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residentraccoon · 9 months ago

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Ok we have all the songs, time to make a top, with comments even 😳

1. Norway - I love love love this one, this eerie, thrilling melody mixed with the medieval theme and old norwegian language just makes this song perfect and no other song of this year can come any closer to it. Very unique, true to their homeland, absolute masterpiece. I'm definitely following more of Gåte's discography from now on!

2. Estonia - Well they're singing about drugs here and this song is exactly like a drug - addictive. What sells it is their awesome, slightly batshit crazy energy (I absolutely love it) and let's not forget the traditional instruments. I can see a Trenulețul scenario with this one tbh.

3. Slovenia - Absolutely magical, the structure of this song is pretty uncommon and the lil RRAH sounds are interesting, love how it takes a while to build-up and I just get chills all over. This one is a piece of art.

4. San Marino - This song is destroying my Spotify wrapped and it's not even funny, there's something about this one that makes it instantly addictive. I've listened to Megara since last year when they were at Spain's NF with Arcadia and all I can say is that I love their style. Sassy pink and punk rock with a touch of Spanish traditional sounds during the bridge, they just mesh together so well. I don't understand why it's so underrated (currently last in the odds lmfao) and I'm looking forward to their live performance.

5. Denmark - Generic pop song my beloved, why is it so catchy though? I've said it in a previous post, I just reminds me of songs I'd hear in 2013 or so and I love the "Oh-Oh" parts. Lovely

6. Lithuania - The beat hits, it's just awesome fr. Lovely staging and colors, Lithuanian sounds so pretty and melodic as well as his voice.

7. Belgium - Wonderful build-up, the song at first sounds very chill and gives me Blanche vibes (I looked it up and they have the same composer so not surprised lmao) but man, the climax is greaaaaat!! Especially with that choir in the backing. My only gripe would be that he keeps repeating the title over and over again, which can become a bit tiring. But just a bit. It's still a great song!

8. Switzerland - I don't know whose idea was to mix opera and drum n bass together but they're a genius, this is really cool, like absolutely nuts. I love how the bridge is very soft and quiet, opposing the loud and dramatic chorus, I feel like the song itself is pretty messy and inconsistent but I really like that, it's very out of the box and innovative. Genius entry.

9. Latvia - Underrated, I can see why it might fail to grab an audience in the fandom but I really like this one, especially his voice. The song flows nicely too, I only wish the staging would be a bit more...dynamic though? I really want Latvia to qualify for once, felt like it might have a chance since it could attract some casual viewers (some of my casual friend watchers really liked it!) but seeing how brutal semifinal 2 is (and one spot will be inevitably taken by...yeah won't elaborate) I'm afraid Latvia's out for this year as well. I hope at least for a surprise or who knows. That's only how I feel at this moment.

10. Spain - My biggest grower of this year and a total banger, I don't understand why it slaps so hard it has no business to, the message is SO real and it's so unapologetically sassy.

11. Czechia - Same story as with Latvia, underrated to hell and back, I know the live version is...a lil terrible but the studio one I really like. Love how you can feel the frustration through her shouty lyrics and how she's blaming herself for not loving herself more instead (also the beginning might or might not remind me of Aijā I mean the intro with the drums makes me think of it-) ANYWAY

12. Croatia - Listen I'm very happy for Croatia being seen as a most likely winner of this year, they deserve it, Baby Lasagna is an amazing man and the message is on point, even if it's not exactly my favorite I definitely root for him!! Please meow back if you agree. Besides this, the glam ethno rock sound is just 👌 chef's kiss

13. Armenia - Love love love that they brought something ethnic!! The girl's energy is infectious and she's such a joy to watch, the music video is very pretty and describes their culture so well, overall I adore this.

14. Netherlands - GREAT I relistened to it so I can rank it and now I have Europapapapapapa stuck in my head how wonderful. This tells me already that this is such an infectious bop that will never leave your head. Possible televote winner, love the quirkiness and Joost is really goofy we stan.

15. Greece - Welcome to Greece, everyone who visits the country is obligated to listen to this the moment they step out of the plane- /j It's so Greek, so fun, so ethnic, geez what's happening with everyone being so diverse and true to their culture this year? This song screams summer vacation in Greece and I'm here for it.

16. France - The raw emotions in this...he sings with his heart and soul, his voice is very deep and gruff which feels a bit unusual to hear such an intimate and emotional ballad from him, but this is what makes the song special.

17. Italy - Love her attitude and how she sells the song, it's very sassy and fun, won't be surprised to see Italy get yet another Top 5 finish with this.

18. Ukraine - Interesting mix of melancholic pop and energetic chanting and rap. Alyona just nails the rap part perfectly. Overall nice song, grew off me but still great.

19. Ireland - This makes me have chills all over my body. It's very haunting and suspenseful, I love the uncommon unique sound and how they recite the lyrics as they are a poem/creating a curse, I simply love how avant-garde Ireland are this year! Finally they're taking a risk and even if the song is unconventional i hope it will have a following that will help them get through the semi! 🤞

20. Poland - Oh look another grower, it's such a cute song for some reason and her voice is so pleasant to the ears.

21. Serbia - At first I thought it's a bit boring but now I find myself mumbling "Lila Ramondaaaa", like it has a hook even if it's a melancholic ballad.

22. Portugal - The emotions in this are immaculate, she conveys all her struggles in life so well into a ballad that's somewhat soft-sounding. Epic.

23. Australia - For some reason this song takes me back to 2015-2016 and I don't get why?? Maybe I heard music that's similar to this in that period, who knows. That chorus slaps immensely, as well as the didgeridoo(I hope that's the instrument), but I'm not extremely head over heels about it. It's enjoyable still!

24. Malta - Contrary to popular belief I enjoyed the revamp, she made it easier to sing live and it just has more oomph, good job, Malta.

25. Finland - The whole 3 minutes are absolutely batshit insane and I love it fr, these dudes are a delight to watch. The song tbh I like it but not that much to rank it higher, but I appreciate the craziness, the message, what sells it is definitely the staging and the guys' stage persona.

26. Austria - Mmmmm I know it's a fan favorite but I'm not a big fan of this, like I've said before in some other posts. The hype at first was highly irritating (especially on twitter, dear god 💀) for such a...just okay/good song? First of all I appreciate the throwback to the late 90s/early 00s eurodance/synthpop music that was popular back then, I think it does a great job imitating the vibes of it, but at the same time is it just me or this song feels so...calculated and has this eurovision-specific formula in its structure/sound? It was definitely made for it being performed live and to pander to the yass queen slay ate and left no crumbs-side of the fandom? Which honestly kinda drags it down a lot for me.

27. Sweden - I can't unhear parts of Air in this, well actually that's their style, neat electro pop tbh, I can bop to this, pretty enjoyable.

28. Moldova - Falls flat but what makes it a bit stronger is the vocalisations in the chorus, as well as the lil ethnic sounds. That drum is also quite catchy. They have to pull out a wonder-staging for this to qualify.

29. Georgia - If Georgia isn't qualifying with this one then that means their only hope is borrowing Loreen at this point. It's a competent girl bop with powerful vocals, that has a dedicated following, but I appreciate that even if it's a girl bop it's not so aggressively in your face like...other examples I've seen before. I'm personally not big on it, but it's nice.

30. Azerbaijan - Oh? Azerbaijan sends something in their language, what is this 2050? And not with a melfest reject? For the 2nd year in a row? I'm very impressed, but even with all these I don't feel that attached to the song, just glad they took a risk instead of renting a swede for safe qualification like they did in the past years. I love the ethnic touches though.

31. Luxembourg - Cute and peppy french bop, although a bit generic and that's about it, no strong feelings.

32. Cyprus - Mmm your regular girlie pop of the year, unsurprisingly from Cyprus as well. Pretty catchy, has a cool vibe but I'm not feeling anything about it.

33. United Kingdom - Just a competent mid-tempo boy bop, honestly nothing much to say since it kinda failed to impress me. Good effort though.

34. Albania - I don't get why they changed it into english, why they turned it more upbeat (I liked the balladier version more) and the rap part feels disjointed. Albania wanted to relive their 2016-2017 era I see.

35. Germany - I'm sorry but this song bores me to death and can't listen to it without zoning out which is a shame because he's a competent singer (his voice is the best thing about Germany this year) and I'm afraid they're again heading for a bottom 3 finish 💀

36. Iceland - Mmm this isn't is, Iceland. Very sorry. Sounds like it would get 13th in 2004, it's a very by-the-letters eurodance.

I will not rank Israel here. It's still mind-boggling that they're still allowed to participate.

#txt

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cptn-m · 2 months ago

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One Piece chapter 1128 review

I'm still editing the full Egghead review I pitched after the last chapter. I ended up having a lot of thoughts and real life has been busy, but it's coming.

Meanwhile, we've got a packed early arc chapter to play with here. It's fun to see how everyone was a little right and a little wrong about the mysterious kingdom in our weeks of speculation. A lot of people hit the right cues to notice the people weren't giant size, and of course this place wasn't actually meant to be a retconned design of the central Elbaf village we'd seen in the past. But with the full picture of it being basically a terrarium and the surrounding room having stone walls and an actual giant present, I'm much more inclined now to say we're somewhere on the island proper.

The much-speculated inconsistencies with outfit pieces turn out to just be mistakes. I might not have fully ruled out the possibility, but I was always skeptical they were intended to mean anything. I'll be very interested to see how far the corrections go when volume 111 comes out.

But if I may nitpick, even in this chapter we can see the Lego castle crumbling like brick and mortar instead of plastic construction materials. Despite being told that they're all synthetic materials that smell funny when they burn. It's a missed opportunity not to draw them like what they're meant to be. A decent adaptation could go the extra mile with this kind of thing, maybe do a CGI physics sim of a Lego wall coming apart and the pieces scattering realistically instead of the standard cloud of dust environmental destruction we're getting here.

This week's Jump cover and colour spread make a great first impression. The painted style Oda's used for a handful of recent covers has been awesome, and I love the details of the colour spread. Franky's souped up broom bike - absolutely radical. And of course Zoro just sits casually on the dragon's head. And the forced perspective on Luffy's broomstick coming right up to the camera gives it all such a dynamic, active composition.

The chapter builds fantastically to the key reveal as Luffy's group descend into the town and meet the locals, with little hints like the lack of wind after they hit the ground. Nami making the suggestion that the crew could have been gigantified is a funny if you remember chapter 410 (titled Giant Nami, and in which Kalifa mistakenly assumes Nami has transformed into a giant after seeing Chopper's Monster Point) but that's probably a coincidence rather than a deep cut. I'm actually surprised in hindsight I didn't see anyone theorising the crew turned giant (or shrank) as a way to reconcile the size issues of last chapter…

I like Luffy calling out Usopp's handling of the cat. Calling attention to his weakness so directly feels like setup for a character arc, instead of it just being another instance of a running gag. I'm less enthused with the standard set of Sanji gags, particularly the idea of setting up a two-way mirror in the womens' bedroom. But what's new? Better humour is the reactions and expressions of the crew when confronted about the sacred animals they just beat up. And Nami extorting Chopper after saving him. It's classic Strawhat humour all the way down, the bad and the good all together.

The scale of the reveal shot after Luffy hits the mirror (another great gag) is jaw-dropping. And I love the expectations play that this isn't a toyroom or child's play place but a fully enclosed human terrarium by what has to be an adult hobbyist who's sewing clothes for his miniatures and everything. His craft room is well-stocked, and he cares enough to call it a temple. I've done a decent few model ships and Gunpla in my time, so I see and respect where that comes from. I'd be pretty miffed too if those 1/144 pilot figures broke out of the display cabinet and set my study on fire too.

The page leading into the Sun God's arrival (love the headgear btw, is it hard to sew at a mini scale while looking out of that thing?) is a lot of fun. The slow build up of the suspicious noises and snippets of offscreen dialogue. The smoke under the door as he reaches it. The door flying open to the battle already in progress. It all makes me very happy.

If I may nitpick again though, I still don't like how Luffy's outfits are working with Gear Five. The Egghead one vanished entirely and came back when he left the form. The Egghead cape stays and turns white, but the boots and axe vanish, and the helmet fuses into his hair somehow? You can see the horns turned white and still sticking out, even with the rest of it gone. That's going to bug me for days. And of course it all returns to normal when he leaves Gear Five in a few pages. I don't understand or like how this works. Just keep the outfit, turn it white. It's like Oda is trying to treat the Gear Five design as too iconic to change and is putting the reversion to it over the story's continuity.

As the chapter wraps, the plan to bust through the opposite mirror and the wall behind it becomes a tiny bit questionable when we consider that said wall will be built to giant proportions, orders of magnitude thicker and denser than the crew must be picturing. But it's the monster trio there, so if anyone can do it…

I know it's the new arc honeymoon phase, but man this one was a fun ride. Creative ideas, mostly funny gags, the mystery of who and where and how building with every new detail. My nitpicks can't bring down the joy of exploration that comes with the opening of each new story in this series. Can't wait to see where it goes next.

#one piece #manga review #monkey d luffy #one piece manga #manga #op manga

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lesvegas · 2 months ago

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ritchie’s🎃💀 ABCs of Horror Movie Marathon!! 💀🎃

Horror movie challenge prompted by @quintsmachete

Day Five - E is for Emesis Blue (2023)

I haven't been 'in' the TF2 fandom in years and only have one or two mutuals left from those days, so while I've heard the title in passing, I wasn't even really sure what this was until I saw it listed on a horror movie wiki. Turns out what I thought might've been a popular fic was actually a feature-length horror SFM-- how could I NOT watch it?

The first thing I need to address is that I've seen very few 'serious' videos animated in SFM in my time; a solid 98% of them have been silly as hell, so it took my brain at least ten minutes to adjust to the fact that this is Not a funny joke video. The striking imagery within the first minute or so definitely helped, but it was still a slightly awkward phase that may have hampered the beginning for me.

The voice acting also made for a weird adjusting period. This is entirely a skill issue on my part but it took me a while to get used to the voices for each of the characters as well, ESPECIALLY the Spy's. In fact, at first I thought the Spy and Heavy sounded kinda bad, but they sorta grew on me in the end.

Okay, just one more 'negative' thing before I get to the praise: this movie was loaded with references I didn't understand, but I could *tell* they were meant to be references, so there were moments here and there where I felt like I was missing out. I caught the Dumb and Dumber reference, but my partner pointed out several The Shining references that I only caught two of (I haven't seen The Shining). I feel like I'm gonna have to come back to this movie after watching at least a few others to Get It, but by then I'm not sure if that will really enhance the viewing experience or cheapen it. Only time will tell.

Honestly, I think I'm gonna have to give this a rewatch again regardless, because I want to experience it again but also because I feel like there's still a lot I don't understand. I don't mean that in a negative way at all; it gives me the same feeling I got when I saw Akira, Fight Club, and The Godfather. Like there's too much to digest in one sitting and I need to see it all again to really take it in and appreciate it. I don't know how else to describe it but I promise I only feel this way with movies I really like.

I don't know much about animation or SFM as a software, but if the comments are anything to go by, this movie must have been an absolute nightmare to make, so it gets an extra star for sheer effort alone. What I do know is that this movie is as beautiful as an SFM production can get; the shot composition, lighting and colours are all incredible throughout the entire film, the animation may be the smoothest I've seen from SFM but it's been a while since I've seen a 'serious' one so I don't have much to compare it to. Some of the models were a little inconsistent in style but there's only so many TF2 models to work with, so it's hard to knock it for that.

I've read fics and comics with their own horror spin on the concept of respawn and other game mechanics before, but I think Emesis Blue easily makes the most of it. This really is a solid psychological horror with some brutal and tense scenes, none of which linger for too long. I only felt it begin to drag about an hour in. Overall I was entertained the entire time and can't wait to give this one a rewatch after I see The Shining.

I'm giving this Movie four Regional Indicator Symbol Letter M's out of 5 🇲 🇲 🇲 🇲 🗌

#abcs of horror 2024 #pretend its still day five. ok?

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7grandmel · 1 year ago

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Todays rip: 25/09/2023

Aquarium in the Ocean

Season 6 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume FF

Ripped by Zielony Szpieg

youtube

If you ask any avid SiIvaGunner fan to recount the most important parts of Season 5, you'll find two songs to be nigh inevitable to be brought up. There's many concise ways to identify the fifth season by today - it was one of the lightest years on the channel in terms of new lore, it was the season tasked with succeeding the indescribable scale and success of the King for Another Day Tournament and its celebration the year after, it saw the official debut of SiIvaGunner Fusion Records, and it overall was one of the highest-quality years in terms of rips uploaded. Yet two icons remain dominant in the minds of many a SiIvaGunner fan, two songs that caused an absolute uproar during their heyday - Astronaut in the Ocean and Yankin'.

Its hard to really overstate just how much chaos these two songs alone put the channel audience in: I once previously tried to summarize it all in my post on Knowledge of the Depths from the same season. Put simply, Astronaut in the Ocean began to appear frequently in low-effort, unsynced mashups in reference to its origins as a TikTok meme, which gave it a sort of perception as an anti-hero for the fanbase - the joke that, no matter what it was attached to, would never even try to deliver something that sounded conventionally "high quality". If the astronaut was an anti-hero, Yankin' was a full-on villain - the crassness of the song paired with the somewhat hard to listen to vocals and immediately identifiable beat made the song into a source of downright hatred within the comment section, on a level only really previously matched by Season 1's "Bean" (more on that guy at a later date). It was fascinating, for a year without much in the way of proper story progression, to see so much community discourse still happen althesame regarding the state of the channel.

Months later, when Season 6 arrived, the dust had settled´. Astronaut in the Ocean had gotten a sort of cult following for its apathetic, inconsistent use in rips very much unique to it, and Yankin' even had its own takeover, to directly address and cement the meme's status as a villain on the channel. The memes are now a staple of SiIvaGunner despite - or perhaps because of - our ire, and they've been infrequently appearing in rips the same way that Grand Dad, Snow Halation, The Nutshack and so many others oft would back in the early days. And to me, no rip better illustrates that new status quo than Aquarium in the Ocean.

Aquarium in the Ocean follows the style of several rips preceding it as a "mashup medley", most easily comparable to something like Memey Hell from Season 1. While that rip acted as a sort of celebration to Season 1 as a whole, Aquarium in the Ocean feels like it does the same for Season 5's two big jokes as discussed above. Despite featuring both the Season's bringers of hell, they're used in very genuine, serious ways - Astronaut in the Ocean leads the song off and is actually, for once, tuned to the original song's key, and Yankin's vocals play surprisingly softly when paired with different instrumentation. The two are blended together with several other memes from the channel's history, be it old-school like Soulja Boy or more recent ones like Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney's Epic Rap Battle of History - its a sort of scattershot selection of jokes, yet each one is given enough time to sink in as funny whilst matching the Aquarium Park instrumental backing quite nicely.

Really, though, above its quality and sound its the meaning to the rip that I really care about. There's no longer any sort of panic in the comments over the presence of Yankin' - many are even surprised and delighted to hear the track finally sounding *good* in a rip. The two are now just jokes amidst the many others, accepted tools within the arsenal of the SiIva team - and permanent member of the channel's family. I can't say if Aquarium in the Ocean was really the rip to cement that, but something about its assortment of various jokes paired with its somewhat sentimental sound really carries that energy through. Zielony Szpieg, as far as I'm aware, is someone who submitted this rip to the team through email as a fan, and they did an excellent job at both making a good-sounding tune and something surprisingly poignant for the subject matter at hand. I know not how to contact him or if he'll ever see this, but if he does: Ya did good!

#todays siivagunner #season 6 #siivagunner #siiva #Zielony Szpieg #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic colors #sonic colours #sonic colours ultimate #sonic colors ultimate #sonic prime #sonic frontiers #sonic superstars #sonic music #astronaut in the ocean #yankin #Youtube #Bandcamp

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cyberfunsupporter · 5 months ago

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ranking the red velvet album covers, be warned this’ll be long

halfway through tumblr deleted my draft so um…

1-3 🏆

28 reasons very visually pleasing. the red and the black go so well together and the mirror showing seulgi is just creative genius. absolute fav, i could stare at it forever to be honest. not to mention it perfectly reflects the album’s contents which is a huge bonus for me

the red summer i have a huge soft spot for covers with a lot going on actually. the cover’s fun, very summer and even with vibrant colors that would normally clash in the real world, it’s somehow satisfying. i love all of the details too and the way the members are positioned on the cover. so fun

rbb the positioning of the members + the teeth is just fun to see. it’s definitely different from a lot of their other covers which makes it more interesting for me as well. i also just really like their outfits, especially yeri’s

4-6 🏅

chill kill what’s funny to me about this one is the fact it’s photoshopped like omg they couldn’t even get an ot5 pic wow. but i like the overall vibe of it a lot and it’s a drastic change from red velvet’s typical colorful covers, which also makes this one stand out to me. i also am just a huge fan of this album anyway and think the feeling of it was perfectly executed which obviously extends to the cover since that plays a huge role in the concept anyway

perfect velvet okay actually this used to my favorite album, cover, concept, etc… it’s definitely their prettiest & most visually interesting, but i’ve grown. it’s still really cool and my fav part is the incorporation of the title but i don’t think it’s their absolute best cover regardless of its quality and general appeal LOL. it’s been a bit overdone i think? still a huge fav tho

the red it’s iconic and very pretty. honestly i don’t have much to say because it’s just that good. it really pops. eye candy for me

reve festival is actually not in order of how i’d rank the covers because i have a more pressing criticism regarding the overall trilogy’s design

they’re all meant to be connected, yet finale is randomly like. SO different. it doesn’t even have a rollercoaster that connects through it the way day 1 and day 2 have… sm paid for a cover to be made and couldn’t scrounge up a couple more pennies for a damn rollercoaster 😭 i just hate that disconnect so much because they’re literally MEANT TO GO TOGETHER and they already did that for 2/3 of the albums so idk why finale’s suddenly different. ugh

anyway, onto the actual ranking:

finale it’s the most creative and very cute. i love the house details w the velvets inside + one trapped under the house, as well as the surroundings. typically not a fan of green but this shade is pleasing to my eyes

day 2 the purple is very beautiful especially when combined with the red of the rollercoaster. the “events” on the cover are also really cutely designed and it def appeals to me a lot

day 1 my main complaint is the yellow. i hate the color yellow and this shade in particular is offensive to my eyes. i like the rest of the cover though which is a shame… but that’s why it’s so high for me; everything BUT the background color is great. it’s fun

10-12 🎖️

rookie it’s very eye catching, the blue is wonderful and the positioning of the titles as well as the members is creative and i like it a lot. also having seulgi in the middle is another part i enjoy, simply because she has an interesting pose and i feel like it tells you a lot about the album’s sound

bloom what annoys me is the fact the title seems to be off center? but i like the overall feel of the cover and the doodles are really cute

sappy it’s cute and charming, their styling is unique and i love the colors!!! it does kind of bother me that wendy, irene, and yeri have similar hair colors and then joy and seulgi don’t but it’s just a minor thing. i do love their hair colors it’s just the inconsistency/out of nowhere-ness that can grate me a little bit. but overall very fun and cute

13-15 🎖️

the velvet well this one is just pretty. idk why yeri’s blurred out though 💀

feel my rhythm i like the logo being in the clouds. cute, fun, very springtime, good colors

power up love a good ot5 focused cover. the background is a bit boring but i don’t really care because the velvets make it interesting

16-18 🎖️

the perfect red velvet one of my fav covers however i can recognize it’s not as visually interesting as a lot of red velvet’s covers. i love the fact it looks like a movie poster though so it’s definitely very special to me

birthday UNDERRATED. IDGAF. the pink is perfect, the design is engaging and vibrant… the logo is unique…. very solid cover

ice cream cake see i’m fond of this because it represents when red velvet really began & became 5. however the bg doodles are a bit too pale which makes the cover seem kinda bland otherwise. the drawing of all 5 members is pretty though so

19-21 🎖️

happiness once again i’m very fond of a slightly overwhelming and very colorful cover. the editing is kooky which i enjoy although many people don’t like it, it just radiates 2014 and i just luv what red velvet did with what they had in that time period. it’s so fun!!

queendom i like this cover and the colors are nice but i also think some of the concept photos for this could’ve been better suited to be the cover. i do like that it looks like they’re all just kinda hanging out tho

hello the background is just a boring white but joy’s pose combined with her outfit really makes it pop to me. like my eyes are consistently drawn to it because of that

22-24 🎖️

be natural i like the pose and the monochrome, and the logo is really cool to me and def unique… a yeri-less rbb kinda. the white at the top cutting off the photo can be bothersome though

monster well the colors are just too boring for me but everything else is nice. the pose is good, the feeling radiating off of irene and seulgi is special, etc

wish you hell this one’s nice because it really feels like wendy. the helmet and the tag on the side are sooo cute. however in comparison to other covers it is a bit on the blander side which is why it’s so low, but i really like it!!!!

25-27 🎖️

russian roulette this one is definitely boring since it’s just the logo but i like the logo + combo of colors enough for it to outrank the next couple covers LOLLL. the title going through the heart as an arrow is just so cutesy

cosmic the album’s so vibrant and dreamy yet this cover represents none of that. i don’t get that feeling from this photo at all, not to mention the logo’s just slapped on there. i love the mysterious hotel concept but it was poorly executed which is why the cover falls flat for me despite it utilizing one of my fav parts of the concept… and tbh idk why they didn’t do something more similar to midsommar promo or at least something dreamy like that. just feels weird and a bit disappointing. they’re beautiful though

cookie jar boring & washed out… i love their stylings though which makes me feel better about it. the cover also does actually look like a cookie tin which is charming

… 28 👎

like water i loveee wendy i really do. her voice is angelic, she’s beautiful… but this cover is so boring. boring colors, no pose, not even a title or anything particularly special to make up for it. just wendy standing and a W slapped on there. not to mention the album just is completely not wendy’s vibe or vision so the whole album is just not very entertaining for me. it makes me sad that sm tried to force her into doing ballads forever 😭… so idk i just don’t feel very much for this cover nor the album. i’m so sorry wendy. u are so loved but they did u so dirty w your debut album…

#had a lot to say #i loveeee reve’s use of colors so much though ugh it’s so perfect #plus how well their covers fit idk not everyone can do that you’d be surprised #🧸#🕸️

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babygorewhore · 1 year ago

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Hi dear!! I saw that you were making Evan ships and I decided sent a request too 🥹 It's okay if you don't want to do it. You have a very nice blog, I love it so much ❤

English is not my first language, so I'm sorry if there is something strange or incoherent

I'm not sure how exactly to do this, I hope everything will be in order (´｡• ω •｡`)

I am 5'2 feet Asian with brown eyes and dark hair. I'm pretty slim but not athletic (I hate sports haha)

My style ranges from cute things like light floral tops and pink skirts to something dark. It's hard to make a choice when there are so many cool things :(

I'm very impressionable, emotional and empathic, a big crybaby actually. Pretty funny and have good, stupid humor. A little delulu and silly person. Shy at the beginning of communication, but then I open up as an active person.TOUCH CONTACT!! I bite a little, but it's like a love language. By the way I cursing a lot, so unfamiliar people around me are shocked by the inconsistency of this with my cute appearance. I prefer to spend time at home, cause I don't like the street and large, although sometimes it can be fun

I built my personality on Steven Universe, Undertail, a little on some anime like Sailor Moon or Shaman King. I love drama movies. La La Land is my favorite. I love The Office even more. Favorite artists One Direction (each member solo), Joji, Lana Del Rey, The Neighbourhood

Thank you so much and just wanted to say again how amazing you are!!♡♡

You’re seriously the sweetest and I’m sending you a hug rn. BUT YEAH IF I LOVE SOMEONE I BITE THEM MUNCH MUNCH.

I ship you with…

Kyle!!!!! So if we’re going with frat boy Kyle he’s a super extrovert and I feel like he would make shy people really comfortable. And he would love your style. I feel like he would fully support delusions because he’s low key that way too. And he would be always comfort you if you’re crying and he’s also really empathetic.

And he would absolutely jam out to one direction (I saw them in concert heheheh) and if he’s Franken Kyle, he would literally be your pet. No cap. Like he’s your baby and you’re his baby and he would protect you at all costs and snuggle AHHH

#personal

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lone-sk · 11 months ago

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Hey, so! I thought it would be fun to do a tier list of all the games I played for the first time this year, and discuss my thoughts on them. Tiers are unordered, thoughts below the cut.

Super Meat Boy -

Just a fun ass time. Excellent platforming, a great difficultly curve, fun level gimmicks, and a solid amount of content. Basically as flawless as a video game can get.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth -

I've never played a roguelike where each run felt so unique. All the different shit you can do with ability synergies and items is insane, the skill ceiling for this game is practically infinite. This is what the roguelike genre has the potential to be, and every other roguelike is now worse because they aren't this good.

Dark Souls Remastered -

Yeah, the combat is improved in later entries, but the level and world design here is unmatched. Each segment flows together so seamlessly, combined with the top notch atmosphere and aesthetic for an unforgettable experience.

Psycholonials -

A really exceptional visual novel that talks about the pandemic, the internet, and just kinda what its like being a young adult nowadays. Captures a lot of weird and intense feelings. It makes you feel so emotionally drained after every chapter, and I mean that as a compliment.

Persona 5 Royal -

There are so many interconnected systems in this game, but they're all so balanced and intuitive. The developers thought of everything, and every time you get complacent, they pull another trick out of their sleeves to keep you on edge. Masterclass of pacing. Plus, the visual style is leagues above anything else out right now. The RPG mechanics are even somewhat manageable as well. It just feels good to play, and never really fumbles.

Class of 09 -

A visual novel that is both really funny, and really profound. Kinda similar to MTV's Daria, with a lot more edge. I do appreciate that there is a message - several really - at the core of it's various endings, and it's not just being edgy for the sake of it. The voicework really caries the experience, especially in contrast to the inconsistent artstyle. I get that they want to go for the shitty deviantart anime style, but some of the endcards just look bad.

Class of 09: The Re-Up -

Pretty much a direct improvement in every way. More scenes are hand illustrated now, and the artstyle looks a lot more palatable now. The voice actors are given more challenging scenes, and they absolutely rise to the occasion. There are less endings, and less content overall, but it's higher quality.

Cruelty Squad -

Everyone seems to talk about this games art style, but honestly, I just really liked the gameplay. Lots of high skill movement mechanics, paired with challenging level design, and a dash of immersive sim mechanics make for an engaging experience.

Melty Blood: Type Lumina -

A fighting game that combines the mobility of a platform fighter, with the combos and depth of a traditional fighter. Takes the best of both genres with none of the cons. I only wish the netplay was better.

Shenzhen I/O -

A puzzle game that involves programing and arranging circuits. Fun, but very challenging. Or maybe I'm just dumb.

Pentiment -

Disco Elysium but set in a 15th century European monastery. It's well written, and has cool art, but doesn't really have the memorable, interesting characters of Disco. Plus, it asks the player to learn a lot about medieval history. Like a lot.

Dead Cells -

A fun enough roguelike, but it runs out of steam pretty quickly, faster than you'd expect for this genre. After a while, you run out of good long term progression unlocks, and the difficultly curve really spikes. I got stuck at a point where I could beat through all of the stages easily, but then the end boss would wipe me out really quickly.

Hotline Miami -

Lots of visceral, gory gameplay. The aesthetics and art direction are on point as well, more so than normal for one of these games that was clearly made for a gamejam. The controls do kinda suck though, the lock on mechanic is especially unintuitive. It's almost impossible to play on controller.

Exa Punks -

Another fun programming puzzle game. The gimmick of having little robots you give commands to is fun, and kinda reminds me of those websites that teach coding in similar ways. The only problem is that the objective of levels can be unclear.

Watch Dogs 2 -

I'm surprised a Ubisoft sandbox is this high, but this game really grew on me. The gameplay is mostly similar to the stuff you can do on the hacking skill tree in Cyberpunk 2077, but more fleshed out and intuitive, really fun stuff. The story, too, is surprisingly pretty good. They also push the messaging pretty far, nothing that's proper like, anti-corporation or anything, but it's pretty anti-silicon valley, anti-walled garden tech, stuff like that. Shattered my incredibly low expectations, good job guys.

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley -

Overrated as fuck in my opinion. It starts out strong, but the pacing gets flattened by the end of chapter 2, and it feels like the developers don't know where to go from here. There are so many little bits and pieces of the story, with the cult, the demons, the weird shit to do with blood types - and I don't think there's any way to take these ideas, build on top of the story so far, and have something cohesive, or satisfying. And if you're just here for the incest, it's only in one scene at the end of one of the possible endings, so what the hell was even the point.

Shadows of Doubt -

A procedurally generated detective game, which gets points for letting you do pretty much everything. Like it's an admirable level of detail, you can do shit like break into the phone lines in order to trace someone's call. It just doesn't really click with my brain, I guess. Like it could be tutorialized a bit more, so the player has a better idea of what they can do. Plus after a while, you exhaust all the different cases there can be, and they all get predictable and formulaic. I do hope there are more content updates in the future, this is a great base to build off.

Psychonaughts 2 -

The world and characters in this game are all really good, but the story is really a drag for me. The first game had this goofy, silly vibe to it, but the story here is so overly focused on like, acknowledging how fucked up it is that you can go into people's minds and change their personality like that, which I always thought was kinda the joke of the original. Plus the gameplay is like, just okay, although a lot of the levels are too long, which feels like a weird complaint, but I ended up getting bored a lot.

Pseudoregalia -

Excellent platforming with dogshit level design. Once I left the tutorial stage, I was constantly confused about where I needed to go, and what I needed to do, and even where I was. Just some of the worst game design I've ever fucking seen. Abysmal shit. But, the movement is pretty spectacular, so I did end up finishing it. I hope people find out how to mod level packs in, that would be hype.

Pizza Tower -

I had the same issue with this game that I did with Mario Odyssey. The main character has such a distinct and refined moveset, so why am I spending half of most levels as someone who is not the main character? I don't understand this focus on captures. I still had a lot of fun, but it's frustrating as fuck, when you want to play as the fun character with the deep, high skill ceiling moveset, and the game does not want you to do that for some reason.

TIS-100 -

Another puzzle game for smart people, which is brought down a bit from not really having an art style. I dunno, I get wanting to be minimal and cool, but at least give me background music, come on guys.

FAITH: THE UNHOLY TRINITY -

I do respect the commitment to the Atari 2600 art style, but if anything this just proved why most "retro"style games went for the style of later console games. The gameplay is literally almost nothing, and I have a hard time getting into any story that's told in 90% text logs. The style makes for some effective horror, outside of that I had a hard time getting anything out of this.

ALAN WAKE II -

I feel like the devs did not consider the combat system here. Like the entire point of making combat clunky and resource - dependent is to force the player to pick and choose their battles. It falls apart when you're constantly forcing them to kill enemies. That, and the corkboard puzzle sections don't really require any thinking to solve, you can just brute force them. They aren't very intuitive either, it's such a transparent way to just, progress the plot instantly. I did like the story though, for the most part, and the visual style is pretty fantastic. Lots of eerie, abandoned scenes, I love it.

Hotline Miami 2 -

Whatever improvements to the art style and gameplay are negated by the terrible level design. Lots of wide open spaces, where an enemy off screen will shoot you, and you have to duck out of cover, spraying at them with an SMG that has random spread. Lots of glass, lots of levels that only really have one route, lots of getting killed by random enemies you didn't even notice. Just really frustrating stuff.

Teardown -

The tech used here is really cool, I just wish they used it in a better way. The levels are barely passable, there's no real difficulty curve, or ideas that get expanded upon. It still feels like a tech demo.

Hiveswap Act 1 -

It's a perfectly inoffensive point and click adventure game. The art is well made, I like the story, and I thought Joey and Xefros were cute together. It's just missing something to really bump it any higher. It's short, and the puzzles are all either obtuse as fuck or super easy to solve. I also have a hard time figuring out who this is for. I don't know if Homestuck fans or point-and-click adventure fans would get a lot out of this.

Yakuza 0 -

I had a hard time getting into this one. The main story is just too soap opera for me. So many characters with complicated relationships, so many dramatic declarations and cutscenes. The combat is also just okay. The side content is really great, but it's hard for that to carry the entire experience for me. What a weird game.

Critters for Sale -

It's difficult, because I think there's a lot of cool techniques here that would help push visual novels as a medium forward. Lots of cool visual effects and fun mini games. Being very clear and upfront about how many endings and routes there are. Good menu and UIs. But the stories are just, not very good? Like I can remember maybe one or two individual moments, but most of the game I've totally forgotten about. Except for the Death Grips storyline, what the fuck was that?

Far Cry 3 -

Everyone gasses up the main story on this one, but lets be honest, it kinda sucks. Vaas is great, but who gives a shit about any of Ethan's friends? Or Ethan himself? Plus, the gunplay and exploration were both so generic. They were probably impressive like a decade ago, but now? I can get this same experience in 20 other games, do something interesting with it, or get out.

Not for Broadcast -

A game that really had me, and then really lost me. At first, the gameplay is mostly basic video editing stuff - keeping the camera on the person talking, censoring curse words, stuff like that. Ok, makes sense, it's fun. But they slowly add more gameplay that's just busy work, and the story really goes off the rails, and I couldn't take it seriously anymore. It basically turns into watching Monty Python skits while solving a Rubik's cube.

Gunfire Reborn -

A roguelike fps that just kinda sucks. The "roguelike" elements don't change anything massive about your run, just enemy placement and weapon pick ups. And it runs on like, Borderlands progression, where you're just looking for stuff with the bigger number. The combat feels shitty too. Shitty movement, abilities and guns that don't feel satisfying to use, what a terrible experience. I hate how every FPS makes "difficult" enemies by just adding more HP.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch -

Boring as fuck. The story was boring, the combat was boring, the world was generic, I feel like I've played this game twenty fucking times already.

Jedi Fallen Order -

Dark Souls if it sucked. You can always tell if a game was made in Unreal Engine if it has shitty, floaty movement, and for a soulslike, not having precise movement really fucks with the entire experience. There are also too many ranged enemies, which is a problem when your character is melee focused. The levels suck, and the story is shit. Fucking Star Wars fans will buy anything.

Bastion -

It's Hades, but everything is 1% as good. I guess it was interesting to see the roots of certain ideas, but everything is just slower and not fun. Literally no reason to play it now outside of some historical curiosity.

City of Gangsters -

There are so many interesting systems here. You can set up specific routes for your crew to perform at specific times, down to the location, and action, but honestly, it just doesn't scale well. In video games that revolve around storing shit, the complexity ramps up much faster than it does in most games, and if you don't provide the player the tools for handling it, it's just overwhelming. I appreciate the ambition, but this needed like, another half year of dev time, minimum.

Outcore -

I've never played a game that was this self conscious. You can skip pretty much all of the gameplay, although it's not like it offers a lot outside of rip offs of better games. So much could have been done with this concept of a desktop buddy coming to life, but instead, I am presented with a rip off of the Flowey fight from Undertale. Guess it's not plagarism if you frame it as an homage. Get the fuck out of here.

Clone Drone in the Danger Zone -

It needs more. More upgrades, more enemies, more weapons, more arena designs. As it is, it feels like a gamejam game.

Hiveswap Act 2 -

Oh my god the story is so terrible. Imagine thinking that it's a good idea to introduce 30 characters in a 4 hour game. Barely any of them are interesting, either, and even if you do end up liking one, it's not like they can be a significant part of the story, because we've got 29 more of the fuckers to introduce. Plus there's an Ace Attorney segment like halfway through which is really hard to get through if you've never played one of those games. I don't see anyone enjoying this, outside of the really hardcore Homestuck/troll fans, and even then, do you know how much fan fiction for this series exists? And how much of it is really good?

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regarding-stories · 2 years ago

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A Matter of Style and Skill (Re: Zero, Sword Art Online, Grimgar, Isekai Uncle)

So, I watched a lot of anime lately, especially around the Isekai ("from another world") and LitRPG (inside a game) topics. I like fantasy stories, and I like those genres. Last one I watched was Grimgar - Ashes and Illusions (novel title: Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash), a series that lulls you by a more subdued, subtle pace and then crushes your heart... I love it! It was very well executed, and where the art style veered into water colors, that was just beautiful. Sadly, there's only one season and it's unlikely there'd ever be a second.

For each of the four shows that stole my heart over the last few months - Sword Art Online (SAO), Uncle from Another World, Re: Zero - Starting life in Another World, and Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash - I grabbed the original material, be they light novels or manga (in Uncle's case) to read on. For Uncle I actually grabbed the whole manga run because it was so delightful to read. By now it should also be clear that I grabbed everything I could possibly read from Sword Art Online and related series.

The experience of grabbing the original material ranged from smooth to jarring:

Uncle is almost the same in the manga from which the anime clearly takes all its style, cues, and humor. What I noticed is that the anime overdoes the "misleading situations" that are so common to this comic. Still, very faithful, absolutely smooth transition, both are a delight. If you like one, you are bound to like the other.

SAO was a bit of a surprise there. If you read the earlier materials you will start to notice how the story has been rewritten for the anime adaptation. If your starting point is the Aria of a Starless Night movie, you'd find that Mito only exists in the Movie and Argo plays an actual role in the story, nya. In general, the anime adaptations tend to introduce inconsistencies that don't exist the same in the story - and the novels are a delight to read, beating the movies or anime series by far. There's a few moments (mostly Liz/Rika) where the anime does better than the book and feels more consistent. The transition between books and screen is not the smoothest but absolutely worth it.

I've just started to read Grimgar and can already tell that the anime chose to rewrite some characters for the better, or to put it the other way round: Ranta is even worse in the novel (sigh) and Yume is a complete, utter ditz. For shame! So that was a disappointment. But we'll talk more about Grimgar in a moment.

At the bottom ranks Re: Zero, which is odd, right? Re: Zero is a fantastic multi-season anime, engaging, great characters, dramatic, as full of suffering and existential despair as Steins;Gate (the anime), it reels you into its world like SAO does, and it got an unique premise that it executes well. So, picking up volume 16 of the light novels seemed like a no-brainer... For reasons I will also explain I haven't come very far yet.

So kindly follow me on another tangent...

Characters, characters, and their mouths

What Grimgar does well in the anime adaptation is focus on its ensemble cast. You really get to know the group... in some ways. It becomes easily apparent for example that Ranta is an unbearable blaggard (which makes it almost funny that he's some sort of black/dread knight if you think about the word root) and sexist foul mouth. So much so it would be easily understandable if anyone left the series right there once he opens his mouth for any considerable length of time. The fact, however, that he's an unlikable character that nobody really gets along with is well established even in the short season this anime got. It's unclear why he choses to behave this way as he clearly knows better underneath, at least one tends to notice so in the final episodes.

What I failed to notice that much in the anime and what became immediately apparent within the first chapter of Volume 3 of the light novel is that Yume is an absolute ditz. Mind you, I watch with subtitles (and German ones in this case, no other available) and the translation hides the fact how Yume speaks ... a lot. So I was surprised by the English light novel and how every sentence basically uses "Yume" instead of "I." I revisited the anime and indeed this is the case in the spoken dialogue. You could say the translation of the book is rather on the nose (and it is). But on the other hand, the dialogue as presented in the subtitles obfuscates a lot about the character this way.

Now, this is one aspect of it. Volume 3 starts with yet another fight within the group, or better - one of these typical verbal altercations triggered by Ranta "who goes there." In his typical style of going for an immature confrontation he suggests to Yume (wait for it) that her breasts would get bigger (already groaning) if she squeezed them (this boy needs to suffer). A suggestion that Yume actually considers!! As I said, had this happened in the anime (which stops beforehand) there would have been no doubt that this character is as ditzy as they get... and that I would have stopped watching.

You see, Yume here is presented as somebody where I don't believe they're stupid as such but... she does seem clueless, naive, innocent even in some ways, I guess. Somewhere between naive and ignorant about some topics, maybe? But this I only really noticed once I read the light novel (volume 3). Within a few pages. (After the first battle is over.) It's on the nose, it's right in your face, you can't miss it. Whereas in the anime Yume might come across like her name suggests - a dreamer. She tends to babble on with what is on her mind in a way that doesn't necessarily imply she's a deep thinker, but most of the time we see her (eventually, like all of them) as capable, and her personally as dedicated, daring, fearless. Not in a "I suppress my fear" way. Outright without fear. (Making her the perfect scout. If you can instill some caution in her...)

Since I have not read the first two volumes I don't know for sure, but I get already the feeling that Yume would have come across as a ditz more than in the anime. And frankly, I enjoy Anime Yume way more than the other one.

Regarding the quality of the translation I have to wonder. The language is more like the terse style the Japanese supposedly speak. (Japanese sentences omit pretty much anything you can derive from context.) I found a mistake already that's apparent from the English ("it" instead of "he," misplacing the subject of the sentence altogether). I also think that rendering "��リイ" as "Merry" is a mistake by the translator, but maybe it isn't. (Could be "word of God" as well.) You can read this as "Mary" or as "Merry" as far as I know, the original "Merii" allows for both given how Japanese transliterates words in Katakana, emulating English by similar-sounding syllables (like "Smith" turns to "Sumisu" and can sound surprisingly similar). I think the makers of the Anime or at least the subtitles made the right call to call her "Mary." But I won't die on that hill.

Given the way characters were portrayed in the anime, I was definitely shipping Yume and Haruhiro, but I knew that wouldn't happen as soon as Mary/Merry called Haruhiro by a nickname, almost as first sign she connected with the group. It becomes pretty obvious after that. But before it was Yume who reached out to Haruhiro, and while "first past the gate" doesn't always apply, the two seemed to be both kind-hearted, complemented well in role (both stealth/scout style characters)... Well, and there were only two girls to begin with, LOL! (And later there were hints of shipping Ranta with Yume, and I sure hope that doesn't happen and stays one-sided. That was just insulting.)

The anime does a great job of depicting the group dynamics, their bickering, their attempts at dealing with their situation, the slow burn in general, but also in depicting the world and how they adapt to it. What I wasn't prepared for is the amount of changes the anime really must have done!

I had to stop reading volume 3 of the series yesterday. Almost all dialogue has Ranta screeching over it, you get pages of dialogue full of his BS to just get what's going on. If the dialogue was pleasing to read, fine. But it's just utterly annoying. Moguzo, who is just the quiet type in the anime, gets enlisted into Ranta's schemes way too easily. Both Haruhiro and Merry have the habit of correcting Yume - but while in the anime it seemed like that's done with a bit of sigh, here they come across as annoying sticklers. Haruhiro's inner monologue is an endless deluge of self-depreciation and reasons why he shouldn't talk to others. Oh, and when he described Merry as "a goddess" in his mind, it gave me a virtual gag reflex. Reading his stream of consciousness makes it also clear that he's way less nice than you might think - he fantasizes about backstabbing Ranta. Understandable, yes. But less likable.

All in all the anime chose to downplay the traits assigned to them by the author. You could see that's the same character when you read the book, no major change to the contrary. But bad bits have been toned down, made less obvious, or reduced to a more acceptable manner.

So in the end, the Grimgar book actually delivers dialogue and characters, but the end result leaves a lot to be desired. After reading the novel I feel like somebody who projected on these characters, seeing them in a more positive light because I saw less of them than in the books. In this sense it was a disillusionment of my own projection. The anime, however, is quite okay.

Prose from Pros

Where Grimgar does okay is the prose itself. You can read it, it's not the best, but you can go with the flow to follow Haruhiro's thoughts which speaks of a modicum of balance in the writing itself.

The first light novel I ever picked up was Sword Art Online Progressive Volume 1, and Reki Kawahara's writing style took me in. Not like Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London) who completely had me after one paragraph with his wit and execution. But Kawahara is comfortable to read, for reasons I will come to further down. He crafts good prose.

The translation of Re: Zero suggests that its author doesn't. I mean, translation always loses something of the original writer, but I'm assuming a translator is charged with translating with what is there, they don't tend to add or remove stuff. A sentence might be broken into several where necessary, or they might be combined, but overall you would expect the same amount of sentences even if one language is more verbose and another is more terse. What a translator would certainly not do is invent descriptions that are not there in the original - that would make them co-authors or editors.

And in Re: Zero's case it shows!

It had really high hopes for this. Realizing that the plot continued past what we have in the anime felt like getting a third season. I would get to read into another series of light novels! Re: Zero the anime was hard to watch (because it's emotionally challenging) but you could tell the source material had been carefully crafted. So I came with high expectations to this one, expecting a masterful author.

I had best braced myself.

Practically the moment I started reading my heart dropped. And I have barely picked it up since. There they are, the characters I cared about, right? On to have more adventures. And I can't muster the willingness to go... because it doesn't read good.

The reason is hard to put into words, but I'll try my best. There's for one a bad balance between description and dialogue, and what would have fitted well in the description of the scene ends up badly shoved into the dialogue. There's also no good separation between dialogue and conversation and inner thoughts. It just reads like a mish mash. But it's probably better to compare it with its opposite.

We're at the beginning of another volume, so if that were a Kawahara book he would in some form recap where we are and how we came to be there. But not as a mere blob of exposition - it would be weaved into the thoughts and the dialogue, but also appear as some straight exposition. If a character was musing about something, it would often sit in its own paragraph(s), and dialogue (or action) would continue after it concluded. This sometimes leaves you with a feeling that way too much time passed, but it gives you the chance to digest the thought process of the protagonist and understand the reasons behind their actions.

Kawahara will ensure that you as reader are on the same page as him as the author when setting a scene. He conveys the images he wants you to see, he conveys the information he wants you to know, and he's truly masterful at crafting the things that weren't said. Oh, his dialogue is good, no doubt. But he's at his very best when interrupting dialogue, characters biting their tongue, and at implying things you as the reader have to read between the lines. That's skill. But not in an universal skill, more of a particular set of skills that contribute to why his books are such a joy to read. He crafts good prose, dialogue, he sets scenes properly, he never leaves you behind. He sometimes overdoes the reminders, but he communicates to the reader everything needed to follow along and adds many charming details. His characters not only speak, their actions speak as well, especially small ones, details, everything.

When Re: Zero #16 reintroduces Mimi in the second scene, I can barely follow along. I can picture the scene only because I saw the anime and remembered her from the hints given. But I have to pause the reading to do so. Then I can work my way backwards to what has transpired in the scene. The way the scene is described obscures what is going on - we are told the character has figured it out, but we can't. We have to wait for him to say it. It seems like everything has to be said aloud here.

And what is said is mostly just chaining up dialogue from which alone we have to infer the mood of the speaker. There's no description of the speaker, no laying out the part we're meant to picture, no description of their voice or tone. The dialogue just comes at us, description might follow. Frankly, as prose this is unpleasant to read. It quickly soured on me.

It's a less obvious example for what most people would describe a book as "horribly written." And I bet this isn't the translator's fault. They're not meant to reorder sentences or add details. This prose lacks craft in the source as well I would assume. Grimgar definitely does better, it reads normal. The cringe comes from the characters. And it can hold no candle to anything Kawahara ever wrote - when it comes to crafting the prose itself.

The Plot Thickens

But it's not as if Kawahara's writing is perfect. If I compare SAO to Re: Zero then the latter has achieved mastery in maximizing dramatic escalation while also knowing a way out. Allow me a spoiler: Re: Zero is a time loop story. So we see the same events unfold multiple times to different outcomes. (You would be aware of this at the end of the first episode of the anime, so I hope it's not too big a spoiler. Go watch it, it's good!) It's not only up to the protagonist to find his way through the problems he encounters, the same is true for the author. Both seasons of the anime encompass 15 books in total - and IIRC three different time loops. This means the author clearly had a well-crafted plan if he can split each loop into multiple iterations over multiple books, each interesting to follow along. (He was apparently also involved quite a bit in the anime - says Wikipedia.)

SAO has been accused to be lacking in its resolutions. While dramatic, they seem at times quite "Deus Ex Machina." This is true of the ending of the first novel where a formerly unwilling Kirito kills the big bad after technically dying (for added drama), or for the Alfheim story arc - where we can take "Deus Ex Machina" literally! The SAO Progressive series also leaves an aftertaste. All the bosses of the later novels require an NPC and a gimmick to be beaten - which means they were basically unbeatable as is. The 6th floor boss is extremely gimmicky, the 7th too strong. Each is played for drama - and each situation could have also wiped the "Clearers" or "Frontrunners" out. Mind you - we're not even at floor 10 at the current pace of the series. Imagine another 68 levels like that. It would be suicide. There's a lot about this that doesn't work if you think it to its logical conclusion. In the end, it might follow that the game is unbeatable as is if you can't die and try again. (Which contradicts what the characters express about it - until floor 75 that is.)

Of course Kawahara made his own trap and got caught. He wrote a finished story that he ever since stuffs new content into, increasing the inner inconsistencies. But that's only half the problem. The other half is that Kawahara struggles with dosing the escalation. He revs up the drama for each individual book in an attempt to be satisfactory, but each series he writes as books following in a defined order actually risks crumbling under the over-escalation (SAO Progressive, The Isolator, Accel World) and breaking the suspension of disbelief.

A series stretching out over multiple volumes needs to dose its escalation in a way that future escalations are possible. The Lord of the Rings starts small and builds from a scope as small as The Hobbit towards a finale (or rather multiple finales) that include major battles and resolutions. But if you blow up a Death Star each time, it gets old... leading hack writers to create in the end a fleet of 10,000 Star Destroyers rising from underground of one planet that each has the destructive power of a Death Star. If you can't dose your escalation and scale, that's what you end up with.

So far Kawahara has managed to deliver, but if you look at the release schedule of the Progressive series you'd notice that it took Kawahara a 3 year period to craft book 5/6 (written together) and book 7/8 (same). While it was not the only thing he was doing, The Isolator closes in on a four year hiatus by now, and with horror we can watch on as Kawahara started a new series (Demon's Crest) instead. I personally wonder if it is tiresome to play one-upmanship with oneself. These ever more convoluted escalations aren't needed, but are not the only case in point where such escalation takes place. The same is true for the love story arc. But I will now gloss over it since I enjoy it too much!

Skills that pay the bills

There are many skills that an author needs to craft a satisfying book. I've mentioned the prose, the basic interweaving of description, dialogue, inner monologue. Then there is how you weave necessary exposition into the story. Characters need to be fleshed out and ideally grow and change in some way. Dialogue needs to convey us something about the speaker and seem convincing and true to the character. Descriptions paint a picture of what we are meant to see and hear were we in the world

There needs to be pacing. Good pacing balances action and more quiet passages. It builds suspense and resolves it in a release, over and over. But good pacing also alternates what happens "on screen" by offering us a variety of scenes, not just "battle" and "break," over and over, for example.

Then there is the drama, the misunderstandings, the emotional challenges, the conflicts. How they come about, how they defy resolution initially and how they resolve eventually. And how they are set up - oh, setup is ever so important. A character can die on page 1 and we will care very little, but if a character has been made central to the story and features in its dynamics, if the character leaves a big hole when they go - that's all in the setup. And it pays off so well.

Same for humor. The best kind of humor flows naturally from the characters themselves, their interactions, but it can also come from the situation. But it can also be poorly executed, and boy is anime full of poorly played humor... oh Handyman Saito, how often have you failed me! Not to speak of the downright juvenile. I sometimes wonder what separates some authors from the teenage boys they write for...

If we're talking fantasy or Sci-Fi, you also need to build the world, make it come alive, make it interesting, engaging, and gradually impart its workings on the reader. So it needs to be built and it needs to be conveyed, and the latter needs to balance with the rest of the story.

Even good authors need to learn this - and might publish their mistakes. I personally consider Alicization such. To me, the world was ultimately unlikable and I couldn't fathom why I would care about saving its disgusting society. The story paces poorly - after the protagonists actually get going, they immediately get stuck in a sort of boarding school story that is poorly related to their goal - to save Alice. Completely sidetracked at times, not interesting. Then we get into the Cathedral and it's battle, battle, more battle. Each chapter is homogenous to a fault. And the resolution drags out endlessly... I consider Alicization as a skill-building exercise for the author, but watching the two seasons to finish was a chore and nothing else.

Or take for example The Dresden Files. The stories are well-crafted, but it became soon apparent that every book follows exactly the same template. And each book will resolve one set of problem the character has and replace it with the same amount of new problems, so you never get a feel there is a breathing space for the character. There will be always be someone breathing down his neck, he always will be out of resources, outmatched, and he will still win somehow. And each book escalated over the previous one in exceedingly dubious ways. I just stopped reading.

Oh yes, resolutions! How you get from A to B in a consistent way, how the ending fits the story, how satisfying the ending itself is. Does the ending follow from the forces set up in the story? Is it logical? Does it seem forced or contrived? This goes for any arc, any change in how characters relate to each other, book finales, season finales, or outright finales altogether.

Or what's at stake. Why should we care? Do we care? Are the characters important to us? Do we relate to their suffering? Do their victories feel like victories to us?

Keep improving, not "more of the same"

All of these are skills an author can possess and you will likely find they do differently on some, or there are some of their works where they are still practicing them. Or they get stuck in what they do okay and never improve - which is the worst. Nothing like a "good enough" mindset author to tire of. What I hope for in an author is that they will improve and keep delivering satisfying stories.

Or these series die an ignominious death, if not commercially, then in your own willingness to read them. Piers Anthony crafted a great many really good Xanth novel that I enjoyed in my youth, but eventually he just kept writing them to be formulaic and too full of puns. Yes, the puns played a role in the original books, but they were balanced with the story and the world-building, and the drama, characters, and puzzles were well-crafted. Eventually he just cobbled together books involving a lot of reader-provided puns. Ugh.

As I keep exploring anime, manga, and light novels, I hope to find more of these jewels. More authors - or teams of authors - that keep evolving, keep crafting engaging stories, and keep building their skills. It's so rewarding when they do.

#re: zero #sword art online #sao #grimgar of fantasy and ash #grimgar #writing style #writing skills #uncle from another world

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pinchraccoon · 2 years ago

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FAITH: The Unholy Trinity Review

I played FAITH: The Unholy Trinity on stream recently, and I was very very satisfied with my experience.

Admittedly, I'm something of a wuss about horror media usually, but that didn't stop me this time. FAITH is a game in three chapters about a pastor by the name of John attempting to right previous wrongs and exorcise demons that have haunted him for a year since an incident in his first exorcism.

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The very first thing that you'll notice upon booting up FAITH is the incredibly palpable style that it sticks to. In it's in-game visuals it's highly reminiscent of an Atari title, but with some modernizations to make it look Not Awful. Additionally, all dialogue has this uncanny text to speech applied to it, such that even your main character sounds horrifying, and adds to an inability to trust most things in the game. The third and final major point toward it's visual style that I feel is worth mentioning, and perhaps it's biggest claim to fame, is that of it's cutscenes. At multiple points in its run, FAITH will pull you into something of a first person point of view (although there is no hard rules saying that this has to be so) where what is being presented to you is seen in this really interesting, almost sketchy, pixel art style that clearly shows signs of being traced from real video references. The visual effect that these make is unparalleled in it's ability to unnerve, and it strikes at the uncanny valley effect that an encounter with a demon would likely bring to attention.

Provided are some notable examples of these cutscenes and their general style. These can occur at any time, and can be absolutely terrifying when the game wishes them to be.

I find that FAITH's visual elements serve to give a lot of this game's strength, and while the rest of the game is still quite good, it's apparent that the style contributes greatly to this games horror.

Regarding that, this game is fucking horrifying.

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There are numerous instances in FAITH where I was legitimately in a state of terror regarding what was occuring, and the tension made by FAITH for the majority of it's run is thick enough to take a big, bloody bite out of.

Airdorf Games clearly understands the fundamental tenets of what makes good horror, and the Hitchcockian advice that has served to underpin the genre since visual horror's popularization. Everything that this game pulls in terms of scares this game absolutely earns, both because the actual imagery is somewhat scary in its presentation, as we've established in the section on it, but also in it's pacing. There are very few areas that don't have a really good scare to them, and I'm happy to report that the quality of the game, up to a certain point, remains very consistent.

Smaller things that I liked about FAITH, this game, when it does kill you, doesn't make a huge show of it, and it shows you your death screen and lets you get right back into it, which does serve to assist the combat elements present. FAITH is also quite funny sometimes! It's subject matter is inherently somewhat spooky, but it does have a goofier horror tone later on that calls back to roots of old horror schlock, as referenced in it's key art. Additionally, it contains nods to Yume Nikki, WD Gaster, and I'm Scared, and I love a game that recognizes history like that.

I only have a few complaints regarding this game. They are as follows:

Hitboxes feel janky and inconsistent, which one could argue adds to the horror, but in a boss fight you've been killed in 9 times to this point, it becomes frustrating.

Later portions of the game lose a lot of the horror, although in context they should absolutely be the part of the game that is the most horrific. This is largely due to the increased reliance on gameplay and combat in these sections as opposed to atmosphere as the game had done up to that point. It's not *bad* per se, but it's different in a way that doesn't immediately align with the clear objective of the game to that point

Occasionally the game becomes a little bit too "gamey." Which is odd to say, but there are some things that take me out of it and cut that tension that took so much to make, and when I'm cognizant that I'm playing a game and not being completely in it kinda makes me a little sad. This is a minor complaint however, as some of the puzzles are interesting and kinda fun, they even use this feeling of safeness at some points to really scare the shit out of you later on as well, so it's not all bad, just perhaps not to my taste.

Some puzzle design is needlessly obtuse, but sometimes they throw you a bone and give you means by which to bypass these (as well as boss fights) but with narrative consequences for them. I really love this idea, and this makes the game have a clear narrative arc FOR you that YOU make yourself. My run of FAITH might be completely different from your run of FAITH, and that's really cool!

I would implore you to play the game for yourself, as even if you watched my VOD of the game, you will get a completely different experience if you engage with it yourself.

Overall, I recommend that you should absolutely play FAITH: The Unholy Trinity. It's a lovely horror experience unlike much else. The best horror is Catholic, and this game is certainly a guilty pleasure.

If you'd like to watch my playthrough of the game, it's up on my YouTube, linked right below!

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#faith: the unholy trinity #FAITH #vtuber #envtuber #vtuber uprising #game review #game reviews #indie vtuber #raccoon #twitch streamer #twitch #Youtube #Pinch Reviews

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rookie-critic · 2 years ago

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Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023, dir. David F. Sandberg) - review by Rookie-Critic

The first Shazam! was a very funny, if not a little messy and tonally inconsistent, take on a superhero film. It wanted to be a goofy comedy, but still felt like it needed to adhere to a trappings of the genre and being a part of a larger connected universe. Fury of the Gods is basically just a lesser version of the original, with everything about the first film dialed up, which has its pros and cons. The pros are that everything that was funny in the first film is still funny here and the theme of found family still rings very true. On the former, Zachary Levi brings a ton of charm to the screen, and the whole "child in a super powered adult's body" shtick is mostly endearing. We're also getting a ton of that style from the other family members this go around, as the end of the last film (spoilers for the first Shazam! here, but if you've seen any promotional material for this one this shouldn't come as a surprise) saw all the children in the foster family receiving Shazam powers. Adam Brody, Meagan Good, Ross Butler, and D. J. Cotrona are all very funny as the aged-up versions of their respective characters, and Grace Caroline Currey, who plays Mary, the eldest of the foster kids, gets the unique privilege of playing both her regular self as well as the Shazam-ified version of her character, and does a pretty great job at both. However, the real superstar of both this and the original film is easily Jack Dylan Grazer, who is a bonafide scene stealer in everything I've seen him in. For all of this film's faults, and there are a decent number of them, I really didn't care as long as Grazer was on screen being hilarious.

Now, the film's biggest pro is also its greatest fault, and that humor that made the first film stand out has a large tendency to feel quite forced in this one. Some of the lines feel thrown in out of left field, existing for no other purpose than to attempt at a laugh, and it makes those moments feel more awkward than anything else. Also, I feel as though the filmmakers were very aware that people liked the duo and chemistry between Grazer and Levi in the first film, and sought to capitalize on that, regardless of how much time it sacrificed for both actors' counterparts. Asher Angel, who plays the un-Shazam'd Billy Batson, gets what amounts to maybe 5 minutes of screen time, and the same can be said, albeit less so, for Adam Brody, who plays Grazer's character Freddy Freeman's Shazam-form. There are times in the film where you absolutely would not be blamed for forgetting that Zachary Levi/Billy Batson even is actually a child, because he seems to hardly ever switch back, which hurts the aspect of the film that makes the comedy work: watching Levi act like a child in the body of an adult superhero.

The film also has the same problem as the first in that, for what is by all accounts a comedy, Fury of the Gods takes itself very seriously in bursts, I would say even more so than the first. There are a few moments that are outright dark, and while I'm not one to generally turn my nose up at clashing tones in movies, it is so stark of a difference between the comedic and the dramatic that it was hard not to just be confused. I found myself asking who they thought their target audience was multiple times. A lot of the drama surrounds the film's antagonists, played by Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu, and while they are both amazing actresses who are clearly outclassing everyone else in the room with them, they sometimes feel like they're from a different movie, much like Mark Strong's villain from the first Shazam!, albeit less so. Taking the good with the bad, though, I didn't hate it. The Shazam! films ask you to check your brain at the door, and I did, and because I did, I found Fury of the Gods to be a harmlessly good time. I can see this one being divisive, but if you enjoyed the first one, I think there is enough similarity between the two to keep you interested.

Score: 6/10

Currently only in theaters.

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ephemedux · 3 months ago

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I'm not an artist.

I‘ve never drawn in the whole my life. Except for that one time in high school when I drew a boul of plums with watercolors and I was absolutely blown away by how beautiful it turned out and extremely sad that I’ve never properly learned to draw. “And, well, too late to start now” - thought 17-year-old me back then.

A couple of thousands of years later, when I adulted up, I saw Pewdiepie’s video about him drawing every day for 100 days. And then a million videos of copying that video or reacting to that video. YouTube is a very original space nowadays. And I wondered: What if? There won’t be grades or payoffs, and I can drop it whenever I get too depressed with my inability to convey any ideas into pictures. I was simply curious about how it would turn out with me. So I decided to draw every day for a month. But first, I should get the sketchbook, and new pencil, and an eraser. There was no way I could draw anything with that common stationery I already had!

I got a sketchbook and that was my first day:

Ok, actually this was my first ever day👇. I made it just a day or two before I got a ‘special’ sketchbook.

It looks like I indeed can’t draw without new tools 🙂

I managed to stick to the schedule more or less, missing a day or two and then catching up (which apparently is a major win for my inconsistent as head). Pretty quickly I found out that I have a weak visual imagination because I was constantly struggling with what to draw today. So I started to follow some basic lessons.

Besides that, I was mostly copying someone else’s art. I was aiming more for a funny and cartoony style. It’s definitely much easier to make pictures in those styles look appealing, rather than something in a realistic style. Though still very hard for me.

Also, I tried to do some studies on facial expressions.

Human bodies.

And especially chibies, as I need them for one of my projects (wink-wink).

Anyway, the month ended (technically that was one and a half months), and this experiment caused a major influx of my drawing supplies (I even bought a workbook about how to draw 50 faces), made me realize that I can make some art and UI for my games myself, and born some drawing project ideas in my head. And also helped me come up with two major convictions.

Well, it actually took more than that one and a half months, it also took about four months after to crystalize those two in my head. Anyway, first of them:

“Without mastering your skills you purely rely on the whims of your mood.”

Some days I made something cool, no matter was it copying or some technical drawing or winding out something from my head; other days I could not draw at all! Every simple line was just odd. My assumption - it was because of the lack of skills: if I’d had more experience and established muscle memory of drawing, it would be, well, at least less fluctuated in quality. Much less. Without that, it was a result of how much energy my brain was ready to spend on focusing. And my brain doesn’t like doing that in general.

The second conviction was:

“I am not used to enjoying the process, I want the result. And I want it now!”

I mean, I like drawing, but I was always focusing on the result of the drawing, not on the process. I wanted to finish every drawing as quickly as possible to get the finished piece. And after some self-reflection, I realized that this applies to anything in my life. In the previous post, I’ve already touched on this matter, about the process of implementing an idea into a finished piece and that sometimes it could be boring. I mean, it looks boring to me, and ideally it shouldn’t. It isn’t. Because the Journey matters not the destination. And that is a problem in my mind, in my worldview. I should probably talk about that with a therapist or something. Anyway.

That was a very pleasant experience, and even though after that my drawing practices shrank majorly, I am still holding onto the idea of properly learning to draw. I found the whole study plan for Self-taught Artists and already started to follow it. The plan is full of, you know, ‘studying’ stuff, but so far so good. I will tell you about that when I finish at least the first module. And by now, here are two of my favorite pictures: one I just copied the thumbnail, and the other I made following the tutorial.

2. Because, you know, <3

#creativity #drawing #tumblr draw #drawings #dibujo #artist #graphice #expletio

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bustersnax · 1 month ago

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BOY the triplicate space is one of the things i go deep into theorizing the most. there are things that DO align with it being a construct of the stone grumps, and then theres things that, assuming the tunnel was left untouched for a while, would be off to align. but please enjoy my absolute incoherence as the journo mentions during the floofty part of the quest, the stone grumps were pretty advanced; brokentooth is full of still working puzzles, sliding paths, interesting mechanisms (i do theorize the mothza cutter was done by them, too), large statues with impressive headpieces, and imo had some pretty fantastic architecture. even had what seemed like a HUGE building in the distance!

next if we look at Jamfoot's map, we see that the stone grumpuses had an array of camps and tunnels. some are obvious, some others not so much. we do see that the triplicate is marked between the ones they used to inhabit. and to be fair some sort of passage between the tunnel and the island would be really convenient anyways

NOW, THE BIGGEST ISSUE; the way this was built with, and the stark difference in style.. While the stone grumps' structures are, well, mostly stone, these are made with some different material, slightly glossy, fairly darker. I do have a thought for this; they live on a volcanic island, which means that there is an array of things you can mine and have fun with, from probably gemstones to volcanic rocks that happen to look nice. we even see columns of basalt right outside!

so, the material it was built with is Special, but also considering that this is a fictional setting, it could be a material that is hard but not impossible to find.

NOW THEN, why find so much of this special material, and why build something so stark and different wholly with it? its not really that far fetched that they'd go for something unusual for the triplicate. after all, with mother naturae's figure now just being used to hold a tool?

the triplicate could have been their place of worship. while we don't see this particular grumpus anywhere else, there's something in it that it shares with the rest of the statues built by them; an impressive headpiece. or in its case, impressive horns that form a triangular shape. and we do see in the murals and carvings that some stone grumpuses could have had horns, too! A side theory that i have about the triplicate is that it could also have doubled as a bunker but id be derailing from the subject if i go into that HAH

i do agree that the contrast between building styles is stark enough that the chance of a group we dont know about is not far fetched, but i don't think we'd ever get a concrete answer to who built it, or from which time period it really comes, if theres any or either of these. after all, it is a very, very special space.

on a different tangent in the similar line, if anything one of the stone grumpuses could have drawn the murals after the queen event as we know some of them escaped. But unless a desert grumpus felt like doing something funny when they figured out the queen thing (for all we know maybe it even was here where they found out about it), there is only one tiiiiiiny inconsistency...

Another question for other Bugsnax fans:

Jamfoot only says that the ones who built it are lost far beneath the ocean, and that does describe most of the Stone Grumps' civilisation, but the architecture and building materials are nothing alike. I don't think the Stone Grumps have any metal in their buildings, although I could be wrong, and the Triplicate Space is covered with it.

Plus the Triplicate Space has a ton of statues of a Grumpus that isn't depicted anywhere else, other than the Triplicate Space-looking tunnel where you find the triangle key. It doesn't match up with any of the faces on the past leaders carving you can find on Broken Tooth, and my standards for matching up are pretty generous.

I think it was built by one of those ultra high-tech lost civilisations like in Chrono Trigger, and the Stone Grumps/Desert Grumps/Snakolytes all repurposed it, but I'm curious what other people think. It must be from the Stone Grumps' time or earlier, since the tunnel you find the key in seems to be part of the sleeping quarters area on Broken Tooth. It's just not clear if it sank with Broken Tooth, sank earlier, or was always underwater.

#i sure hope this was consistent enough to be entertaining or add food for thought to the topic haha!#i love love discussing the triplicate!!!!#maybe some time in the future someone will walk in and see a third grumpus added to the mural...#this place gives me a category 7 autism event #a side personal theory is that time and space do NOT work here but hey thats another beast

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