay connected.

Anyway, here’s video games:

10. MARVEL’S AVENGERS

Oh, Marvel’s Avengers. I know you expected to be on more prestigious Top 10 lists than mine. Truthfully, I debated whether or not you should be here. But I had to search my soul (stone) on this one. Really assemble my feelings. Tony Stark my thoughts (?). Here’s the short of it: Marvel’s Avengers has a great story campaign with a surprising amount of emotional weight thanks largely to Kamala Khan’s quest to reassemble the heroes of her youth. Once the final cutscene ends, though, players were expected to take their play box of Marvel heroes, jump online, and duke it out against hordes of villains for the privilege of precious loot and level gains. It would be impossible to get bored because Crystal Dynamics was going to continually Bifrost in new quests, cosmetics, and heroes -- for free!

Except, after fans blasted through the campaign (took me a solid weekend), they found a multiplayer mode filled with repetitive fights against non-descript A.I.M Bots, a handful of dull, un-Marvelous environments (the PNW?! In a video game?! Wowwee!), and a grind for gear that became useless minutes after it was equipped. Oh, and bugs. Tons of bugs. It must be hard for A.I.M. to take earth’s mightiest heroes seriously when they’re falling through the fucking earth every other mission.

So why the Kevin Accolade™? Of all the mistakes and underbaked ideas, Crystal Dynamics got the most important thing right: they made me feel like I was a part of the Avengers. Cutting through the sky as Iron Man; dive bombing, fists-first as the Hulk; firing gadgets at cronies as Black Widow; cracking a row of skulls with Cap’s shield… Avengers is a brawler on super soldier serum.

The combat is crunchy and addictive, and surprisingly deep once you unlock your character’s full suite of skills and buffs. The gear matters little. But choosing a loadout that works for you -- like ensuring enemy takedowns grant you a health orb every time or turning area clearing attacks to focused beams of hurt -- does matter. When it comes to games with disastrous launches, Avengers is the most deserving of a triumphant comeback story because, if you clear the wreckage, I think there’s a solid game here. If I was able to spend hours playing it in its roughshod state, I can see myself digging in for the long-term once it’s polished up and given a healthy dose of content. You know...if Square Enix doesn’t outright abandon it.

9. STREETS OF RAGE 4

Here’s a fact about me: I love beat ‘em ups. From Final Fight to X-Men to The Simpsons, I prioritized my quarters for the beat ‘em up machines (and House of the Dead simply because House of the Dead fuckin’ owns). Unfortunately, Streets of Rage wasn’t in arcades, and I didn’t own a Genesis growing up, so I didn’t get around to the series until Sega re-released as part of a collection. Though my history with the 29 year old brawler is shorter than some, the basics stand out out right away: it’s an awesome side-scrolling brawler filled with zany character designs and high octane boss fights.

SoR4 nails that simple spirit while adding an electric soundtrack, buttery smooth animations, and an art style that looks like a comic book in motion. You can button-mash your way through the game or master your timing to combo stun the shit out of bad guys. Same screen co-op is a requisite for the beat ‘em up genre but I have to call it out nonetheless given that it's next to obsolete these days. The story campaign is, of course, finite but a stream of unlockables and a Boss Rush Mode pad out the package nicely.

I really don’t have to go on and on. I’m on board with any game that captures the arcadey high of classic beat ‘em ups, and Streets of Rage 4 does it with flare.

8. RESIDENT EVIL 3 REMAKE

Resident Evil 2’s remake was my game of the year in 2019. It’s a pitch perfect revision that captures the pulse-pounding fear of the original while beautifully updating its graphics and gameplay for modern audiences. The most striking aspect of RE2’s remake is how it expands and reconfigures the classic game’s environments and set pieces. Capcom managed to recontextualize, and even improve on, the original’s design while staying faithful to its tone and atmosphere.

Resident Evil 3’s remake is less successful in modifying and improving on its source material. If the game feels like it was handled by a different team than RE2R, your gamer hands have good eyes (roll with it). It was developed by a separate internal team (three different teams, in fact), but that’s actually one of many choices mirroring its 1999 forebear. Just like the original, RE3R is a tighter (i.e. shorter) experience that launched less than a year after its predecessor. And just like the original, the game skirts away from survival horror in favor of action horror.

Unlike last year’s remake, however, RE3R paints in broad strokes with the original material much in the same way that 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake shared a vague resemblance with Romero’s ‘79 classic. Capcom at least nails down what matters: you play as Jill Valentine, beaten and discredited after the Arklay Mountains incident, during her last escape from the zombie besieged Raccoon City. Her exit is complicated by Nemesis, a humanoid missile that relentlessly pursues her from minute two of the game. Her only chance of making it out alive is by teaming up with a gaggle of Umbrella dispatched mercenaries, including an overly handsome fellow named Carlos Oliveras that you control for a spell. But fans struggled to get over what Capcom didn’t remake. Several enemies, boss fights, and a “divergent path” mechanic that had you choose how best to escape the Nemesis in a pinch were omitted from the remake. Even an entire section set in a clock tower was cut. But, let’s be honest, the biggest omission is a secret ending where Barry Burton saves the day using only his beard. For real, YouTube that shit.

If you look at what the remake does instead of what it doesn’t, you’ll find a lightning paced action game highlighted by tense, one-on-one fights against the constantly mutating Nemesis. The tyrant’s grotesque transformations evoke the mind-rending, gut turning creature designs found in John Carpenter's The Thing. It’s sad that Nemesis doesn’t pursue you through the levels as diligently as he did in the original, or as Mr. X had in last year’s remake, but these “arena fights” end up being harrowing and fun, culminating in a memorable final encounter. The remake also treats us to the best incarnation of Jill to date. She’s a cynical badass, exasperated at how Umbrella upended her life, and can take a plunge off of a building yet still muster enough energy to call Nemesis a bitch. RE3R also shines thanks to its snappy combat, including a contextual dodge that feels rewarding to pull off, less bullet-sponge enemies than RE2, and an assortment of weapons to get you through Jill’s Very Bad Night(s). It makes for a necessary, though shorter, companion to last year’s stellar remake.

7. HADES

I’m experiencing a new type of shame including a title that I haven’t beaten on my Top 10 list, but I can assure you that I’ve dumped hours into its addictive death loop. It’s probably because of my resistance to looking up any tips, but given the skill-check nature of the difficult boss fights, I’m almost afraid the top shelf advice will amount to “die less, idiot.”

My failings aside, Hades is brilliant. It’s the perfect merger of gameplay and storytelling. You play as Zagreus, son of Hades, and your entire goal is to escape your father’s underworld domain. You pick from a selection of weapons, like a huge broadsword or spear, and attempt your “run,” seeing how far you can make it before an undead denizen cuts you down. It’s familiar roguelike territory, but where Supergiant separates their game from the pack is in the unique feeling of constant progression, even as you fail. With each run, not only is Zagreus earning a currency (gems or keys) that unlock new skills that make the next go a little easier, you’re also consistently treated to new lore. The fallen gods and heroes that line your father’s hall greet you after each death and provide a new insight into their world. The writing is bouncy and hilarious, the voice acting ethereal and alluring, and the character designs could make a lake thirsty.

Supergiant’s stylistic leanings are at their peak here. They’ve managed the impossible feat of making failure feel like advancement. Sure, it totally fucks up other roguelikes for me, but that’s okay. None of those games have Meg.

6. DEMON’S SOULS

Whereas Capcom takes liberties with their remakes, Bluepoint took the Gus Van Sant approach and made a 1:1 recreation of the 2009 title that launched the “Soulslike” genre. The dividing difference is a 2020 facelift brought to us by way of the PlayStation 5’s next-gen horsepower. There’s been online arguments (surprise) regarding the loss of Fromsoftware’s visual aesthetic in translating the PS3 original in order to achieve a newfound photorealism. It’s true, some beasties lose their surreal weirdness -- a consequence of revisiting designs without the worry of graphical or time constraints -- but the game’s world is still engrossing, morbid, and bleakly gorgeous.

That’s not to say all Bluepoint did was overhaul the graphics and shove this remake out the door. No, their improvements are nuanced, under-the-hood changes that gently push the genre into the next-generation. For one, the loading times are incredible. You could hop between all five archstones in under a minute if you wanted. And this game is a best DualSense controller showcase outside of Astro’s Playroom. You can feel a demonstrable difference between hitting your sword against a wall compared to connecting it with an attacking creature. Likewise, the controller rumbles menacingly as to let you know enemies are stomping across a catwalk above you. “Better rumbles” was not on my wish list of next-gen features, but the tactile feedback goes great lengths to make you feel like you’re there.

Granted, sticking so closely to the original means its pratfalls are also carried over to the next-gen. The trek between bonfire checkpoints is an eternity compared to the game’s successors, and Fromsoftware hadn’t quite mastered the sword ballet of boss fights prevalent in Dark Souls. Instead, a handful of bosses feel more like set pieces where you’re searching for the “trick” to end it versus having to learn attack patterns and counters. Still, it’s easy to see the design blueprint that bore a whole new genre. From having to memorize enemy placements to hunting down the world’s arcane secrets in the hopes of finding a new item that pushes the odds in your favor. Bluepoint’s quality of life improvements only make it kinder (not easier) to plunge into the game, obsess over its idiosyncrasies, and begin to master every inch of it. That is until you roll into New Game+ and the game shoves a Moonlight Greatsword up your ass.

5. YAKUZA: LIKE A DRAGON

Here’s a fact about me I’m sure you don’t know: I love beat ‘em ups. Streets of Rage 4 had an easy time making it on this list because it can be classified as both a “beat ‘em up” and “good.” Here’s another fact about me: I’m not the biggest fan of JRPGs. I’m told this is not because of any personal preferences I harbor, but rather due to a distinct lack of culture. I’ve made peace with that. At least my uncultured ways are distinctive.

But my disinterest in JRPGs is notable here because it illustrates how very good Like A Dragon is. Transitioning the Yakuza series from a reactive brawler (entrenched in an open-world SIM) to a full-blown turned-based RPG was risky -- especially 8 entries into the mainline series -- but it pays off explosively for Like A Dragon. Not only does the goofiness, melodrama, and kinetic energy translate to an RPG -- it’s improved by it. Beyond a new protagonist -- the instantly likable and infinitely affable Ichiban Kasuga -- we’re finally treated to an ensemble cast that travels with you, interacts with you, and grows with you. Their independent stories weave into Ichi’s wonderfully and end up mattering just as much as his.

The combat doesn’t lose any of its punch now that you’re taking turns. In fact, it feels wilder than ever and still demands situational awareness as your enemies shift around the environment, forcing you to quickly pick which move will do the most damage and turn the fight in your favor. RGG purposefully made Ichi obsessed with Dragon Quest (yes, specifically Dragon Quest) as an excuse to go ham and morph enemies into outlandish fiends that would populate Ichi’s favorite series. It’s a fun meta that never loses its charm.

This is the best first step into a new genre I’ve ever seen an established franchise make and I hope like hell they keep with it for future outings -- and that Ichi returns to keep playing hero. There’s plenty of callbacks and treats for longtime fans, but RGG did a masterful job rolling out the virtual carpet for a whole new generation of Yakuza fanatics.

4. GHOST OF TSUSHIMA

Sucker Punch’s dive into 13th century Japan doesn’t redefine the open-world genre. But like Horizon: Zero Dawn before it, Ghost of Tsushima takes familiar components of the genre and uses them exceptionally well, creating an airtight experience that can’t help but stand out. I can tell Sucker Punch mused on games like Assassin’s Creed and Breath of the Wild, tried to figure out what makes those games tick, and then brought their own spin to those concepts. You can feel it in their obsession to make traversal through the environment as unobtrusive as possible, letting the wind literally guide you to your destinations instead of forcing the player to glue their eyes to a mini-map. You can feel it in how seamless it is to scale a rooftop before silently dropping on a patrol, blade first. You can feel it in the smoothness behind the combat as your sword clashes against the enemy’s. Every discrete part is fine-tuned yet perfectly complements the whole. The game is silk in your hands.

The mainline story can be humdrum, though. It mirrors the beats of a superhero origin story, which isn’t surprising when you account for the three Infamous titles and satellite spinoffs under Sucker Punch’s belt. But Jin Sakai’s personal journey outshines the cookie-cutter plot. His gradual turn from the strict samurai code to a morally ambiguous vigilante lifestyle (to becoming, eventually, a myth) is a fascinating exploration in shifting worldviews. This is bolstered by the well-written side-missions dotting your quest, some of which play out in chains. It’s these diversions about melancholy warriors and villagers adjusting to life under invasion that end up being the essential storytelling within the game. Whatever you do, don’t skip a single one.

Before GoT can overstay its welcome with collectible hunting and stat-tree building, the ride is over. If you find exhaustive open-world titles, well, exhausting, Sucker Punch coded enough of a campaign to sticking the landing and not more. But if you were looking for more, the game’s co-op Legends mode is the surprise encore of the year. It strikes its own tone, with vibrant, trippy designs, and a progression system that embarrasses other AAA titles in the space (I mean Avengers. I’m talking about Avengers).

3. THE LAST OF US PART II

The Last of Us is widely regarded as a masterpiece. It’s a melancholic trek through a realistic post-apocalypse, driven by the budding bond between a world-weary survivor and a would-be teenage savior. The fungal zombies and violent shootouts with scavengers were scary and exciting, but ultimately just window-dressing compared to the level of complicated, and honest, human emotion on display throughout the tale. While a segment of detractors helpfully pointed out that The Last of Us’ story isn’t unique when compared to years of post-apocalyptic books, comics, and movies, that argument seems to forget that a narrative more concerned with the human protagonists’ connections to one another instead of saving the world or feeding into a hero complex is pretty unique for games -- especially a high profile, AAA budgeted game.

Still, fans made heroes out of Joel and Ellie because of their own connection to their journey. And that connection is almost instantly challenged in the opening hours of The Last of Us Part II to heartbreaking effect. But I’m here to tell you that any other sequel would have been dishonest to the legacy of the original game. To be given a hero’s quest as a continuation, an imagined sequel where Joel and Ellie do battle against the viral infection that’s swept the earth, would have been a despicable cash-in. It would have been a mistake to follow-up the original’s careful examination of human nature just to placate an audience that seems to have missed the point Naughty Dog made. The Last of Us Part II hurts. But it has to or else it wouldn’t have been worth making. It’s a slow-burn meditation on the harmful ripples revenge creates, how suffering begets suffering, and how, if we don’t break the cycles of violence we commit to, suffering will come for us.

To drive this point, we’re given two distinct perspectives during the meaty (and somewhat overlong) campaign, split between Ellie Williams, the wronged party seeking revenge, and Abby Anderson, an ex-Firefly whose actions set the sequel into motion. The greatest trick Naughty Dog pulls off isn’t forcing us to play as a character we hate, it’s giving us reasons to emphasize with them. It was gradual, and despite some heavy-handed moments meant to squeeze sympathy out of the player (how many times do I have to see that fuckin’ aquarium?!), I eventually came to love Abby’s side of the story. The obvious irony being that she unwittingly walks the same path Joel did in the original.

My love for the narrative shouldn’t distract from how well designed the world is. Being a King County local, the vision of a ruined Seattle strikes an uncomfortable note -- it was eerie seeing recognizable buildings overgrown with vegetation but otherwise devoid of life. Maybe the heart-wrenching story also distracts from the fact this game is, by definition, survival horror. Exploring toppled buildings in the dark, hearing the animalistic chittering of the infected, defending yourself with limited resources… It manages to be a scarier entry into the genre in 2020 than even RE3R. There’s a particular fight in a fungus covered hospital basement that easily goes down as my Boss Fight of the Year. Human enemies make for clench-worthy encounters, too, with incredibly adept AI that forces you to keep moving around the environment and set traps to avoid getting overwhelmed.

Admittedly, the subject matter -- or more to the point, the grim tone -- was tough to stomach during an actual pandemic which has happily treated us to the worst of human nature. Still, The Last of Us Part II is absolutely worth playing for its balance of mature themes and expertly crafted world, and the way it juxtaposes beauty and awfulness in the same breath.

2. SPIDER-MAN: MILES MORALES

The most impressive thing about Miles Morales is that, despite being a truncated midquel rather than a full-blown sequel, it’s a better game than 2018’s Spider-Man. It’s not because of the instantaneous loading times or the fancy ray-tracing techniques used on the PS5 version of the game. Rather, it’s how it takes the joyride of the original game and hones it into a laser focused experience filled to the brim exclusively with highs. Like Batman: Arkham Asylum going into Arkham City, Miles starts the game off with his mentor’s best abilities and tools. From there, he discovers his own powers, his bioelectric venom strike, which ends up feeling like the missing ingredient from the first game’s combat.

Your open-world playground -- a locale in the Marvel universe called “New York City” -- is exactly the same size as the previous installment, which helps avoid making the game feel “lesser.” But Insomniac wisely consolidated the random crimes Peter faced into a phone app that Miles can check and choose which activity to help out with. Choices like this really trim the fat from the main game and help alleviate “the open-world problem” where the story’s pacing suffers because players are spending hours on end collecting feathers. This is great because Miles’ story is also great. The narrative kicks Peter out pretty early on, focusing on how Miles assumes the role of city protector, primarily focused on his new home in Harlem. Insomniac avoids retreading the same path paved by Into the Spider-Verse by telling a relatable tale where Miles defines his identity as Spider-Man. With a strong cast led by Nadji Jeter as Miles, the game lands an impactful story that weaves its own new additions to Miles’ mythos (light spoiler: I loved their take on The Prowler).

Miles Morales was pure virtualized joy from start to finish. A requirement of the platinum trophy is to replay the entirety of the game on New Game+. I didn’t hesitate to restart my adventure the minute the credits were over. Everything I loved about 2018’s Spider-Man is here: the swinging, the fighting, the gadgets, the bevy of costumes. But it gave me a new element I adore and can’t see Insomniac’s franchise proceeding without: being Miles Morales.

1. FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

I love subversive media, I do. And Square Enix’s “remake” of one the most beloved video games ever made subverts expectations by openly acknowledging that, yes, the original story you love exists and is consistently referenced in this game. But this is not that story. This is something..else. Because the truth is, SE could never have recreated FFVII and delivered a title that matched the Sacred Game fans created in their heads. That impossible standard is like an imagined deity, given power by feeding on raw nostalgia reinforced by years of word-of-mouth and appearances on Top 100 lists. I’m not saying FFVII is a bad game or that fans give it too much credit. Not at all. There’s a reason it’s so influential -- it’s good! But memory works in a funny way over time. We have a tendency to codify our perception of a thing over the reality of it. The connection we make to certain media, especially when introduced at a young age as FFVII had been to a whole generation of fans so long ago, creates a legend in our heads. Unfortunately, it’s a legend no developer could achieve when tasked with remaking it.

So Square...didn’t. Final Fantasy VII Remake has the same characters, setting, and plot beats as the first third of the original game but it’s not the same game, nor is it a remake of it in the traditional sense. It’s something new. And I fucking love that about it.

Everything is reconfigured, including the combat. After years of trying to merge RPG mechanics with more approachable (and marketable) real-time action (see FFXV and the Kingdom Hearts games for examples), Square Enix finally landed on the perfect balance. You fully control Cloud on the battlefield, from swinging your impossibly huge buster sword to dodging attacks. The ATB gauge (no one knows what the acronym stands for -- that information has been lost to time) gradually fills up, letting unleash powerful moves. But best of all, you fight in a party, and you can switch who to control on the fly.

That may not sound revolutionary, let alone for a Final Fantasy, but each character has a completely unique feel and suite of moves. At times, it feels like playing a Devil May Cry game where you can switch between Dante, Vergil, and Nero on the fly (that’s a free idea, Capcom. Hire me, you cowards). You can soften up an enemy with Cloud’s buster to increase their stagger meter, switch to Barret for a quick gatling barrage, and finally switch to Tifa to crush them with her Omnistrike. You can accomplish this in real-time or slow down the action to plan this out. It’s a great mix of tactics and action that prevents the game from feeling like a mindless hack n’ slash.

What really, really works here is the character work. Each lead walks in tropes first, but the longer you spend with the members of your party, the more their motivations and fears are laid out. You end up having touching interactions with just about the whole main cast. There’s a small segment, after Cloud saves Aerith from invading Shinra guards, that the two make an escape via rooftop.They make light conversation -- small talk really -- but it’s exchanges like this that feel genuine, perfectly framing their characters (stoic versus heartfelt), and grounding an otherwise larger-than-life adventure.

Many bemoaned the fact that FFVIIR only revisits a small portion of the original game, but I think it was a brilliant choice -- to massively expand on areas we only got to see a little of in the original. I honestly didn’t want to leave Midgar. It’s a world rife with conflict and corporate oppression, sure, but Midgar is beautifully realized, from the slums below the plates, populated with normal people trying to make the best of life, to the crime controlled Wall Market, adorned with gaudy lights and echoing honky tonk tunes. It very well may be years before FFVII’s remake saga comes to a close, but if each entry is paved with as much love and consideration and, yes, storytelling subversion as this introductory chapter… It’ll be worth the wait.

#gaming

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colossaldame-a · 4 years ago

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HEADCANON BUFFET !

for the 50 headcanons challenge that @bnharpchub made i’ll be reposting the ones i posted in my main blog the other day , since they are pretty recent still ! ! beware that some of these might have spoilers , both for the main manga and for the vigilantes manga --- not all obviously , but a few !

she eats A LOT , it helps with her quirk since she has a giant hehehe appetite ! no seriously , she probably eats almost as much as taishiro ( fatgum ) , but due to her transforming a lot and training it doesn’t look as much ( neither does she want it to be noticeable ) .

she actually loves to play video games ! first person shooting games are the ones she is better at , but she will play everything !

her favorite solo game of all time is the last of us , and her favorite co-op one is gang beasts ! although just dance will always have a special place in her heart .

she has the animal crossing switch !

yu swears A LOT too , usually when playing though , it’s pretty funny to see her lose her cool , actually -

her setup looks like this !

she streams , but actually doesn’t show her face or reveals her identity at all ! it’s like a little safe spot for her it’s also a good way of getting money for the damage she causes while working !

on that note : one time on a stream , yu got told that ladies shouldn’t swear as much as she did , so she spent the next 30 mins somehow managing to get a swear in every sentence . she only stopped because she didn’t know how to continue anymore .

since in her original design yu had blue hair , i’m going with the idea that she had a tiny little bitsy emo phase back in middle school . that’s also when she started to play more on her computer !

she has two older brothers , who are twins ! taichi’s quirk is the ability to make things big by touch , while koba’s to make things small ! her mother , tsukiko , her quirk is to make any part of her body grow : hands , feet , ears ! anything ! her father’s ( his name is kimio ! ) is the ability to touch anything and be able to mold it into something else !

her brothers ( now both 29 ) , they used to participate in the fighting matches that rappa and miruko participated in ! yu is aware of this due to the fact that they would ask her to distract their parents while they sneaked out , or to cover up for them in case anything happened !

know how astronauts have trouble adjusting to life on earth again , because of how they let go of things in the air thinking they’ll stay there , but get confused when they drop to the ground because gravity ? that’s kinda what happens with her , but with the size of things ! while in her normal form , she envisions things as smaller than what they really are , and ends up getting surprised each time !

since yu is the youngest of 3 children , she always grew up in a competitive environment and mindset . that didn’t change much the moment she became a hero , always aiming for the top and to be the ‘winner’ . HOWEVER , that began to change the more she grew as a hero , not having that mindset as her priority anymore but in the back of her head , and due to the recent events of the manga , it’s almost completely gone .

she actually knows a lot of puns , usually doesn’t say them often but she knows them !

the fight between her and nemuri ( midnight ) that happened on that talk show ? completely fake , they planned it before hand !

yu’s favorite hero since she was a teenager was , in fact , midnight ! the mask she wears with her hero costume is in her honor ( now more than ever ) !

like momo and itsuka , her first internship as a hero student was with uwabami . it’s thanks to her that she wears the curls in her hair bangs now !

she likes to jog at night , when it’s chilly ! this does not apply in the winter , though ; too chilly !

as the only daughter in the family , as well as the youngest , she is spoiled . it happened , it’s okay -

the only reason why yu got mineta as an intern after the sports festival was because of his color scheme being similar to hers . the moment she met him for real she wanted to kick him to the sun , but alas couldn’t and shouldn’t and she knows that ( unfortunately ) .

the way yu and her family found out about her quirk was one time in a picnic , when she was 5 years old . thankfully , they were far away from people , but it took her 30 minutes to be able to turn back to her normal form . from that day on ,, her parents started to buy her clothing that fit her quirk . she had control over her quirk one year later , and since she was 15 she didn’t need to wear that special clothing . although sometimes she still has certain outbursts and it causes for it to activate .

to everyone’s surprise ( not really , if you remember that she dyed her hair ) , her favorite color is blue !

her favorite song is timber , which is pretty ironic in itself ; although she also vibes to wap !

yu records and takes pictures a lot ! and due to that , her tiktok account ( because lets be real , she has one ) is filled with videos of funny things happening while working .

she is bisexual , and usually goes for men that are older than her , and women around her age ! obviously this doesn’t apply if she meets someone she really likes , but that’s usually how it goes !

yu really likes asmr !

her nickname in high school was sharpay evans ; she took it as a compliment !

since kamino , she wears her suit under her casual clothing --- her mask usually kept either inside a pocket of her jacket , or inside a purse she has at the moment . that experience ( mostly best jeanist though ) taught her that she can’t let her guard down .

she knows how to play the violin !

one time she entered a competition of people dressing up as a heroes , mostly as a joke : she lost , and the judges told her that her hair looked fake . it took a lot to keep things calm then .

yu prefers to not wear much makeup , on contrary to popular belief ! eyeliner , mascara , lipstick and a bit of concealer under her eyes usually does the trick ! although she has tons of makeup and will often do looks when she is at home ( and if there’s any formal event happening ! ) .

yes , she liked one direction when in her emo phase . nobody knows , it’s her dark secret ; even darker than that whole phase itself and yes , she cried when zayn left .

yu doesn’t like kids , at all . teenagers are alright though , she supposes .

yu , tsunagu and keigo ( best jeanist and hawks , or rather : @fiibermaster and @perditus ) have weekly meetings to spill the tea . honorary members are katsuki and neito , though .

continuing from above , that’s how she always knows the spiciest drama that happen . it’s pretty funny , actually .

continuing of from 33 , @perditus‘s keigo is absolutely her best friend .

since her quirk only allows her to have those two heights , yu has taken upon herself to learn and and know more of 1v1 combat , meaning beginning to train more martial arts .

her favorite movie is legally blonde ! and her favorite series is new girl ! although her favorite character of all time is tanya from mamma mia ! !

her favorite animal are squirrels ! she finds them cute and that’s why she has caroline in her island in animal crossing ! !

yu’s taste in music is very sporadic , although a lot of songs end up being slightly suggestive . here’s her playlist .

yu has met both @explodeking‘s katsuki and @shockingtm‘s denki through gaming online . when she heard their voices she went pikachu shocked face !

mentioning katsuki ; you bet your ass she absolutely went and asked about the kids first thing after waking up after kamino .

she might have gotten a few scars from kamino ward , but she actually absolutely cherishes them . because those scars reminder her of how they trusted her for such important mission , to be able to work along heroes that were in the top 10 . it actually means a lot to her , although if asked yu will just shrug it off .

she likes to camp and hike ! granted , she hates it because no wifi and no games , but that way she can use her quirk without much trouble of hurting people or destroying things and therefore relax a little .

yu naturally smells of roses and surprisingly ; rain .

unlike many , yu doesn’t even think on quitting her job after the war : in fact the whole thing that happened made her grow more stubborn about it . also made her realize how much she still has to grow as a hero , and she can’t wait to leave the hospital and start training and helping those who need it right now .

it took her one day to wake up after what happened too , and while she did have many injuries , the worst ones ended up being on her head . right now it’s mostly wrapped up , and she has been having many headaches even with the pain killers .

she doesn’t like spicy food that much , but she will eat it either way .

in her giant form , she will often whisper ; since if she speaks normally , it’s already pretty loud .

and finally ! the glare that machia gave her right before grabbing her head and throwing to the side ; it scares her still . in that moment she realized he was basically just playing around , while she was doing her most to stop him . she has nightmares about it still .

#CRYING SPENT THE WHOLE DAY ON THIS #* HEADCANONS // it goes one by one ; even two by two - everybody in the club gon' be rocking when i'm through .#bnha spoilers //#manga spoilers //

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disregardcanon · 4 years ago

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rwby volume 7 chapter 2. this will be the last episode of the morning. i’ll probably watch a few more before bed

1. i like the way that the shot of jaques and whitley bleeds into weiss and winter

2. not to be obvious but atlas and ironwood making enemies of everyone in his quest to keep them safe from salem is so counter-productive. i know that this is something that most of us know but i’m still going to say it

3. weiss: don’t you think tyranny’s a bit extreme?

both rebel brick man and me: uh yeah weiss you should probably not be the one to say that

4. atlas is GORGEOUS. like, oh my god i love the design. castle in the sky is my favorite ghibli movie for a reason

5. winter loves her little sister <3

6. ironwood, every kingdom that isn’t atlas is going to get fucking annihilated by grimm if you tell everyone and the entire military is here in atlas and none of the other governments have prior warning. jesus christ, that’s worse than i thought

7. not sure how wise telling ironwood about oz is, but the gang has always been friendly with him so they aren’t being nearly as wary of him as i think they should be. winter and penny are both also on his side, so they have some good reasons on top of the normal ones to buy into it.

also, ironwood S a disarming man. i can get why many people don’t see the red flags.

8. i love dog guy. his design is sooo cuutteee

9. hUG!

10. the ops leader guy is that clover ebi, right?

11. penny: every team at atlas academy gets its own room

ren: so we’re staying in the dorms?

all heads: *fall*

12. i love tyrian’s prosthetic. i don’t know if i’ve mentioned that before, but i think it’s really cool

#rwby liveblog

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grrlinthefireplace · 5 years ago

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Hey so I’ve been seeing you post a lot about La Casa de Papel recently. What exactly is it? It looks kinda interesting.

Thank you so much for asking!

I am delighted beyond reason to have the opportunity to tell you - and by extension the entire world - why this show has cleared my skin, watered my crops, and legitimately healed my soul after this particularly soul-crushing season of Grimdark White Man Television almost broke me as a human being.

I will attempt to keep this as spoiler-free as I possibly can, because this is a show that should be experienced in the moment, but in a nutshell, La Casa de Papel is a heist show set in present-day Madrid which follows both a found family of thieves who rob the Royal Mint of Spain, and the law enforcement officials on the outside who are chasing them.

If that is enough for you, go right to your TV or computer, fire up the ol’ Netflix, and don’t waste any more time.

If, however, you need a little more, here are the top five things I flail about to every single person in my life to convince them they need to start watching this show like immediately and then come back and tell me all about it.

For visual flair, we’ll intersperse them with some gifs of ladies, because I know my audience.

5. character driving plot > plot driving character.

You know that infuriating thing lazy TV writers do where, in order to to hurry up and get to the big explosion or battle scene or dragon attack or whatever, which is the only bit they really care about, they handwave away the whole concept of motivation and make some character do something that any halfway-attentive viewer will immediately clock that they would never actually do?

There is none of that bullshit here.

In its simplest form, the plot of La Casa de Papel is as follows: a brilliant criminal mastermind devises a heist which cannot possibly go wrong, and then we proceed to watch all the ways in which it goes wrong.

This is a fantastic setup for an action story, made even more breathlessly exciting by strategic use of my favorite heist movie plot device (as perfected by Ocean’s Eleven): namely, “scene where it looks like our crime heroes have been outsmarted and are now threatened by a completely unforeseen disaster” immediately followed by “flashback to the team prepping for the heist where we learn that of course they prepared for this exact scenario.”

But from time to time, things do actually go wrong (as they must, or else there would be no story); and, when they do, it is never because you can tell a writer just wanted to write a scene where bullets go flying, and didn’t care how he got there. These characters are so clear, their behavior so consistent, that when gasp-worthy plot twists happen, they happen because of course that character, in this exact scenario, would do that exact thing.

I’m telling you, I came to this show for a ship (more on that in a minute) and I stayed for a swooning, heart-eyes writer crush on the impeccably-designed plot structure and characterization.

4. High stakes, low gore.

Tone-wise, on a sliding scale of Heist Film Intensity where a really fluffy episode of Leverage is a 1, Reservoir Dogs is a 10, and the Ocean’s franchise is somewhere in the 3-4 range, I would place La Casa at a 5 or a 6, which is perfect for me. I love action, suspense, drama and adventure, but I hate gratuitous violence (especially when it’s pointless and masturbatory and doesn’t contribute anything to the plot) and have a very low tolerance for blood and gore. So I kept waiting for the story to eventually take a hard left turn into Tarantino Land, until eventually it was all just one huge pile of dead bodies, and was genuinely surprised when it didn’t.

This is how I learned just how badly my brain has been fucked up by lazy showrunners who think shock deaths are the only way to raise stakes. During the first season of this show, before I had figured out that it was a Flawless Gem of Television Which So Far Has Not Once Disappointed Me, there were probably a dozen moments where I was absolutely convinced that some character was about to be gruesomely killed for shock value … and I was wrong every single time.

Reader, it was fucking wild.

Every single time I was convinced that person A was going to shoot person B in the head because blah blah maximum angst over here in this part of the story and then it will motivate person C to do this other thing, the show did the hard work of finding a smarter, more unexpected direction to take that character’s story. That means that when deaths do come along - and there are a couple - they feel genuinely earned, and they matter deeply to the story and to us.

3. I would die for these women.

This show loves women. Like it truly, authentically, uncompromisingly loves women in all our fucked-up messy glorious complexity. There are no “types” or cliches here; no one is forced to be only one thing. Fuck your one-dimensional Strong Female Characters, lazy writers.

For one thing, on many shows you might be lucky if you get maybe one mom who is given a personality and a story outside of motherhood. Often, on shows written by men, the fact of her motherhood diminishes her strength or her agency. On this show, nearly every one of the central female characters is both a mom and an action hero simultaneously. Seriously. By season 3 there are four different battle moms. They’re all different, they’re not all on the same side, they have different perspectives, and their role as mother impacts the story differently, but that’s the joy of having a whole lot of different kinds of women - no one has to be everything to everyone.

These women are complicated. They laugh, they cry, they crack dirty jokes, they get laid, they have babies, they fight, they make mistakes, they fall in love, they grow. Men pull sexist shit and they shut it the fuck down. Some of them have love stories, some of them don’t, but they are never defined by or triangulated around relationships with men. They get to have relationships with each other. All of them are excellent at their jobs.

Tokyo is the kind of hot mess antihero protagonist we’ve been watching middle-aged white men play for decades.

Allison is such a realistic teenage girl it’s genuinely painful to watch.

Monica has one of the best arcs I’ve ever seen on television, this is not a drill.

Alicia is terrifying. (A pregnant black ops interrogator! ON WHAT OTHER FUCKING SHOW!?!??)

Nairobi is unlike any other character you’ve seen on TV before; she’s got a little bit of Parker from Leverage, a little bit of Raven Reyes from The 100, but she’s entirely her own creature and you will fall in love with her instantly.

And Raquel. Oh, my love, my angel, my hero, Inspector Raquel Murillo. Love of my goddamn life. A fierce, kickass hostage negotiator swimming upstream against a tide of workplace misogyny who sometimes has to make the frustrating little male-appeasing compromises we all have to make to get through the workday. A beautiful, sexy, powerful heroine over 40 whose femininity isn’t diminished based on some bullshit notion that, for example, pairing your tough-bitch suit and gun holster with red toenails and a lacy blouse detracts from your strength. A loving mom and daughter who has to juggle raising a small child and caring for an aging parent with the stress of, you know, trying to stop the biggest robbery in the history of Spain. A domestic violence survivor (TW for those who need it; nothing is ever shown onscreen, but it’s discussed several times) who is given the space to discuss the things that have happened to her and how she has worked through them with such dignity, accuracy and respect that you can tell the writers did their homework.

This is a show where you can tell there are women in the writers’ room.

2. The Professor and Raquel. I don’t want to spoil a single thing for you here except to say that I myself was lured into this show by the promise of electric sexual chemistry between a criminal mastermind and the police inspector hunting him down, and my God I was not disappointed.

1. Love.

This show came into my life at a period where I was so weary of cynicism on television - so fucking furious at showrunners who dangle hope in front of us and then crush it, who only care about building anything if they can tear it down later, who treat love and fun and joy and hope and family and happiness like they’re intellectually lesser than grimdark nihilism with no soul - that I was honestly kind of broken by it. I was just so. fucking. tired. Tired of “the way we show this heroine is strong is to kill off her love interest.” Tired of “sorry but all this rape and murder is NECESSARY because of REALISM” (particularly rich when coming from shows featuring evil A.I.’s or dragons and ice zombies). Tired of getting invested in relationships - whether ships or friends or found families - only to realize that the show I was watching was always going to sacrifice character to force plot mechanics into place, and those relationships were never going to get the kind of care and focus I wanted them to get.

But that is not this show.

The single most revolutionary thing, to me, about La Casa de Papel - the thing that sets it apart from every other rollercoaster action thrill ride on television - is that every single thread of the plot is tied to love.

Every.

Single.

One.

Love of all different shapes and sizes - parents and children, friendships, doomed crushes (straight and queer), toxic exes, blossoming romances, siblings - and over it all, a deep, deep love for humanity.

The thing I said before, about how when things go wrong they go wrong in character-driven ways? It’s this. Love is why everything on this show happens. Love is what makes children want to live up to their parents and what makes parents fight to leave a better world for their children. Love is why deaths have stakes. Love is why we spend so much screentime lingering on small moments another show might ignore, like all the thieves at heist camp sitting down every night to have dinner together and argue about paella techniques. Love is what causes chaos in the middle of the heist; when there’s one person in the room you care about more than the others, you can get distracted and take your eye off the ball. Love is how your enemies can get to you, by leveraging or blackmailing the people who matter most, knowing that you’ll crack if they’re in danger. Love, gone wrong, causes toxic men to develop possessive and controlling behavior towards women. Love is how the Professor gets the idea for the heist in the first place. The plan is flawless on paper, but it doesn’t account for the human variable, and over and over again we see that relationships and connection and sex and family and love cause people to behave in unpredictable ways and throw the whole plan into chaos, which is what makes for a dynamic and compelling story.

How refreshing to see a show simply refuse to grant the oft-repeated premise that a show cannot have both high-octane thrills, and a big soft squishy heart, at the same time.

ANYWAY, I’VE TAKEN UP ENOUGH OF YOUR VALUABLE TV-WATCHING TIME, GO JUMP ON BOARD THIS TRAIN AND COME SCREAM ABOUT IDEALISTIC SPANISH ROBIN HOODS WITH ME, AND LET THE GOOD SHIP SERQUEL INTO YOUR LIFE, YOU WON’T BE SORRY

THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK

#lannister-slings-and-arrows #la casa de papel #money heist #from the inbox #i have a lot of feelings about this show #is this entire post just one long subtweet of 'the 100'#listen #maybe #i'm still pissed about kabby and will be for awhile #but legit this show was HEALING and CATHARTIC in some unexpected ways #yes virginia you CAN have functional loving stable relationships and high-stakes drama at the same time

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