#nth reason why i love a well written villain

[officialdaydreamer00]

it's always "ily"

but never "for you, my dearest angel, i will gladly left the world to burn to ashes. if it means loving and holding you close to my soul, divine war crimes i shall willingly commit."

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[wesavegotham]

My personal thoughts on this are that if Damian has a conflict with Bruce again it should be more like in Batman and Robin 2011 where at least I felt like Tomasi tried to give both Bruce and Damian understandable reasons for their opinions and actions most of the time, Bruce was written as fallible and flawed on purpose and Tomasi let him learn that he was wrong about Damian (unlike other writers who write Bruce as a bad person on accident and then refuse to let Bruce face the consequences, * cough * Tom King *cough*)

Not crap like Batman vs Robin, which resolved Bruce and Damian's long running conflict by...making Damian realize that he would never be as great as his father and the solution to everything is to simply believe in the greatness of Batman really hard.

I'm still so annoyed by that. What the hell was Waid on? It fixed NOTHING. I prefer Bruce's half-assed apology to Damian during Shadow War over this and that already wasn't satisfying (and still refused to aknowledge the actual chain of events that lead to Alfred's death in City of Bane)

I also see people expressing their hope that DC puts Damian on a new team book like a magic based team when they thought Damian would get magic powers out of the Lazarus Planet event or a new team with other young characters like Irey and Jai West after the most recent Flash issue...and I'm simply not ready to see Damian on a team again. It didn't go well before and Teen Titans 2016 might have killed my desire to see him in a team book ever again. Even in the run before they tried to turn him into a villain it wasn't exactly fun and he felt like everyone's punching bag most of the time.

I remember some people saying that Irey putting Damian down in a recent story was "so great, this could be a special relationship, he needs someone who humbles him" and I couldn't disgree more. Damian has this exact dynamic with what feels like 90 to 95% of characters he interacts with. Even when he doesn't do anything to a character you get crap like Black Alice calling him an asshole even though she barely interacted with him when he was possessed by Nezha (which would be treated as a valid excuse for any other hero character) and hadn't said anything to her after he was freed. You know what would actually be a unique dynamic DC writers? Someone who actually values him and doesn't insult him for no damn reason. Stuff like this just makes me dislike Damian's so called new friends.

It's also one of the reasons why I am not a fan of his relationship with Flatline at all. Even after they kissed she makes fun of him for referring to her as possibly his girlfriend (he even showed awareness that she might not see it as a serious relationship?) when talking about her and she seemed very uncaring/nonchalant about their relationship status in her Lazarus Planet story. It all comes off as Damian once again caring way more than the other person.

Sorry, but if DC thinks Damian already needs a love interest at his age I would much prefer a character who I feel actually wants to be Damian's romantic partner and is not only aspiring to be yet another unstable relationship in his life. He already has enough of those and I think he deserves someone who is not playing some weird games with him.

If I'm being completely honest I'm not that fond of any arcs revolving around Damian getting "new friends" in the near future. I've read the arc of Damian befriending someone, only achieving anything after learning about "the power of friendship" for the nth time and then this friendship getting ignored by the next writer way too many times. Not even his most promising friendship (in terms of this character having staying power) with Jon has truly been relevant after Jon got aged up.

I simply want to see Damian achieve things on his own. Without any other character helping him or Damian only coming up with a plan that lets another character solve the problem.

Damian, a bit like Cassandra Cain, is a character who had to sacrifice their childhood and social skills to become a skillfull fighter. Only that Cassandra actually gets praise for her skills and is often allowed to be competent (I'm not saying there aren't other problems with the way DC is treating her though) while Damian's canon track record in solo fights is kinda awful. The list of serious foes he managed to beat is actually pretty short and unimpressive.

So I guess what I most desire to see in the near future is Damian finally getting some solo achievements under his belt, less undeserved insults and friends/family members/love interests who are written as if they actually like him and want to be around him.

What with Damian and other characters would you like to see more of?

EDIT: anon sent two asks that are the exact same except the 2nd one said "what conflict with Damian and other char-" and I accidentally answered the 1st ask that didn't mention the word conflict, sorry.

Gonna be honest for a minute here; I genuinely don’t want Damian to have any conflicts with any non-villain character for the next.......10 years lol

Yes, I know that characters having conflicts with each other is what makes them so interesting, but DC has been exaggerating Damian’s attitude and lack of people skills by making him an angry brat that butt-heads with everyone for so many years that I’m kinda over it at this point? Like he already had enough conflicts with other characters to last a lifetime, do we REALLY need to add more to the list? If anything I think it’s high-time we switched it up and actually had characters enjoying Damian’s company without first trying to fight him or mentioning how rude he is.

But most importantly the real reason for that is because I know that whenever he argues with a non-villain character, DC will never allow him to win the argument or be in the right. He has to always be the instigator who provokes other characters for no reason which always result in either him apologizing to them or getting reprimanded by other characters/the narrative. Seriously though, I have read every single comic that Damian has ever appeared in and I genuinely can’t recall any significant moment where a character has genuinely apologized or shown regret to the way they talked to/treated him and if they did, then its because Damian apologized to them first.

Except for maybe his parents, but I personally don’t like taking Talia apologizing to him into consideration since she’s only apologizing for things that she did due to character-assassination and with Bruce its always half-assed.

Like I understand how difficult Damian can be to deal with and how he can easily step on people’s foot, but there’s so no way you can convince me that’s he’s always the instigator every single time? Because I can count many times where other characters did him wrong without him doing anything to deserve it (at that moment at least), yet none of them have apologized, got reprimanded or shown any guilt toward their actions.

As for already existing conflicts? I’m not really interested in seeing any of them resurface again because all of them have been constantly repeated, stretched, exaggerated and dragged through the years to the point where all of them are now boring and unnecessary. Especially when the biggest two conflicts he has had are with characters that DC and readers has strong bias for (Bruce & Tim), so continuing them anymore will just end up making Damian look bad, since he will never be allowed to be in the right when it comes to them.

So yeah lets take a little break from all the fights, unless it was like harmless comedic banter, then sure, that sounds like fun and will not hurt anyone. Otherwise, just let him have unconditionally wholesome interactions with other characters for once please.

[mendely]

Not to be a downer on main but I gotta get things off my chest. This post is going to be long and rambly and clumsily written to the nth degree, so please bear with me just a moment.

For one, I really don't feel like I fit in with the Snape fan crowd. I'm not interested in discussing the book meta (HP series' writing decisions leave me dissatisfied), I'm not a fan of the Snape design in the books, I fuck right off as soon as I get a remote whiff of Snape vs Marauders discourse (seriously, please stop arguing about this. Touch some grass). I don't even find him that sexy either; Alan Rickman radiates charm and charisma, but to me it instead makes Snape appealing in an aesthetic manner. It goes without saying I'm also very much anti-JK Rowling, both politically and artistically. We all know she's a virulent, egotistical bigot. I genuinely don't enjoy what she's done with the character, and personally, Alan Rickman did a lot of heavy lifting to make Snape endearing.

In short my interest in the character lies solely in the actor and the character design from the films. I prefer to draw him differently from most fanart, rounder and softer and heavier to match the actor's physique, rather than being lanky and pointy like a Disney villain as he was depicted in the books. I'm not immune to cool goth uncle Alan Rickman with the tousled hair and swishy robes, so I lifted that entire look for one of my character designs. Plus it gives me the chance to draw something I like without having to invoke the name of the TERF or her bloated wizard franchise. Snape fandom hasn't noticed, but it's not like most of them will enjoy what they'd see anyway, since the character's resemblance to Snape is limited to being Alan Rickman with long hair and black robes and none of the traits that most Snape fandom loves him for.

I really don't know where this rant is going. I guess these are all the reasons why I feel hesitant about posting more Snape content or interacting much with fandom really. He is wildly out of character in most of my doodles of him and at this rate I might as well just stop calling him Snape and start calling him my OC (a step I've already gotten to).

Sorry if this was incoherent

[fruitchakra]

why you should read haikyuu!! (no spoilers)

as an sns-focused blog, i’m going to frame this through the lens of sns/naruto (the series) because the fact is that i finally, finally picked up haikyuu because i read something posted by someone on tumblr or twitter saying ‘hinata and kageyama are basically just naruto and sasuke in high school’.

which is true but mostly false BUT i am so glad i gave it a chance when even my best friend pestering me couldn’t get me to watch/read it (she doesn’t watch naruto so i didn’t trust her lmao). 

the reason i’m so hesitant to start on new manga is because i’m extremely picky with the type of shonen manga i read. 9/10 times i’m just disappointed with the art style, plot, storyline progression, etc. this is also the reason why i reread and rewatch naruto for the nth time because i just cannot get into anything else.

enter haikyuu. haikyuu is truly what a shonen manga is imo - one that revolves around friendship and rivalry with a single key person and overcoming adversities to become the best. compare this to naruto which is a love story because i still cannot believe that it is a shonen manga because it’s not (naruto’s focus on sasuke is not normal or platonic lol. it can’t be. i refuse).

1. character development and world building

the characterizations are really good and they don’t go obsessively deep about people or a single character - hinata’s rivalry with kageyama is clear but it is not the basis of the entire plot. there are no real ‘villains’ too, even if the other team is the opponent. the way things are written makes you root for everyone involved (unlike naruto because there are many characters that i absolutely cannot stand. in haikyu i either like them or can’t remember them because there’s so...many...players.)

furudate’s strength is making you connect with the characters. 

the most refreshing thing is that the world building is good (volleyball is super interesting) but not fraught with things that are uncomfortable, like naruto and its politics and how some people absolutely lose all critical thinking skills when it comes to examining things like fascism and genocide. haikyuu is so much more lighthearted and because of this, it’s a lot of fun.

2. hinata and kageyama’s bond

this is one of my favourite things and it’s so SO refreshing compared to naruto and sasuke’s relationship. hinata and kageyama are introduced as rivals and hinata doesn’t fixate over kageyama - his main goal is to the best volleyball player. in naruto, the narrative is set up as naruto’s desire to be acknowledged and become hokage, but there is a disconnect because the plot is driven by sasuke and his actions. 

i watch naruto for sasuke so i absolutely have no issue with it but when the second character becomes more important than your titular character, something has gone wrong in your plotting/writing.

but there is no escaping that there are similarities: hinata’s name means sun and kageyama’s name means shadow. their character designs and colors are in direct contrast as well (tall and short, bright and dark hair).

3. tsukishima

give me an aloof, quiet character with brother issues, who finds himself changing due to the influence of the protagonist and I AM SOLD. add in moon symbolisms and i am crying because you are now my favorite character. 

4. nostalgia 

the best thing is the nostalgia i think! pretty sure everyone reading this has gone to high school. most people have (or were forced to) participate in some sort of sport. everyone has had dreams and in high school, the world outside seems impossibly big and anything and everything is possible. haikyuu really plays into this and it is absolutely hopeful and inspiring it is. 

it also reminds me how naive and flawed this thinking is because life will not go the way you want to, just because you really truly want something and work hard for it. of course, as a children’s manga, it doesn’t linger on the negative aspects of growing up but seeing something so hopeful and happy really highlights the stark reality of adult lives. and i honestly love how introspective it makes me. 

5. furudate’s art style

the manga is 100000% better than the anime because we get furudate’s art style which is insanely good because you can really sense the speed and motion and excitement of the volleyball. 

more importantly are the little tiny details he adds into little frames. it builds so much more character and i’m slowly getting through the anime because the volleyball parts are much better animated and the OPs are hype but the pacing is really off and i don’t think the voice casting is as good as naruto’s. 

6. the importance of a strong opening 

the first chapter made me cry, with hinata’s enthusiasm and lack of support and him still finding his way around it to make things work as best as he can. it’s incredibly earnest and just so pure.

naruto didn’t do this for me tbh, and it was only sasuke’s introduction that hooked me. the closest feeling i’ve come across in the introduction of a story from another form of media is the kdrama vagabond. no other opening has hit me as hard with this sense of warmth and purity (12/10 would recommend. it’s on netflix!)

7. stand-out characters

hinata - my big hearted sunshine boy. best protagonist ever thank u for existing

kageyama - the way to my heart: a boy with dark hair and dark eyes. his growth is so so good

tsukishima - moon. background and character growth. i love his attitude

yamaguchi - i scream whenever he steps onto court. pure and sweet

basically everyone on the karasuno team

kenma - basically me irl

oikawa - “i hope they both lose” truly the single best sentence ever given to a character

miya twins - they’re drawn so beautifully?? and great chaotic energy

if you’ve read all the way here, you’re the best and take it as a sign you start haikyuu :)

[minhthangcoi9993-blog]

Review Game Detroit: Become Human

It’s a testament to the breadth of Quantic Dream’s branching storylines that I felt terribly guilty as the credits rolled after my second playthrough of Detroit: Become Human, as I’d played against my personal moral compass to test how far I could push the story’s exploration of the morality of artificial intelligence. This was very much the opposite of my mostly peaceful first run, and Detroit obliged my wickedness to a surprising degree, leaving a trail of bodies of those who had previously survived in my wake. And while it never seems to know when enough heavy-handed expositional dialogue is enough, Detroit: Become Human manages to be a frequently moving melodrama that bends to your choices with meaningful results.

Each of those playthroughs took around 10 hours to complete, and during that time Detroit’s pace rarely lags thanks to the deft juggling act it performs, alternating between three android characters across multiple chapters: Kara, a housekeeper who must care for a little girl named Alice, Connor; a prototype police model whose assignment is to round up ‘deviant’ androids, and Markus; a carer model who believes androids should share equal rights with humans.

The trio of performances is excellent. Bryan Dechart is delightful as Connor thanks to his deadpan innocence, which makes for a great foil against the whirling dervish of his cynical partner, Clancy Brown’s Lieutenant Hank Anderson. Valorie Curry brings quiet strength to Kara, and excels at selling her love for her ward, Alice, who is quite possibly the least charismatic video game child to have ever existed. Jesse Williams employs all of his dreamy Grey’s Anatomy warmth as Markus and is never unlikeable, no matter how you choose to play him.

Based on your choices, you can change their personalities and the tone of their individual stories. In my first playthrough, for example, the relationship between a humble Connor and the android-hating Anderson played out like a knockabout buddy comedy. In my second, I let Connor’s ambitions take over, and his story was of a different genre.

Though Markus appears to fundamentally remain endearing no matter what you do (unlike Connor, who really can be played as a hero or villain), there’s a tug-of-war going on within him that throws up some of Detroit's most interesting moral quandaries. Kara’s story seems less tonally flexible but is the quietest and most intimate, which provides a welcome contrast to all the running and explosions you can opt into in the other two stories.

Play more Jelly Doods

Hot new 60 Second Burger Run

For the most part, supporting characters adapt to the way you choose to play, but there are occasional misfires. When I played as ‘nice’ Connor, for example, Anderson was far too aggressive toward him to be believable. When I played as ‘mean,’ or even ‘indifferent’ Connor, his fury made a lot more sense. At one point, Markus gained a lover very abruptly, and I felt I’d missed a slow burn somewhere. It’s noticeable when your choices feel they’re going against the grain of a more robust story.

I found all three of Detroit’s central characters to be dramatically interesting, which meant putting them in compromising situations – or worse, killing them – was a real fear throughout. It’s testament to the writing and performances that I found making decisions “just to see what would happen” teeth-clenchingly hard.

I'm a Real Boy

The backbone of Detroit’s story – meaning the one that’s relatively fixed in place despite the choices you make around it – is big, ambitious fun that takes Phillip K. Dick's question of whether androids dream of electric sheep to the nth degree. In doing so, however, it does suffer from a multitude of plot holes. Marcus appears to gain magical android powers when it suits him; Hank is impressed when Connor solves the most basic of mysteries; and one twist makes absolutely no sense if you look back on that particular storyline after having finished.

These were noticeable (and often pretty funny), but they weren’t deal-breakers for me. Detroit is audacious and silly as hell, but it’s got real heart to it. There were enough moments of quiet tenderness to keep me emotionally invested, and the stakes were suitably high - particularly in its final act - to keep me thrilled.

With this in mind, there is a lot of clumsy exposition and dialogue I was willing to forgive, as one would while watching a fun B-movie. But occasionally, Detroit ignores the standard writing rule of “show, don’t tell” to such an extent I was yanked out of the story. Bad guys spout monologues that spell out Detroit’s themes in capital letters. (There’s a compartment for androids on public transport, in case you didn’t get what Detroit was going for here.) Select side characters, like Hank’s harrowed police chief and the inexplicably wise and mystical Lucy - are loudly cliched, so we understand what their roles are without any real character development.

With the remarkable performance-capture technology – and performances – Quantic Dream has at its disposal, there’s no real reason for such heavy-handedness. Nor do I think Detroit is incapable of subtlety; some of the scenarios here are unusual and profound. But I wish its ideas had more room to breathe before being trampled by someone spelling out the meaning for us.

Characters are certainly capable of non-verbal expressiveness. The level of detail you can see in their faces is astounding; facial hair, blemishes, freckles, and moles are rendered in stunning detail, particularly in checkerboard 4K on the PS4 Pro. The animation is just as good; as Kara and Alice hurry through the rain on a freezing night, hunched over and miserable, I could have been watching two humans from the side-streets.

The world here feels very real, too, built with a sense of history. This is a miserable, dark version of a future Detroit where androids are so omnipresent that they’re old news, sold in chain stores for the price of a discount mobile phone. Little details from the sidelines tell the story of a burst tech bubble, like basements filled to the brim with discarded models or a street performer advertising the fact he is playing “human music.”

Though the path you are guided through in Detroit’s world is as linear as previous Quantic games, I felt like there was more time to enjoy these beautifully detailed environments. One of my favourite sequences involved chasing graffiti tags to find a particular location, which ended up being an eerie, silent excursion in a forgotten corner of the city. There’s also a marvelous scene in an abandoned amusement park which still creaked with enough life that I got a sense of what it might have been, once upon a time.

The way you interact with Detroit’s environments hasn’t evolved much from Quantic Dream’s usual formula, which is unobtrusive and mostly works. Action sequences are generally executed using timed button presses, swoops of the thumbstick, and occasional motion control, which evoke the action you are performing on a case-by-case basis. An android detective mode allows you to scan your environment to reconstruct crime scenes, and fast-forwarding and rewinding through these is a lot of fun, as is a new ability to ‘pre-construct’ scenarios before you execute them. I would have liked the opportunity to play around with the latter ability more than I was allowed to, in fact.

Like Beyond: Two Souls before it, though, Detroit: Become Human struggles to justify its multiple fight scenes with meaningful interactivity. Clicking on buttons at just the right time while struggling with an angry android encourages a welcome sense of participation in the fight, but you have to screw it up disastrously to fail. I understand that making combat a proper challenge runs the risk of introducing an immersion-breaking sense of trial and error, but I was left wishing the stakes were just a little higher after I ‘won’ each fight without really trying. Why make them interactive at all if the input feels so meaningless?

Of course, the way you play Detroit is primarily through the choices you make within it. While there’s that backbone of a story that can’t be shattered, which can occasionally result in frustration when it makes a decision for you to keep you from straying too far off the beaten path, I found its branching paths to be multiple and deep. Quantic Dream has been smart in making this multitude of paths transparent through flowcharts introduced at the end of each chapter, showing you just how differently it could have played out if you’d made another choice, enticing you to play through again.

Not every alternate choice leads to a drastically different story, but some will. Sometimes it might lead to the same result, but by a surprising new means. Sometimes it might change your relationship with another character and unlock a path that wasn’t there before. Sometimes it might result in death, whether that be of a supporting character or one of the central trio (they can all die at points throughout Detroit), or a dramatic action sequence with unexpected consequences. Comparing endings, not only between my first and second playthroughs but with other players, was astounding, particularly when I assumed everybody’s story had wrapped the same way as mine and found that nobody’s had.

For me, this is the biggest draw of Detroit. One playthrough really isn’t enough to see what it has to offer, and characters and world-building are interesting enough that it was a pleasure to go back to see what I’d missed in scenarios that are deceptively complex.

The Verdict

Detroit: Become Human is a poignantly pulpy interactive sci-fi drama where your choices can impact events to a greater and more satisfying degree than in most games of this type. Though I wish its story had been handled with a softer touch, especially considering the subtlety that can be conveyed through its tech and performances, its well-written and acted central trio were vital enough to me that I found myself feeling genuine distress when they were in danger and a sense of victory when they triumphed. Most importantly, Detroit offers a multitude of transparent branching paths that entice further playthroughs, and choices have a permanence that raise the stakes throughout.