#matter of fact every character is just so polite to eachother constantly

[sprinklysparkle]

I love how Quincy, Arthur, and Jack all get along and admire each other despite the fact they all want to marry Lucy. like they all seem to adore one another instead of the traditional loathing you would usually expect in a dynamic like this

[thebeauregardbros]

Can you tell me about Yakuza 0? I've never played it before and would like to read your thoughts on it.

YOOOOOOOOOOO LES FUKIN GO (thank u!!)

This review is spoiler-free!

Despite what you might assume a game about a bunch of tough muscley fighting dudes, the amount of moral philosophy in this game could rival a 3-part episode of Star Trek: TNG in terms of surprisingly deep and emotional thought. The struggles the protagonists go through has a huge emphasis on honor, keeping your word, taking responsibility for your actions, standing up to things you think are wrong and persevering no matter how much pain, suffering and threat you personally go through all in the name of trying to be a good person, and emphasizing that the mental fortitude to stand for your convictions is the true strength, not just brawn. Character development is absolutely fantastic and I feel like it’s impossible not to fall for these main characters by the end of the game, no matter how weird or even pigheaded they might seem to you at first.

(Trust me, moral philosophy is probably my biggest autistic hyper-fixation. They did this shit GOOD.)

Another major reason I really love Yakuza 0 is that it takes an unusual setting to the normal person - the incredibly political, dark, yet surprisingly realistic setting of organized bullies, criminals, and the uneducated brawn and bad-attitude baddies of the world and try to show them as worthy of more as humans like you and me than just trash that should not be seen or touched. The amount of humanitarian outlook on these people and the humanitarianism of our protagonists is absolutely heartwrenching and beautiful. Despite appearances, anyone can be a good person - this seems to be a major message in this story which I just find absolutely beautiful.

The yakuza definitely have different rules to their world, and that is one that’s built on violence over paperwork, especially when it comes to showing eachother the extent of their passion about something. I feel like it’s an excellent way of portraying the difficulties any normal person goes through with their mental health while struggling to do the right thing in a very direct and relatably painful way that anyone can understand.

The story deals with not only the importance of preserving life and protecting it with surprisingly pacifist ideologies, but the aesthetics in align with the idea that no matter how dark the world or your life feels, happiness is always an option.

Why you might love Yakuza 0 even if the plot doesn’t sound that interesting to you:

Tons of minigames - I think about 28~30 total. That includes 4 actual vintage SEGA arcade games! There’s also tons of gambling games like black jack and shogi, fishing, rhythm games, bowling, fighting tournaments, pool, darts, stock car racing, doll dressup.. It’s very hard not to find at least one you’ll like!

Tourism. Yakuza 0 has such an incredible amount of visual detail to every nook and cranny of every corner and unseen alleyway in the town maps that it feels just absolutely insane to me. The devs didn’t need to put in all this detail but they did. I could legit spend hours in first person mode just looking at everything. On top of that, every restaurant in town has a detailed menu describing each item despite the fact that all food items are just generic healing items. I think there’s even a bar where the bartender will go on a spiel talking about certain drinks after you order them. The atmosphere really makes you feel like you’re truly taking a vacation in another place. Great for when you’re longing to see new scenery while being stuck at home all the time during COVID.

The amount of optional side quests is absolutely insane. According to a wiki there’s a total of 100 side quests in all. If you’re a fan of JRPGs or a fan of completionism, completing them all gives you a ton of extra content and side-stories that can sometimes be just as gutwrenchingly wholesome or tragic as the main plot, or otherwise be great comic relief.

Speaking of comic relief, this game is notorious for it. The main plot can be incredibly serious and stressful and the devs know that can really wear down on the mental state of the player after awhile, so seeing Kiryu dance at a disco in the most lame awkward embarassing dad way possible, or see him pick up a phone in the most ridiculously over-dramatic way for no reason, or see Goro sing lovey-dovey pop songs is just something that will absolutely kill you with laughter and joy and give you a refreshed break you need to help you be able to keep continuing on.

Big fan of seiyuu (Japanese voice actors)? The karaoke bar lets you hear your protagonists’ gorgeous singing voice. You can even invite some side characters and hear their voices too!

NOW THE FAIR CRITICISMS:

Despite the plot having a huge emphasis on how important the morality is of not killing, fighting animations are often totally lethal. Goro canonically fights with a knife and a bat by the end of the game. Both characters can use guns, swords, poisoned knives, baseball bats and other lethal items as a weapon. One of Goro’s main fighting animations is snapping a dude’s neck. Kiryu threw a dude out of a high window. Kiryu shoots at dudes with a gun in a high speed chase at some point and none of these instances are ever addressed in canon plot as having blood on the hands of these characters - no matter what, the people hurt by these things seem to be able to stand up fine later on like nothing happened. Even the main characters can get shot by an actual gun 20 times in a row and shrug it off by shoving convenience store food down their throat. It’s super dumb but absolutely hilarious in it’s unaddressed B-Movie esque hypocritical nature and became a huge in-joke with the fandom. Despite these Goofy Video Game Logic instances, the main plot (specifically the cutscenes) are all extremely realistic and well done. Actual members of real-world Yakuza say the story is pretty accurate to reality.

One of the minor characters is obviously a trans woman but is misgendered constantly by other characters, including the protagonist (though this may be a translation problem), and is the only female character in the game you can fight and have to fight in order to unlock Kiryu’s endgame fighting style (though he remarks he only fights her because she looks like she can handle herself in a fight). She does end up joining up with you as an ally afterwards without changing anything about herself so that’s a positive, I guess? SEGA is aware of fans’ dislike for transphobia and have removed a lot of transphobic content from their re-releases of future Yakuza games, as well as shown the protagonist, Kiryu, as a huge LGBTQ+ ally.

-----------------

Things you might like or otherwise want to check out relating to the same story style of Yakuza 0 I personally highly recommend:

Kyou Kara Ore Wa!! (aka, "From Today, It's My Turn!!"): Absolutely hilarious gag comedy with surprisingly heartwrenching drama and incredibly lovable in-depth characters. It’s about highschool delinquents in the late 1980s (same era Yakuza 0 takes place!). The two main characters remind me a lot of the protagonists of Yakuza 0 in that one is very straight-laced and honorable while the other is more prone to dirty tricks but still does the right thing in the end. I personally recommend reading the manga above all because adaptations cut out a lot of details that I feel add a lot of depth to the characters, but the OVA anime is pretty good on it’s own and there’s a hilarious live action TV show adaptation if you like slapstick.

Rookies: A story about an impossibly determined formerly disgraced highschool teacher doing absolutely everything he can to be the best teacher he can be. Part of his journey is helping reform a group of delinquents who have self-sabotaged themselves into having their baseball team - the one thing they cared about - disbanded. The delinquents constantly fight the teacher off, believing him to just be another adult putting on airs instead of truly caring, while the teacher perseveres no matter what to prove them wrong. A manga and live action drama - both extremely good.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep 39: Tea Fight

Hey I just wandered into a random forum on the internet about the deaths that impacted you the most in a series, and I was in there faster than you can say “How many GRR Martin fans does it take to kill off a pregnant lightbulb in a random wedding episode″ (the answer is no one in this entire forum watched anything but anime) and then this one guy stood up in the back of this little internet forum and was just going off about how this one dude died in Yugioh GX and he turned off the TV and like didn’t want to even go back to the season until his students were like “no really, professor, please keep watching Yugioh GX” and he was like “WHAT’S EVEN THE POINT NOW” and it was like...really??? The series where nearly 200 people have died in just the first 3 seasons??? (which I didn’t comment, don’t worry, I just kinda lurked in stunned silence)

So like, lets talk more about Yugioh, which apparently has one of the roughest death scenes in any series that this random adult guy on the internet has ever watched. Course that was GX. I’m pretty sure I take so long on this show that I’ll probably still be recapping Season 3 of Yugioh when I’m dead and reincarnated into some cursed locket that a poor internet blogger wears around their neck.

Which would be shaped like a DVD set of Seaquest, S2. Like sometimes we talk about -sonas and we draw people and characters but what would your puzzle necklace -sona be? (remembering that is has to be cursed, heavy, awkward, and as inconveniently shaped as possible--you can’t just say Gucci or wtv) Because mine is the DVD collectors set of Seaquest, but only S2. Bro says that his is a Comic Sans version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

But I digress, so we start this episode knowing that Joey and Kaiba are dueling or whatever--but honestly none of this matters to me. Not at all. This doesn’t matter to anyone because for the first time ever, I finally get to see Tea try and punch out a God. Or a Ghost. Really hard to tell the difference between God and Ghost in this show.

And like, no one else will even witness this event because they’re too obsessed with Joey. So much so, that Yugi makes a staggering observation.

In the actual dialogue of the show, Pharaoh’s response to Yugi’s comment here was “HMMMMMMMmmmmMMHhmmmmmmmm”

and it’s like yeah, hard agree, Pharaoh, hard agree.

(read more under the cut)

Anyways, our very punchable God/Ghost character never came down from atop of Card Mess Mountain, and he’s just been sitting here on his perch trying really hard to just parse what exactly went down over the past few episodes.

Marik right now is me before I write every recap.

So he decides, well if the Rod did something for Kaiba, I guess it should do something for me, thus kind of proving that no one on Earth understands how to use this item anymore. I was kinda banking on the the fact that Marik’s Slightly-More-Evil-Possessed-Ghost-God-Entity-Person was kind of like the only guy who knows what’s going on with these gadgets outside of Bakura, but nah. Not even this guy knows. Now that Bakura’s temporarily vaporized, basically all that these millennium items are now are heavy paperweights that sometimes make your life just super inconvenient.

And I guess it can possess minds but wtv. Had Marik remembered that this rod can possess minds he would have had a much, much easier time in this episode. Of course, we haven’t really seen him possess anyone since Slightly-Better-Marik peaced out, so maybe that’s just something only Slightly-Better-Marik can do?

Ah. There it is.

What sweet catharsis.

She doesn’t actually punch him, which is kind of a shame, but because they can’t show Marik explode like a slo mo frozen giant gummy bear shot with a deer slug directly on screen, this episode is Tea-punch free.

Anyway, during this episode, the Millennium Puzzle develops a neat new trick--which is to set an alarm to remind Pharaoh to check up on his sort-of-not-really-girlfriend for once in his damn lifetime because this asshole will not do it otherwise because he is just waaaaay too busy thinking about cards.

And then it just finally dawns on Yugi that he boarded Murderzone island like 3 hours ago.

And, because this is Yugi, do you think he’ll tell everyone else what’s going on? Do you think he’ll step in and be like “woah woah stop the game for five seconds I just realized Tea might be in huge danger and we all should go and stop the murder.”

Do you think Yugi, for once in his entire life, will finally tell the entire truth to his friends who have constantly given him love and support and who just want Yugi to tell them the entire truth even once? Just ONCE?

That’s right, in an effort to be polite, he apologizes to Joey for ditching him and then books it without bothering anyone else.

The lengths Yugi will go to be as awkward as possible in order to not make anything awkward.

And then he just books it as fast as he can go and I guarantee that offscreen, everyone just kind of stopped what they were doing, looked at eachother, and Seto was like “Well, now why am I even playing?”

Anyway, atop the tall tall tower that takes like 15 minutes to get to the top of, Marik as Tea is very easily holding their own. And listen, Marik didn’t say any of the next lines in these caps but I can’t stop thinking about how freakin weird this would be for him. I’ve been kinda holding this in for a little while and youknow what? I have to talk about it for just a little bit. Just a little.

Like I usaully just erase any shipping stuff but just...give me a little second to just...touch on this subject. Just a little bit.

And while Marik thinking about dating is absolutely not canon, I’m just saying, going from tombkeeper to living within the body of not-Pharaoh’s-GF must have been a really crazy ride for Marik. Like, he starts out life learning literally everything about Pharaoh lore that is left over from the wastes of time. But, none of it--and I mean none of it--could have prepared him for the High School dating scene of “but should I text him more than twice a day or is that too much texting?” They don’t tell you how to do that in the Pharaoh brand card scriptures that they tattoo on your back with a hot knife in underground Pharaoh school.

Marik went from mole-person who has no human contact to just watching this whole weird thing unfold with Tea and Pharaoh giving eachother hoverhands-of-a-hoverhands hugs, and it must have been just completely wild for him. I’m not suggesting he remotely enjoyed it or didn’t enjoy it, but I’m just suggesting that the thought must have crossed his mind that this would be the last place he ever expected to end up when he picked up the Millennium Rod.

And it’s like, congrats, Marik, your soul went to hell and then you accidentally dated your own god.

I’m sure there’s plenty of fanfics about this already to fill in the gaps, so I won’t go too deep into this but man, Marik could have possessed anyone, and he possessed this girl.

Which again was probably because she’s strangely super strong because then Tea reveals that she could have done this the entire time.

LOOK AT THIS.

SHE DID THIS FROM STANDING. OLYMPIC GYMNASTS CAN’T DO THIS.

And then I guess Marik got sleepy after that much effort and just passed out.

And no one got to see it, Ishizu didn’t see it, Pharaoh didn’t see it.

Who’s here now, PS, Pharaoh finally showed up. That long as hell elevator must’ve stopped like 4 times on the way up for Roland who’s on his break, probably heating up the grill to talk to the other Kaiba Dad Stand-ins and have a Kaiba Dad Stand-In brunch where all they do is talk about sports, dark sunglasses, and if they should send Mokuba to UC Davis or Colorado State.

And so, seeing that Tea is passed out on the ground, Pharaoh jumps to conclusions and it very much looks like we’re gonna get a Millennium Item fight, which we haven’t yet seen Pharaoh even do.

Like, when you think about it, do either of these people even know what they are doing? Like Marik can at least fight a bunch of robots and one stationary computer monitor, but does Pharaoh have any idea that thing can shoot lasers?

Much like a bobcat making itself look really big to fight other bobcats, Pharaoh managed to poof up his hair big enough to spook Marik into actually stepping down. I guess Marik figured he’d have a better time with cards than lasers that neither of them know how to shoot in any general direction.

I gotta say, Pharaoh’s reaction to Marik secretly being in the body of his girlfriend was like “oh. Well we better go save him then before he dies.” and I do appreciate that. He seems secure enough in his own identity to not be bothered by this gender reversal he was not even aware of at the time. How I wish more boys on TV were more secure about that type of thing.

Like obviously this show that has no romance in it will never actually talk about sexuality but just enjoy this moment of zen where this possible lowhanging punchline could have happened and the writers room went “do we have to do the Family Guy/Friends thing?” and they were like “nah.” because Pharaoh canonically would not at all be bothered by this. At all.

Anyway, I’m kinda bummed that they didn’t extend Tea fight out for 3 episodes, but at least I got one Tea fight in before the end of the series.

I can’t believe she did a weird backflip thing off of a rail that was on a tower 300 ft in the air. I can’t believe that was the B plot of this episode.

And here’s a link to read these recaps in Chronological Order.

[johnnyappleseed369-blog]

Check out my petition: https://www.change.org/p/black-lives-matter-unity-of-the-left-against-oppression-while-we-still-can

The history of humanity is a series of struggles between identifiable groups. From the civil rights movement to the suffragists, many of the oppressed have periodically struggled for change to create a better life for themselves and future generations. Despite all of this, we find ourselves in a uniquely dangerous place today.

The progress of past movements has, over time, proven to fall short of what is necessary. From feminism to black lives matter to antifa, many of our generation have taken up the cause to create a more equal world for everyone. That being said, these groups don't always see eachother as allied. Many of these groups are in fact fighting the same enemy but calling them by a different name. What we need to do is band together and fight the root causes for oppression of minorities and women.

Though it would be ridiculous not to acknowledge that things have got better than they once were, todays political climate has brought the racists and bigots to the surface. The self described "land of opportunity" has shown itself to be fascist at its core. And the argument that one black president means everything is equal is absurd. People of african descent are targeted by police, women are paid 70% of what men are, muslims are unfairly painted with the brush of international terrorism, and the LGBTQ community finds itself having to struggle for the most basic of human rights.

Now is the time to strive for real change. We must band together and complete the revolutionary fight that our ancestors fought and died for. And I believe the first step is to outline our common enemy and band together. The fascists want us to stay divided,and cheer when we fight with one another (BLM protesting pride parades for example).

We must stop quibbling over small issues with one another and work to shut down fascism and systemic racism. The oppressive system of the west will always oppose change, because change means less power. Those in power always crave more and envision the loss of power to be worse than death. It is for this reason we must band together. The fascists see this as the first nail in their coffin if they do not win. And we cannot win without banding together. I believe now is the time to kill fascism once and for all. It has taken enough lives and oppressed enough people.

So who are the fascists? Well....there are a number of answers to that question. Donald Trump is the obvious example to point to. His administration has been polarizing and has been consistently pushing nazi policies. Republicans too have revealed themselves to be more than just conservatives. The refusal of the republican party to push back against Donald Trump has shown that they are not our allies. They are closeted rascists and bigots who are biding their time to reveal their true motives. Its more than just the government obviously. You can't blame Donald Trump and the alt right for everything. Someone gave them their power and their voice. 

Feminism is the struggle for equality of the sexes, and is constantly oppressed by mysoginists. The patriarchy is real, and it is everywhere. However, I don't think the term fully explains the real problem.

Antifa is dedicated to fight fascism. The "punch a nazi" narrative is a good first step, but doesn't in the end fix anything. One individual nazi being punched won't change anything, and in fact will embolden them to become more outspoken. More violent. Moreoppressive. And sometimes more famous.

Black lives matter is fighting for better policing and rights for black communities. They find their safe spaces under attack, their young people shot by police for the crime of being black, and discriminated against by the system. These communities need real help, not to be told stop complaining and make better choices.

While the aforementioned groups all have real goals and are fighting for change, they are fighting an impossible fight alone,and fighting the same enemy without knowing it.

The true enemy to these causes is whiteness. And I think it is important to explain what whiteness is. Whiteness is the system white men in the west have in place to keep the power. White women are not as oppressed as black women for example, but that doesntmean they are given their fair share either. Indeed it is true they too are victims of whiteness, however not nearly to the degree that minorities are. Whiteness therefore could also be accurately called the patriarchy, but as I stated before is a term that isn't specific enough.

If whiteness were ended, many of these problems would cease overnight. However this isn't something that can be ended all in one day. Whiteness has caused all the wars, has stolen all the money and resources from other races, and has betrayed minorities atevery turn. The way to end whiteness will take time, and it will be a hard fight. Whiteness will not surrender power. Even when they become outwardly less rascist, they maintain their biases in their minds and in their systems. 

The first step would be a blanket boycott of all white male owned businesses. Money is power, and if they cannot exploit us financially, they lose power. After that, we must purge oppressive ideas and literature. Whether it be by burning books or demanding e books be removed from online stores. Many white authors have routinely written in characters of color who are portrayed as dim witted and often threatening. These help to nurture biases, concious and unconcious.

Inter racial marriage is another way to destroy whiteness. If white women only associate with men of colour, whiteness would be dealt a death blow by the next generation. Policies should be made that forbid white men from having relations with white women. 

Another way would be to confiscate the excess wealth from those who have actively oppressed minorities and women and to distribute that wealth amongst the oppressed. I don't just mean reperations for slavery, Im talking about social and wage inequities. Those who have been underneath the jackboot of whiteness deserve to be compensated.

Those who hold rascist views should have all property seized and redistributed and be forced to publicly apologize, as well as take mandatory bias training and denazification. Finally, we must make the oppressors feel the pain of the oppressed. Suffering bringsenlightenment, and enlightenment is freedom.

White women are not completely excluded from the crimes of whiteness. It would be ridiculous to not acknowledge the privelege they have. In fact many of the crimes against minorities were pushed forward using the excuse of protecting white women and white families. Therefore, white women should share in the burden to overthrow whiteness. Although many do not condone whiteness, they still benefit from it. Every white woman has a white father, and that white father perpetuated the system. It is for that reason I place special emphasis on their part in dismantling whiteness. However, they aren't to be fully trusted, and when the struggle ends must be willing to take their rightful place. 

Only when whiteness is destroyed can we all flourish. Only when whiteness is destroyed can we have equality, not just the semblance of equality. Only when whiteness is destroyed will pointless wars cease. Whiteness is violence. Whiteness is fascism. Whiteness is oppression. Whiteness is racism. Whiteness is evil.

This petition has been made in hopes that the various groups fighting for their place in society will band together. Because only together can we topple whiteness. I would ask that all like minded people who this reaches band together and make the world a better place for everyone. 

[littlebitwriter]

12 DAYS OF STAR WARS: AN ORIGINAL FANBOY-DRIVEN BLOG SERIES EPISODE 10: THE FUTURE OF STAR WARS POST-RISE OF SKYWALKER

(A tricky episode of 12 DAYS OF STAR WARS where I directly talk about the effects of The Rise of Skywalker on Star Wars fandom without talking about the movie itself saving it all for the big SPOILER review finale on Christmas Eve with an epilogue on Christmas Day)

**This is an extremely opinionated episode that I hope does not alienate anyone** So sorry if it does, for those who love the prequels I respect you all. It just wasn’t my thing*

Rise of Skywalker is in reality, ultimately... it’s just a movie. I will not say what I thought about it, whether it was good or bad or mediocre or whatever. I am saving it for the grand finale of 12 DAYS OF STAR WARS and I allow those who have been keeping up with the holiday spirit of 12 DAYS OF STAR WARS to play a guessing game as to whether people think ‘I liked it’ or if ‘I didn’t like it’ I am a guy with opinions on certain things and I don’t like that we live in an age where people have become so divisive over just simply having different opinions. I personally took a break from Star Wars when I was young because the Prequels gave me an obnoxious headache and I didn’t like everything that's Star Wars related when I was younger and didn’t know how to deal with my feelings because I thought as a fan you were supposed to like everything and I thought at the time ‘what if I don’t what if I become ridiculed and bullied or called Not a true fan’. As a child watching Star Wars and when it came to having different opinions on certain things ultimately I discovered was totally normal. I can love Star Wars and I can love the original films, Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars, Legacy, The Mandalorian but I don’t have to like Attack of The Clones for example. You can like or dislike whatever you want and can express your opinion only as long as you are respectful of other people and their beliefs you are allowed to be a fan of whatever you want to be a fan of. It is important to state the facts as to why you feel the way you feel and call it the way you see it without being rude or hypocritical and belittling people. What all of us fans of Star Wars have in common is we love Star Wars and want to see an exciting vibrant future of the franchise we all know and love.

I feel Star Wars should ultimately make the jump to television a la MCU moving to the binge-model for Disney +. Mainly because you have so much time on television than you in film, the entire Star Wars cinematic franchise honestly should only continue on-screen in the format of great prestige binge-streaming television. Even though it destroys the once-in-a-lifetime special experience of seeing a Star Wars film in theaters, it ultimately instead ultimately provides a richer story with deep nuance where you can have more time to delve deep into the characters, their relationships and motivations. With the mainline saga films ending I hope Star Wars takes the jump to strictly television as they have been having tremendous success with Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian and potentially more shows. In a previous episode of 12 Days of Star Wars I talked about directors/writers I would love to see direct a film or develop/showrun a TV show set in the Star Wars universe and I think it would be awesome for Disney + to bring people like Drew Goddard, Ryan Coogler, Todd Philips, in to make brilliant television and craft brilliant stories set in a galaxy far, far away with the help of folks who get Star Wars like Dave Filoni (who should from the beginning have been involved with the Sequel Trilogy).

There are so many cool ideas in Star Wars that could be fleshed out and made interesting that end up being almost stale in certain films. For example the idea of an Atlantic City casino in the Star Wars universe is a cool idea but ultimately in The Last Jedi the Canto Bight scenes were in my opinion the most boring parts of the entire film. Ultimately, you need people who can execute these cool and interesting ideas and that was a large part of what the last couple of episodes have been about. I’m NOT saying JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson are incompetant directors/writers and can’t execute a story, that’s completely false, they are two of some of the most talented directors in the industry who I love dearly. I don’t love everything they do but they both have done great projects in the past. Ultimately I feel Star Wars needs a larger canvas to tell it’s stories and I think television is the perfect place.

Even though The Rise of Skywalker is just a movie, Star Wars altogether is more than just a movie. It’s a cultural touchstone/phenomenon that matters to millions of us, all for different reasons, individually and we are all entitled to our own opinions and for all of its flaws, we all love Star Wars. That should continue to never end our love for this rich galaxy far, far away and we don’t need toxic fandoms or haters/trolls on the internet telling you to think how they should. As the Star Wars fan community we should end this divisiveness and just have respect for eachother. In America, we have sadly become such a politically charged/divided country where if you don’t agree with someone else you are in a way ridiculed for it and that ultimately goes on both sides of the political spectrum. Over the last couple of years there has been a toxic fandom in the Star Wars fan community dubbed "The Fandom Menace". Who are fans who are extremely unhappy with the current state of the Star Wars franchise who constantly give out increased attacks and the increased negativity about upcoming Star Wars projects. Who bully and harass fans across the internet and it is my own mission as a writer and also as a genuine human being to end this culture of extreme negativity.

Ultimately, with whatever your opinions on the state of Star Wars are, I respect you but ultimately you should NOT harass other people and force them to think the way you do. Everyone is different and thinks about things differently. Objectively and subjectively and no one should ruin another person’s enjoyment of something.

Please for the love of this franchise, let’s end the divisiveness, embrace others and be actual human beings and be friends have conversations and dig deep into the ‘why’ you feel the way you feel and respect why others feel the way that they feel. Remember, everyone we all love Star Wars. We all should have something to bond over. And my last thing I’ll say is (this is just my opinion) Han always shot first.

“For every ending there is a new beginning...”

-LilBitWriter (12/22/19)

[samleheny]

The curious forgotten gem(?), Binary Domain

Binary Domain is a game. In this way it’s eerily similar to Dynasty Warriors, Dig Dug, and Checkers, among others.

Less similarly, it’s been sitting in my Steam Library for years since I picked it up for pennies during one of the holiday sales. All I knew is it was a shooter, and it was Japanese, and while the Japanese market doesn’t have as much of an appetite for shooters as we do in the West, the few they put out generally turn out pretty good, or at least refreshing coming from a development culture not as obsessed with trying to clone Call of Duty or Gears or War.

Binary Domain was developed and published by Sega in February 2012, by a team helmed by Yakuza creator Nagoshi Toshihiro. It received decent reviews but didn’t sell very well outside Japan. Knowing that Japanese shooters also tend to be a tad on the short side, I decided to install it and boot it up.

First impressions weren’t good. I’m one of those social pariahs who plays shooters with a controller, but while Binary Domain has full controller support, all of the button prompts remain adherent to the keyboard, which makes the learning curve especially annoying, and quicktime events (while thankfully infrequent) are a nightmare when there’s the added twist of having to guess which button it wants you to press. But the graphics are thrifty and generally look pretty nice, and it ran flawlessly on my sputtering old GTX 660ti.

The plot: It’s the near future, robots are totally a thing, but the New Geneva Convention restricts certain research into advanced robots. Japan didn’t want to play ball, so it isolated itself from the rest of the world and built a big wall to keep the foolish gaijin out. You are part of some secret small UN team (or something) who is tasked with infiltrating Japan and hooking up with the Japanese resistance on the inside. If you’re thinking that sounds plageristically similar to the plot of that 2007 Japanese film Vexille then you’re not the only one.

Robots permeate every aspect of developed society as an unthinking physical labour and customer service workforce, but one day some rando walks into America’s/the world’s largest robots company distressed and waving a gun around. He tears off his face to reveal he’s a totally a robo-man before offing himself.

We then get a delightfully Japanese imagining of what a secret White House meeting looks like –

-in which it’s explained that this man was a “Hollow Child”. A robot dressed up in flesh and blood and suspected to have been developed in and deployed by Japan to infiltrate foreign society. And for some added creep, these Hollow Children believe themselves to be human. That’s pretty dorky but fun. I was on board. But obviously you’re not meant to think about it too much or you’ll run into unhelpful questions like “This guy is established as being one of potentially hundreds of Hollow Children infiltrating the other countries for decades and then living their lives normally. How in that time did not a single one of them encounter a simple doctor’s appointment, medical procedure, or injury that would have immediately revealed their crude mechanical innards?”

You play as good looking, all-American Dan, aided by your meaty, all-American friend Bo. As part of an internationally coordinated effort to get into Japan, arrest the Mr. Amada, leader of Japan’s robot industry, and find evidence of his involvement in this Hollow Child business. After a fairly dull first hour or so spent getting through the big sea wall, things pick up when you join up with the British and Chinese teams. You see, at the start of every chapter you get to pick two team mates to accompany you from your growing motley crew. This crew eventually includes a flatteringly polite break-dancing robot with a French accent.

11/10. Game of the Year. Better than Breath of the Wild.

The banter between these characters is good. It starts out a little too Hollywood, or rather what Japan thinks of Hollywood, which is normally way to cringy for me but I found myself quickly warming to these people. They all just think you’re the big dumb American man, but they felt human enough in their performances that I was always determined to make them like me.

The big idea with this game’s combat is that you must earn your team mates’ trust and respect. You score points by answering their questions right (which is just a matter of always answering “yes”), coming to their aid when they’re hurt, and by performing well during combat. Blowing away a lot of enemies in a short span of time or pulling off a sweet headshot will pretty easily garner you praise mid fire-fight and yeah, it feel pretty nice. You lose points by answering wrongly (anything other than “yes”) or by accidentally shooting your allies, which happened a lot and every single time was their own damn fault! I would have scrapped the friendly fire mechanic entirely. And except for some quicktime events (WHY DO DEVELOPERS STILL USE THESE?!) I didn’t die once. It’s not that I didn’t get my good looking, all American arse shot off on multiple occasions, but when that does happen, you get a good generous chance to administer a magical first aid injection or if you’re out, call over one of your teammates to do it for you should you have racked up enough good will with them. And I really appreciate that. It’s one of the few things I unguardedly agree with David Cage about that Game Over states too often exist more for the developer’s benefit and not the player’s

You spend the first third of the game travelling through the slummy lower parts of old Tokyo, battling various flavours of “Scrap-Heads”, Japan’s weaponised robot soldiers. A consistent rule for all humanoid robot enemies is established early on: Shoot off one of their arms to tamper with their aim, shoot their legs out from under them to greatly reduce their mobility, or shoot off their heads and they’ll lose track of who’s who and start attacking eachother. It’s a neat system that rewards skilful play. The guns are satisfying to shoot you can feel the gradual improvements as you upgrade their stats throughout the game, but one area that suffers is the lack of variety. There aren’t that many different firearms, those available aren’t that different, and the game has an annoying system wherein you have four weapon slots, one is dedicated to your trusty rifle, another to your backup pistol, a third is the designated grenades slot, and only the remaining forth slot is available for trying out different weapons. Lame-sauce!

Enemies feel good and bad to shoot at since even the basic drones can take a lot of punishment and require sustained fire to put down, and they fizzle and spark satisfyingly as you blow apart their armour and reveal the delicate innards. But larger enemies feel a bit too bullet-spongy I think mainly due to a lack of visual feedback that you’re even causing any damage. And there’s one major grievance I have to bring up. There are a handful of especially frustrating boss fights in this game and when I pondered what I found so aggravating about them I realised they all had one thing in common: they all used missiles and missiles in this game are OP as all goddamn. Even if you manage to evade them they’ll still stun you and shake the camera furiously if you’re so much as standing in the same time zone as the explosion. And the seconds you have in between repeated stunnings are precious few with how much these bosses spam them.

At first the movement controls feel a bit slippery and sticky at the same time, but eventually I adjusted and had a good time with them. Perhaps the result of the difference in what qualities Japanese and Western developers value in a shooter.

The story ends up being pretty enjoyable for its good animation and performances, but I’m going to venture hard to spoiler territory now to talk about how my experience with this game got… weird, and why it’s a videogame experience I’ll not soon forget. So if you’re thinking you’d like to give Binary Domain a try, pull out now!

What starts off as seeming a pretty silly junkfood sci-fi quickly gets a little more interesting. As you venture deeper into the city and have more surprise encounters with randos who turn out to be Hollow Children and break down from the revelation, the paranoia sets in as you the player start to consider that for all these characters know the entire population has been unknowingly replaced with robots who think they’re human (again, as long as you don’t think about it too much).

There’s a cutscene early on, a flashback of one of good looking, all American Dan’s memories, wherein a young Dan madly beats the shit out of a servant robot with a bat, establishing Dan’s prejudice towards the robots that permeate society. But oddly, we witness the entire memory from the perspective of the robot, leading me to smugly predict the climactic twist: that good looking, all American Dan is a Hollow Child! Dan’s nickname (of which the game constantly reminds us) is “The Survivor”, so the opportunity was ripe for it to turn out that The Survivor had in fact not survived and at some point been replaced with a robot with all of Dan’s memories. But no. The game never goes for that low-hanging fruit, although if the misdirection was intentional then it was pretty well executed, and what the story does have in mind is a little more ambitious if nothing else.

Good looking, all American Dan and the Chinese sniper team mate Faye grow closer over the course of the game. She gets wounded at one point and Dan stitches her back up, confirming for us that she’s flesh and blood. But things get more complicated, for better and for worse, as the story reaches its crescendo.

You and your mates infiltrate the Amada Corporation to find evidence and extract Mr. Amada, the brilliant robotocist suspected of breaching the Geneva convention and building Hollow Children in the first place. You get separated, blow some shit up, reencounter your team mates minus Faye, who have some bad news… about Faye? No... she ain’t no scrap head! We patched her up ourselves! Turns out Amada’s tech is even more advanced than we thought it was as the real purpose of the Hollow Children is revealed!

Female Hollow Children are fully capable of being impregnated by human men and carrying a child to term. Children like… Faye! Completely identical inside and out to regular old human beings. This fundamentally disgusts all your human team mates, while good looking, all American Dan is feeling conflicted and questioning his prejudice towards robots.

Come the final encounter the execution starts to fall apart around a narrative that really had my attention. All nuance is thrown out and the script devolves into a pretty ham-fisted moral lesson about bigotry.

Big evil Mr. Amada shows up accompanied by Faye, and explains: He is actually an A.I. created by the original Mr. Amada (now deceased), and all he wants is, like any lifeform, to reproduce, and so seeded the world with fertile Hollow Children leading to 108 hybrids like Faye currently wondering around in the world. Human in every way, but fitter and healthier mentally and physically, drawing from the same emotional spectrum but more rational and less fueled by aggression. Basically just like the best, smartest person to be. The kind of people I’d think most of us aspire to. But Dan’s teammates immediately devolve into a bunch of completely unreasonable arseholes who see Faye as an abomination and have already seen to it that a special hit squad is deployed to scour the globe and terminate all 108 of this new breed.

I was experiencing this game with a friend and at this point I turned to him for confirmation that I wasn’t crazy for thinking everything coming out of Amada’s mouth actually sounded pretty sweet. He agreed. We couldn’t see a downside! And as the game locked me into a boss fight against Faye as she hurled her disappointment at Dan for being so small-minded we were screaming at the game to give us some sort of choice to make. I would gladly have turned on my arsehole teammates if that’s what it took! But as the game looked like it was presenting Amada’s plan as definitively and fundamentally wrong, I almost wanted to stop playing and walk away, so onboard was I with everything Amada described. But they’re just like “Oooh but humanity! Oh it isn’t human! Ooooh she’s no good for some reasons that can’t even be physically measured! Oooh this plan to peacefully end the divide between man and machine without even really altering the human race to any noticeable degree is eeeeeevil!” Fuck humans. What’s so important about being human? It’s not like it’s your usual “All humans must die for robots to be free!” no it’s a much more agreeable “We are here to breed peacefully with you so we may both benefit.”

All the right themes of humans mistaking humanity for personhood are there, but the game didn’t seem to have much faith in me. I can see how this battle would have worked had I spent all that time being conflicted on the whole situation, but I wasn’t conflicted at all, I immediately thought “Amada’s actually making a lot of sense. At the very least I don’t see the harm in letting this be.” but I was stuck in the in-game body of good looking, all American Dan who was all “Gosh, I still think I love Faye, but obviously we still have to stop this.” Is it Dan? Is it obvious?

From there the game sort of accidentally stumbles toward a satisfying enough conclusion, with Dan secretly avoiding killing Faye and letting her escape. Then the real final showdown begins as it turns out the US military have double crossed you (duh) and the twists and changes of heart start mounting up quickly and clumsily. There’s a hilariously superfluous sequence that lasts all of one minute wherein one of Dan’s team mates holds Dan at gunpoint and reveals himself to have been evil all along for no other reason than to reveal a moment later that no, actually he’s been good all along and this sequence is was absolutely pointless. And naturally Faye didn’t leave after all and  shows up to assist, and of course all your team mates are suddenly righteous and totally on her side even though nothing has actually happened to influence such a change of heart between now and five minutes ago when they were all overcome with disgust at her very existence and wanted nothing more than to execute her… It’s all a bit infantile. I love sci-fi and I especially love sci-fi that is daring enough to take the stance that a lot of the values we live by in human society are arbitrary and artificial, and this game… sort of took that stance? The right person got their way in the end, but not because anyone involved necessarily learned anything.

In the end, I was surprised and impressed with the majority of Binary Domain. It has everything you want and expect from a Japanese shooter. I am a little bummed out that the story’s nuance and execution spent the whole mid game rising in my esteem only to finish in a very turbulent landing. One in which all passengers survived, but a number of them will still probably want to file complaints.