#long review or just me trying to explain to myself some stuff

[anotherfanaccount]

A long (spoilers included) review of Dunki.

Because I think I should just write it all out.

Starts with classic Hirani flavour. A main character on a wheelchair plotting an escape. And they succeed. Mannu runs away to meet her lawyer to ask about her visa condition. The answer is negative but she's desperate to be back home now. So comes the names of Hardy, a guy who she hasn't met in 25 years now.

Cue Hardayal Singh Dhillon, in all his greys and old age cramps running a race and also winning it but well a call from Mannu, who cares about a damn race. He answers no I'm not coming to get you and she smiles saying 'kand' ho gaya hai. And how can the 'Banda' refuse.

This was the introduction of a tale so simple, yet so real. Why do people leave their homes? The homes even with the poverty still has the warmth and love. But what could be more glaring than poverty for unemployed youth. Sometimes it's heartbreaking love, a love so powerful that people decide to end themselves instead of trying to survive through. That's Sukhi and Jassi's subplot, which only propels Hardy to decide on the donkey route, a decision that'll change all their lives forever.

And so starts the dunki, shown very aesthetically if I might say the horrors and the dangers. But you know your leads survive so you hold on. They wade underwater, scared and tired. They hide in freezers, cold. They walk through the desert among skeletons and evilness. Mannu has a cathartic experience here. And you wonder what exactly is the point of going through all this trouble without any guarantee. But they manage to reach their destination.

And now awaits another horror. Immigrants are looked down upon. They aren't humans in the eye of the citizens and don't get the dignity to live like humans either. Toiling through odd jobs, sending fake pictures to assure their families and to give them a better life is their only cause now. But Hardy doesn't have any of that. He's there for Mannu, so he starts the point of going back. But necessity is larger than lives for some people.

So they get caught and the rest seek asylum but Hardy can't lie, won't lie that it was his country that's unsafe for him. So he's sent back.

Fascinatingly dark that deported people get to travel safely back to the places they tried so hard to escape. It's along the same line as punishing people attempting suicide. This helps no-one.

Anyway 25 years pass offscreen. We get to know in passing that the families back home are doing well enough but our 3 asylum seekers are not getting the visa to return home. But trust Hardy, he can do it.

And Hardy does, with a bit of cunning and so much old man charm, the old man does it for his Mannu. But Mannu is dying. And ah well. What beats a tragic love story.

What beats a movie with so much heart and love and pain underlying the humour and constant laughter.

You just end up sitting a bit longer in the theatre and hoping to gather your thoughts because there's so much and yet there's this numbness. Is it because you saw the best movie, maybe. There's no best movie as per me honestly. Is it because this topic is way too real but so far from your reality that it shocks you a bit more. Is it because you love the man frontlining these moving images and you can see no fault.

Honestly I don't even want to conclude. If I could I would like to hug Sukhi right after the phone call, and Hardy after the court and at the terrace. But I'm guessing Hardy will be fine. Wo sambhal lega apne ko. Mannu I hope you had happy moments, even if they were the bare minimum.

[fereldanwench]

I didn't want to completely sit out a year-in-review, but for reasons I'll explain at the end of this post and under a cut, doing the traditional pick-one-pic-from-each-month approach just wasn't going to work for me. So instead, here are 20 of my favorite shots (in no particular order) of Valerie from 2023!

(I'll share solo Goro shots and shippy/story shots in two other posts before the year ends.)

Some thoughts about this year (cw for anxiety and depression mentions):

So yeah. I actually hadn't planned on joining in on the virtual photography year-in-review fun in part because... Well, frankly, I wasn't sure if it would actually be fun for me.

Although I do have pictures for every month, the first third, maybe even half, of the year was a struggle on almost every conceivable level. A lot of it was shit that carried over from the end of 2022, which was also an incredibly difficult year for me. I don't really want to delve too deeply into why--Some of it was personal, some of it was professional, some of it was fandom, and if you know, you know.

The main obstacle I had here is that looking at a lot of the shots I took from about January to May (give or take a few weeks on either end) honestly reminded me of Bad Times™️. I've worked really hard to pull myself out of that depression/anxiety cycle and return to a healthier approach to fandom and online socialization in general, but I just didn't want to spend a lot of time in that mental space. There are a few shots from those months that made it to my favorites, and I hope one day I can look back on that stuff and just feel the good from it again. Alas, that day is still not here.

But I am happy to report that the other reason I wanted to approach the review differently is a lot more positive! It's also two-fold: 1) I spent the earlier part of this year exploring more of a technical side of virtual photography and 2) I was really prolific the last third or so of this year so trying to narrow faves from about August until now was just not possible.

One of the few good things about the end of 2022 was being able to upgrade my graphics card, which meant I then had a rig that could support ray-tracing and hot sampling. As a result, I started putting a lot more focus on lighting and getting acquainted with new tools. I also was trying to work with the new AMM posing system, which is very convenient in some ways (100s of poses without reloading the game!) and a complete pain in the ass in others (can't move characters without their poses breaking!). Custom photomode poses + Nibbles Replacer has been the game changer I've been waiting for.

Or to put it more succinctly, December 2022 through about April 2023 felt like a relearning/return to basics kind of creative period, which is essential, but also means I just don't really like a lot of what I did, lmao.

Then, shockingly (I'm not shocked at all), starting treatment for my anxiety and depression in the second half of this year suddenly made creating a lot easier and fun again! Crazy how that works.

Even bumping this little review up to 20 shots instead of 12, there are still pictures from the past few months that I had to cut as favorites. There was just no way I could condense the amount of fave shots I took from August to now in just 5 options.

I also owe quite a bit of this revival to modders for asking me if I wanted to take shots for them--Exploring more of a fashion photography approach to my shots I think did a lot to build on what I had learned earlier in the year and encouraged me to try something new. I don't want to tag anyone in this long-ass glorified diary entry, but if you invited me to take mod shots for you, just know that it really meant a lot. ♡

And that's where my head has been with a yearly review! Is filling out a little template with 12 pictures this serious? No, it definitely is not, lmao. But hey, overthinking shit is still something I'm working on. ✌️

[atopfourthwall]

Tbh you lament what people say about you and bemoan "harrassment and bullying". Yet you told RLM to "eat a bag of dicks" unprompted. You said Oneyplays "Are assholes, fuck them!". You'll constantly lecture your own fans, angrily yelling at them for asking when new Power Rangers are out, or for giving you simple, solid advice like below. You say youve calmed down in reviews yet still yell at the comic creators over minor stuff. The comments you complain about getting seem tame in comparison.

Okay, first of all I did not tell RLM to "eat a big of dicks" unprompted. What I said was "Eat a dick, jackass" while talking about the Plinkett Reviews in regards to how parts of them have not aged well, in particular the line that I felt was a bit racist - "Black people don't like Star Wars" (to be clear - I don't think anyone at RLM is racist [AFAIK]. The remark itself feels like it is, though, but that's also emblematic of edgier, wince-inducing internet humor from the time - we're all guilty of awful jokes like this to some degree, myself included). Now I ended up removing this line from the Star Wars Prequel reviews compilation because I realized it was needlessly inflammatory towards them and some perceived it as me attempting to star a beef with them… when of course I don't want to start a beef with ANYONE, much less someone much, MUCH more popular than me.

And no, I did not say Oneyplays "Are assholes, fuck them" (unless I said this on Twitter a long while ago). I'm assuming this is in reference to a part of the Fallout: New Vegas streams. Someone in the superchats asked a question relating to them and my other guests didn't know who they are. I proceeded to spend all of 40 seconds calmly explaining (though admittedly with a bit of light irritation) "They're other streamers, one of whom apparently does a GREAT impression of me. They're also responsible for popularizing calling me Lightbringer, soooo… screw 'em." That was it. But apparently "screw 'em" was TOO MUCH for a lot of people, because I got flooded with hate from that - videos made about how I was "TRIGGERED!" and "HAD A MELTDOWN!" Because that was one of the first public times I ever talked about how I wasn't okay with the nickname. We'll circle back around to this in a minute.

"You'll constantly lecture your own fans, angrily yelling at them for asking when new Power Rangers are out-" Aaand right there you prove that you don't actually watch my stuff. You're just repeating the same garbage from people who ALSO don't watch my stuff, but assume I have not changed at all, that I am the same person forever whose opinions don't change, whose attitude doesn't change, never gets better, etc.

Because I haven't been angry at people asking when the next History of Power Rangers is out in ALMOST TEN YEARS.

And the reason I know that number in particular is because I started my Patreon in 2014. The question annoyed me so much because I didn't have an answer for them and it seemed like they didn't care about anything else I did. But then I started my Patreon and one of the Milestone goals was actual release dates for HOPR. And thus since then I've been able to answer when new ones are coming out.

You want to know how NOT angry I am about the question I am now? I put it on t-shirts.

You can buy them at https://atop-the-fourth-wall.creator-spring.com/listing/when-is-hopr?product=2 and https://atop-the-fourth-wall.creator-spring.com/listing/when-is-hopr-03?product=2 (I was going to post pictures of them but Tumblr keeps breaking when I try). There's a third one, but I don't think I put that one back up because it was intended for Shark Robot where colors are limited and it didn't do very well.

But this is a thing that's brought up by people who hate me - my irritation at the question as if it was still something that bothered me because, again, they cannot conceive that maybe I've changed. No, I am cringe forever and there is nothing I can say or do that will satisfy them.

But no, I "lecture people constantly" evidently. People say I'm obsessed about this topic, about the bullying, that I just talk about it soooo much and I can't move on from it and it haunts my every waking moment and that such "simple, solid advice" like "Be okay with being bullied" is met with unreasonable hostility and my mind fixated on it constantly.

Unless of course you actually look at what I post, what I reblog, what I tweet about and then you discover "Oh, he actually only talks about it when people bring it up to him. He only made that thread because he said the harassment is starting to rise up again and that was days and days ago and hasn't said anything about it since. In fact, on this very Tumblr he's only bringing it up again because somebody ELSE is bringing it up, allowing him a chance to further break down why asshole behavior is still asshole behavior.

So let's bring this back to the "screw 'em" thing. You'll notice that in none of these longer rambling statements I've made have I brought them up. Sure, in that 40 seconds during the stream I did… but that was in the middle of the first wave of it where it really WAS affecting me psychologically hard… and I have not talked about them on stream since then. I don't talk about them in these threads. I don't tell my fans to harass them. I don't make up some nickname for them or mock them or do anything other than maybe some frustration at them during the thread a few years ago (and I am explicitly telling my fans not do so - if you want to be an asshole to them, you can fuck off from my fans). Because I don't WANT to talk about them. They can do whatever the hell they want on their streams. They can call me Lightbringer there, make weird memes about me. It's THEIR space to do with as they please.

The problem is entirely that their fans come to MY space to be assholes. To repeat those memes, to bully me and call me the name. Some do it innocently, thinking I'm okay with it (which, again - is who that thread was directed towards)… but there are others who are being assholes about it. And I'm going to call them assholes about it and block them. And I'm still not going to talk about Oney because I don't want to - they're not the ones who are spamming Lightbringer in my chat or comments or trying to find some way of sneaking it into the comments past my comment filters to try to get a gotcha on me. Hell, I've gotten some people who have said they discovered me and love my stuff now BECAUSE Oney talked about me.

And I'd really like to know which recent review you saw where I was specifically attacking creators in the manner you seem to think I did. Because being angry at a plot point or a narrative decision is not the same thing as attacking a creator. I'll freely tell you about the ones I HAVE specifically called out for shittiness - the racist, the homophobic, the sexual harassers, the transphobic, the one that spread misinformation, or just the greedy assholes. But just looking at the list of the last 50+ episodes I've done that maybe… once or twice? And even despite ALL those horrible things, I STILL tell my fans to leave them alone - to not start fights with them, to not send my videos to them, etc. Because I don't want my fans to be bullies, either.

I will end this with one final thing: "The comments you complain about getting seem tame in comparison." Yeah, well, that's because you're you and I'm me. Something that seems innocuous to one person may be deeply triggering for someone else. Something that seems like an innocent joke might actually be really fucking with someone mentally, as it was for me. And that's why I've tried to tell people "Hey, please don't do that." Maybe I do it aggressively. But sometimes that's the only way people will listen. If people are still doing it even after I've expressed how much it harms me - telling me that I should just "get over it" or "let them do it and respond with a laugh" even though I keep saying it DOES affect me, then those people are assholes and I don't see why I should give them the time of day.

Hopefully this lengthy response (I really am a windbag) helps people understand or it clears up some bullshit. And if it's still not good enough for you, then nothing less than complete capitulation to being called Lightbringer is the only thing that will satisfy you… well, fuck off.

[shizukateal]

Grimm Variations - Episode Three Review: Hansel and Gretel

(Buckle up, everyone, this is the call-back episode.)

Hansel and Gretel live a pretty routine, gray life at their orphanage/boarding school, with their fellow classmates and their mama and papa- wait a fucking second, that's Sakura's great-grandfather from Card Captor Sakura!

Jesus Christ, CLAMP, I know designing old men isn't your wheelhouse, but that's no excuse to be lazy! Anyways, their life is pretty boring and restricted, so Gretel usually acts out and Hansel gets swept up until they're both grounded. Finally, one time after too many antics, their "parents" decide to spice up the punishment by leaving them to sleep outside in the forest. They're warned that they can sleep near the fence if they want to, but of course that's too boring for Gretel, so they go on a walk until they find a small wooden cottage, although it does have two ca- Yuuko.

...

I never really finished XxxHolic. I only watched the two seasons of the anime, so I didn't really experience Yuuko's death, I just spoiled myself. Still, it gets me unexpectedly emotional. To see a version of her blessed with the ability to age.

So the Dimensional Witch and the kids get to talking around some cocoa, and Yuuko incites the kids to find out about The End of the World. Her words, not mine. That's silly! reply Hansel and Gretel, the world doesn't have an end, it's spherical! They would know, they've been taught a lot of suspiciously advanced scientific stuff in school. So Yuuko proposes them to do a little empirical research to settle the debate. Next time someone loses a ball during a game they should go pick it up themselves, instead of letting their "parents" get to it first. Hansel does that at the first opportunity he gets and indeed, he finds a forcefield, proving Yuuko correct.

This discovery sparks a fire in Hansel, so he gets himself deliberately sent out to the forest again and Gretel does the same to accompany him. He reaches a bargain with Yuuko: she'll help him discover what's real and in return he will help her grant her own unspoken wish. She tells him to look for unusual things in his school and gifts him a tube filled with what could be candies or gems, saying that they'll help guide the way, but to not eat them or they'll run out of it.

Hansel and Gretel start paying attention to their surroundings and finally the weirdness of their situation starts to stand out to them, like how their classmates keep disappearing out of nowhere and nobody bats an eye, especially when there's photographic evidence about their numbers dwindling in the school group pictu- Syaoran.

And 2/3 of the Clamp School Detectives!

I find it hilarious that Nokoru and Akira are here, but Suoh had to be deleted from existence because his blue hair would've stood out too much. RIP, lmao.

Anyways, Hansel decides to try to see if he can find a way out through the forest and obviously his sister goes along with him. Before they can properly set out, however, one of the candies acts up and opens up a portal. The siblings go through it and they find themselves in a mysterious space station of all things, with data of all of their classmates. Soon enough their "mother" finds them sneaking around and they run away from her, using up the candies to open doors. But when Hansel almost gets squished by a closing door, Mother sacrifices herself to save him, confirming to everyone that she is, in fact, a robot.

Naturally, this leaves Hansel with more questions than answers, so after coming back to the school he and his sister straight to Yuuko, who gives him the Matrix choice of taking a pill to forget everything or learning the truth. Hansel chooses the latter and Yuuko takes them back to the space station, explaining that the earth has long since become inhabitable and that the school is teaching the children how to restore it until they deem them fit to go there. Her previously mentioned "wish" is to send them all safely there. Hansel is apparently fit to travel already, but he starts dithering about the choice, especially because the space shuttle only has one seat, so where is Gretel to fit?

That's when the curtain is lifted: Gretel doesn't exist. She's a mental projection for cowardly, dithering Hansel to act out decisively on his own impulses while mentally excusing himself for following along, but now that he has come this far on his own accord he doesn't need her anymore. Hansel, with Gretel's encouragement, chooses to leave, but he still cries tears of bitter regret at loosing his "sister" to the truth instead of taking Yuuko's offer to forget.

Alas, however, he arrives at earth, where his lost classmates have grown up and welcome him with open arms. Yuuko eulogizes the mom-bot, congratulating her for raising the kids and then welcomes Syaoran to her hut...

Oh boy, ok, this one's a doozy, let's see where to start.

Ok, I'm gonna start with the blatant Revolutionary Girl Utena references and work up from there, because if I don't it's gonna drive me insane. Here's the thing people, it's not a sin to reference RGU; in fact I'd encourage it, but if you're gonna pull iconography from there of all places, then you'd better be really fucking conscientious about The Themes™️ and what you say with them.

So this episode presents us with a school in which time is apparently bubbled, constricted by The End of The World it represents, supervised by two figures emulating the heteronormative family structure, contrasted by a witch who at first seems like an outcast but is actually essentially powering the whole thing (maybe), and where students disappear without anyone properly remembering them because if they dare to figure out what lies behind the curtain of the system, just like Ohtori Academy. So far so good... kind of.

The implication is that the school is deliberately set up as this secret test of character thing so, like Hansel, the students learn to be independent. There's even some clever hints that disobedience and figuring out the mystery gives them the passing mark before we watch our protagonist. But then like... why do the students forget whenever one of them leaves? In Utena that's implied to be the magic of whatever time bubble Ohtori is in keeping everyone ignorant to perpetuate itself without objections, but more important that the explanation itself is the metaphor it's in service of. Ohtori students forget because the system wants to present a narrative about itself without any blemishes, so tragedies get trivialized into gossip, victims swept under the rug. Even if you assume that this schools timeloop or whatever is also passively mindfucking with the children, why is there so much focus on the dadbot and especially the mombot keeping things like the forcefield hidden? What is the purpose of that? What commentary is it making? What does breaking the cycle of apathy and blind obedience mean in this setting?

It might sound like I'm doing a pointless nitpick here, but trust me when I say that the viewing experience is already too confusing because of the tone and its use of the imagery. The school really is portrayed like if Othori met the orphanage from The Promised Neverland met an oscarbait period flick about world war II. Like, you genuinely expect that the twist is that the school is farming the children for their brains or something. It took me until I was writing this review to actually put the pieces together as to what the robo-parents motivations are, because their secrecy and strictness is completely antithetical to them wanting the children to grow independent!!!

The truth of the matter is just too soft for the themes its exploring and the imagery is presenting. Hansel created Gretel because he's afraid of taking responsibility for his actions, the same way a character in Utena projected a Rose Bride to not acknowledge the fact that he killed like a 100 people in a fire on purpose. So one would assume, based on how fucking creepy the school and the parents are, that he has some real good fucking reason to reach that extreme of cognitive dissonance, but no!!!!! Even the parents sending them out to sleep in the forest lands like mere chiding!!!!

But going back to Gretel, the usual initial portion of the episode is about how Charlotte doesn't seem to like her character in the original fairytale. How she thinks Gretel should be punished for getting Hansel into trouble which... istg I have NO idea how this show is trying to engage with its source material at all, because that is NOT a conclusion anyone would reach after reading the fucking fairytale, but whatever. It's fine. Or rather it WOULD be fine if there was a smidge of actual feminist commentary in this script which goes OUT OF ITS WAY TO REFERENCE ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL FEMINIST PIECES IN ANIME, but noooooooooooo it's all so bittersweet. On the one hand I'm glad he chose to grow up, and since I don't believe in punitive justice I don't think he needs to be punished to get there, but I'm still upset the character of Gretel gets reduced to this when she was an active heroine in her own story. Guess Charlotte succeeded in her purpose then, although it is curious that she casts herself as the twins.

Like, am I evil for expecting Hansel to straight up die in that oven-shuttle? In her original universe, Yuuko was an agent of karma. If she was scary it wasn't because she was evil, but because she would give you exactly what you want and not shield you from the consequences. It would feel weird to me if she were to endanger children the way she does some of her customers, but it would not have been completely out of place in this "grimm variation" that is about our protagonist literally deluding himself to avoid taking responsibility for his choices to end up with those consequences catching up to him in a terrible fashion.

Guess I shouldn't have expected all that much better. Although I am surprised that they didn't just straight up turn Subaru and Hokuto from Tokyo Babylon into Hansel and Gretel. Alas, to be a CLAMP fan is to suffer, and it seems that these past 20 years have not taught them much about theming. This is why I'm still terrified of reading Clear Card Arc, even though I should.

[hvnnibvni]

Together Again | JJK *Spoiler*

Pairings: Jungkook/Reader

Genre: Mature themes. Romance. Angst. Arranged marriage AU. Childhood best friends to lovers AU.

Warnings: cheating, reader is a rope bunny (ALLEGEDLY), hard!dom JK, switch!reader, reader likes to be slutted out, drunken sex, unplanned pregnancy(this is in the end dw😅), cunnilingus, oral (both receiving), fighting (talk shit get hit) daddy!kink, praise!kink, dirty talk, spanking, hair pulling. Just all around nasty y’all.

Summary: After reader finds her long-term boyfriend in bed with their mutual friend. She moves back into her family home, but under one condition. She has to marry her childhood friend that has been arranged since their childhood. For a wedding gift they go to a mountainous getaway with a group of friends, reader is told that ex and mutual friend get invited, so reader and jk decide to pretend not to know each other to avoid any confusion or miscommunication.

Authors note: This, if not obvious, is my first time writing. Like call me the virgin marry of writing cuz idk what I’m doing. But we gone figure it out though. Anyways some things might change throughout the story just bear with me. This is actually a piece of the end not the whole thing. More of a drabble if you will darling, cuz idk if it’s good or not and Ian trynna EMBARRASS myself. But in all honesty I want honest reviews just don’t hurt my feelings I will cry 😐 I would like respectful constructive criticism, not no “yOu WrItInG DumB HAr hAr🤓” type bs y’all can take that childish shit somewhere else, and other writers feel the same way when people do stuff like that kind of stuff isn’t cute or funny when you’re the only one laughing babes. Sorry I just went on a whole tangent. Anyways enjoy my piece of a piece 😂 (Edit: ex doesn’t have a name neither does the ex bff)

——————————————————————

Everyone is having their own separate conversations when ex bff brings up the fact that y/n doesn’t look like she’s feeling well. Y/n bushes it off but ex bff pushes a little harder and say “I’m just trying to make sure you and your baby are okay” the table goes dead silent, everyone too stunned to speak. Jungkook watching quietly.

“ what is she talking about?” Asks ex bf. Y/n calm as ever replies “ I’m pregnant.” Looking right at (name). “Well I don’t know what to say,” ex bf goes on to say while acting flattered. “I mean you know I’ve always wanted to be a dad-“

“it’s mine.”

Everyone turned shocked to look at Jungkook who’d been sitting quietly the whole time. “How long?” He proceeds to ask, ignoring everyone around them. “Around 8 weeks” y/n responds. “When did you find out?“ His questioning continues “Yesterday morning.” Y/n answered, not missing a beat “why didn’t you tell me?” He interrogates further. “It was going to be a surprise, but it seems plans have changed.” She answers calmly, although she is agitated that her plans were ruined all for a petty jab that gave the latter 5 seconds of satisfaction.

“Wait… what’s going on?” Ex question confusingly. “you know him?” He asks y/n. “Y’a she does, rather well actually. We grew up together” Jungkook answers. “Y/n and I are married.” “WHAT!!” Ex exclaims “Since when?!” Ex continues “because we broke up about 2 months ago. The time checks out. So that would mean you cheated on me.” He reach’s.

“Well not exactly.” Jungkook goes on to explain. “Y/n and I were arranged by our parents when we were little. But then she chose to be with you and was disowned by her family. So when you guys broke up, she went back to her family under the condition that she marries me. How it was always supposed to be.” He finishes looking at ex.

“So wait.” Everyone turns to look at ex bff. “Y/n isn’t some poor gold digger “ex” found off the street? I don’t believe that.” She says spitefully. “I’ve know y/n for years and not once has she ever showed she is the heiress like you all say. I mean how come i’ve never seen or heard about her? Huh? Riddle me that?”

“Do you not know what disowned means you mamahuevo? Eh? Does anything flicker between the last two brain cells you have AI COÑAZO CULO! EL BURRO SABE MAS QUE TU!!” Gabriella screams at ex bff fed up with her bs this weekend, bout ready to jump her if she wasn’t worried for y/n’s stress levels.

“This is some Penelope Douglas ass shit bitch.” Meimi whispers to Jimin next to her waiting to see what happens next.

[janmisali]

Hello jan Misali, about the polyominos: I fully understand and respect the idea of "this is just a post, I do not want to make a video", but your post has spurned me to try and make a video where I review your new nomenclature and compare it against one I am attempting to develop. Would that be alright, as long as I give proper attribution? I can understand if you'd rather this stay as a blog post-only idea.

ah great timing, I just added this to the FAQ

I broadly always approve of people to make things based on my own work as long as they give me the appropriate amount of credit and let me know about it once it's posted somewhere (so I can see it)!

there are some minor caveats to this just to cover myself (as I explain in the FAQ) but as long as it's not like, Unethical I actively encourage people to make stuff based on things that I make. I think it's really cool

[review-anon]

New Look, New Beginnings

???: Hello? Is this on?

.....

???: Shit, I didn't turn the recording on, let's try that again.

...

* A image appears on screen showing what looks to be the interior of a futuristic building. On the screen is a weird blue-ghost like entity*

Hello? Is this on?...The green light is on so I assume it is on.

In that case, greetings everyone! I am Review Anon and at long last we have visual connection!

Now I know some of you are acting confused right now. You probably have a bunch of questions like "Review Anon why do you have custom sprites?" "Review Anon I thought this was gonna be 100% writing so why are you doing this?" "Is this an attempt to launch a story blog?"

Well don't worry I plan to address all of those issues in a moment so this won't take lo-

???: HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!

Huh?

*Suddenly a door bursts open and a very familar if somewhat plain looking high school student bursts in*

You really think you can announce you are gonna start a story blog without me being here?

Hajime I just SAID this was not gonna be a story blog.

Actually a better question is how the heck did you get in here?

You do realise this location is in the void of reality where the laws of time and space are bendable. Anyone from my world could be here.

Also you left the door wide open.

Okay but I didn't ask for anyone to help me with this announcement. So why did you feel you needed to come in here?

Are you kidding me? I'm the mascot of Danganronpa ask blogs more or less. I am the main character of A Student out of Time, the deuteragonist in Despair to Future Arcs, a very important character in both Survivor and The New Future and finally I was one of Aliza's boyfriends in Finalverse!

Before it was erased from the internet that was...

How many times do I have to say this Hajime? THIS. IS. NOT. A. STORY. BLOG.

But you made yourself a sprite sheet for your Anonsona.

Yes.

And you are planning to use those sprites for telling tales between characters.

Well sorta.

And you are planning to have some continuity between each story.

Get to your point.

In other words, no matter how you slice it, this is a story blog!

NO ITS NOT!

.....

I was about to explain what the deal behind these were but SOMEONE interupted me before I could explain myself.

I jumped the gun, didn't I?

Yes, you did.

Anyway apologises for that outburst there but before Mr. Reckless over there bursted in, I was about to explain what the deal with this was.

So yeah, I have a sprite sheet now. I was thinking of doing this for a little bit, but now I've finished my ASOOT Video Game Pitch I figured now was the time to get them done.

And no I don't have amazing drawing skills to get these out, during down times on the ASOOT video game pitch I was working on these in the background and I just finished the first batch now. More will come in the future when I need them.

So why did I make them? Two reasons, firstly to use them on the blog itself when answering asks, as long as its not too serious stuff. I'm not using them when updating on my writing projects for example. But the second reason is that I plan to roughly around the time I upload writing projects or other events involving me to have sketches.

[the---hermit]

Beltane tarot reading (look at how well my tarot deck knows its owner) and my new bullet journal monthly cover page (I didn't feel like doing anything special so ai just had fun with the font).

01|05|2023

I am staring the month feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything I have to do for uni. I have yet to find a new routine for this next month of classes, and this is troubling me more than I expected. I did take today off from studying since it's an holiday here and starting from tomorrow I will be on my regular schedule. I plan on catching up some more with the history of religions lectures I have missed/ that have been uploaded online only. I don't know yet whehter I'll be done with them by the end of the morning when I'll have to commute to uni, but I plan on being caught up by the end of the week. I did a some planning to see everything I'll have to study in the next two months and I am not going to lie it's a lot, especially considering how little I can do during the week due to my long commute to uni. I am considering skipping classes on Wednesdays (that professor records lectures and uploades them online very quickly) in order to get more time to do everything. Since I will have lots to juggle these new few months I might even bring back a good old productivity challenge. I am also considering a few posts in which I explain how I am planning to tackle all this stuff I have to do.

Productivity:

finished the audiobook of Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

wrote the first draft of its review

practiced Irish on duolingo

updadted my reading journal

created the first weekly spread for the new month in my bujo and did a bit of planning for what I have to study in the next couple of months (this definitely made me feel better about this overwhelming sensation, sitting down and planning calms my brain and I am trying to have faith in my organizational skills)

did some crosswords with my parents (it's something we often do during the holidays, but it'f fun doing them together)

did a tarot reading for a friend

Self care:

selpt in

took the day off since it's a holiday and I had no classes

read first thing in the morning

finally had the time to sit doen with a cup of tea and read the latest letter my beloved penpal sent me (and I plan on doing a couple of big letter writing session in the afternoons of this week when I get home from uni to answer both to them and to my digital penpal)

did a tarot reading for myself

📖:Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

🎵:Good Enemy by PVRIS

[justjstuff]

Babes. I really appreciate all the asks about Daughter of Fire! It makes me happy to see that people love it as much as I do, I just gotta ask something of y’all. Please leave a review before sending an ask here! I noticed a lot of you don’t do that (not to mention the anon asks that I can’t possibly know if they did comment or not) and I just wanna explain a bit why it matters. I don’t know if u guys have been around here for as long as I have but the fandom culture changed a lot over the years, not all of it for the better. Five, ten years ago, it used to be the norm to comment on almost every single fic you read, in every chapter. There used to be discussions in the comment section, readers answering readers and sparking conversation… just genuinely a lot more interaction than nowadays. I’ve mentioned this before but I felt like writing another post about it.

Please notice that I’m not saying “don’t ever send me an ask about DoF again” or “you should be giving me comments NOW!!!”. I’ve just been scrolling through my endless unanswered asks and noticed that there were a lot like those I mentioned.

Now, I know sometimes it’s hard to send a review. I, myself, sometimes get so anxious just by the thought of writing a comment that I just don’t even read the fic/chapter. But notice how this is aimed towards the people who already took the time off their day to sit down on Tumblr and send me an ask. It would take the same amount of time to drop a review! And you can even do it anonymously too!

Anyways, this isn’t a complaint, I’m just always a bit sad to see that this is the way we led fandom culture? I know it might seem a bit disingenuous to be saying that when DoF has the reach it has but keep in mind that I also write other fics and most of them only get a little bit of engagement. It’s honestly disheartening because while I don’t write fanfiction for the comments, I do share it for them. I could just write them and satisfy that need and keep it to myself, never putting myself out there so others might judge me but I do because I love the fanfiction community and I love interacting with it.

I also noticed that authors who don’t have their social media linked tend to have more engagement in the comment section and that’s kinda what this post is about. Although we don’t comment as much as we did back in the days, it’s still the way some people choose to give fics their time of day, they see if there’s a lot of hits/kudos/comments before even giving it a try. So it does matter in a way that the engagement gets through other media only like some of the asks here! I’m not saying stop interacting with me here and keep only to the comment section, even because I chose to link all my social media because I love interacting w y’all in a deeper level here and on twt and other platforms but like. If you do choose to reach out to me, don’t forget to leave a review!

As I’m writing this I’m already regretting it lmao I don’t want to seem ungrateful and nitpicky but in the end I’m forcing myself to post this because it might spark some conversation and I do know a lot of authors feel like I do. We’re seeing how much writing isn’t being valued in our society and that’s kind of the same in fandom culture imo and I dunno. What do y’all think?

Love u to bits and I’ll see you soon 🖤

Oh, btw! Regarding the next DoF update!!! I can’t, and really it’s more like I don’t want to, give you guys a precise date. I struggled for quite some time with feeling like DoF was a chore, a job I had to keep up otherwise I would let everyone down and that (and some other stuff) led me to the biggest writer’s block I’ve ever had in my life. I’m just now trying to reconnect with that part of me that loves writing and finds actual enjoyment in tackling this huge and complex fic (and any and all writing tbh), so I don’t want to slip back into that same pattern I had before. I don’t like the term hiatus for fanfiction because it gives me this notion that the author is obligated to go back to the fic when in fact they’re not (unless the fic has a set update schedule and the author is letting u know when they’ll be back). No one is getting paid for this and most of us study and work full time jobs before coming and sharing something that can be really personal with strangers on the internet. If an author wants to drop their fic and never come back to fandom life than that’s their prerogative. We as fanfic readers kinda sign that unwritten contract that when we start reading an unfinished fic we might never get to see the end of it. However, I like the term hiatus because it illustrates my point with this which is: I’m not done with Daughter of Fire. I just don’t know when I’ll update next. Rest assured that if I ever decided to let it go, I would let everyone know. I would release all the chapters I have written, I would give y’all all of my notes and unfinished drafts and lone scenes, I would give you the document where I tell you step by step what would happen until the very end of the fic (and the sequel I have planed for it 👀). And I would also leave it open to anyone who wants to continue it to pick it up and give it a try. As it stands, I’m nowhere near done with Daughter of Fire 🖤

[a-gnosis]

Hi, sorry to bug you! I’m trying to be brave and start a project about Ancient Greek myth. The breadth of scholars, literature, and opinions can be overwhelming and intimidating! If it’s okay, could you explain how you go about determining which sources are reliable? Apologies if this is too personal or involved an ask! Please don’t feel pressured to answer! Thank you for taking time to read this. Be well! (Also, do you know if Noel Robertson is reliable? Np if not, just thought I’d ask lol)

Don't worry, you're not bugging me! Ancient Greece and Greek mythology is a very popular and well-studied subject, so I understand that it can feel quite overwhelming and intimidating to start such a project. I myself have never tried to be 100% accurate about everything (because otherwise I would feel so intimidated that I couldn't draw a single line). My comics are inspired by Greek mythology, they are not supposed to be accurate retellings. I do a lot of research, but in the end it's my own take on it.

First I would recommend you to read the ancient Greek sources, or at least the parts that are relevant for your project, instead of going to retellings by modern authors (like Stephen Fry's Mythos. Don't get me wrong, such books can be a great introduction to Greek mythology, but the authors sometimes add details of their own or have their own spin on things). One site that has helped me a lot is theoi.com. There you can go to a certain god's page and see what the ancient poets and writers said about this god. It also has a collection of translated ancient sources (mostly very old translations, though). Sadly, the site is not complete, so depending on which characters you want to write about, you might not find as much information as you'd like.

As for other books, I always look at who has written it and who has published it. If the author is a professor of Classics, then they will most likely know what they are talking about. Even better if the book is published by a university press, since that means it has been reviewed by scholars in the field. Now, some scholars can of course still have some speculations and interpretations that not everybody agree with (for instance, a few scholars have speculated that Persephone's pomegranate seeds is a contraceptive that keeps her infertile. Even if I don't believe that the seeds have that meaning in the myth, it gave me inspiration to how the chthonic pomegranates work in my comic. I don't mind using speculative stuff as inspiration as long as it makes a good story, but then I usually point out in the comments that it is speculations and not facts). If a book is very old it can also have some outdated theories.

I haven't read anything by Noel Robertson, so I can't really say anything about his works. But he was a professor of Classics and his books are not that old, so he is probably a reliable source?

[radellama]

Games I played in 2023 - Part 2

Well. These certainly took longer to write than I expected them to. Who knew that I’d have a lot to say AND be incredibly picky about how I said everything?

Me. I knew.

Anyway…

Read part one if you haven’t already, and my resi part will be coming out… soon……… And once again, spoilers of varying degrees and strong opinions moving forwards.

~~~

Tomodachi Life, 3DS

I never had this game growing up, but my friend did, and they gave me a demo via DS download play. I really wanted to have it myself, but it was always so expensive that I could never justify buying it, and I prioritised getting other games that were higher on the list instead. Now that I have my cool 3DS where I can play whatever I want, I finally gave it a try!

It didn’t last long though, as there isn’t really that much to do here.

Similarly to Miitopia, this kind of game is only any fun if you have ideas for funny miis to play with, or are amused enough by using miis of you and your friends. I played for about 8 days, checking in with everyone and trying to put all the Chrono characters in. There wasn’t much to actually do, it felt like pointless unlocks and shopping just for the sake of it, instead of any intrinsic reason compelling me to do so.

Maybe I’m just too old now, and have outgrown the age where I would’ve potentially enjoyed this more, but I doubt that. It’s just boring, and once you’ve played for a day or two, you have pretty much played it all. I know that there’s more to do if you spend the time playing for a few minutes every day, like miis dating or having a baby, but I couldn’t get my otp Magland to like each other and Harland spent more time with Schala than Magus. Also I had to make Magus a girl, cause gay people don’t exist and Nintendo doesn’t allow mpreg.

This is disappointing, especially as I enjoyed Miitopia more than I thought I would. I thought there would be more to this dollhouse style game, but there isnt. There’s some funny charm in the flavour text and such, but ehhhhhh… Just play Miitopia. That vibe is there and there’s more to do in that game.

I’m not going to link any songs, as I didn’t find anything particularly stand out, and as I listen while writing this, I’ve barely made a dent in the track list, so I can’t be bothered. It all just sounds like the classic Wii-DS era Mii music. Whatever.

~~~

Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns, 3DS

I know I did a mock review a few years ago for this one, but. Y’know. This game is pretty good and I like farm sims. All the good stuff I’ve said in previous years about farm sims applies here; I get addicted to them easy and it’s dangerous for me to play them, cause it makes my autism go wheeeeeeeeeeeee

This game is one that’s close to my heart- I played it a lot as a tween and just enjoyed how much I felt like it captured the reasons why I liked the SNES Harvest Moon, while also expanding and adding more fun stuff. The gist of this game is that you are on your way to your farm, when you have an accident and forget which town you were going to live in. Both mayors want you to live in their town, and as you’ll come to find out, they’re fairly competitive against one another. Once you’ve picked your town, and start getting settled in, you’ll have an encounter with the Harvest Goddess, who explains that she collapsed the tunnel between the two towns because she was sick of the arguing- but wants YOUR help repairing relations. You do this primarily by entering the cooking festivals, held four times every month- the more you win, and the closer you get with the townspeople on both sides, the more you’ll be able to access upgrades for your house and tools, along with opening up the tunnel for easy access to both towns.

In the early days, you’ll be spending most your time working on your farm, and foraging on the mountain. There’s three screens on each side of the mountain with various foragable goods, fishing spots and wild animals to befriend – which is plenty to build up your inventory and earn some cash while you wait for your crops to grow. I really appreciate the early days in this game, as it’s not only nostalgic for me, but also a really solid tutorial. The first month is like an overall guide on how to play the game, with each town giving you a gift to start you off (Konohana giving you seeds and tools to grow crops, and Bluebell giving you a cow, which is just a much better deal lmao), showing you how the cooking competition works, and showing how to use the notice board and demonstrating the goal of opening the tunnel. You get a fairly well rounded understanding of most the mechanics you’ll be using, while also getting familiar with what you as a player will personally gravitate towards as you farm, forage, and befriend the locals on either side.

It’s not a lot of story, and it’s a very simple one at that- but it’s all this game needs. I remember as a tween, thinking that if there were ever to be a Harvest Moon movie made, that they should base it on this game; as it wasn’t overly complex, but still had fun characters and an easy to follow plot that would leave a lot of room for an adaptation to do what it needed to in order to make it work. I still stand by that, and will happily write the screenplay. Hit me up.

One cute thing that I love about this game, is that you can get closer with everyone, not just the bachelors and bachelorettes. In some instances, its required, which is a good incentive to give gifts and catch up with everyone when you can. Some date-ables need you to have high friendship points with not just themselves, but friends and/or family members that are important to them, otherwise you’ll be unable to marry them. That’s not the only reason to befriend people, however, as I learnt through this replay that you can unlock special requests once you’re close with certain people. This was an awesome revelation, as it varied the request board in a much needed way- when I was a kid playing, I’d only get super close with the bachelor I wanted and his required people so I could marry him. I didn’t ignore everyone, but I didn’t put much effort into raising their points either. I did this time though, which was great.

The request board is pretty simple, when you check it, there will usually be simple fetch quests from the villagers asking for something or to deliver something to someone else. This ranges from various crops, to foragables and other rarer items you need to collect or create. At the start of each month, there will also be special quests that are much higher in their difficulty, but also reap much greater rewards. In the early game, they’re usually requests for materials to open the tunnel between the two towns, or to upgrade your tools. Once you get closer with others, you can get special timed requests, which usually entail helping out with someone’s crops or livestock before the end of the day. This is a nice, simple mechanic to incentivise collecting items and growing your farm, and isn’t inherently bad.

What does hurt this, however, is how bloated and drawn out so much of this game feels. The special requests to upgrade your farm that I mentioned? ONLY at the start of the month. And, when you’re a year or two in, you can complete these big quests by day three or four usually- definitely before the first week is over. It kinda sucks to be forced to wait around all month just for an upgrading blitz as soon as the season turns over. I just wanted to unlock the mines, but according to the online guides, you need to have your house and property FULLY upgraded... I thought I was. I have the biggest house, both the chicken and livestock paddocks are fully expanded, I got a little more fields and a maker shed to process animal products into things like yarn and cheese and shit... BUT I HAVE TO DO THE BEEHIVES INDIVIDUALLY AT THE START OF EACH MONTH. THERE'S 6 OF THEM. I'M AT YEAR 4 OR 5 I'VE BEEN PLAYING FOR SO LONG... THERE'S NOT EVEN ANY NOTES OR INDICATION IN GAME THAT THERE WILL BE A MINE I JUST HAVE TO MAX OUT MY FARM AND FIND OUT. NOT TO MENTION THAT THERE'S UPGRADES FOR BOTH FARMS TO DO, SO IT TAKES FOR FUCKING EVER… It’s really shit to have the main way to feel progression being spaced too far apart to even mean anything. A simple change, like making the big upgrades available twice a season instead of once would help IMMENSELY. Even to expand upon the request system, and be able to make requests yourself to various villagers once you’re closer to them in order to upgrade your farm. That way, there’s still that focus on the community, and incentivises you to get close to people on both sides, as there will be materials that only one town has. I’m just spit-balling, but the progression needs to be more frequent!

This elongated feeling isn’t just limited to the requests and upgrades. It’s unfortunately present across the whole game. Which is such a shame, as it’s the reason why I never played past the second or third year as a kid. Befriending villagers and getting closer to them takes ages. Progress takes ages. And the food competition takes aaaages. There’s no auto play for it, and there is no reason to drag out an ‘ooohh who’s gonna win!?’ back and forth every. Damn. Competition. You compete 4 times a month, it gets old by like, the third one lol. There’s also a lot about this game that is just vague for no real reason- my biggest gripe being that you can upgrade your livestock’s production output by feeding it treats. In game, you just have someone say that feeding your livestock their favourite treats will increase productivity. The reality? There is a set number of treats for each type of animal, and you have to feed it that set amount for every level up you want to do, for a max of 5 items from that animal. So, where I though it was something like ‘feed the animals various treats to see which is their favourite,’ or ‘feed the cow 10 grain treats,’ - it’s actually ridiculous numbers like the cow needing 7 treats, 15 grain treats, 8 vegetable treats and 1 nutra treat PER LEVEL. PER COW. AND YOU CAN ONLY FEED AN ANIMAL ONE TREAT PER DAY. And there’s no way to keep track of it in game, you have to keep track of it yourself, which, in my opinion, is fucking horrific. I don’t mind the concept of having to feed your livestock various treats to level it up, but at least give some way to know how many to feed it! Have one of the villagers who likes animals tell you this as a reward for getting close to them, and maybe they can tell you how many of each treat you have to go. Or, have it be something you can get the stats of when you examine your livestock with a stethoscope! OR JUST HAVE IT IN THE LIVESTOCK BOOK IN EACH SHED. There’s so many ways that this could be a perfectly fine mechanic, but with it being that bloated and time consuming, it’s just ass!

And while I’m getting into the nitty-gritty of nitpicking- when you do timed requests for other villagers, like picking crops or milking cows, the items automatically go into their storage through an auto animation of the player putting their crops into their pocket. I wish that was an option for me on my farm, as it got annoying having to manually place every individual thing into my pockets when collecting crops and such. It’s things like this that make me want to get back into Stardew Valley again, as simple things like the auto grabber in the livestock sheds was a GODSEND that helped minimise the mind numbing grind, so that I can focus on enjoying the much better grinds that are more enjoyable.

One thing that this game has, that I really enjoyed when I was playing as a kid, is that the date-ables not only have heart events for when you’ve levelled up in your relationship, but also, YOU CAN TAKE PEOPLE ON DATES! If you catch your particular person when they’ve got some free time, they’ll ask if you want to go somewhere with them, and you can choose the location. Picking the right locations will reward you with a little date that goes well, and an increased amount of heart points – and if you pick a place that person doesn’t like, they’ll cut the date short due to feeling uncomfortable. This is really cute and fun, and though I wish you got more than a small handful of rotating sentences to see from your date- it is a nice way to be sure that you ARE close with that person, and can enjoy some time together. What I do wish, is that this was expanded a bit more, and even being able to go on friend dates with people you can’t date. I’d love to go for a walk in the mountains with the cool carpenter lady, or have tea with the grandma who runs the tea house – they’re my friends too, and it would be nice to have them do more than act as essentially set dressing and people to put up requests for you. Due to how simple these dates are, after a few of them, they don’t really feel like dates. The charm wears off when you notice that you’re just watching the two of you stand next to each other, while your date proclaims a random fact that’s not necessarily revealing anything of note towards your relationship with them, or their character. Having these be a bit more interactable would help solve this, as it’d be fun to answer questions the date has for you, or to do something together as a little minigame might be fun. Even something as simple as finding out info from other villagers as you get closer with everyone, and asking your date about the things you hear would be really nice! And, if you’re not dating, and able to go on friend dates, this would be a cool way to get closer with other villagers and learn a bit more about them and the history of the two towns.

One funny thing I noticed with these, however, is that ALL available bachelors or bachelorettes will ask to go on dates if you’re close enough- regardless of who you’re dating or even if you’re married. There is a jealousy system in place, where you’ll get the cold shoulder if you rack up too many jealousy points, and you have the choice to apologise or make it worse when they confront you with it. It’s a bit weird that people would still ask me on dates and get jealous after I was married. Like… Dude, you were at my wedding. There’s the occasional dialogue from other villagers that comments on married life, so it’s definitely not a secret. you KNOW I’m married, but still get pissy when I go on a date with my husband? It’s so silly, and that’s another point where I feel like a friend date system (that’s implemented with care) could resolve that strange point.

Of all the mechanics in this game, one that I simultaneously love and loathe is the filth on big livestock. First of all, I love that it’s such a clear indicator of when my animal is getting dirty, and if I leave it for too long they start to get filth clouds and flies following them. On the other, goddamn they get dirty so quickly. I don’t want to keep washing them every day, its a massive time sink and can be quite frustrating- especially when you’ve got a full barn with half a dozen cows, some sheep and alpacas. If it wasn’t as frequent, that’d be better, cause I don’t really care for the upkeep if I’m being honest. I just appreciate that it’s one of the only things that is communicated very clearly in the game. And, while we’re on the topic of bothersome things regarding the animals, the frame rate goes to hell when all the livestock are outside. It shouldn’t cause the game to nearly crash just by having all the animals outside, and it’s really annoying trying to milk your cow when you’re going at 1fps with massive slowdown. It’d be helped if the dogs and cats you train to herd them don’t cling to you and follow you wherever you go. I don’t really care if it’s cute or how pets act in real life (cause I know, my cats routinely come bother me for head scratches and cuddles while I’m writing these), but it’s really frustrating when you’re trying to pet your livestock and keep picking up 3 dogs in the process. Oh, oh, and one more thing, I grew up with the original DS version of this game, but played the 3DS remake for this; and while there’s not really any changes, the one change is this petting minigame for your livestock. While the livestock is out in the fields, you can sometimes see a little petting symbol above them, and interacting with them while that symbol is playing will launch the minigame. IT SUCKS. Like, yes, you can get extra hearts quickly through this minigame, but it goes on just a little too long, and would routinely crash my game when my black sheep wanted a pet. If the game automatically ended when you reached full hearts, instead of waiting for the timer to run out, that’d improve it- but this is ultimately an unnecessary addition and there’s no way to turn it off. Blehhhhh. You get so much more bang for your buck when farming livestock, but all this faff makes the crop growing seem so much simpler in comparison. I love that you can dig a trench for your crops, which allows you to place fertiliser at one end and it will fertilise the whole row, same with watering! There’s still a massive slowdown if you try to water a particularly large trench, but it goes back to normal when the animation is finished, unlike the animals, who still exist on the screen regardless.

Onto something I genuinely love about this game – the graphics. The style of the game is very cute, with a lot of the pre-rendered backgrounds having a painterly quality to them. The sprite art on the characters is also nice, even if it’s a bit of a generic anime style. I enjoyed seeing how the landscapes changed in each season, and seeing the little decorations put up during festivals is a fun touch. Pair this with the pleasant soundtrack, and it is such a nice, calming atmosphere to lose yourself in as you forage and farm.

Looking at this game more in-depth, it seems there’s a lot about it that becomes frustrating. However, I truly love this game. Within these weird flaws is a really cute game that I enjoy immensely, I just wish it was a little better so I could get more out of it. I deliberately pushed further than I ever played as a kid; I got so far that my animals started dying of old age LMAO. I would recommend playing with the fogu guide, as that was a lifesaver and clearly spelled out some of the vague things the game doesn’t elaborate upon. If you’re someone who likes farm sims, and hasn’t played this, I think that if you take into consideration how bloated it gets, you’ll probably enjoy this one! For at least the first two to three years. Lol.

Bluebell Town

Konohoana Town

Winter Theme

~~~

Story of Seasons, 3DS

Oh boy. I got addicted.

I really should stay away from farm sims, huh?

This game is the spiritual successor to the Harvest Moon series- or, more accurately, what Harvest Moon rebranded to after the split from Natsume. Look into it if you’re interested, I don’t particularly feel like rehashing the history for this write up… These take long enough to write as it is, and I’m just sharing my opinions!

Anyway, this is such a fun and pleasant game!

I’ve been struggling with general life and health issues this year, and I can say that playing this was a great distraction for a few months. It was genuinely refreshing to play a farm sim that was new to me while still feeling like I knew what in store for me. What I found funny about this, was that the sound design is the same as Tale of Two Towns. That was very strange to hear after just giving up on ToTT for being too much of a slog – at least the sound design is pretty good lmao.

The intro to this game is straight to the point, which I appreciated. You’ve been chosen to move to this small farming town and start working on your own lot to help boost the local economy. For your first week, you stay with your neighbour- an elderly woman who knows everything there is to know about farming -and she teaches you the basics. It’s a great safety net to slowly get introduced to the mechanics you’ll need to know, and allow you the time to get acquainted with everyone in town.

The big change for this game is that you will exclusively be selling your goods in the market, which will grow to have a rotating list of vendors to buy and sell from. This is an interesting idea, and is certainly one way to get a basic understanding of a supply and demand economy; but I’m not sure how I feel about it. Because of the focus placed on this market, there’s no shipping bin for you to just sell items at a base price. A few years into the game, you can unlock a personal stall at the market, which I suppose is the replacement for the shipping bin; but you don’t get that until you’ve been well and truly playing for a while. In the beginning, it’s a little rough when you only have one or two vendors- if you miss them and then hit a dry spell, you’ll just have to deal with a bulging inventory until you can sell everything! It gets better once you unlock more vendors, and I assumed as such when playing, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling a bit off-putting initially. Once you start unlocking more vendors, though, it becomes surprisingly in-depth. There’s a strategy to the market, especially when a particular vendor is paying extra for select items or when completing requests. If you sell an abundance of one type of thing, the price for it will drop- which I thought was an interesting application of supply and demand. I’m unsure how easily understandable this all is to a younger audience, as despite my math and business skills being subpar, I am still an adult with a lived understanding of the concepts at play here, and not the intended younger demographic.

I can say that once you get a grasp on all the mechanics at play, this game was a blast! I think my hyperfixation on this game lasted until about halfway through winter of the first year – which is pretty good mileage! The addiction lasted much longer than that, as I genuinely enjoyed playing this game over a couple of real life months. In the first two years, I didn’t really feel bored or at a loss for things to do. There’s a decent pace to the events held within each season- and with limited stamina and particular days to meet with vendors and actually earn money, there’s loads to cram into each day! Will I spend the day working on my farm, will I head to town to talk with my friends, forage for much needed materials and supplies, go bug catching or fishing, even swim in the river to dive for fish or rarer items like gemstones? There’s a lot to do, and it often reminded me of Animal Crossing. The diving when you swim in the river functions the same way, and with the ability to decorate and rearrange furniture in your house and certain areas of town; I couldn’t help but feel it was an interesting mish-mash of Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon.

To help demonstrate progress, there are tourist NPCs that wander the village square and comment on the town and it’s reputation. Once you start to attract more vendors and build on it’s popularity, there will be more of these tourists wandering around, which makes the town noticeably more lively. In the beginning when the town is pretty sparse, they just complain about it being a small country town- but with just one or two more stalls, you not only see a handful more tourists wandering about, but a shift to a more optimistic mindset towards the town too. Dialogue for local villagers will change depending on the reputation of town also, commenting on the popularity of the place and the kinds of wares available in new vendor’s stalls. This is a subtle thing, but I really appreciated it, as it did make it feel like there was a tangible difference happening to the town as I put effort into it. Villagers will comment if you haven’t said hello in a while, and sometimes I came across little events with certain characters, which adds to that local community feeling. I also found it quite amusing that the villagers will tell you in varying ways to leave them alone if you try to talk to them while they are eating. I was also surprised that once the town became more popular, more villager NPCs moved to town- ones you could date! AND, TWO OF THEM HAPPENED TO BE FROM TOTT!? You have no idea how surprising it was to see my husband Cam rock up to town, but his name was Kamil now. And Reina moved to town as well, though her name is… Licorice. I’m so sorry they did you dirty like that Reina... That is a fucking dogs name, not a name for a cute girl...

The visuals of the game are pretty nice, too. I think the watercolour inspired look to the character portraits is nice, though I think the in game 3D models creep me out a bit… There are plenty of QOL additions to this game that I really appreciated; my favourite being the crop fields having a little text bubble pop up labelling what crop it is, and crops automatically went into my pockets when I harvested them!! However, I’m not keen on the UI of the inventory, if I’m being honest. I understand that a scrolling list menu is pretty utilitarian, and keeps the UI clean and simple, but I think I’d prefer to have a more visual inventory so that it’s super clear what I am selecting. There are pictures and more details on the top screen when you select something from the list menu on the bottom screen, but ehhh… It didn’t hit for me, and I often felt a little lost when scrolling through the monotonous design. Nitpicky, I know, but I feel this is a slight downgrade.

There were other little things that became apparent the more I played, and unfortunately culminated into a mindless and sometimes frustrating grind. In the animal sheds, there is a feed dispenser and a treat dispenser, but they are so close together that often when I was trying to grab a treat, I’d end up with a handful of feed, and vice versa. Treats also had to be pulled out one by one, which is just silly when you have a lot of animals to give treats to. My solution to that was to just keep treats in my pocket at all times and map them to a quick select menu; but I would’ve preferred the treats be held somewhere else in the shed so that they’re not accidentally picked instead of feed, and that the treats automatically pulled out the amount corresponding to the number of animals in the shed (ie, if you have 6 cows, you go to the treat dispenser and it will pull 6 out for you in one go- instead of you having to pull out six individual treats).

When feeding animals outside, small animals like chickens and rabbits need to have food placed on a crafted feeder plate, but big animals like cows, sheep, llamas, alpacas and camels can eat directly from grass you’ve planted within their paddocks. This is great in theory, as you can fence off a paddock of your own choosing, and place grass and feeders within so that the animals can eat outside. What sucks about this is that I found the big animals would all crowd around one tile of grass, despite me growing 2-4 for them at any given time. Animals would get stuck on each other, and when I’ve got 16 big animals in the paddock all trying to eat from one tile of grass (which I believe is only 9 servings) it’s just a huge mess. Especially when I’m trying to go around and milk all my cows or shear the sheep and such. In the early days of the game, you’ll need to manually put each animal outside, and bring them inside at night, otherwise you risk stressing out the animal, making them sick, or skipping their produce the next day. When you’ve got a lot of animals, this takes up a lot of time, so its handy to buy dogs when they become available and let them herd the animals! This was present in ToTT, which I loved, but I often found that my dogs would glitch and get stuck in a default pose, or sometimes they’d seem fine and just never herd the animals back inside for bedtime. I had no problems when I only had a few animals in the sheds to herd, but when each shed can hold up to 8 animals, and you can have two small and two big animal sheds on each screen for a total of 32 in each half of your farm (not counting the dogs and cats!) there’s a lot of animals to take care of, and that’s when I noticed the most glitching out. Training the dogs isn’t so bad though, as you can use your whistle to train them for the actual herding, and playing with them by throwing a bone will increase friendship points with them quicker, which will allow them to herd more animals. What sucks a bit about this, is that you cannot play with the pets inside their kennel. Their huge kennels that are perfect for playing fetch. Especially on a rainy day when you have the extra time to play with them cause you’re not watering crops. C’mon. I want to play with the dogs. Another thing that was a bit upsetting was that the cats are next to useless here. You can’t train them to do anything, they’ll just laze around your farm (which is fair enough), but unlike in ToTT, they don’t herd small animals. No, they just randomly collect items here and there. Maybe they’ll give you a stick. Or some stones. If you build up your relationship with them, they may get gems and other valuables, but I found this to be quite basic and unnecessary when getting more dogs to help herd my animals was more immediately useful.

I wish the livestock animals had the same visibly dirty system that ToTT had, it’s one of the only things that was a genuine downgrade compared to that game for me. The animals don’t look dirty, the only visual indicators you get are for when shearable animals are ready to be shorn, as you can see the fluff. If the animal is filthy, you just get a little cranky symbol from them every now and then, or you’ll find out that they’re stinky when you pet them. This isn’t great, as you can miss that when you’ve got a lot of animals to keep track of, but letting them be too dirty for too long will increase their stress and risk them running away or getting sick. When you’ve got 30+ animals to take care of, you don’t want to waste your whole day, every day, brushing them all when there’s other important things to get done. Another thing I miss is the trench digging you could do for your crops. In this game, each tile you till will result in 9 of that crop (ie, plant one potato, you’ll reap 9) – which is awesome! I just think it would’ve been nice to have some trenches or sprinklers to assist with watering, as despite the process not being too bad, especially when you’ve upgraded your watering can, I was pretty tired of it by the end of the third year.

The worst part of this game is the bloated requirements to unlock stuff. This issue is still here, and I’d argue that it’s worse than ToTT! Not only are the requirements vague and hidden, they’re also outrageously stupid. To unlock more vendors, you need to ship a certain amount of particular items- which on it’s own makes sense. I appreciated that some of the villagers encouraged this idea too, but they don’t give any indication for how much of each thing you’ll need to ship. Looking at online guides to help, I was outraged with the numbers. I just think that if the NPCs are already hinting at it to me, there could also be a note book or quest log tab where the player has something like "maybe shipping X amount of Y will work?" so that it's clearer. If I, as an adult, looking up guides to assist, found this confusing and convoluted- I don't think there's much hope for the intended younger audience to see the whole game... Like, saying I should try selling various items is one thing- but trying to figure out with no further clues that what it actually wants is 500 seeds, 10,000 processed goods and 15,000 cooked recipes as just SOME of the criteria for ONE of the two remaining vendors to unlock.... Jesus. I was already very lost at why I unlocked cats but no dogs yet- turns out I needed to fulfill certain requirements, one of which is 30 seperate offerings to the goddess… Just to unlock dogs.

I don't have a problem with the game wanting and encouraging you to use it's systems to unlock more things, it's the fact that it's so vague and bloated I have an issue with. This year’s replay of ToTT was the furthest I’ve ever gotten, and I still ended up giving up before I could unlock everything because it became a slog to get through. Even in this game, where it’s paced much better, it’s still awful! At the beginning, you have the option to play on easy or normal mode, and I chose normal thinking that the differences would be things like managing the animals and crops being made easier, so I didn’t need that. Nope, as I understand it, the only real difference is the number of things to export. And even then, the numbers are still ridiculously high! This is the main gripe I have with this game, its a real dampener on the experience and it makes the time sunk into it with the cost vs reward pitiful. I made it to partway through year 5 or 6 before I gave up, because I was no longer having fun and the grind felt awful. That far into it, I should have unlocked all the basics, like EVERY VENDOR. There will be more cosmetics and recipes and blueprints to buy with new vendors, and when you get close with each vendor, they’ll give you an animal that will either live in the wild areas outside of town, or on the safari once you’ve unlocked it. This is nice! But why do I need to export arbitrarily large amounts of things without any clear indication of how I’m doing!? When a new vendor comes to town, they have a little cutscene introducing themselves with the mayor- why not have them come to town to investigate, or send a letter, or just the mayor suggesting it clearly to you; and say that they’re only interested if certain requirements are fulfilled. That way, it gives a clearer goal, something tangible to refer back to (either have the goal in the same tabs as the requests, or go ask the mayor at town hall) and a much easier time achieving it. There’s potential here, just executed poorly.

I don’t really know how to link this, but there were some other strange things I noticed about this game. The start button does nothing… you have to tap a button on the touch screen to pause the game. I don’t understand why the start button wasn’t good enough, especially when it’s not used for anything else? Also, I don’t know if it’s a quirk of the game, or just my copy, but when planting tress, the softwood and hardwood seeds are swapped. I plant softwood, and I’ll get hardwood, vice versa. Was very weird, so I just planted both to make sure I got some of the tree I wanted, as I’d inevitably forget and confuse myself lmao. There was also never enough fertiliser sold at the shop, and never enough weeds and twigs to find while foraging to turn into fertiliser. I wish it was easier to get a hold of more, as I seemed to have an excess of literally everything else at that point.

But, enough bitching- there’s an auto text mode during festivals and you can skip certain cutscenes! YIPPEE!! A lot of the gripes that I had with ToTT feel like they’ve been directly addressed and renovated in a nice way for this game. There are more things to do throughout the month- there are festivals and competitions regularly enough that it gives you a chance to work on your animals, crops, and fashion sense. The characters feel generally nice to get to know, and cutscenes aren’t just limited to the date-ables you’re romancing- there are farm rivals that will trigger cutscenes as well, and I played a little with one of the kids and she had a little social special event too. The town really felt so much like a small community when you know that getting closer with people can trigger cutscenes and events that show you more about them or your relationships with each other!

The maker sheds are not only easier to unlock, but more varied- there’s plenty of things you can do to the items you grow and gather, like creating more things for your farm, decorations for your house and the town, or even cool outfits and accessories. Did you know that if you equip certain combinations of accessories, you’ll get stat boosts? I didn’t until I read through the guides, and I equiped a combination that regenerated stamina periodically – it was SUPER helpful! Decorating your house, farm and town is fun too. I put it off for a bit because I was focused on the grind to try unlock all the vendors, but when that was seeming pointless, I built a bunch of cool furniture and made some lovely little settings with cute plants and nice decorations. Tourists will sometimes stand close to the decorations and comment on them too, which was a pleasant surprise. And, earlier I mentioned the safari- you can travel to it to forage for rarer items, or whack the mining point to get gems and minerals for upgrading tools and crafting cool furniture and accessories. I really meant it when I said that it didn’t feel like I was running out of things to do!

The music is generally nice too! I really loved that each season has both a day and night theme, I appreciated that after playing so many farming games that just have nighttime ambience when it gets dark. The summer theme for this game is also my favourite, its so pretty and I’d play it on my phone over other themes I didn’t like as much lmao. I was sad to hear the autumn theme was a bit strange and I didn’t like it as much, cause usually the autumn themes are some of my favourites from farming games- and although the winter theme was better, it got repetitive in a negative way real fast. Thats not so bad though, considering there are so many cute songs in this game (I think it’s gotta be double what ToTT had soundtrack wise!) I know for certain that when I hear the spring and summer themes from this game, I’ll have that fun nostalgic feeling when I listen. There is also a music festival held once a year, and in it they’ll play little medleys of songs from older Harvest Moon games – which was such a cute easter egg for older players!

In closing, I’m not sure what else to say, really. I love farming games, and this was a nice reminder as to why. I’m very glad to have played it, and although I still have a lot of gripes with it, I had a lot of fun. Which, that’s the point of a farming game, right?

Summer Theme

Flower Event 1

Competitive Festival

~~~

Nintendogs, DS

I wasn’t originally going to write this the following entry, as these were short playthroughs compared to what I normally self impose for these lists. But, well, here we are. This and the next entry are kind of a call and response to each other too, btw, as I played them both at the same time to compare for the sake of my own curiosity.

Nintendogs was the very first game that I had for my little ice blue DS lite back in the day. I had just turned nine, and this was the very first console that was mine. I had a childlike obsessions with dogs, and this was before I found out how cool cats were! I would ask all the time if my parents could get a big dalmatian with a red leather collar so I could name him spotty. It was a dream I’d held onto since I was two, and my parents were definitely sick of me asking, so it was VERY exciting that I got a dog game, and not only that, but the dalmatian version!

Initially, I just started playing this as a half hearted nostalgia trip- it’s hard when you’re inbetween fixations and NOTHING is fulfilling any entertainment or stimulation needs. It was cute to revisit this game, and I got pretty far, considering I fudged stuff a bit to make it a little more interesting. After all, I’m not 9 with endless time after school and homework was finished!

There’s plenty of things to do with your virtual dogs, you can feed and bathe them, dress them up and play, take them on walks or train them to win competitions! The only ways to make money in this game are to win competitions, or sell items. Good thing you can both find items and train your dogs for 2/3 of the competitions while out walking! While on a walk, if you head to an empty park and have a frisbee, you can practice throwing with your dog until they get better at catching and returning to you. You can also head to the gym where you can train your dog to go through various agility equipment, unlocking more as you progress through the agility trials. Both of these are free to visit, only relying on your dog having enough stamina to make it to these locations and back home again- and like the training at these locations, your dogs stamina will build over time the more you spend time with them.

The other competition is the obedience trials, which is best practiced at home. Training your dog to do tricks utilises the built in microphone, requiring you to direct your dog to the trick you want it to do and then calling out the command. I quite liked these when I was a kid, and while I didn’t get as far this time around, I really appreciate that this game will teach you how to train your dog for everything required to win the trails, but also lets you create new and unique tricks for your dogs. I so vividly remember sneaking onto the computer (I wasn’t allowed to use it without permission, and especially not to use the internet unattended lol) and looking up forums on how to teach my dog particular tricks. If you manage to find and buy a keyboard, you can teach your dog to bark short melodies on command, or even teach it to stand or do flips if you and your dog are particularly close! Some tricks are much harder to teach, obviously, but I enjoy that the game literally gives you an easy guide on how to take care of and train your dog in all aspects, while also giving you the freedom to play around and see what else you can get up to while you play.

As the competitions are so integral to the game, you’ll quickly meet the commentators Ted Rumsworth and Archie Hubbs, who were gay married in my head before I knew what gay marriage really meant. While the commentators can drag on, they’re actually pretty funny and certainly have a charisma about them, working perfectly as a silly jokester who feels more down to earth, and a more straight laced professional who takes those jokes seriously. You can even run into Archie on walks, with his friendly Shiba Inu. He often has nice or silly things to say to you, and sometimes other neighbours will gossip about him, talking about that time he apparently ate a dog biscuit.

There’s also a plethora of items and accessories to find while you play, including but not limited to weird and interesting toys, a Mario Kart RC toy collection, musical records, lost shoes to chew on and funny hats. The musical records were particularly fun for me, and though I didn’t play enough this time around to collect them all, I have great memories with these. You start off with just one white record, and this is one that you can record your own sounds on and replay, with half and double speeds available. I remember mucking around with it as a kid and finding out you can layer recordings on top of each other, and if you record at half speed, it’ll sound like a chipmunk when played at normal speed- so of course I had to make an elaborate record about an alien landing on Earth and telling everyone to go away. Some records, like the nap time and marching band one will have effects on your dogs, such as getting them all sleepy or marching around the room together. There are also four ‘secret’ records you can find that are produced by our very own Archie Hubbs, and these would incorporate snippets of your own record as a kind of remix. You would not believe how funny it was when I showed my sister my version of Giant Socks ft. Fart Noises, you just had to be there…

The visuals are about as sharp and crunchy as you’d expect from a DS game, but I love them. This low poly look with pixelated edges is quite charming to me, and although it’s not the most spectacular graphics ever made, there is a lot of care and detail put into the dog models and all the items and environments you come across. When you save up enough to buy new looks for your house, there are so many gorgeous interiors to choose from once you unlock them all! The soundtrack is similarly iconic, I pretty sure everyone likes the bath time track! There’s also plenty of Mario references throughout the toys and accessories, so it can be quite fun to see what you can collect when you get closer with your dogs.

Unfortunately, as I played on my own for a few weeks, I couldn’t partake in street pass, but you’ll just have to trust me when I say it was pretty good back in the day. You can choose a pup, maybe choose something from your inventory to give as a gift, and close your DS as you went out. I’d often exchange gifts with my sister as we compared trainer level scores, and it was fun meeting with other kids at church on the weekend and showing off all the cool tricks and items we had.

The only real downside to this game is that it takes place in real time, but I don’t find that too detrimental. This is definitely a game meant to be played in short bursts, and as a pet sim, if you’re not all that interested in just hanging out with your dogs after you’ve maxed out the amount of competitions and tricks to teach in a day, I don’t think you’ll get much more out of it. What you see is pretty much what you get, there aren’t really any hidden mechanics that’ll drastically shake up the game, you just buy dogs and hang out with them.

I highly recommend this if you’re looking for a quintessential DS game to play, or just like dogs. It’s cute, has it’s own charm, and is quite frankly iconic. And it has middle-aged man yaoi

Bath Time

Walking the Dog

Friendly Whiff Record

~~~

Nintendogs + Cats, 3DS

I never owned this game growing up, but my sister did. She never played it, so sometimes I’d borrow it and try to play, forgetting each time why I’d put it down previously. This game is a pitiful attempt at recapturing the magic of the first Nintendogs, adding features that no one asked for, and changing or even removing the elements that made the first game work so well.

Lets start with the biggest and worst change, in my opinion. You can’t physically pet your pets. Now, I know what you’re thinking, it’s a pet sim, surely you can pet it? And while, yes, technically, you can, all physical interactions with your pet are via a silhouetted shadow of your pet on the touch screen, while your actual pet is on the top screen. WHY!?

Well, I know why. They wanted to utilise the oh so epic 3D visuals and to do that, they have to keep the pets on the top screen. BOOOOOOOOOO

This design philosophy that prioritises the tech over the actual gameplay is the poison that killed this game, in my opinion. I do not even play with the 3DS slider on because it strains my eyes real quick lol, yet everything important is placed on the top screen to utilise this feature. The bottom screen is delegated to being a permanent menu screen or just a silhouette of your pet. By segregating this tactile element, it’s not only making it difficult to interact intuitively with your pets, but it just plain ol’ feels crap. In real life, when I want to pet my cats, I read out and pet them. In the first Nintendogs, when I want to pet my dogs, it’s really easy to figure out that petting them with your stylus while they’re on the touch screen is how you do it. I just don’t think there’s any reason in defence of making this a hand-eye coordination thing with the silhouette dogs, like. It’s yucky.

Because of these changes, the trails have changed a lot too. The agility trial is now a lure course, where you turn a crank wheel and lead your dog down a race track with lure lines. This is… painfully simple; despite there being elevations to the trails as you progress- like cross-crossing lines and hurdles to jump -it lacks any sort of direction or skill between you and your dog. You just… turn a crank, and honk the horn if you need to recapture your dog’s attention. Turn it just fast enough that they run at their fastest, but not so fast that your dog will lose interest and not so slow enough that your dog will pounce and play with the lure. It’s not complex or even interesting, if I’m being honest, and you just make sure to take your dog to the gym a few times and buy good lures that can go fast and it’s almost a guaranteed win. The disc trials, by comparison, are much more complex. In the previous Nintendogs, the only thing that really changed was the minimum required points needed to qualify for rankings. Here, the further you get, the more things get introduced. There will be sand patches that slow down your dog, and highlighted point zones that give an additional boost to your score. In theory, I get how this is upping the stakes and making it more challenging to win, but it all feels like a moot point as the disc feels so floaty and garbage to throw. It needs a certain weight and spin to it so that you can guess how hard and far to throw for certain points, but nothing I did seemed to work. Why did they change the physics here? The disc was perfectly fine previously, and these new challenges might even be interesting if you could actually direct and throw the disc. The other big gripe with these competitions is that your competitors are on the same screen as you. Previously, you competed by yourself, meaning that if you fucked up, it was on you and your dog, no one else. Now? Other dogs can get in the way on the agility course or disc range. I get that it feels more like a competition, but aren’t we here for the skill demonstration? The most egregious is the obedience trial, as you can’t even compete if you don’t have the AR Cards that came with the 3DS. Like… HELLO!? It’s lucky that it worked by just opening a PDF scan of them on my phone, but a core part of the game like this shouldn’t be tied to something external like that, just for a gimmick. They don’t actually do anything to enhance the competition, they aren’t a core mechanic in how you train your dog, it’s just an awkward thing you have to sit in front of your 3DS while you play! They don’t even do much when you play with your pets at home, the only thing you can do with them is scan them in and then your pet will wear an accessory based on whatever card you scan… but only while you’re in the scanning mode. IF you are going to implement something like this, I think it’s only fair if you get a rare collectable in game thats a fun reward for scanning it in, something more tangible for the effort, yknow? Not this dumb gimmicky shit that’s forced in cause they have to. (I don’t even think there should be stuff like what I just suggested if I’m being honest, the LoZ:SSHD Zelda amiibo is the perfect example of.. wtf why?)

Also, the prize money is not that much, especially for coming first in the championship. I have a feeling that this is due to the fact that you can enter each competition three times a day, per dog, for a total of nine potential competitions - unlike the previous which was three entries total per dog, regardless of competition. While Ted is back to narrate the competitions, it’s clear that they got the feedback of there being too much text to get through, so he’s barely a presence at the start and end, doing nothing more than the formalities of it. I definitely get that it could get tiresome to tap through all the text, but the text was flavourful at least, and if they had more banter between Ted and Archie here, it could’ve helped. Even just having something like… press and hold A to skip. That would literally fix it. And… ARCHIE ISN’T HERE. ITS JUST TED ALONE ITS SO SAD. AND I DON’T LIKE THAT EVERYONE IS MIIS NOW, IT WAS FUN THAT THE ONLY FACES YOU SEE IN THE FIRST NINTENDOGS WERE THE PIXELATED FACES OF TED AND ARCHIE, AND NOW ITS JUST MIIS EVERYWHERE. YOU DIDN’T NEED TO SEE THE PHYSICAL NPC PERSON AS YOU WALKED THE DOG IN THE FIRST GAME, IT KINDA IMPLIED THAT THEY ARE ALSO PLAYING ON THEIR DS JUST LIKE YOU CAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE AN IN-GAME MODEL EITHER. WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKK.

MIIS ARE COOL AND ALL, BUT THIS FELT LIKE IT WAS TRYING WAY TOO HARD! The Wii/3DS era is rightfully iconic, but this just missed the mark. I dunno how else to describe it, but there isn’t that much charm in walking through town and coming across miis- it was fine the way it was in the first nintendogs! The music as well… it just feels like it’s trying too hard to have baked in nostalgia by using the classic wii/mii sounds we all like without bringing anything to the table. Archie technically appears as one of the cashiers of a store you can enter on walks, but I didn’t recognise him cause he’s a mii and he got a bit whitewashed :/

The walks as well… UGH. There was something very nice and deliberate about planning out the walk beforehand and then going out. You can pick where you wanna go, if you wanna try to get the ? Icons that will either be a present or a neighbourhood dog, it was nice. I also liked that it was 2D sidescroller style walking in that game, here it is point of view behind the dog as it runs forward for the EPIQUE 3D GRAFICKS. You don’t get to plan the route, and I disliked how certain spaces were only in certain areas. The more you walk your dog, the more you’ll unlock places like the town streets, mountain streets, beach streets, ect. In town, there is a gym, in the mountain and beach there are public parks, but to get to them you have to catch a sign asking if you wanna go to that section while you’re on the walk. It’s more spontaneous, and I found myself frustrated. If I wanted to go to the gym, I had to make sure I went straight to town and after that, it’s straight home. If I want to go to the park, I have to make sure to get through at least two areas every time and not accidentally run past the park sign- and even then, you don’t know until you get there if there’s going to be another dog there who will muck up your training session. I don’t care, and its annoying for no reason, what was wrong with picking your path beforehand? If they insist on having these segregated areas, why not at least let me pick where I want to start? The only thing that is kinda ok, I guess, is that when you talk to neighbours and your dogs get along, they might invite you to come to the cafe or park with them to let the dogs play for longer. That’s cute, but most the time I don’t wanna do that cause the gym is right behind you and I won’t be able to access it if I go out with you now. UGH. At least there are little cones lines up that if you manage to get your dog to zig zag through them without touching any, you’ll get a gift- but the gifts are always recyclable materials to craft items later and it feels like salt in the wound for getting rid of the agility trails while reminding us that the dogs don’t control very well so its annoying doing the cones anyway!

The interiors you can buy are weird too- theres some nice looking ones to unlock but they all cost a certain amount. That on it’s own is fine, but theres the basic one you start off with that’s free, and then every time you change to one you have to pay. So if I bought the Japanese style interior for $1,000, then bought a different one but wanted to go back to the Japanese one, I’d have to pay $1,000 again. The build is instant, but like? Bruh? This is a bruh moment because in Nintendogs, once you bought a design, it was free to change back to it at any time- it just took a day or two irl to install. WHY WAS THIS CHANGED?

Even something as iconic as bath time isn’t that fun here. I dunno. This game just sucks. If washing the dog isn’t fun, what’s the point. There’s so many stupid changes that just says to me that they didn’t understand why the first one worked, and forced too many new gimmicks without testing to make sure that they were integrated well. Oh and the cats? Literally useless. You can’t take them on walks, and you can’t enter them in competitions. But Rads, I hear you say, real life cats are like that too! And to that I say: THERE ARE ALSO CAT COMPETITIONS IN REAL LIFE! The lure coursing feels much more like a cat thing than a dog one to me, and cats could be trained to go through obstacle courses or do a little dance like obedience trials. The competitions are an integral way to interact with your pet, they help to set goals for how you want to train them and measure your progress, and it is rewarding to win something with them after you put all the effort in. If you have a cat here, I want to play with it, not just throw a toy at it and have it look at me. I have cats in real life that will just stare at me blankly when I try to play and throw toys at them, cmon.

I can’t even be bothered to talk about the other stuff in depth, you get the idea.

This shit sucks.

Lets Go For A Walk [Daytime]

BARC

Cafe Petrov

~~~

Katana Zero, PC

Katana Zero is a relatively unique game; it’s a 2D sidescroller, but not quite a platformer- it has stealth elements, but is more focused on the mowing down of enemies to be a true stealth game. Either way, what you’ve got here is fun, especially once you start to understand the game and how it works.

One massive thing I appreciate is how the narrative elements are so entangled with the gameplay elements. The story revolves around Zero, a bathrobe-wearing, katana-weilding, samurai-film-loving swordsman who is tasked with killing certain individuals, leaving no survivors behind. To assist with these missions, he’s given a dose of chronos- a drug that alters the user’s perception of time, allowing them to slow down and rewind time through precognition. The more missions you go on, the more you slowly find out about the drug and circumstances surrounding it, along with revealing more hints towards Zero and his past.

As he is an amnesica, the only things we know about him is that he fought in the war, as evidenced by his service medal- and that he is a highly skilled, if socially withdrawn, killer. In between missions, he must attend therapy sessions, where he will be briefed on his next target and given a new dose of chronos. There are also little sequences where he befriends a young neighbour girl, and various other one-off sections with colourful characters around town. These all function like interactive cutscenes, meaning that there isn’t much time spent idly holding the controller and waiting for things to happen. You will be playing and making choices, even in quieter moments.

A real stand out factor of what makes this short game so memorable is the delivery. Not only in the gameplay and other details, which I will get to in a moment, but in the text itself! The text boxes have a timed delivery- with colours, animations and some sound effects for emphasis. This is AWESOME and really helps to demonstrate the tone of each conversation, accentuating the flavourful writing. Each character feels distinct in their presentation due to the way their text is literally presented, and when prompted, you get timed responses to choose from when in conversation. You’re given options for how you want to interact with others, from serious to humorous- even given the chance to interrupt people and really piss them off. The writing itself is quite enjoyable, as it knows when to be serious, and when to not take itself so seriously. In certain sections, you can even watch the conversations of certain enemies before they’re aware of your presence, which are quite entertaining to snoop on.

Into the gameplay itself, there is certainly a rhythm to it that takes a moment to fully understand- but once you do, it’s really satisfying. The big gimmick that ties into the narrative is the slo-mo - of which you have a limited amount of time to work in slow motion, which can be incredibly helpful when bum-rushing particularly tricky groups of enemies. The main skills you can utilise are a quick roll, which is practical and fun; melee items, which can be found and thrown across the levels; and your katana, which is a one hit kill for enemies, and can also help with extending jumps and dashes across the levels while you slash away. There’s also a crouch you can use to sneak around levels, but I did not use this often enough to really comment on. For the things I did use, however, I am quite pleased with the deceptive depth built into them. Melee objects seem simple, just pick up and throw; but depending on which item you’ve picked up, you can obscure yourself in a cloud of smoke, throw molotov cocktails or grenades at enemies- or at oil barrels, which was a personal favourite of mine -or simply rely on the tried and true reliability of throwing knives or other blunt impact objects to kill enemies or otherwise interact with the level. Sometimes, you’ll even come across melee that’s more special, like a flame thrower or remote detonation mine that can be used with more tactic.

The main method of killing will be via your katana, it is the name of the game, after all. Most enemies are one-hit kills, only requiring you be in range and slash at the right time to take them down. Some enemies will parry attacks with shields or melee weapons of their own, requiring two or more hits OR for a tactical roll to slash from behind. You can also parry the bullets shot at you if you time it right, flinging them back in the shooter’s direction for a nasty surprise. It’s simple, yet there are options for how you want to approach your enemies- meaning that you can’t blitz through with button mashing alone. You’ll want to pay attention while you learn through trial and error- as once you gain a bit of confidence in your understanding, you may want to experiment with baiting groups of enemies to your advantage- I sure liked playing with this! If an enemy shoots their gun upon seeing you, it’ll alert all the enemies in the immediately surrounding areas to flock to where they heard the gunshot. This can be a pain in the ass if you’re caught off guard, BUT, if you can adapt, or even plan to have this happen, you can wait for enemies right by the door they’ll appear from and slice them straight away. This is the kind of thing I think will seperate a lot of players’ experiences with this game, as the game gives this incentive to get good while being quick and nimble- so if you’re up to the challenge of bettering yourself through the way you behave and interact with the levels, it’ll definitely change the way you feel about the combat! I can tell you personally, just from playing through roughly 3-4 times, my first play that was largely brute force based vs my most recent where I prioritised efficiency and dexterity felt so different- AND BOTH FUN!

While this may sound a little overwhelming, especially when I tell you that you WILL be dying often, the game isn’t discouraging as it allows a quick respawn at the start of the room you’re in- meaning you can try again almost instantly without ruining the flow of gameplay. One of my biggest critiques of the game is, due to how fast paced everything is, I often found myself losing Zero amongst the flurry of guns and katanas, which mucks me up a lot. The only detriment to it being so fast, especially upon respawning, is this. Sometimes I’d get stuck for a second and keep dying on loop at the beginning of a level because my human brain and eyes were lagging behind and unable to physically process the rush of everything going on. This user error was the only thing stopping the experience from otherwise being seamless, so make of that what you will. I can say that I DID get better the longer I played, but I seemingly reset after putting down the game each time. It’s a great indicator for when I was getting too tired to play properly, as it was incredibly quick at pointing out through the rapid fire of stupid deaths when I’d just lost the knack for the session. One thing to counteract this is that there is a plethora of customisable setting within the menu. I had my friend Nika help me adjust everything so that I could play with minimal strain to my eyes, and it was greatly appreciated! I even joked that the tell of a great game is when the settings menus were as robust as the game itself- I’m not kidding when I say there’s a lot to customise! That is definitely the kind of accessibility within gaming I’m after; and I feel so perplexed that an indie game such as this can provide these options, while a large majority of AAA games barely let you remap buttons where you want.

Anyway, aside from the gameplay, the visuals and soundtrack are fantastic. There’s a distinct retro-dystopian-cyberpunk feel here, taking advantage of that tactile analogue feel of late 90s tech. There’s a branded focus on the cyan and magenta colours, which is super fun- but all the environments feel vibrant and detailed, even when they’re not pushing the saturation limits of your screen. You’re really able to see and appreciate the beauty of modern pixel art graphics here; the fluid animations make sprites feel so lively and full of character, there’s so many details in each level to appreciate, the dynamic lighting within levels is fucking gorgeous, and the level design was visually clear without being so in-your-face that it detracts from itself. Like, I noticed that during the levels as you walk through, theres a subtle glow around interactable elements, like floors and doors you can burst through. It’s not calling attention to itself in an obnoxious way, and honestly I find it hard to notice when you’re focusing on the action- but, if you’re ever feeling a little lost, the tiny glow as you get closer can really help steer players in the right direction- in a way that may even be subconscious when you’re not looking directly for it. In fact, I could say something similar for the early levels that teach you the foundations of this game as well. The tutorial sections do a great job of demonstrating the way it wants you to play; once you’re on your own- playing the real deal -I often felt as though there was an open dialogue between myself and the developers, the common tongue being this game. I love when games feel like a conversation in this manner, a back a forth between player and creator in a way that’s memorable- no matter how short the game is.

Pair this with an amazing soundtrack and some brilliant sound design, and you have yourself a winner! Seriously, you don’t know how conflicted I’ve been trying to pick my top 3 tracks here. Everything has a nice cohesion to it, while also being quite broad in sound. There’s a nice, almost vapourwave-esque style to most of the main level’s tracks- something fun and upbeat that showcases the beauty in synth music, and all without being too distracting from gameplay. There’s subtle changes in vibe depending on where you are in the game as well, so it’s not like you’ll ever get bored! And the light jazz sound in the quieter tracks brings a more subdued feeling without taking away any of that charm. I’m glad that the composers had the skill and confidence to pull these various moods together in the game through the music, as it allows for various emotional beats to play without feeling cheesy or abrupt. I already mentioned the sound effects that play during speech text; but the rest of the sound design is greatly appreciated in creating that atmosphere, along with auditory cues to help with gameplay. Even something as simple as the end of every level- where your objective has been completed and you have to walk back through the rooms with the carnage you left behind with nothing but the sound of your feet as you make your leave -is incredibly impactful.

For a game that is so fast paced, I was pleasantly surprised that it let moments just breathe. Walking back through levels, the sessions with the therapist, the nightly routines of watching the news and drinking tea before bed… Moments of reflection, forcing you to just sit and BE with the characters. You can’t avoid it, at least, not in the main story mode. It’s great. For those that don’t care as much about seeing the story in replays, or just want to challenge themselves, there’s a dedicated speedrun mode; and for those that bought the game on steam, theres an April Fool’s patch called Katana HERO, which is a frankly hilarious story of a spirit hunter who is trying to slay all the evil spirits. For something that’s notthedlcbro, there was a lot of effort put into the reskins and new dialogue that was very fun. I found Katana ZERO quite funny in certain moments already, HERO was just an enjoyable step further in that aspect.

I’ve been putting it off until now, but my other major critique is, in fact, with the story of this game. And it’s more of a half-hearted critique, as we are left with a vague twist and a lot of dangling threads that are setting itself up for a continuation. We know from the dev team that they are steadily working on a free DLC update, which is great to hear. However, I can’t help but feel that there could have been a way to keep this short story more self contained instead of relying on this update to tell all. There’s a billion and one examples of games that set themselves up to have a grand conclusion in the DLC or sequel, and end up falling short due to any number of factors- often the worst of which being the time between releases and the stagnating interest from fans as they wait. What we have here story-wise is special, don’t get me wrong, but I find myself being very cautious towards a DLC being able to truly clear up any questions and satisfactorily wrap up the narrative. I want to trust them, as they’ve delivered a great base game and April Fool’s patch, but I’ve experienced all too many games that fall short from things like this, and it’d be a massive shame if the overall experience is soured by leaving players on a puzzling ‘huh???’ for years before getting a conclusion that doesn’t quite live up to expectations. I think it is important to note that their progress on the DLC was likely interrupted due to the pandemic, and for an indie team I’m more than willing to wait as long as they need to get it out- these are just concerns I have, ones that more often than not can hit indie studios harder. I will say, that up until the very last chunk, the game had a fantastic pacing that I vibed with, great escalation and tangible stakes to drive the story, and very charismatic writing that I appreciated. The reveals and rapid fire of new perspectives upon the credits ARE interesting, and I’ve been thinking and talking about them for a while after playing- and that is something I’d like to give credit to. Despite the minor gripes I have, I was left with a great experience, one I’ll gladly replay through the years as I patiently await the continuation. The impact it’s imparted is already enough, as that’s what I’m usually looking for to validate the time sunk into any game that I play.

Lastly, I have no idea how to transition into this, but this game often reminded me of Donkey Kong Country 2 & 3. This game is not at all like DKC 2&3, and if you play either game expecting elements of the other, you will not find them- yet I consistently felt a distinctly DKC sense of familiarity. The way Zero yells when he dies sounds similar to the kremlings when you jump on them, the 2D level progression that’s not quite focused on platforming in a traditional sense yet still has undeniable platforming elements, the minecart section, the reticle aimed at you in the meat packing facility, the banging music and attention to detail… I DUNNO. IT JUST KEPT REMINDING ME OF DKC!? I want to stress that this is a good comparison, as I thoroughly enjoy both games- a lot of effort clearly went into both. ALSO I would enjoy more time with the minecart, it was really fun and way too short. I am a minecart level apologist for both DKC and KZ idc.

To wrap up, I absolutely see why Nika fell in love so hard with this game, and I’m glad I finally got the opportunity to try for myself. It was great to run my first playthrough with her watching, and I have enjoyed poking around and experimenting with the game myself. I feel like there’s plenty more I could say, but you get the picture, so I wont. I’ll just leave you with the only thing left to say-

R.I.P. Strong Terry, you’re lifting with Baby Jesus now...

Sneaky Driver

Breath of a Serpent

Delusive Bunker

Come and See

~~~

Marvel’s Spider-Man, PS4

This is a game that I’ve had on my shelf for a few years now, and I finally decided to give it a go. I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t really have an interest in playing, as I am so completely burnt out on the Marvel-ification of superheroes and also don’t really play these kinds of games much. I bought it because it was $18 on sale and it is one of my best friend’s favourite games. (The same friend who likes Odyssey… He should play better games, I am for reeeeeeeaaaaaaaal)

While the game isn’t that bad, I found myself incredibly bored and under stimulated with the repetitive nature of the gameplay. It does have it’s perks, (which is a massive one-up on Odyssey), and the saving grace of this game is it’s story. It took me a while to get into it, but once you’ve started to get a feel for everything and play past the tutorial sections, you start to see why people enjoy it. There’s a richness to it that has definitely been absent from the most recent entries in the MCU, and it was great to see a Spidey story that wasn’t the same ol’ Uncle Ben With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility spiel. We all know it, regardless of how much you know about Spider Man, and instead I would say it’s a genuine treat to see a Spidey (and Peter!) who have been at this for a while. There’s a lot of flavour text to help support this, through things like the in-game twitter parody, and collectables you find across the map, of which Peter will nostalgically comment on as you inspect them- I found that this did help to make the city feel like something that’s already been lived in, and not just starting up for the events of this game. The best demonstration of this, however, is the relationship between Peter and MJ. They’re exes who are just starting to rekindle their friendship as they cross paths and decide to team up and try to work together as events unfold.

You start the game by putting away Kingpin, and starting a domino effect that starts to put the city at risk. Without his mafia-style grip on the underbelly of New York, smaller criminal gangs are attempting to take over in the absence, which leads to trouble for our hero. There are three main stages to the story campaign, of which I felt the best was the first. While you swing around fighting crime and helping people, you’ll be able to tune into the JJJ livestreams which give an interesting, if vindictive, view of how the people view Spidey and related events- even if he seems a bit too fixated on him and comes up with some wild conspiracies.

I think most fans would say that swinging around as Spidey is the biggest draw to the game- though I’d argue that I found more fulfilment doing friendly neighbourhood activities. There are also various battles and boss battles along with select missions to be had around the map, so there is a lot to do. During the main story campaign, you will take part in scripted events AND play sections where you play as other characters- MJ and Miles. Playing these short sections, which are usually stealth oriented, was overall a nice change in perspective. It helped make the world feel just that little bit bigger and connect various main NPCs to Spidey and what you get up to. In between the three main phases of the campaign missions, there are various side missions and objectives to fulfil- such as various crime related missions where you infiltrate and take down baddies with the help of a local police chief, more environmentally focused missions provided by your friend Harry (who is absent for this game), and little quests given by NPCs in the world who need help from their friendly neighbourhood Spider Man.

There’s a lot going on here, and that is both to it’s benefit AND detriment. I enjoyed doing most of Harry’s eco missions; it not only varied things up with little, but provided a further reminder that Peter IS a scientist, and quite a clever one at that. Plus, you can’t be kicking butt allllllll day! It was also nice to help NPCs out when you could- but there were a lot of missions and quests that felt like copy paste jobs and I got tired of them real fast. In the overworld, while you swing around, you can come across crimes to stop, enemy bases to expose, and later on various little puzzles or skill challenges as you progress. These encounters were grindy and repetitive, and I found that once you’d gained an understanding of both how to enemies behaved and how the combat worked, it’s not actually that in depth! It kinda sucks, actually, because even if you only did encounters that were radioed in, there’s so many that even if you’re not aiming for 100%, you’d still spend a lot of time idly swinging around and doing the same old fights over and over. Encounters don’t feel challenging, they’re just hard because there’s six waves to fight through. Anyone who isn’t a boss is a copy paste from one of four variants of the same enemy. Guy. Guy with weapon. Guy with shield. Big guy. Sometimes you’d get a guy with a rocket launcher or a jetpack, but it’s nothing more than a garnish. I’d have hoped that it at least felt different to fight the different syndicates- the first third has you fighting a Chinese Mafia group, very organised crime based enemies. The second third is mainly escaped convicts after a break out, which is much messier with in-fighting and lack of organisation. And the final third has you fighting Sable Agents, a form of private military/mercenaries for hire who’ve run amuck, and have brute force and numbers on their side. If there were more variation in the feel of these different stages in the story shown through the way you needed to fight and take down these groups, I feel it would’ve helped immensely! But no, all three stages of the story have battles and enemies that are quite literally the same, but just reskins depending on which syndicate, with the Sable agents just ever so slightly different because they have jetpacks and armour. OoooOOoOOoooooh. So gaming. I think that if they were aiming for more of an organic feel with enemy encounters and the like, they should aim higher than for them to be set dressing to eventually ignore, and instead put effort into making battles not only varied and challenging, but enjoyable, too.

Even the most fundamental part of the game- the web slinging -felt fatiguing and tiresome early on. I guess it’s nice, but it didn’t feel too impressive to me. I found the controls rather sticky- pun intended -and felt like I had barely any control over the movement and direction. When I’d run up a building, Spidey felt like he was going all over the place instead of where I’m trying to get him to go. And don’t get me started on trying to get off a building once you start crawling or running across it- he’s stuck and I couldn’t find any way to get him off in a timely manner without resorting to button mashing! It sucked the most when I was in the middle of a car chase or other time sensitive manoeuvring and I’d get stuck on the corner of some dumb building – goodbye momentum! Fighting was also ass, as I’d often get stuck in corners when wall crawling or attempting some of the fancier move sets you unlock later on. I don’t really think it’s that great when so much of a AAA game made me feel like I had to resort to button mashing just to get out of the way…

If that wasn’t bad enough, during the more stealth oriented sections where you play as MJ or Miles, you don’t have access to much, if any, move sets; and have to get by with something much more limited. The stealth sections are ass, and I think people who genuinely praise these sections haven’t played other stealth games. I’m a relatively new appreciator of the stealth genre myself, but cmon, the stealth here is bare bones at best, and is infinitely better when you’re playing as Spidey compared to the mandatory sections with MJ or Miles! Crawling around, finding info and trying to escape unnoticed is so much more fun with Spidey, and although I understand the point of these sections is to demonstrate not only how powerful and skilled Spider Man is, but also how dangerous the enemies are- I just plain ol’ didn’t enjoy them! Some stealth scenes were more interesting than others- I mostly enjoyed creeping around Mayor Osbourne’s apartment – but as a whole, it is just so bare bones and not good enough to have made it to the final cut in my opinion. I don’t know what else they could do to make these more interesting, making more stealth based objectives for MJ and Miles to do during these sequences might be a start. Another thing might be to have more time playing as these characters in a non stealth context, but I don’t feel too solidly on either suggestion.

I’m clearly quite frustrated over these sections, but that’s because, to me, they concisely describe an issue that I have with this game. It’s trying too hard to be a jack of all trades, while being a master of none. So much of this game felt like obligatory game design choices, the safe ones you make because they’re popular and work and can be easily replicated in most AAA games. The very first note that I wrote down for this game was that the map reminded me of the botw map- bad. I don’t enjoy these pseudo open world games that try to put so much busy work in the overworld that doesn't actually amount to much, and it’s boasting points are mainly on the technical specs and not the experience of the game imparted on players. For a hero that’s defining characteristic that sets him apart from other heroes is the fact that he is a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, so much of this game felt about the big picture instead of the little guy. By having so much crap in the world over saturating Spidey’s downtime, it detracted from the feeling of helping the people of New York, and just felt like he was helping the city as a vague concept. Yes, fighting crimes and keeping the city in check is important, but let us spend more time at the FEAST Shelter so we can help out when we want, instead of limiting it to scripted story moments. Even if Peter can’t always get to the shelter, show us more of how Miles is doing once he starts volunteering his time there. And show us more of MJ please, she’s a very clever and interesting character, and to have most of her screen time being limited to shitty stealth sections or cutscenes was a bummer, especially because, although what we get of her is decent, it would’ve been a bit nicer to see more about how the actions of Spider-Man were affecting her work and personal life as well. I feel there plainly wasn’t enough time to get to know these characters, and that they were all severely lacking in those ‘filler’ moments – y’know, the ones that let us know more about these characters and their world when they’re not faced with life or death. Some comments here and there from Peter and MJ wasn’t enough, and in this department, even though I do think the story is solid and the best part about this game, it is too refined when it could’ve afforded to go a lot more in depth. Even things such as important moments regarding Aunt May or Doc Oc didn’t hit very hard for me because we barely spend any time with them- and what little time we DO spend with them is through whatever Peter is directly involved in. Having some time to cut away and SEE how the work Peter and Doc Oc are doing is DIRECTLY impacting the people they’re trying to help, and not just having some random guy show up when the product is nearly finished and the funding is cut. Let us KNOW how hard Aunt May is working in the FEAST Shelter without the director there, and what kind of a toll it’s taking, not only on herself but on the people she’s trying to help. I feel that it was in desperate need of more humanising moments for everyone, and not just Peter. It’s a video game, not a movie! Lean into the fact that there are so many more ways to demonstrate characters and settings through this interactive medium, a comic book character should be one of the easier things to adapt!

The visuals were fine, it’s a pretty standard PS4 game- but I noticed a lot of issues when playing, and some that would’ve been game breaking if not for auto saves. There were instances where enemies got stuck in walls or behind fences and were literally inaccessible to me, meaning that I couldn’t complete battle objectives because the battle was never won. There were also a few times where the camera puzzles set up by Black Cat just didn’t load correctly. The location had everything there to start the puzzle, except for the camera, so I couldn’t start anything until I swung around for a bit and came back, hoping it spawned in correctly this time. The worst example of this though, was that during one of the eco missions, I was supposed to redirect satellite dishes to relink them during a storm. Very simple mission, however, I was swinging around for over 40 minutes trying to figure out what the hell I was missing, because even though I’d linked up everything, the final part of the mission didn’t load in or whatever and I couldn’t complete the mission. It was so frustrating that it marked the end of that play session for me, and when I eventually went to restart the mission, it worked fine and was solved in under 5 minutes. For a game native to the PS4, it wasn’t optimised that well, which is a shame.

The audio was generally pretty nice as well, there’s a few nice tracks, but I don’t really feel that anything was stand out to me; other than the fact that there is a dynamic soundtrack thing going on. This means that when you’re just walking around, you’ll hear the city ambience in all it’s glory (including this cool easter egg). However, as soon as you start swinging, the bombastic track for epic cool spider guy starts playing, and can feel quite awkward when you abruptly jump into a song, especially when you didn’t intend to. The soundtrack has an overall orchestral feel, one that feels on a similar caliber to blockbuster movies, so while I didn’t personally connect with many of the songs, there’s not really anything bad to say about this soundtrack either.

In my final nitpicking, I’m going to get a bit more spoilery than I aim for these write ups. The final third and ending of this game sucked balls. Sable as the main antagonist for the endgame felt bland, and she had a rather abrupt change of heart at the end. I feel she would’ve been a stronger threat if she, and her men, were better not only narratively, but morally too. Having a private military for hire should’ve felt like a threat, and I can’t help but feel if they proved that they ARE better at Spidey’s job and really shaped public perception of him into being an amatuer and a menace, that would’ve been a morbillion times more interesting. By having them just be an oppressive, fascist-lite, military brute force that is just as corrupt and uncontrollable as you’d think it would be, it devalued all level of threat for me. Shouldn’t the main issue here be that Mayor Osborne hiring these guys is not only a smear campaign against Spidey, but something so effective after the main fuck ups at the start of the game that the people of New York are WELCOMING of this protection? I just found it cartoonishly over the top and too simple that the big military guys were arresting and locking up civilians for no real reason, looting them and kicking them out of their building, and otherwise wasting all their resources by focusing on Spidey and not, yknow, resolving crimes and other disputes. Fuck cops, but the very least they could’ve done is make it more obvious that the police can’t do anything anymore, as these guys are stepping in and taking over ALL aspects of life in the city. Having them stated to be crazy oppressive and whatever felt pretty watered down when they functioned exactly the same as the amateur but organised crime of the Masks in the first third, and exactly the same as the chaotic and brutish crimes of escaped convicts. The only tangible difference is that theres more physical layers to peel off Sable Agents when in combat: there’s more towers to pull down and armour to smack off – THATS IT. Part of what should’ve made Sable so much more of a commanding force is that they’re acting in direct response to a viral epidemic started by Doc Oc. Not only do I find it unrealistic that everyone was actually wearing masks during the pandemic, but this whole section just felt like a complete mess, gameplay wise. I found myself most annoyed by the crime system in the overworld, as there will be both escaped cons AND Sable agents shooting you down as you swing through the map. While this is an effective display of how fucked the city has become, I was quite disappointed to find that of all the enemies you can fight in the overworld at this stage, the ONLY ones that count towards map completions are the ones that are radioed in. There’s no other incentive to make it worth my time to fight all these people, no extra things to trade for to gadget upgrades or new suits. Nothing. On top of all this, the actual end of the narrative was rather abrupt and crap tbh. I know with the foresight of having played this years after release that it got it’s own sequels and spin offs, but I’m a firm believer in narratives being able to hold on their own internally without relying on the MCU-ification to make them retroactively better.

In closing, it’s clear that this game was not for me. It’s fine if you like superheros, and don’t care about how thin the genre cocktail of gameplay styles are in actuality - but I think my standards are too high and I wasn’t impressed, especially due to this being a fucking Sony game. I know they have the budget to do better, c’mon. And although I didn’t care for it, there were a lot of options for customising your play experience, like choosing suits, power-ups and gadgets to aid in battle, and the freedom to leisurely explore the map if you’re so inclined. I did 100% the story and all collectables and challenges on the map, but not to a gold-star degree or with the aims of platinum trophy. Fuck that.

At the end of the day, I want to praise the parts of this game that should be standard within games of this budget, but weren’t, and sometimes still aren’t. This is a completely single player game with a large campaign filled with variety and interesting things to do. There is still a demand for games like this, and I’m glad that this aspect was something that not only helped it to sell well, but also show to developers and stake holders that there IS a demand for enriching single player games. There were also a great amount of accessibility features that were fairly easy to access and understand, so those that may need a bit of extra help and adjustments to get through the game are able to enjoy the same experience. These are things that should be encouraged, and for that, I commend it.

But, play a different game if you care about the fighting or the stealth. Neither are done well here lol.

The Golden Age

Anything For A Story

Renewed Rivalries

[rigelmejo]

Notes to myself on study activities I want to do, feel free to try some if you feel like it -3-)/

Play Final Fantasy X in japanese (reading practice, some vocabulary learning from context or word lookup on translation app)

Listen Read to Kiki's Delivery Service on Smart Book app. This app is free (I recommend it), and let's you listen to TTS, auto generates a parallel translation, and has click translations for all words. This app has a lot of free books, but you can also just import files you have so I imported Kiki's Delivery Service. (Reading and listening practice, vocabulary learning, some grammar structure learning from context)

Listen Read to Alice in Wonderland on Duoreader app, a free app with several parallel texts with TTS audio. I already did 2 chapters, I'd like to do all of the book though. (Reading and listening practice, vocabulary learning, some grammar structure learning from context)

Listen to Game Gengo YouTube videos. Listen to Final Fantasy IX video, Yakuza Ishin video. I highly recommend just putting on his videos and listening while doing stuff, his vocabulary lessons are DENSE which i highly value in study material, because the more words studied per hour the better to me. And he explains well enough you can listen without watching, if you want to use the long videos like podcasts. (Listening practice, vocabulary learning, grammar structure learning)

Watch Nihongo con Teppei videos with japanese captions (reading practice, some vocabulary learning from context, listening practice)

Listen to Nihongo con Teppei videos (listening practice, minor vocabulary learning from context)

Listen to Glossika Japanese (vocabulary learning, grammar structure learning, listening practice)

Playing games with japanese audio, Judgement and Final Fantasy Crisis Core Remake. Barely considered studying, but I do think I get some listening practice, mainly review of words I know, by listening to Japanese that much. Especially in Judgement's case because it's like a show with how much dialogue there is relatively frequently. I think playing games with English subtitles and Japanese audio helps me keep what words I've learned fresh in my mind, rather than forgetting them. (Minor listening practice, review)

Watching Japanese let's plays on youtube, you can click auto captions for Japanese youtube videos usually and they're often decent enough to read along. Let's plays mean more frequent listening practice, more words per minute spoken, then just playing a video game in Japanese. Also some let's players will read the game text aloud, helping with learning pronunciation of new unknown words and review of pronunciation of written words. You can watch let's plays of games you've played before, which can mean you have enough prior context to guess more word meanings of unknown words. (Reading practice if captions are used, listening practice, vocabulary learning)

Watching Japanese shows in Japanese. Anime and dramas. If there's japanese subtitles, can also be used for some reading practice. I'd like to do this with Sailor Moon, Ranma 1/2, Devilman, and a few jdramas I'm interested in. I think I have enough vocabulary to make learning from show context feasible, i just need to rip the training wheels off but I've been a chicken about the initial difficulty of adjusting. For dramas, i think good starting options might be: Our Dining Table, She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat, Midnight Diner, and Way of the Househusband. I've tried watching a few of those already without english and they're all doable. I have a vocabulary of roughly 2000, I think this activity may be doable at a vocabulary of 1000 if you have a higher tolerance for ambiguity. As long as you can follow the main overall idea of each episode plot, you understand enough to watch and learn new words from context. For chinese I started watching shows at a vocabulary of 1000 words. Other jdramas I'd like to watch but fear will be harder in japanese without English subs to rely on: First Love, Japan Sinks People of Hope, MIU404, Kei X Yaku, Dakara Korosenakatta, Shoutai, Ouroboros... can you tell I like crime thrillers... (Listening practice, some vocabulary learning from context, reading practice if japanese subtitles are used)

Reading anything on bilingualmanga.net. I recommend this as an easier "immersion" activity then novel reading, but I'm on the fence about if it's easier to just read a japanese manga and look up the words versus using the change to english/japanese tool on bilingualmanga.net. while I love that site, it doesn't work well for me on my phone. So I usually just read entirely in japanese, and try to look up words myself using imabi app or Google translate apps handwriting input. It's an excellent site for finding online copies of japanese manga though if you want a digital manga you can copy/paste text from into a translator site/app. If you are studying Chinese I greatly recommend Bilibili Comics app for reading chinese manhua, as it has tons of free chinese/english manhua, and it gives you prizes for reading which may help motivate you to read more. (Reading practice, vocabulary learning from context or looking words up)

Reading japanese stuff on Amazon through Kindle app. Alternatively, read on whatever you want, I like Smart Book app and Moonreader app. But if you buy japanese novels cheaply on amazon.co.jp, then reading on Kindle app will be convenient. I am currently reading a manga adaptation of Kokoro, the Japanese Translation of Guardian by priest, some random novels I found, Koisenu Futari novel (I love the jdrama). I think amazon.co.jp sometimes also offers free chapters of manga, so you could download free chapters to read on Kindle for regular free reading material. Kindle app has click-translations, I hate that it has no TTS feature (if it does someone PLEASE TELL ME). No TTS feature makes Kindle suck compared to all my other reading apps. In comparison, Smart Book and Moonreader apps have TTS and click translations, so I'd recommend reading in literally any other Reader app you like better if you can get japanese reading material on it. I'm stuck with Kindle because I do not know where else to buy japanese ebooks as easily and cheaply. (Reading practice, vocabulary learning through context and click translation)

Tadoku Graded Readers. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS IF YOU'RE A BEGINNER. In fact I highly recommend them period, if you're not comfortable with reading. They're amazing, and free. You can find pdf collections of all of them together and it's around 900-1000 pages. You can also find the Tadoku readers individually free, there's several levels of difficulty. I read the mega collection since it started with the very easy graded readers then gradually increased the reading difficulty, so I didn't have to figure out what to read next. They're amazing graded readers, when used together they go from very basic Japanese (like the first chapters of Genki 1) to probably at least 1000 words of solid common japanese vocabulary. It may go up to 2000 words, I didn't check. The main noticeable benefit is they are written to read a LOT of Japanese that's easy for you to read, so you can practice the skill of reading without the difficulty of constant unknown words/grammar to break the reading practice flow. As a result, when you're done reading the Tadoku graded readers, you come out of it feeling it is much easier to read Japanese for hours straight. Because you've practiced reading itself, so the activity itself feels doable and easy, and it's just the difficulty of reading material like number of unknown words that feels challenging. If you're a false beginner like me who knows a few thousand words, you can read all 1000 pages of the Tadoku readers in a few days to a week. Afterward, novels and manga will feel much less daunting. That's 1000 pages of practice getting used to reading Japanese grammar patterns and the words you already studied easier, while filling in any basic vocabulary gaps you had. If you're a true beginner, you could probably still do 1 Tadoku story every few days. As you get to the longer Tadoku graded readers with more vocabulary, you might do one story every week or few weeks. The Tadoku readers are genuinely SO beginner friendly and easy to use and NICE. I wish there were 10 other graded reader collections this actually easy to read, this comprehensible, for Japanese. (Reading practice, vocabulary learning)

For beginners, I'd recommend: Tadoku Graded Readers (for reading practice and vocabulary learning), Game Gengo YouTube videos (lesson format vocabulary learning and grammar pattern learning where you can jump in at any video and learn something, no major difficulty curves), Nihongo Con Teppei (good listening practice for middle beginners and upward), Glossika Japanese (if it is free/cheap to you only* in my opinion, it can be started as a complete beginner and will be useful until your vocabulary is around 2500-3000 words)

For upper beginners: manga reading either on bilingualmanga.net or finding any japanese manga then looking up the unknown words yourself. It will be easier to do if you already know the manga in your native language, and if its a manga that's about more obvious topics (like daily life, romance, action). You can download translation apps like imabi or jisho, just use Google translate in a pinch (I like the handwriting input if i dont know the kana for a word or the voice input if i happen to know pronunciation), Ichigo Manga Translator app is a free screen reader translator app in a pinch to look up words on manga panel images. For the people who want heavier text materials, try out Duoreader app (for its free parallel texts) or Smart Book (if you have your own japanese ebook files or text files). Those two apps both provide: parallel texts, text to speech audio, click translations. Those tools can be nice to lean on as a beginner, if say you don't know a pronunciation and need to hear it or vice versa you don't know a spelling and hearing pronunciation helps clarify what word you're reading, parallel text helps with figuring out grammar, click translation of course helps with vocabulary meaning. And both Duoreader and Smart Book are free. Other Reader apps will work fine (Kybook, Moonreader, Kindle, literally anything including Google Chrome, Edge, Firefox because all web browsers have click translate and TTS). But not all other reader apps provide parallel text translations, and those can be very useful if you aren't sure of the grammar. The Golden star BEST recommendation for upper beginners is Satori Reader app, because it's got graded readers of various difficulties until you're reading close to native japanese novel difficulty stories. Satori reader has interesting stories, parallel text translations written by real translators and include extensive grammar explanations, human narration for all stories. The caveat: Satori Reader costs a monthly subscription. I do plan to use the app eventually, some month I can justify the price because I'm in a reading mood and managing to read 300 chapters or more a month. But currently I'm finding it's free sample chapters sufficient, and reading other (less learner friendly) materials that I'm more interested in at the moment.

For upper beginners/lower intermediate learners who like video games: I highly recommend japanese let's plays on youtube, japanese auto captions turned on. Let's plays provide you spoken audio for all text in the game (if the let's player reads everything aloud) making it easier than playing video games, they're videos so you can pause them to check word spellings or replay audio to hear something better, you can select lets plays of games you've played before (for example if I listen to Kingdom Hearts let's plays I can pick up a LOT of words because I know the script in English almost by heart as one of my favorite games). You can replay cutscenes multiple times if you don't understand them, and use the let's players reaction to figure out what was meant to be taken away from the scene. You can practice the skill of learning things from context (story, plot, visuals, listening/reading what you know and guessing the unknown word meanings from what's around them) without the pressure of Playing a video game yourself. Because you can pause, replay, and just follow along, you can focus on learning new stuff and understanding the bits you've studied before. While the let's player will show you how to play the game, what the menus mean and attack commands mean, where things are on the map, and all the things the game player will need to know. Then if you decide to play the game yourself later, you will not be struggling with all of that while ALSO trying to understand the japanese. I think Game Gengo's videos for beginners, then let's plays for upper beginners, then trying to play video games in japanese that you've played before in your native language, is a good progression if you want to make things feel fairly doable. (You can definitely do whatever though, I played Kingdom Hearts in japanese before checking out let's plays lol, cause it's better to do whatever you are MOTIVATED to actually do rather than what's the "best possible activity." Do what you want first, then change things based on what's more easy or difficult if you want or need to).

[allseeinganalyst]

Frozen II Novels - Review

It's been a while since I reviewed or analyzed anything here. This blog was made for that exact purpose, but I've posted one half-hearted review-ish thing about Mob Psycho and the Nanoha look-back is taking a while.

Part of that is due to being that I find myself in weird mental spaces more often than I'd like. The internet is a hell-hole, but it's also one that's borderline impossible (and certainly very impractical) to actually just sever ties to. I've ditched Twitter and I don't use TikTok (except to look at videos my partner sends me), but I still get, somehow, hit with a lot of LOUD, SHOUTY voices that seem to make it impossible to enjoy anything.

After about three-to-four midlife crises about things (i'm 30 this November), and a chat to my partner, I've managed to get the mental TARDIS that is my mind up and running again, ready to tour the fictional universe and enjoy what is has to offer, getting back into the things I love, without getting bogged down in the screeching of fandoms and social media.

Gods, that was a very long way of trying to say "I read a cool Frozen book."

Frozen 2 - Forest of Shadows and Frozen: Polar Nights - Cast into Darkness are two original novels set in the world of Frozen (Duh.) Forest of Shadows was released in 2019 and I actually read it back then, while Polar Nights was released in 2022, and I picked it up from Target and read it in march of 2023.

To get this out of the way, while it does sometimes throw people off, I am actually a big fan of Frozen. I've loved it since the first movie. It's not my favourite Disney film (that would be Tangled, and whoo-BOY, will we get to Tangled related media at some point on this blog!), it's probably a close second. I love the animation, I love the songs, I love the characters and I love the world. I was even sad when the hype for Frozen died down, and no, I don't think Enchanto is better - That's another LOUD SCREECHY OPINION that I'm not sad to hear less of.

These are obviously not the only Frozen novels out there. I do own "A Frozen Heart", which I've really got to get around to, because apparently it contains some Hans backstory, and Hans is a character I'm really interested in learning more about, and obviously there is a slew of additional Frozen media. Frozen-Mania gripped the world in a chokehold not seen since the god-damn Shrek movies, and it had an effect on our media and culture so great that no doubt, someday there will be an essay on youtube by Super Eyepatch Wolf explaining and analyzing the overwhelming impact of a Disney movie from 2013 and the INSANE fandom that sprung out of it - which I was a part of from very early on, and quite honestly you can use it as a self-contained example of how fandom has changed since then... BUT I'M DIGRESSING.

The point I was trying to make here is that, most of the media released post the original Frozen movie is fairly generic. Baring one or two things, and of course, the animated shorts, a lot of it is standard kids stuff - Storybooks, Quick Reads, Junior novels, picture books, etc. Some of it is really fun, and the art was almost always either a wonderful, bright cartoonish 2D style, or a painterly, soft style that's really pretty to look out - But not a lot of is espeically unique. It's got a "Frozen Flavour" to it, but it's all very standard. If you changed one or two things, you could swap out Elsa and Anna for Rapunzel, or Ariel, or any other number of Disney Princess characters and the stories would be more-or-less the same. Stuff that mum and dad can give to their kids to let them have their Frozen fix without having to endure "Let it Go" one more time. (Side note: If you do happen to be one of those people who're bitching about how over saturated that song is - Fuck you, I'm going to play it again on purpose.)

The point I'm getting around to is that these books, cheep target paperbacks they may be, are not that. There's a distinct world and continuity here, and it's even possible to place a timeline.

These books (I believe there may be a third between them for a reason I'll get too shortly) have recurring characters, direct continuity and callbacks. All of them expand on the world of Frozen, moving away from the generic Disney-Princess storytelling of kingdom mishaps and "oh-no! character X is lost/upset/lost a precious item/wants to do something special/has a special occasion/etc" and into a deliberately constructed world, with a soft but distinct influence from Nordic and Sandenavian folklore.

They are not perfect, but they are worth talking about. Spoilers abound below, for those of you who are interested!

I'm not going to summarize the plots. I want to talk what I find interesting, annoying, curious, fun or frustrating about these books. These reviews are intended as a form of looking after my own mental health anyway. If you're interested, I've given names and pictures of the covers. Go look them up. Or better yet, read the books yourselves and tell me what you think!

The coolest (pun 400% intended) part about these books is they are clearly on a timeline. They're designed to slot very nicely into Frozen canon, and do so very tightly I might add. The timeline that we can establish is:

Frozen > 3 YEARS > Forest of Shadows > Frozen 2 > Polar Nights.

Forest of Shadows leads directly into the events of Frozen 2, even referencing the scene where Elsa wakes up the spirits at the end, while Polar Nights is explicitly stated to be a matter of 2-3 months since Anna took the throne.

During that 3 YEARS period there, you can obviously slot in Frozen Fever, Olaf's christmas special and probably one or two of the storybook stuff released post Frozen. If the (hilarious) "Olaf Reenacts Disney Movies" shorts are in ANY way canon (and... They MIGHT be to some degree, I'll get to this later...) they almost definitely slot in between Frozen 2 and Polar Nights. Again, I'll get to why later.

I believe I am missing a novel or story somewhere that fits into the same timeline as Polar Nights references an event that's a bit too specific to not have been depicted in some form of media, but I can only work with what I find locally. Although I am in no uncertain terms a fan, I only have so many resources and time to put toward things, and Frozen isn't at the top of that list. If a novel appears on a store shelf, I'll buy it. If it doesn't, I go without.

While my thoughts are mostly focused on Polar Nights, because I read Forest of Shadows over 3 years ago. I'm talking about both novels for the most part.

They are decent in size. Small enough for kids to read with no trouble, but more than a short story. Both tell full length, original stories.

These books paint a slightly wider view of Arendelle and it's surroundings than what we see from the movies. Neighboring kingdoms are mentioned by name (including Corona - Rapunzel's kingdom from Tangled. - Again, I'm going to get back to this later), and there are several named, recurring characters like Tuva and Ada, lesbian blacksmith wives (explicitly mentioned as being married) or Sorensson, the Astronomer who lives far outside of Arendelle and is introduced in Forest of Shadows, then plays a small but significant role in Polar Nights. There's recurring references to Aren of Arendelle, the founder of Elsa and Anna's kingdom, and a secret room or passage discovered in one book is referenced and used again in the next. It's really consistent and it makes it feel rewarding to read these novels. I very much doubt that any future Frozen visual media will reference their events, but if the stories themselves can keep a continuity across writers, then that's good enough for me to feel like I'm really in a bona-fide expanded universe.

There's some stuff in these books that I have personally wanted to see since the first movie. Things like finding out how Anna never recovered the original memories the trolls took from her, or finding out what Elsa spends a lot of her time doing in Ahtohallan...

(conjuring ice memories, apparently. Yeah, seems like while she's not going to "drowning depth" again, she is using her magical ice powers to pull up home-movies of her parents... Gotta wonder if she didn't accidentally pull up one of their date nights and then shattered the whole thing into ice shards in a panic once her dad put on the Barry White music.)

The books ALSO give me something that I have held in my head since the very first movie - Anna cracking jokes about her past and her mistakes.

I've always loved the idea that Anna doesn't seem the type to get all "Shell-Shocked PTSD Veteran" over her traumatic memories. That's Elsa's job, so I've always imagined she makes a lot of jokes and lighthearted fun out of it. Like, she seems the type to go: "OH HEY! That's a great statue of me! And I'd know! I've been a statue! Made of ice! Wanna see me do the pose?"

And while we don't get that exactly, we do get her ribbing Elsa about having Marshmallow throw her out of her ice castle, grumbling about how "Hans isn't actually THAT good looking", and generally having a sense of "oh no, I remember what happened LAST TIME..." about her. It's not as explicit as I'd like, but it's there and it helps with that feeling of the world being alive and moving. These characters do remember what happened yesterday. They are actively learning their lessons and trying to avoid the mistakes of their past.

The stories are compelling enough. While not groundbreaking, edge-of-your seat page turners, they both offer an adventure that's very much on brand for Frozen, effectively utilizing the characters and the world. This isn't a story where you could change a few names and slap Aurora or Belle or Ariel in instead. These stories feel tailored to Elsa and Anna. Unfortunately, there's a bit of an issue that I assume arises from being an author hired to write your own original entry into a carefully curated, multi-million dollar franchise, owned by the real world's full on Mega-Corp.

See, while I love the connected, constructed world these novels build around the movies - They do in-fact, happen to be being built around the Frozen media franchise, and Disney have been notoriously strict with this before.

If you were a part of the early Frozen fandom (again, I was), you might remember the sheer excitement around when it was announced that Elsa and Anna, as well as Arendelle and a number of other movie characters would be coming to Once Upon a Time, flinging the universe of Frozen into unexpected live action.

I'm not going to get into my thoughts around OUAT, because... YEAH I'm trying to be focused and that is worth a WHOLE other blog post - which I don't have any REAL desire to write out unless someone BEGGED me to do it, but long story short, given that the show explicitly is alternate continuity for ALL Disney's franchises, it had a lot of leeway in what it could do with it's regular cast... But not the Frozen characters. Although the writers did get to play around creating new backstory and lore, and chopping and changing a bit, there was a strictness to what they could and couldn't do with the characters. They couldn't give Elsa a love interest. They couldn't dramatically change anything from the movie. Characters had firmly fixed personalities that were absolutely not allowed the usual "flex" of OUAT - No extra edginess snuck in, nothing out of character.

(They did have incredible costumes though. Way better than any other live action projects that I've seen).

My point in all of this is, that was explicitly in an alternate universe. OUAT had NEVER had any bearing on any of the franchises it pulled it's roster from, and was marketed to a whole different audience.

These books are NOT. They are marketed toward the same audience as the movies, and are intended to fit alongside it. And it is painfully obvious that Disney holds a tight leash when it comes to ways for writers to interpret their billion-dollar characters. Obviously this is pure speculation, but I would imagine the writers for these novels were given dedicated character bios of characters like Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Olaf and not allowed to deviate or even go into much depth beyond what was listed in those bios.

I say this for a couple of reasons - The most notable of which is the dialogue, and to a lesser extent the character actions. Characters have an unfortunate tendency to sprout stiff, unnatural dialogue, based on certain things that were mentioned in the moves.

Nowhere is this more egregious than with Anna and chocolate. The movies mention her having it as her favorite treat, and she has like two memorable moments involving it in the first movie, but the books treat it like it is NEVER off her mind. If the books mention Anna wanting to do ANYTHING, most of the time, it involves chocolate in some way. She brings it with her on expeditions. She can't wait to get back to the castle and eat some. She has a "choco-versary" with Kristoff, the anniversary of the first time they ate chocolate together. It comes off as a weird obsession, instead of the favorite food it was in the movies. Similarly, she's mentioned as having "Sandwiches" as her favorite meal a few times. Not only is this FRUSTRATINGLY non-specific, it also seems PURELY based on her one line in "Love is an Open Door" and it's callback during her conversation with Kristoff in the first movie... Although to be fair, this did also get a call back in Frozen Fever where we see her be enthusiastic about one, so... whatever.

It gets stiff with dialogue between characters too. Almost every conversation with Elsa and Anna seems to drift towards "we were seperated, but now we are together again, and I love you and am so proud of you!". They'll discuss the plot, and they do have some genuinely great moments (like Elsa talking about the trolls and Anna pointing out, somewhat sadly, that "no, sis, I can't remember, they took my memories as a child...") but a lot of it is re-hashing their end-of-movie "sisterly bond" stuff. It's a real shame especially in Polar Nights, because that is set AFTER Frozen 2. We could have had scenes of Anna asking Elsa for help ruling as Queen, or Elsa observing how Anna does things differently from her, but we learn nothing more about how these two interact than what we already knew.

The other problem that I assume crops up from Disney's strict oversight is that it's obvious the writers are not allowed to affect the world too much. They can play with the figures in it, but can't change the landscape dramatically. This is understandable, as it's unlikely the Mega-Mouse wants some kids novel throwing out a detail that might force them to change how they write the next movie. They're not going to kill off Kristoff, or suddenly give us a Hans redemption arc - As interesting as that would be, the writers need the all clear from Disney, and Disney won't want some hired novelist to make a major change to their giant money making machine which is no doubt shaped like Elsa's head.

This means that, although the stakes do feel real for the books themselves, there's a sense that nothing that happens within really affects the world that much. Characters don't learn a vital lesson or change in any significant way, and those that do are new characters, constructed for the book, who can easily be ignored by the wider narrative - Polar Nights has a whole segment with a pair of sisters, obviously designed to parallel Elsa and Anna, who's past and backstory, and the mysteries and mistruths thereof, form more-or-less the basis for the entire plot, but our ACTUAL sisters can't have a chat more complex that "boy I'm glad we're not separated anymore, also we're proud of each other!"

The result is - and this is kind of what I've been driving toward this entire time - these books give me a VERY distinct feeling, and it took me a while to identify what it was. I didn't catch it when I read "Forest of Shadows", but it WAS there, and Polar Nights has it there in full force.

These novels feel like FILLER.

Traditional, ACTUAL, filler.

SIGH - Quick sidetrack.

The term "Filler" is thrown around a lot these days, often by people that I don't think realized the term originally had a more specific meaning - At least from what my experience is.

"Filler" was primarily a term used by the anime community, referring to episodes of a show that were not adapted from the original manga. This practice was done as most anime, especially Shounen anime like those pictured above, ran almost continuously, and when your airing an episode a week which is sometimes able to adapt multiple chapters from the manga, you're going to close the gap pretty quickly.

This meant that things would be done in the episodes to stretch them out. Anything from lengthening fight scenes, to additional dialogue, all the way up to - perhaps most famously - whole new arcs created purely for the anime. These arcs had to tell their own stories that were entertaining, but obviously couldn't massively shake up the status quo, as they had no idea what would be coming next for these characters and this story. They relied on events distanced, often entirely unrelated to the plot at large (in-fact, rather infamously, Bleach once went to a year long filler arc in MID-SWORD-FIGHT BETWEEN CHARACTERS). Often they would invent new characters, new powers, and often draw on events of the past, or spotlight background characters to create an unobtrusive narrative.

These arcs can, and have, been good. There's nothing inherently wrong with filler, but as TV Tropes says: "These arcs can, and have, been good. There's nothing inherently wrong with filler, but as TV Tropes says: "At their most extreme, absolutely nothing that happens in a filler episode will affect things going forward, even if it seems like a character developed or grew in some manner."

Filler's definition has expanded a lot, and was never really as fixed as I tended to take it, though I still see it used incorrectly. If an episode of a show had the characters sitting around talking, with the plot not advancing at all, but we still learn things about the characters that matter, and have an impact or call back later, or their relationships change in SOME way, then it's NOT filler. In the words of my Media Teacher: "Just because it didn't feature a car chase and a shoot out, doesn't mean it doesn't matter." - Filler doesn't matter. Slow paced slice of life episodes can matter a LOT.

As a side note, to this side note, Filler in it's most traditional sense is dying out, and has been largely, though not entirely, gone from anime by the mid 2010's. Anime have switched over to the "cour" style of episode production, with a season consisting of usually around 12-or-24 episodes (a little leeway in either direction is common, like having 26 or 10 episodes), which focus on tightly adapting one arc or novel or portion of the story. They then take a break, and return with the next season whenever, picking up where they left off. This is why you don't really see stuff running for 200+ episodes in a row anymore, and why something like, say, Attack on Titan has five seasons. This has allowed for MUCH reduction of filler, and virtually eliminated the need for the filler arc. They do still pop up, but notice how today's "big shots" like My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer have multiple seasons instead of just running for a billion episodes like shows such as One Piece, or Naruto.

Though speaking of that, apparently some new shows are determined to carry on the traditions laid by their parents... *side-eyes Boruto*

AHEM. I really need to drop this topic and get back on track. QUICK, what's an appropriate Frozen-related GIF to use to move on?

I fuckin' told you I was gonna play it again.

ANYWAY, so my point is that - despite feeling like we've really entered a living, breathing world, with its own history and people, it feels like we're never allowed to see that world DO anything.

This wasn't too bad in Forest of Shadows, because even though it couldn't do anything massive, it could create the illusion of movement, by transitioning characters from their Frozen selves to their Frozen 2 selves, laying down hints of what would be fully realized in that move, but it is REALLY on display in Polar Nights - The set up involves exploring Anna's first major kingdom event as Queen, and yet, we really don't get any meaningful detail about that. We don't get a sense of how it feels for her to suddenly wield all this power and responsibility when, not just a few months ago, she was more or less the spare princess that could spend her days having picnics with snowmen. I mean sure, there's mention that she's nervous, but it really doesn't go into much detail. She's just "Queen Anna", the same way we saw her at the end of Frozen 2.

(Elsa's also still referred to as Queen - sometimes she gets directly called "The Snow Queen" - but this is a detail I like. It's not like the people forgot or disavowed her as their monarch. The two are called "The Queens of Arendelle" at one point. It's an interesting touch.)

The events of Polar Nights involve a lot of things happening (including major characters losing their memories of each other), but it all amounts to a problem that's easily resolved with Sisterly Love, and by the end of the book, everything's normal. I know these books are not going to affect the movies, but one of the cool things, as I mentioned, was that they did have continuity between each other. Sorensson was introduced as a man of science in Forest of Shadows, and then in Polar Nights, Anna and Elsa go to him for help with something they want a scientific explanation for. While some of these characters might pop up again to be mentioned in the next novel, it's hard to believe it'll focus on Anna dealing with the fact that... Say Dragurs are real, and exist out there, and that things like grudges and nasty legends and rumors can bring unwelcome power.

Some of the dialogue and phrasing is just plain awkward too. A lot of the time, when Anna spoke to Kristoff, it felt very bland, and forced-romantic, rather than their natural, more banter and warm interactions in the movies. We don't even get a call-back to "I prefer you in leather ;)" - Although that may have been pushing the biscuit. If they went any further with how Anna feels about that, the LOUD SCREACHERS might lose the ability to pretend she was being 100% wholesome and child-friendly with that line...

There's another line where Elsa's narration indicates she wants Anna and Kristoff to have kids so she can be "the cool aunt, literally" - A line that exists purely for that one lazy joke, since no other mention of them having children exists that I can remember.

(Though I am borderline certain that Frozen 3 will focus on their child, but again, that's getting distracted)

Polar Nights also avoids any direct appearances of Northuldra. No Honeymaron or Rider or anything - The only other significant characters that appear from Frozen 2 are Mattias (who fills a bit of a generic "general/captain of the guard" role, but that's his job so it's fine), as well as Gale and Burnie and the Water Nokk, who do have roles to play, but relatively minor ones. They are mentioned, but even when we see the Enchanted Forest, it's purely featuring the cast from Frozen, plus the wind and the new plush mascot lizard. Again, it's a shame because beyond: "Elsa loves the fact that she is living free" and "Elsa spends time pulling up home movies made of snow", we get nothing about how the former Queen is living as a spirit. Okay, I don't expect the book to explain about how Elsa hates needing to pee in a bush now or something absurd like that, but when you go from living in a castle to living in tents and caves, you've got to feel more than just "free" right? We don't even see how she interacts with the Northuldra. How do these people, who revered the spirits, interact with one who can speak to them in their language? Who can sit and chill out with them? Who can pop round for dinner? We get none of that, and it's sad, because it would have been nice.

Polar Nights features a mystery story between two sisters, one of whom is said to have outright murdered the other, several fights between Elsa and a Nordic zombie wraith that mimics her powers at one point, a Pirate Queen and her fleet sitting menacingly at Arendelle's borders, at one point escalating to firing on royal ships during a massive storm in an eternal night, Anna and Elsa traveling to a whole different neighboring kingdom, and Anna's fiance explicitly losing his memory of her, and anything they ever did together...

... and somehow it comes off as less compelling and impactful than Frozen 2, where - and I don't want to downplay or insult Frozen 2 because I think it's amazing and obviously it's themes run far deeper BUT - the main antagonist force boils down to "Dam that a bastard-man built one time".

(On that, Polar Nights is intent on reminding everyone that King Runeard was a Bad Man™ and every single character essentially goes "BOO! HISS!" whenever his name comes up. And yeah, the dude was an absolute bastard, and he only gets revealed to be worse in Polar Nights but you would think Anna and Elsa would have more complex feelings than "hate that guy" to their granddad who they believed was a bit of a legend up until the events of the second movie. Still, maybe they genuinely don't and at any rate, unpacking those feelings might be a bit more complicated than a novel intended mostly for kids is willing to get into.)

There's more that could be said, but I worry I've been sticking to the negative for too long. Yes, these novels do feel like anime filler. Lots of stuff happens, but it doesn't really impact anyone. There's new characters introduced and side characters discussed and all sorts of things that really don't mean that much to the world in the long run, and no doubt will be forgotten by the time Frozen 3 rolls around BUT...

BUT

The books are an enjoyable read. They let me return to the world of Frozen and explore a bit more of the land these characters live in. Yes, I wish the book featured a conversation between Anna and Elsa that didn't just feature them rehashing what they've learned in the movies, but it is STILL good to see them together again. It's heartwarming to know that Elsa still stays in the castle, that Anna let her keep their parents bedroom, that the people of her former kingdom still call her "Queen".

It's great to see side characters mentioned, and not just appear once. It's great that these books are allowed to look outside of the generic fairy-tale fare and bring up things like Dragurs and Huldrefólk and, while I do think the Sisterly Love being the solution to Polar Night's problem isn't the best ending, it does FIT with the themes for the franchise and it isn't a re-hash of Anna and Elsa, instead holding up a mirror to them and showing them what they could have been had their lives been but a tiny bit different.

They're good books, and I would rate them:

A solid B

Was originally a B-, but upon writing this out, I re-evaluated and I wanted to stress that I actually really do like them, and I hope they make more. I really want Frozen to be that thing that winds up having 20 different novel series, six comic books, two original TV series and a line of successful movies. It'd make me happy.

That is just about all I have to say on this topic except for:

OKAY SO YOU KNOW HOW I HAVE BROUGHT UP TANGLED A COUPLE OF TIMES AND I'VE BEEN SAYING I'LL GET BACK TO HOW I THINK IT INTERACTS:

Well - We all know Frozen featured Rapunzel and Eugene visting Arendelle and, ignoring some of the crazy and common fan theories (they're cousins I swear it still works if you squint), that suggests that there is a shared universe and I believe these books CONFIRM that when taken in conjunction with other evidence...

Consider that, Corona is directly mentioned in Forest of Shadows, and that would seem to confirm it, but I've still seen that, and the Tangled character's cameos waved off as cheeky Easter Eggs, BUT... REMEMBER THOSE FUCKIN' OLAF SHORTS? The ones where he re-enacts disney movies?

YEAH WELL, in the Tangled one, he has a bit of extra dialogue where he goes something like "this one is for one of my favorite people in the world, Rapunzel" or SOMETHING LIKE THAT THAT SUGGESTS HE'S MET RAPUNZEL PERSONALLY, and...

AAAAAND...

Polar Nights reveals that he and the others HAVE stayed in the Enchanted Forrest before, which gives him a timeframe where he could plausibly tell these stories in universe, AND AND AND AAAAANNNNND:

He also has a short where he re-enacts "The Little Mermaid" which IS CHEEKILY IMPLIED TO BE A BOOK THAT ANNA LOVES in Polar Nights, so Olaf has a REASON to know that story, AS A STORY--

AND BASICALLY THIS CONFIRMS THAT FROZEN AND TANGLED ARE SET IN THE SAME UNIVERSE AND THE FRANCHISE IS GOING TO CONCLUDE WITH AN ULTIMATE CROSSOVER THAT puts Avengers to shame and I SWEAR THAT IT'LL BE SO AWESOME AND--

The Analyst has been dragged off into the night by sensible people. Please ignore his ramblings.

[shrimpmandan]

Hello! I have a question about evaluating and understanding scientific sources. You seem to be interested in that sort of stuff, so I figured I'd pop over and ask. Feel free to answer or not answer, whatever you wish.

What is the difference between a scientific study, a review, a meta-analysis, and a commentary? I am asking because I am confused on how to interpret some reading I looked into while researching on gender identity and sexuality.

This commentary states that, "No evidence has shown gender identity to be innate." A paragraph in the commentary goes on to say that, "Much has been made of differences in brain structure and activation between transgender and cisgender people, but the significance of that work is unclear. Differences are found in regions with no obvious ties to gender identity. There is little work on the neural substrate of gender identity itself, and it is unclear how cortical thickness, white matter microstructure, or activation to various stimuli have conceptual relevance for gender identity. But, even if such differences are better understood, they do not necessarily reflect predetermined or innate behaviour. The brain is plastic, and changes in response to behaviour and environmental input. Brain differences between transgender and cisgender people may simply reflect (or result from) their behavioural differences and not mark a cause of their gender identity."

I am a bit confused on how to understand this information, because the commentary doesn't cite any specific work in this paragraph that I can compare it to. Why do numerous studies discuss differences in the brain affecting gender identity itself if the differences "do not necessarily reflect predetermined or innate behavior?" I think I am missing a piece of the puzzle here in understanding the material.

I just realized I technically asked more than one question, but I gave the example because it's what got me confused on interpreting this information and relating it to other information, as well as on what exactly a commentary is. Thank you for reading over this post.

From what I understand, a meta-analysis is a systematic review that draws from multiple studies, instead of just citing one specific one. Commentaries can depend, because they can either be judging a source by the quality of its arguments, or simply be an author giving their own subjective opinion on a matter that isn't meant to be taken as strictly scientific. Sometimes it's both.

The commentary you cited seems to be mostly the former, with it criticizing the validity of the arguments made by people who support the idea of gender identity being innate. It could absolutely be influenced by unconscious biases that the author holds, but that can go for people in support of innate gender identity too. It's easy to say "there's no proof of gender being innate", when it's just human nature to seek out sources that confirm our own preconceived notions about how the world works (confirmation bias). Same goes for people trying to prove the inverse.

So in short: the commentary is just that. Someone commenting on a study or a multitude of studies pertaining to their own field of expertise, and criticizing the validity of those studies in relation to what they were trying to claim. I do think we have a long way to go in understanding the human brain myself, even if I do lean heavily towards neurological sex being a real thing. Doesn't mean scientists and random people won't keep trying to debate whether it truly exists or not, though. It's kind of in a weird spot right now.

Link that further explains what a commentary is:

[marcianoliterati]

The sunbearer trials, by Aiden Thomas

3.5 stars

This is more of a discussion than solely a review, and does feature some spoilers :

I was really excited for this, but found myself a bit disappointed by the end.

It takes place in a fantasy world heavily inspired by Mexico. It all sounds pretty Aztec to me,the gods mentioned and all that but it's not particularly mentioned anywhere, and all the copy solely reads 'mexican-inspired'

It’s a mix of modern society and ancient stuff, there’s gods and demigods running around, there’s an academy for heroes and every ten years something called the sunbearer trials happens where a demigod child is killed by another so they can ‘charge the sun’ and keep the bad guy in his cage.

Tw: violence, bullying, manipulation, world-ending mistakes

It’s clearly another take on the hunger games and other similar stuff.  Only no one here is supposed to be killed till the end. 

The main character is teo, a trans boy who has wings he’s ashamed of, and who feels underappreciated due to his mother being a second-rate god which means he’s not seen as particularly important or good enough to be a hero. 

Still, he and his best friend are called to participate in the sunbearer trials, and he spends the whole time being unsure of it all and just trying to keep everyone he loves from dying.

It’s a good premise, and it’s entertaining, but it constantly feels like the worldbuilding is lacking. 

A thing i don’t like is when the characters, for whom this is all supposed to be their normal, don’t know what they are doing. It’s a lazy form of exposition  I find.

And teo is constantly confused about everything.

They say that the trials go back a long time, that it’s a great honour to participate, to kill, to die, 

But no one shows it. 

Everyone acts like theyre afraid of it ashamed of it.

Even the career heroes that are supposed to be trained for it since birth.

Now, i don’t read  a lot of YA, cause i tend to find the teens annoying as fuck.

Which is probably part of why I had issues with this book. 

Yes a lot is teens being teens

And i also have issues cause i tend to find them toothless.

Too often they feature kids who are afraid to do anything bad. 

Like they sneak out once and its a huge deal and of course they never do drugs or drink alcohol or engage in another common risk-seeking behaviour, so it lets them be bratty teens as long as they don’t do anything teens do?

It feels very puritanical, and it’s boring. 

this is about a deadly race, with many obstacles and chances to hurt or get hurt.

but dont worry, everyone will have a miraculous escape! Plot armour for everyone!

it cant be like youre wrapping both the protagonists and readers in a little bubble where nothing bad ever happens and they never need to see anything that could be potentially dangerous

 the danger has to be real.

you truly don’t know if they’ll survive, and how

this doesnt mean it has to be some grimdark everyone can die the future is hopeless thing

thg works because it is willing to go that far, it says your faves are in dangers and means it. nobody gets out unscathed.

In thg the danger is real, and the worldbuilding is incredibly detailed. Even though katniss who is confused like 90% of the time is the pov character.

It doesnt feel like someone is pausing and explaining everything every 5 minutes.

derry girls is a good example of where they do show dangerous things, it is political, but it is all filtered though the lens of girls who dont know better, and you feel that.

rick riordan’s catalogue also shows this well.  it has kids in trouble, it has danger, it deals with Issues, and so on. 

The main problem with this is that it doesn’t feel real. 

From the beginning, you know things aren’t gonna go according to plan.

You’re surrounded by danger but nothing bad is actually going to happen. 

and theres the ‘the sacrifice is an honour but we all know its wrong’ and the way the approach it , like being sad about it.

their sacrifice is supposed to “charge the stones” and “keep monsters at bay”

But it’s never explained. Why? Why must it happen this way? What does it mean?  No one can challenge it, it is just the way it is but it is not explained either.

Why the trials? Why can’t people volunteer? 

if this is their religion, the way its been done for thousands of year why are they sad and umcomfortable to talk about it? 

like, i feel like at least some people should be going like crazy over them, offer them gifts asks for blessings hell they should be like tell me your stories your wishes your goals so we may complete them for you

like, honour them properly? not this “killing people is a shame but it must be done and instead of facing it we are just kind of awkward about it”

In a way, it feels like it is using modern morals to tell a story where those morals simply don’t work. They don’t apply. 

I expect complicated feelings sure, but it is more like ‘it sucks let’s sweep it under the rug’

There’s a whole subplot of Teo having a sister he never knew cause years earlier, she was sacrificed. And his mum never talked about it.

That sounds a lot like shame and fear.

Tributes in the actual hunger games where treated better. People knew they were pawns being sacrificed, and that it was awful, but they also knew there was nothing they could do. 

Why isn’t there a memorial somewhere honouring the sacrifices?  

If they don’t like it, have they tried doing something else? 

There’s this episode of SNW where they also have child sacrifices, and they approach it way better. They also talk about they have to or the whole planet dies, and how they’ve tried to search for other ways and haven’t found any. 

So now they face it head on. They do a whole festival they do their best for the chosen ones, and so on. They know it’s an awful thing to do but they don’t hide it. They don’t look away in shame.

And the way shame is constantly everywhere in this story feels weird. 

The have the MC and his friends look back into the archives and besides discovering he had a sister nothing much is said of it. There was a moment right there for them to learn of the history and heritage of why and how it is done and…nothing.  Completely missed opportunity. 

like, the character often feels like theyre being faced with all of it for the first time, rather than actually growing up with it, what happens if someone is chosen and doesnt want to compete? do they become the sacrifice ? has anyone ever tried?  have people died doing this shit? what does the process actually entails??

For example,HDM goes into a lot of detail as to the origin the why the motivations and so on.

That’s why i think the worldbuilding feels lacking. The whole foundation of the story is less than great. 

What does it mean for this civilization to have this? To grow like this? 

what kind of place is it? how does this masquerade change the world? 

but i feel like a lot of ‘our world but slightly to the left’ don’t take the time to ponder the winder ramifications.

or you could do growing up thinking it was wonderful for everyone involved ,theres luxury and rewards, everyone wants to be chosen and then oh shit its actually dystopic af and ppl have been lied to.

someone slowly becoming aware of the horrors

and this goes slightly over there ‘oh no someone has to die, i dont want anyone to day, last time i was a kid mum didnt even let me watch’ or ‘oh actually the heroes i admire have really tough life’ but it just sort of waves as it goes past, not even bothering to detour 

i feel like the premise is great, a whole country, how does it all work?, and they even go on a tour, but we dont get to see much, a lot of good things are mentioned, only in passing.

I don’t know if it’s really the sort of thing that can be improved in a sequel, although maybe with new characters who can bring in a different pov it might be possible.

So that’s why i feel the story loses steam.

I admittedly don’t know a lot about mesoamerican human sacrifices, but i don’t think shame was the prevailing emotion.

It just doesn’t make sense.

It’s a shame cause i was excited about it, i wanna support latino books and you don’t get a lot of fantasy based on latinamerican folklore, but even wanting to hype it up it still felt a bit flat.

I guess it’s a bit like ‘i had this cool idea so i’m gonna sketch some stuff around it to support it’ and never quite getting around it to filling it in.

Like, teo,the MC is trans. This is quickly mentioned as ‘everyone was fine with it’, and i think there might be a mention of a genderfluid god?

But beside that everything is the same. Another trans kid wears a binder. They take testosterone, it’s just like in our world. 

Or how Teo is the son of a bird god, he can talk to birds, which we barely see him do, and he has freaking wings.

Which he doesn’t know how to use.

Cause apparently he was ashamed of them so his guardians just let him hide them?  What? get that kid a therapist of something what the hell. 

And the whole reason he is ashamed is simply cause he found them too girly.

That’s like saying oh my legs are too ugly i don’t wanna use them. And your parents just being like ok here’s a wheelchair?

Maybe there’s more to it but it’s never explained so that’s the impression i get, like it’s such a big handicap!

And he spends the whole time complaining he isn’t allowed to go to hero school! Is someone stopping him from training? No, i’m sure his mother’s palace has a gym, and he could’ve gotten tutors, he could’ve been using his wings the entire time.

Maybe it’s too judgmental of me, but it seems  incredibly foolish, and i wish we had more talk about it. Rather than him going “oh i dont want to” or “i don’t like it”

I think it’s a good rec for anyone who likes hp, pjo, thg, or hdm, but i don’t think it is as strong as any of those.

[hindisoup]

15-week learning review

Grammar (11 out of 15 weeks) Despite my angst the other day of "losing my spark" or whatever, I was actually surprised to realise that I've been acing my grammar studies during these past 15 weeks. What I count as "grammar" here is the time I spend on textbooks so actually a chunk of this is me learning the Nastaliq and beginner Urdu - but a lot of that still applies to Hindi too or helps me to understand the differences of the two so it still counts here.

Writing (8 out of 15 weeks) I have used Chat GPT for some writing and comprehension practice and I've written one script which took me an unusually long time, but then again it was three pages long. If and when I'm considering a hiatus from my videos, I realise it's a good idea to think of an alternative way to keep on practising writing regularly. Maybe finding a pen pal?

Listening (7 out of 15 weeks) I managed to listen to some podcasts but even more than those I've enjoyed watching a lot of good old film songs on Youtube with my daughter. She doesn't know a thing about Hindi but being 5 yo she's now grasping the idea of different languages and she just loves "girl songs" as she calls the videos we watch together. She constantly hears random words and asks "what's milke?" "what's dori?" "what's dikhta?" and that's actually very good listening practice for me to translate lyrics for her - and recently she's started to sing along with me and how adorable is that! Language learning tip no. 3965 - have children.

Speaking (5 out of 15 weeks) During this time I've had only one tutoring lesson and two phone calls with my native-speaker friend (yes I have some human interaction after all). I also recorded the audio for my video. I think recording and listening to myself speak has been a great way to practice and hone my pronunciation during the past year. I don't struggle with sounds that much anymore and I can read and pronounce (almost) any word I read in Devanagari even if I don't know its meaning. I've sort of learned the rhythm and tone associated with spoken Hindi. Not that I can produce that out of my mouth perfectly but I understand and recognise it - and it has made me understand so much about how many Hindi speakers speak English.

Watching (5 out of 15 weeks) I only managed to watch stuff on five of these past weeks, but during those five weeks I watched one documentary series, one stand-up show and eight (8!) Hindi films, five of which I had never seen before. Phew!

Reading (4 out of 15 weeks) I'm still making my embarrassingly slow progress with Nirmala - I really enjoy it, but I just can't seem to take the time to focus on it. Chat GPT is of some help - easily accessible and always at hand for a quick chat. But I had a proper argument with it one day trying to explain why we can't say आपका स्वागत है as an answer to "thank you" - and it had the audacity to apologise and say it accepted my explanation after maybe twenty minutes of back and forth and answer "आपका स्वागत है" when I thanked him for understanding the issue. Oh well.