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strangertheories · 2 years ago

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Well, I seriously thought your post was very good (and it sounded like a serious discussion of the show, not a fluffy headcanon post of course), which is why I was so surprised you brought up that "Ronance should be canon if the writers weren't cowards pm just like Byler" implication out of the left field.

I really think Ronance canon would be horrible, not that they are not cute together and have fun scenes and chemistry - which is why it is a fine meme ship, but 1) I would seriously have to ask myself if Nancy can connect to a human being on any level without fucking them. Evidence of that would be zero. 2) Robin too has apparently never met a single girl she didn't want and has no platonic friendship with a female - but 3 love interests. I don't think her touching Nancy's hand for reassurance would be cute any longer in that context. At least, unlike Nance, she can have male friends, which brings me to 3) This would be ridiculous cruelty to Steve. I don't ship Stancy and think he should move on, but that storyline would be over the top humiliation and would need to be explored.

Now those issues could go away if there were endless new seasons. As it is, it's bad (time jump or no time jump) and would pretty much ruin the show and definitely ruin the impact of Byler. Everyone would justifiably say they just made everyone gay out of the blue for shits and giggles and you can't take it seriously. 4 seasons and they never bothered to hint that Nancy might be into girls, what was all the hard foreshadowing work with her brother for then? For nothing. All we need is two actors being cute together.

And for the comments under the post: That's the thing, you can't have it both ways: Are you peacefully shipping characters you think are cute together in your corner or are you discussing the show analytically? If it's the former, have fun, if it's the latter people might respond that no, this makes no sense in canon. No matter if it's about a gay ship, a straight ship, a villain arc or parallel universes.

Just to explain. I mean no pressure to respond if you're tired of it! Peace!

Ok thanks for the ask. I disagree with you and I'm going to explain it a little bit more if that's ok. I still maintain that I feel the same way about Byler as I do Ronance because I want them both to be canon but won't be surprised if the writers don't do that which is still how I feel. I doubt that Ronance is going to happen, your points on why it won't make perfect sense, but I think that it should happen. It's not me having a fluffy headcanon, it's me talking about what I want to happen in S5 and I still think I'm right about that and I'm going to break down some of your points. Your fine not to ship it and I think you make some alright points, but I don't think you can say it's objectively bad because I think it could work and I guarantee a lot of Ronance fans would back me up on that one.

So first of all, the point on Nancy. I get where you're coming from as Nancy got with both Johnathan and Steve but I don't think that's why people ship Ronance. First of all, I'd love Nancy to have more platonic relationships and not be so centred around romance. I'd really like platonic st*ncy to be honest with you, and Nancy and Barbara seemed to have a good relationship without me wanting them to bang. I also don't think she wanted to bang Fred. I don't think it's the fault of Ronance, I think the writers just need to writer her better platonic relationships in general. That being said, I don't view her relationship with Robin as platonic and personally, I don't think anyone would say that if she was a guy. I think it's intention from the writers was platonic, but that's not how I personally like to interpret it.

Secondly, Robin has never met a single girl she didn't want? What about Steve? Has he ever met a girl he didn't want? Is that an issue? I think people overly criticize queer representation and this is the perfect example. No, not every lesbian is attracted to every girl she sees and I'm not saying Robin is either. I just think she has a crush on Nancy, Tammy and Vickie, which is three girls out of the entire female population. If you've read/heard Rebel Robin, you'll know she has platonic relationships with other women. I get saying 'oh lesbians can have female friends too' but what about men? The only platonic male female friendship in the show has a lesbian in it and at first, it was a romantic thing on Steve's part. But I'm not saying it's bad writing that he's attracted to every girl he sees. Plus that's also really not why I ship it. It's not because I don't want friends to exist, it's because I think they have a really good dynamic and I want to see two characters I love get together.

And the final point, I don't care about what Steve thinks. Steve is not dating Nancy. Steve is her ex boyfriend. And I know getting with your friend's ex is a faux pas or whatever, but the whole thing with Steve is that he needs to move on from Nancy and her being with Robin would force him to do that. Not to mention this is way harder on Johnathan, her actual boyfriend. They're also characters and not real people so it's not hurting anyone. I get the point you're making but honestly, I think Steve would be supportive of their relationship and if they decided to make it canon, the writers can just write it that way? Like he's sad but he knows he has to move on and he wants Robin to be happy so if Nancy is what makes her happy, he'll accept her. And if I was writing it and it was canon, I'd also make them get together after the time skip with a J*ncy breakup just before it, meaning they have a two year cool down or so.

Now onto your next paragraph. It would ruin Byler? Look I'm a big Byler shipper and I'm really rooting for Byler canon, but you can have two queer relationships. Is Robin and Vickie going to ruin Byler? And yes there's no build up in terms of Nancy liking girls but sometimes you just meet a girl and you like her and that's it. Byler can be a slow burn childhood friends to lovers. Ronance can be faster and less angsty. You can want Byler to happen and also want Ronance to happen, it isn't mutually exclusive.

Do you wanna know another character who wasn't hinted to be gay pre coming out? Robin. And having a faster coming out with less build up doesn't diminish the values of a slow more painful journey to come to that realization. So having Nancy like a girl doesn't mean Mike coming to terms with liking guys is any less valuable. Queer representation isn't an equation, it's not like having more of it damages the existing stuff you already have. Byler and Ronance can coexist happily.

Also saying Ronance shippers like the ship because the characters are cute together is a bit dismissive. You don't know why I like their relationship and you can't tell me it's because I think it would be fun and lalala. I think it would be good for Nancy because of how male centric she often is. I think it would be good for queer representation. I think it would be nice to see a well loved, original character come out, just like you'd like to see Will and Mike come out. Do I think it's a cute relationship? Yes. But that's not why I'm rooting for it.

For the bit on the comments, we're not saying it's going to happen. We're just saying that we want it to happen and that we think it would work. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's "objectively shit writing". There are plenty of metamorphis shippers who could write an essay on why Byler is bad, would you stop shipping it? No. You can absolutely criticize it and I respect that, hence why I've replied. I don't tend to give rude anons the time of day but I genuinely don't think you have bad intentions. I also think it's a little blunt to say no this cannot work because again, that's a very objective view when stuff like this is ultimately down to personal opinion.

But also, you're creating this drama between Byler and Ronance shippers that does not need to exist, coming from someone who ships both. The commenters seem to be more talking about how you said me wanting Ronance to happen is insulting to Byler which is a weird ship war, which shouldn't exist, and how most people who want Ronance to be canon and think it could work don't think it's actually going to happen and that it'll probably just be fanon. But I'm not angry at you and I think you can definitely disagree with me as long as you're respectful, if that makes sense.

Sorry if this was a bit long! I hope I make sense to you anon and for now I'll just agree to disagree. If you send me a response, I'll read it but I can't guarantee I'll respond because I don't want this to be a bigger thing than it needs to be. Thanks for the ask and thanks for your thoughts (:

#stranger things #st5 #ronance #robin buckley #nancy wheeler #byler #nancy wheeler is bisexual

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theres-an-impulstor-among-us · 4 years ago

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Now that team ITS is playing Phasmophobia on stream (I mean they are when I am sending this) can we get ghost hunters team ZITS?! I'd love to see the full team of morons (affectionate) dealing with ghosts.

I love Team ZITS so much, they’re such morons (affectionate). Just a few notes for this one:

1) CW: swearing

2) This loosely takes place in Phasmophobia. Some details are different/altered to fit the story better

3) Also I would just like to clarify that even though they reference playing Among Us, all my fics are set in the fictional world. I will never write about the real people, only their Hermitcraft characters/personas.

...

“Okay, guys.” Impulse addresses his team in the back of their van, handing out pieces of equipment as he talks. “We’ve got a poltergeist living in this house right here. Our job is to get evidence and get the hell out before it kills us. Any questions?”

Zedaph raises his hand. “Yes, what happens if it kills us?”

“We die,” Tango says wryly. “Permanently. So don’t get killed.”

“I guarantee at least one of us isn’t getting outta here alive,” Skizzleman remarks. “And all the times we played Among Us is telling me it’s gonna be Tango.”

Tango shoots him a scowl. “Hey!”

“Well, if you really don’t wanna die first, find some kind of electrical room and send Impulse there,” snickers Skizzleman.

Impulse rolls his eyes. “Thanks, Skizz. Anyway, we only have one piece of equipment each so we gotta make sure we work together. Skizz, you’ve got the camera to take pictures of the ghost. Tango, you’ve got the EMF reader so you can gauge the strength of ghostly presences. Zed, you’ve got the temperature tracker so you can check when the rooms get freezing. Everyone understand?”

“What have you got, exactly?” Skizzleman inquires.

Impulse holds up the item in his hand. “A flashlight that doubles as a UV light. I’m the one who’s gonna go first into each room and probably get killed in, like, ten seconds.”

“A true hero,” says Zedaph, nodding.

“And don’t forget that the instructions say that if the flashlight beam starts to blink, that means the ghost is hunting,” Tango adds. “We should stick close to you so we know when to panic.”

“Gotcha.”

The team makes their way towards the dark, dilapidated house.

“Man, the only way this could be more stereotypically creepy is if it had cobwebs in the windows,” mutters Skizzleman. “I dunno about you guys but I have zero trouble believing a ghost lives here.”

Impulse pauses outside the house, glancing back at his friends. “Okay, the name of the ghost is William Thomas. And it said in the instructions that saying a ghost’s name will anger it, so try not to do that.”

With that, the four creep into the house.

They tiptoe into the first room in the house, Impulse shining his flashlight hesitantly around to make sure they’re alone. He switches to the UV light but no fingerprints show up anywhere.

“Hey, have you guys heard that song about Shia LaBeouf being a cannibal?” Zedaph asks out of the blue.

His friends stare at him.

“No I haven’t, and also, what the hell?” says Tango.

“I’ve heard it,” Skizzleman says. “What made you think of it NOW of all times?”

“I was just thinking about how the ghost might be a cannibal and eat our bodies when it kills us, and that made me think of that song and now it’s stuck in my head.”

A pause follows this.

“Aaaaand now it’s stuck in mine too,” Skizzleman sighs. “Great. Thanks.”

“The image of a ghost feasting on our corpses is stuck in MY head and now I don’t want to move,” Tango says. “So thanks for that, Zed.”

Zedaph grins to himself. “Anytime.”

A tense pause follows this.

BANG!

Skizzleman screams. “AHHH, WHAT WAS THAT?!”

Impulse, heart now racing, instinctively shines his light towards the source of the noise. “I think it came from upstairs! Tango, Skizz, go check it out!”

“Why me?!” yelps Skizzleman.

“Because you’ve got the camera! Now go!”

Tango drags a protesting Skizzleman away towards the stairs.

“Okay, while they’re doing that, let’s start eliminating rooms as the epicentre,” says Impulse to his remaining friend. “Keep the temperature tracker up.”

Zedaph nods. “Will do.”

The two start exploring the downstairs rooms. The kitchen and dining room show no signs of paranormal activity but when they enter the living room, something changes.

“I’m cold,” Zedaph whispers, the temperature tracker trembling slightly in his hand. “It says three degrees. Not quite freezing yet.”

“Right, okay… Stay here and monitor the temperature, I’ll go check for handprints by the stairs.”

He moves off into the hallway and shines the UV light around at the staircase.

Upstairs, Skizzleman is clutching the camera so tightly that his knuckles are turning white. “Oh my god, I hate this so much. I feel like I’m gonna have a damn heart attack.”

Ignoring him, Tango activates his walkie talkie. “Impulse, can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” comes Impulse’s crackly voice. “Found anything?”

“Nothing yet. We’re just having a look around.”

“Okay, good. Remember, saying the ghost’s name a lot will make it mad so if you want to aggravate it a bit to get evidence, do that. But make sure you don’t say it too much or it’ll REALLY get angry.”

Tango nods. “Gotcha. Talk to you later.”

He puts away the walkie talkie and turns to Skizzleman, who is staring around the dark room with fearful eyes. “H-Hello, Mr William Thomas? Or, uh… Bill? Can I call you Bill?”

He gets no response from the ghost, so he tries again: “Hey William, do you play Minecraft?”

Tango stifles a laugh.

A few seconds later, a heavy-looking lamp in the corner tips over and falls all on its own, nearly crushing Skizzleman.

Impulse glances sharply up as he hears Skizzleman scream. He immediately hears Tango’s loud voice reassuring him, so he forces himself to relax. Nothing bad is happening. His friends are okay, they’re just a little on-edge, like Impulse himself. He just needs to relax.

Inhaling deeply, he takes out the plastic water bottle he brought with him. As he sips at the cool water, he hears Skizzleman’s voice yelling from the upstairs bedroom: “HEY BILL, FUCK OFF!”

Tango’s voice shrieks back, “SKIZZ, DON’T PISS OFF THE GHOST WHO’S TRYING TO KILL US!”

“IF HE’S TRYING TO KILL US ANYWAY THEN WHY CAN I NOT TELL HIM TO GO FUCK HIMSELF?”

Impulse chokes on his water.

“Impulse, I think Skizz is freaking out,” says Zedaph, peering round the door. “And I’m starting to freak out too. The temperature went below zero, like, six times in a few minutes.”

“Right, okay, that’s one piece of evidence collected,” Impulse says. “Two more to go, then we can get outta here.”

As Zedaph opens his mouth to respond, they both hear a loud thumping noise and Skizzleman screaming.

His heart leaping into his throat, Impulse and Zedaph dash upstairs at top speed and both almost trip right over Skizzleman on the landing.

“Skizz, what the hell?!” yelps Impulse.

Lying face down on the carpet, Skizzleman is glad it’s dark so the others can’t tell how red his cheeks are. “I… tripped over my own feet.”

“Oh, I hate you so much.” Impulse hauls his best friend to his feet. “Please tell me you have some more evidence for me.”

“I got a level 5 reading,” Tango says, standing in the doorway to the bedroom.

“Okay, good, that counts. We got freezing temperatures downstairs, so now we just gotta look for-.”

He breaks off as an ominous noise sounds from downstairs.

The group stare at each other in terror.

“Please tell me that was just someone’s stomach,” Skizzleman groans.

Impulse’s flashlight beam starts blinking.

“Run!” Impulse screeches.

The four scatter.

Skizzleman and Zedaph dash inside the bedroom and jump into the closet, both breathing hard. They fall silent, listening intently for any sounds outside the closet.

A minute goes by. Then another. Then a few more.

“So,” whispers Zedaph. “Come here often?”

Skizzleman can’t help a quiet snicker, despite the situation. “No, I really don’t. What about you?”

“Well, oddly enough, this isn’t my first time hiding from a ghost in a stranger’s wardrobe.”

“That genuinely does not surprise me one bit.”

Zedaph’s walkie talkie emits a sudden burst of static, giving the two a fright. “Zed, come in. Where are you guys?”

Zedaph fumbles with the device and hurriedly whispers into it, “Impulse, I think the ghost is still nearby.”

“Nope it’s not. It’s currently having a very intense staring contest with Tango, so we could do with your help right now.”

Zedaph and Skizzleman exchange a look of horror.

Downstairs, Tango has been backed into a corner, frozen with fear as he makes terrified eye contact with the gruesome poltergeist, who is less than three metres away from him. “Impy,” he whispers out the corner of his mouth. “Help me.”

Impulse dithers by the door, itching to go help his best friend but unsure of exactly how to do that without getting one or both of them killed.

Zedaph and Skizzleman appear next to Impulse seconds later. “Can we distract the ghost in any way?” the former asks urgently, as Skizzleman takes a picture of the spirit.

Impulse hesitates. “I-I don’t know how we’d do that.”

“Well, we have to do something! We can’t just let it kill Tango!”

The poltergeist moves jerkily to the side, causing Tango to let out a strangled cry and press his back harder against the wall. “Help!”

Reacting quickly, Skizzleman snatches the temperature tracker from Zedaph and tosses it at the ghost. It passes right through its body, nearly hitting Tango.

“Hey, William fucking Thomas, stay the hell away from my buddy!” Skizz yells at it.

“Dude!” Impulse yelps, as the poltergeist turns on them. “RUN!”

The three scramble for the door.

Tango, seeing his chance, dodges around the ghost and follows, almost tripping over at least twice as he does.

Skizzleman again trips over his own feet on the concrete pathway, and since he’s at the front of the group, the other three promptly fall over him and end up in a heap on the ground, panting hard from fear and exertion.

“Oh my God,” gasps out Impulse. “Is everyone okay?”

Zedaph sticks his thumb up. “Very much below average, thanks.”

“My heart is about to die but yeah, I’m fine,” Skizzleman breathes. “I’m gonna have nightmares about this for months.”

“Months?!” Tango is lying sprawled on his back, his heart still pounding in his chest. “Dude, I’m never gonna sleep well again.”

Impulse pushes himself into a sitting position and watches the ghost float around angrily in the front doorway. “Looks like he can’t leave the house. PLEASE tell me we got three pieces of evidence.”

At the same time, all three of the others speak:

“Temperature,” says Zedaph.

“Photo,” says Skizzleman.

“EMF reading,” says Tango.

“Right, then.” Impulse gets to his feet and opens up the back of the van. “Let’s get going. We can process the evidence in the van.”

Skizzleman is the next to stand up and come to the back of the van. Rubbing his chest, he raises an eyebrow at Impulse. “Dude, we are DEFINITELY stopping at Taco Bell on the way home. We DESERVE Taco Bell.”

Impulse chuckles. “Oh, you’ll hear no argument from me there, dude.”

As Zedaph hops into the back of the van, he grins back at his friends. “Now that was what I call a Shia Surprise.”

Impulse frowns and starts to open his mouth but Skizzleman shakes his head. “Don’t even ask, bro.”

Finally, Tango hands the EMF reader to Impulse and wordlessly starts to head to the front of the van but Impulse stops him. “Tango, are you okay? I-I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more in there.”

Tango slowly shakes his head. “It’s fine, don’t worry. I’m just a little shaken up, that’s all.” He gives a pale grin. “Just promise me that next time we get the urge to do something stupid with the paranormal that we’ll use a oujia board like normal people.”

Impulse laughs. After that experience, he’s just happy his friends are all okay.

“Deal.”

#impulsesv #tangotek #skizzleman #zedaph #team zits #hermitcraft #phasmophobia #cw swearing #Vaunna writes

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galaeus · 3 years ago

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OKAY AS PROMISED HERE IS THE VERY DISORGANIZED BULLETPOINT MASTERLIST OF

“HOW I FEEL ECHO J. GALAEUS WOULD GET ON WITH THE CANON CHARACTERS OF MASS EFFECT”

long post so you can read it under the cut. (in order of me1 to me2)

THE COUNCIL / ALLIANCE

lmfao absolutely not, she cannot stand those hypocritical donuts

also fun fact, her dad left Contraxia and wound up serving the alliance on a refugee grant leaving his child and baby mama to rot so that’s a lot of baggage to be had

COMMANDER SHEPARD

This is completely up in the air because there are a ton of Shepards on indie and they’re all unique and fantastic, but I will drop that Echo respects fighters. Shepard is a fighter and a strong willed person, so I don’t doubt that she’d respet the shit out of any Commander.

ASHLEY WILLIAMS

Debatable. Ashley has a pretty strong background of family and religion and Echo tends to shun her Contraxian culture/has little to no feeling when it comes to her own family ties back home. They may be something of adversaries given they are both strong-willed and outspoken individuals.

KAIDAN ALENKO

Echo is pretty neutral to Kaidan, but given her ties with Cerberus, I don’t think he would be neutral with her. Dude certainly believes in a cause and she can respect that, but I don’t know if he would want to associate with her. Plus there’s that pesky problem she has with Alliance so they will most likely butt heads.

LIARA T’SONI

Echo is more than likely very intimidated by how smart Liara is (that woman is wicked intelligent) but that wouldn’t necessarily be any reason for her not to speak with Liara. They both have mommy issues, so that’s a bonus. If anything, she finds Liara to be a very brave and honorable individual so she’s equal parts nervous around her as well as respectable.

GARRUS VAKARIAN

This is a tough one and it depends on the timeline. With her father being Alliance, she tends to not think too highly about C-Sec. However, they both have major daddy issues to deal with, so maybe that’s enough to bring neutral ground. He’s a ruthless fighter and she respects the hell out of any fighter she comes across.

ME2 Archangel status, I do enjoy the concept that she knew of him/perhaps even crossed paths with him when she was in the midst of her gig as a hunter-for-hire on Omega before Cerberus snatched her up. She has a bit of a revenge list of old ring-runner/betting pools she’s tracking down for soul-sake that she wants murdered, so I wonder if she’d come to him for help? Otherwise they’d meet on the Normandy. Turians/Contraxians like fighting, so that’s A+.

URDNOT WREX

I seriously do not doubt that Echo and Wrex have stumbled into each other at some point or another. He’s a Krogan, Krogans love Contraxia’s lawless wasteland of fighting and chaos, so I feel as though they would have a pretty interesting bond. Bonus points if he actually knew her when she was a fighter on Contraxia!

TALI’ZORAH

Granted she’s intimidated by very smart people (see: Liara) but I think her and Tali have the opportunity to get along great. Quarians and Contraxians are treated as second-class citizens, so I think she would want to make an alliance with Tali strictly due to the fact that their people are very much frowned upon in most corners of the universe.

JOKER

For the love of god do not make puns around her or she will break the coffee machine.

MIRANDA LAWSON

MISS MIRANDA, DID YOU PICK UP ECHO FROM OMEGA ON BEHALF OF THE ILLUSIVE MAN?

Ok but in all seriousness Echo digs that Miranda has zero qualms with stating that she’s the best at what she does because while Echo is shameful of the people she’s murdered (hello, 33 very personal deaths in the gladiator arena) she also knows she is highly capable at what she’s good at. They have both been used and abused in many different ways, so I’d be curious if they had a partnership grow for those little things or if they would butt head strictly on the principle that Miranda is pretty poised and Echo is... not. I would love to explore it.

JACOB TAYLOR

ALLIANCE DADDY ISSUES UNITE. Okay but can they please bond over the fact that their dads were in Alliance and, while he joined Alliance to follow his legacy, Echo basically got the shit end of the stick as a gladiator? Plus he’s super skilled at fighting. I think she’ll like him.

GRUNT

Again, like Wrex, I have a feeling Echo will like Grunt. Krogans love fighting and they love Contraxia’s nature and debauchery, so I think eventually they would warm up to one another and be amicable.

MORDIN SOLUS

Mordin talks much too fast and confusing for Echo to understand him but she appreciates his matter-of-fact nature -- even if it takes her a while to get used to it. Echo tends to take a lot of things literally, so it works out that it’s so neat and plain in front of her when they speak.

JACK

heart eyes motherfucker

No seriously these two both have bodies painted with ink that talk about their past and I SCREAM about it. However, Echo’s champion mark tattoos were involuntary, but she was allowed to choose the design after a kill/winning fight. Jack was also involuntarily held for so much of her childhood just as Echo was held against her will to fight against her peers as she grew up, so they have some very fucked up childhood problems to comb through. They both have really intense viewpoints of the world and tend to be loners, so I would love to see if they royally hate each other or if they become complete and utter nuisances on the galaxy.

KASUMI GOTO

She’s gonna be super gay for Kasumi and think she’s like the greatest person to talk to I can already feel it in my bones and I am so sorry for the simping that could be had here.

LEGION

Oh god has Contraxia ever even been bothered by the Geth? I have no idea. It would be interesting if she came into meeting him with an open mind, because he is an interesting character. Plus there is always the battle of ‘we are legion’ vs her individualistic nature, so I think it would be a neat dynamic to explore.

THANE KRIOS

She knows of him. Like I guarantee she knows of him because his skill would be revered where she’s from (Contraxians really put assassins/fighters on the top of their respect list) and I think because of that, she would be open to discussing her former life. Plus there is almost... repentence? in getting to know Thane? He hates what he’s done just as much as she loathes what she had to do in order to survive her life as a gladiator, so I wonder if she would actually get spiritual and real with him behind closed doors where the rest of the crew cannot hear the crimes she’s committed against humanity.

SAMARA

Big gay and scared of you. That’s all I can say about her right now skdfjsf

ZAEED MASSANI

I have a feeling these two have definitely crossed paths, even if it was before the Normandy. They’re both bounty hunters (though her assassin/hunter stint was short-lived given Cerberus picked her up for their own usage) and they’ve both been scarred by war in one way or another, so I’m curious to see if they become neutral acquaintances.

TIM / THE ILUSIVE MAN

While indebted to him for picking her up in the middle of Omega running around as a hunter-for-hire, she is fearful she traded one cage for another. That being said I think she’d buy into whatever he was telling her to do and do it without questioning because it’s better than what her old life used to be.

#mass effect rp #this took me like over 2 hours to write up lmfao #HONESTLY USE IT IF YOU WANNA PLOT WITH HER #OC'S WE WILL FIGURE OUT AS WE GO ALONG #but i'm excited to plot with whomever xo #long post cw

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recentanimenews · 3 years ago

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RECS: 5 Beginner Mecha Anime Fans Of Giant Robots Should Check Out

Mecha is possibly the most influential anime genre of all time. Mecha’s influence can be felt not only in anime and manga, but also in tokusatsu (live-action with heavy special effects), videogames, and even Hollywood (with the likes of Pacific Rim and Edge of Tomorrow). Many older anime fans got into the medium through classic mecha shows like Macross or Go Lion (aka Voltron). While some may say the genre is past its prime, mecha shows continue to enjoy popularity even today, as the recent SSSS.GRIDMAN franchise can testify.

Most anime fans have watched at least one mecha anime, but few explore the genre fully outside of household names like Gurren Lagann, Code Geass, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. With such a long and decorated history, it's easy to become daunted by the sheer volume of shows (and their length). Fear not, however, for that is where we come in. Here is a small selection of shows to help get you into the genre. Once you’re done with these, you'll be a mecha nut just like me. Even if you’re already one, you’ll no doubt have fun watching or rewatching these titles. Let’s get started!

Mobile Suit Gundam

Is there any better place to start than with the grandparent of most modern mecha anime? 1979’s Mobile Suit Gundam not only kickstarted the massive Gundam franchise but is also credited with creating an entire new genre of mecha: the “real robot” genre — characterized by an emphasis on technological realism and groundedness as opposed to the quasi-magical “super robot” genre.

In a future where most of humanity has moved to space, a breakaway entity called the Principality of Zeon declares war on the Earth Federation, gaining the upper hand thanks to their terrifying giant robots called “mobile suits.” Caught in the middle of this conflict, young Amuro Ray must pilot the Earth Federation’s own mobile suit, the Gundam, and face his greatest rival, Char Aznable. Mobile Suit Gundam has aged remarkably well and serves as a fantastic introduction to the mecha genre.

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM THE ORIGIN Advent of the Red Comet

So you want to get into Gundam, but you don’t want to commit to 43 episodes just yet? Then I have the perfect anime for you! Adapted from Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s manga of the same name, MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM THE ORIGIN Advent of the Red Comet is a short retelling of events from the original Mobile Suit Gundam, but from the perspective of Char Aznable, the main antagonist of the original series.

If you like Char-ismatic Char-acters, this is the series for you. There is no one in Gundam history more iconic than Char, and this series shows the beginnings of one of anime’s most complex and flawed characters. If Char’s story doesn’t grab you, the movie-quality production values most certainly will. I can guarantee you’ll be interested in checking out the rest of the Gundam universe by the end of this.

Full Metal Panic!

Perhaps outer space is not for you? Perhaps you’d like something a little more grounded? Mecha has got you covered in that department as well. Full Metal Panic! follows the misadventures of Sousuke Sagara, a sergeant working for a private military organization, in his quest to protect a seemingly ordinary Japanese high-school student, Kaname Chidori.

Comedy, romance, mystery, mecha action — Full Metal Panic! has got it all. Much of the humor revolves around the military nutcase Sagara trying (and failing miserably) to blend in with the high school setting. He is absolutely hilarious, and his dynamic with Chidori is fun to watch. The mecha designs are more on the militaristic side, and the battles are surprisingly believable. Watch Full Metal Panic! and its sequels for one of the most varied experiences you can get from a mecha show.

86 EIGHTY-SIX

Are you looking for something even more grounded? Enter 86 EIGHTY-SIX. Gone are the humanoid robots that dominate most of the mecha genre. The mecha of 86 EIGHTY-SIX are more practical and insectile in nature, not unlike the spider tanks of Ghost in the Shell fame. The conflict is gritty and not glorified at all, and the story doesn’t pull any punches with its subject material.

The Republic of San Magnolia fights a war with its neighbors with the help of a drone army. They report zero casualties, because these drones are all unmanned, of course. Or are they? The reality may shock you to the core. 86 EIGHTY-SIX is a tale of persevering in the face of oppression, injustice, and war. With more episodes yet to air, who knows where the story will go next?

Planet With

How about we go the other way entirely? How about a zany, ridiculous, over-the-top mecha experience? From Satoshi Mizukami — the mind behind Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer and Spirit Circle — comes Planet With, the story of an amnesiac boy who pilots a mecha — which is also his cat — and fights the seven superheroes of his town with the help of a gothic lolita maid. Just your everyday premise.

Mizukami’s characteristic weirdness is on display as he delivers an experience that is equal parts FLCL and Gurren Lagann. It's easy to get lost among all the surrealness — your head will no doubt be filled with more questions than answers. Why does he live with an oversized cat?. But the core of the series is its cast: the way it explores them and the way they bounce off of each other. At a mere 12 episodes, Planet With is one of the most tightly crafted mecha experiences in recent times, and a good one at that. Don’t miss out on this underrated gem.

With over 50 years of history, it is unlikely that one will run out of mecha anime to watch. For shows may come and shows may go, but giant robots are forever.

What's your favorite mecha anime? Let us know in the comments below.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Manas B. Sharma

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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panharmonium · 4 years ago

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next round of in-progress naruto thoughts under the cut

[i actually haven’t progressed that far from where i was last time, honestly, but i could feel myself getting to a stage where i had some things i needed to write up.]

fyi, this one is a little more gripe-y than usual - still enjoying myself, but there are some things in the current arc that are bugging me.

[spoiler policy disclaimer first, as always: I am watching naruto for the first time and have only gotten to the point where naruto and bee break out of the island barrier and leave to join the war. i am trying to avoid spoilers, so please don’t interact with this (tags included, because the notifications now show them to me automatically) with any spoilery commentary, including even general things like “oh i love this show but it gets less good after X point” or “X season is better than Y season” or any general assessments of quality/likability/etc re: future seasons. Thank you! <3 ]

anyway, to go ahead with my grousing -

there are a couple things about this current arc that have me feeling "ehhh.”

1) too many dead people

i’ve personally always been lukewarm on the “revive/reanimate dead characters for the Confrontation Value” trope, which is probably due to me having been a comics fan for so long (i was pretty deep into DC-land during Blackest Night, and that’s not even the first/last time this sort of thing has been done there, so). i’m not saying it CAN’T be done in an interesting way, but most of the time my experience with it has been that it’s kind of cheap/redundant storytelling. it usually doesn’t add much to an emotional arc, for me, and when it retreads an emotional arc that did have a strong conclusion, i feel like all it does is weaken the original story.

so like - places where i feel like shippuden does this well are with minato and kushina. i found both of those scenes with naruto to be powerful moments that added something new to the story/to naruto’s development. (but they’re not even part of the whole reanimation jutsu plotline, which is what i’m mostly feeling “eh” on, so it’s not even the greatest example.)

a place where i’m kind of in the middle is with asuma. on the one hand, i really don’t think that this needed to happen, because the original story arc with him was SO strong. however, they did kind of redeem themselves in a way by focusing the redux on choji instead of shikamaru, so at least they were still saying/exploring something something new.

places where i’m still pretty dubious are pretty much...everyone else. i’m just not sure...well, i don’t know. i can’t really say definitively how i feel about it until i get to the end of the arc and see how it ends, but at the current moment, i’m just not sure what we get out of seeing people like zabuza+haku, lady chio, itachi, nagato, etc....ALL of those stories had such powerful endings; it just makes me leery of these “resurrections” invalidating everything we saw previously/weakening the impact of what came before.

2) mixed messaging

this is my bigger gripe, and it’s something i’ve kind of had floating on the edges of my mind for a long time, but this season especially is highlighting it.

the one thing that is guaranteed to make me frustrated about this show (besides its obvious disinterest in female characters) is when it starts to lean super hard into the “Naruto Is The Only One Who Can Do It!” for every single task that needs to be completed. and i know this is a stupid thing to complain about when the show is literally titled “Naruto,” but the reason it gets frustrating is because the initial message of this show was never “one super special person must do everything on their own and save everyone else.” the original message of this show was teamwork.

the very first lesson kakashi teaches the kids (and the foundation upon which the rest of the story has been built) is “you are stronger together.” if you had all come at me together, you might have been able to take [the bells]! he specifically criticizes naruto for working alone: “naruto - you do EVERYTHING on your own. EVERYTHING.” and that’s understood to be the Wrong Thing; it’s the reason naruto ends up tied to the stump. but in the last few seasons especially (though there have definitely been previous moments where this has shown up before) the ONLY thing we keep hearing is how naruto has to accomplish everything by himself.

it didn’t bother me in the Pain arc; i actually thought that confrontation was appropriate and necessary for naruto’s development. but ever since then, it’s escalated to a point where now it’s like - “naruto is the only one who can fight sasuke! naruto is the only one who can defeat madara! naruto is the only one who can stop the war! naruto is the only one who can erase everybody’s hatred!”

and that’s the point at which i start to get frustrated, because my mind is like “okay, and the other characters are going to be doing...what, exactly?”

again, maybe it’s stupid to complain about that when the show is literally titled “Naruto.” but i don’t think so. title notwithstanding, this story at its heart was, in the beginning, an ensemble show with four main characters, whereas nowadays, the messaging is that only one of those characters can actually accomplish anything. so i get kind of resentful, when i’m told that the other members of the team can’t do anything but step back and hold naruto up, because the essential message of this story has ALWAYS been “teamwork is more important than anything. you are NEVER stronger by yourself. we ALL have something to contribute.”

right now, the other characters feel like they’ve just been shunted off to do busywork. none of them have grown or changed at all since the end of season 10 (and even the end of season 10 was starting to slide into the “only naruto can do anything about sasuke in the end blah blah” - yes it’s a huge pet peeve of mine but it is what it is; whatever; moving on). we haven’t even SEEN sasuke since the end of season 10. there’s been no consideration given to how kakashi is handling being drafted into a second war and being put in charge of 20,000 lives (and his clash with zabuza was just a vehicle for all the characters to reflect once again on how great naruto is). there’s been virtually ZERO attention given to how sakura is handling things, minus that one scene where she’s looking at gory pictures from the previous great ninja war. everybody is just marking time, punching a bunch of identical white zetsus until naruto can come solve the problem and wow everyone with his new abilities.

part of my annoyance might just be due to the fact that the timeline is so wonky due to filler arcs - it feels like ages have passed for me, but in-universe it really hasn’t been all that long. but i also think there are legitimate reasons for me to be frustrated, when the show introduces things and then just unceremoniously drops them without any indicator of when they might be picked up again. like - the uchiha genocide reveal was (i thought) a Huge Fucking Deal that should have Major Repercussions - but it’s just kind of.....disappeared as an issue??? and yamato - he’s been CAPTURED!!!!!! but the show has not shown a single character reacting to this, or even being informed that it happened, and i think that’s shitty, actually. yamato isn’t a minor character. he’s been naruto’s personal guardian since season 2. he has done SO MUCH for the kids, and he is kakashi’s friend, and i think it is shitty to have him get captured by the same people who experimented on him as a child and then not spend a second or two making it clear that other characters CARE about this.

anyway. this is just something that’s been creeping up on me as time goes on, and the last few episodes of “Naruto is the Savior of the Entire World” talk just made it feel more immediate, i guess. plus the new intro (which i know may not be reliable; sometimes they show things that never happen) had a shot of naruto fighting itachi, and i think that tipped me over the edge, lmao, because you know what? enough!!!!! naruto can’t be the one who gets to do EVERYTHING! some stories are not about him! there are other characters who have relationships that are not about naruto. there are places where other characters should be able to accomplish things naruto can’t do. the other main characters should be allowed to complete their personal arcs, separate from (not just secondary to) naruto’s journey.

like - just - this is how i feel: this show started out as a story about a group of four people, and the root theme was “teamwork is everything.” i don’t like how the show has slowly started to mutate into a story about naruto’s “solitary” quest to save sasuke, when we have seen MANY TIMES that:

a) sakura was the first of the kids who even knew that something was wrong with sasuke, while naruto remained utterly oblivious all the way through shonen jump (and partway into shippuden, tbh)

b) kakashi in the past has connected with sasuke in ways that NEITHER of the two kids have been able to achieve

i just don’t like it. i don’t like how S10 had sakura say the line “naruto...you were the first one to ever see the darkness in sasuke...” when she’s reflecting on their fight on top of the hospital, because that is a LIE. it’s a blatant retcon. of the kids, sakura was the one who knew from the very beginning that something was wrong with sasuke. she was the one who was with him when he had that semi-dissociative episode during the bells test. she was the one who was with him during all the curse mark stuff in the forest of death. she was the one who knew something was off when he challenged naruto to a fight - naruto was just psyched that sasuke wanted to “spar” with him! and SHE was the one who suspected that sasuke might do something as drastic as leave the village - naruto explicitly told her not to worry; that sasuke was totally fine; he would never ever do something like that!

like - the show already barely gives sakura anything for herself; now they try to take this away from her, too? and give it to naruto? to hammer in a kind of connection between naruto and sasuke that demonstrably did not exist?? (i’m not saying that naruto and sasuke don’t have their own important relationship! but it is just provably untrue that naruto was the person who understood sasuke best. shonen jump goes out of its way to demonstrate how clueless naruto is about what sasuke is really like and what he’s going through. naruto is SHOCKED that sasuke would go to orochimaru. he doesn’t realize that their fight on top of the hospital is anything more than their usual rivalry business. when sasuke pops out of the coffin behind kimimaro, naruto waves and starts laughing, because he thinks sasuke is still on their side and is going to run right home! and even in shippuden, when naruto hears that orochimaru is dead, he gets all excited and goes “so sasuke must be on his way back to the leaf village!!! :D” like. he just doesn’t get it.)

and i won’t really get into kakashi’s side of things here, because i would end up writing too much, but suffice to say that i am just...wary of the way it feels like recent parts of the show are trying to minimize or...push aside the real, textually-documented connections that kakashi and sakura had with sasuke in favor of “Only Naruto Can Help!” it frustrates me. kakashi made inroads with sasuke that neither of the kids ever achieved. sasuke talks to kakashi in a more honest way than he ever does with either of his peers, even when he’s out of his head with rage. and i would prefer to see this show taking the angle that all three of sasuke’s team members are going to be indispensable for saving him.

you know. like teamwork.

#anyway #it's important to note that this is all preemptive grousing #it's based on how i'm feeling right now #but i still have so much to watch #the show could easily prove me wrong and handle things in a way that i feel better about #but i was feeling annoyed enough that i wanted to type this all up anyway #naruto #pan watches naruto

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inkstainedhandsandcoffee · 4 years ago

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Here we go again, if you want to. To me, asks are the easiest way to talk about Radiant so I kinda like asking 171616 questions. XD 2. Top [insert a number] of your favorite relationships of any kind 5. Any headcanons? Your turn ;) 7. Favorite ships? (I know you ship Meliselotte 🤩😍 but do you have any other ships?) 11. What are you the most curious about in a character? And that's all for this one ♡♡

I’m always happy to get asks, Lizzie. :D thank you for them if I didn’t say so earlier.

2. My Top Five Favorite Relationships: Okay, tumblr, for some random reason, has decided the word length is too long and therefore won’t post it unless I cut something out (even though I’ve made posts longer than this, Tumblr that little shit) so Im just going to have to make a separate post for that.

5. Headcanons:

Piodon had a Mother Gothel-like relationship with Diabal and Triton.

While he might not necessarily be narcissistic, anyone who raises their siblings to be killing machines to use and discard as they please are definitely going to make problematic parenting decisions.

I have zero doubts in my mind that Piodon isolated Diabal and Triton from any relationships outside of his preapproved “friends” he had watch over them in his absence.

On top of that, I definitely see Piodon as someone who would guilt trip and emotionally manipulative his siblings to control them. If we were to ever explore Piodon and Diabal’s relationship pre-betrayal, I bet we’re going to see a pattern of this kind of behavior.

The Thaumaturges nag Liselotte about her smoking.

Okay, as someone from a family of smokers, I can almost guarantee this is true.

While I highly doubt any low ranking members of the Inquisition bugged Liselotte about her smoking, (criticizing your hot-headed boss about their personal habits is not the best career move.) people of an equal or higher rank definitely did.

I bet you good money Ullmina and Santori have preached to Liselotte about the dangers of smoking like they’re veteran doctors, Von Teppes probably teased her about it, and Verone, being the typical eleven year old, definitely admonished Liselotte for smoking and probably declared something like “When I’m Marshal, I’m outlawing cigerettes.”

Dragunov definitely kept out of it since he’s a “don’t cause shit and there won’t be none” type of guy. Torque kept out of it too, but he looks like the type to judge from afar.

.....Damn, I had some other ones but now I can’t remember them for the life of me. Go figure.

7. I ship Meliselotte, Vonque, and....Seho? Oceth? Whatever the ship name for Seth and Ocoho is.

Meliselotte is powerful af, and since Melie and Liselotte are so tough and hard working, it makes the fluffy moments even cuter! I can’t think of anything better than the duo fighting in sync with each other bantering all the while, or moments where they’re holding hands, or Melie running her fingers through Liselotte’s hair.(Interactions with Dragunov would be veerryyy awkward though. Lol)

To me, Vonque is a self care crack ship. Von Teppes needs Torque for validation and stability, since Von Teppes seems to put his worth in what he can accomplish for others, and lacks the maturity to think things through. Torque needs Von Teppes for affection and relaxation, since Torque’s a workaholic who seems like he lacks a lot of emotional comfort in his life.

Seth and Ocoho is a power couple like Meliselotte but with a more preppy, chaotic dumbass nature to it. One moment they’re fighting in sync, bantering, being badass, and the next they’re throwing marshmallows at each other and trying to figure out whether what they’re fighting is a cow or a nemesis.

11. The better question is what am I not wondering about in a character. I want to know what Grimm’s infection is, I want to know what happened to Dragunov’s eye, I want to know how Torque and Piodon got their scars, etc. There’s never one specific thing I’m wondering about.

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michaelandy101-blog · 4 years ago

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The Top 25 Movies About Social Media to Add to Your Watch List

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/the-top-25-movies-about-social-media-to-add-to-your-watch-list/

The Top 25 Movies About Social Media to Add to Your Watch List

Social media has inspired comedies, dystopian thrillers, documentaries, and horror movies.

Here is a list of the best movies related to social media, in no particular order.

1. The Social Dilemma, 2020

Documentary

Netflix

A popular movie that can’t be recommended enough.

Even if you’re in the business there are parts of this movie that will still startle.

Featuring interviews with people who invented a variety of the algorithms.

This movie balances the shock factor of what’s going on behind the scenes of social media with insights into how social media can be improved.

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2. Love, Guaranteed, 2020

Romantic Comedy

Netflix

Stars Rachael Leigh Cook, Damon Wayans Jr., Heather Graham, Kandyse McClure (Dualla on Battlestar Galactica).

Social media is defined as a social network, and what kind of network is more social than a dating app?

Continue Reading Below

This romantic comedy follows an attorney and her client who claims that a dating site guarantees love is offering a false promise.

As evidence, he offers himself, who has engaged in a thousand dates and failed to find love.

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3. The Hater, 2020

Thriller

Netflix

This is a great movie that you might never have heard of but should definitely check out.

It’s a fast-paced thriller and drama about using social media to settle personal scores.

The hero of the movie is both likable and worthy of loathing.

Don’t be put off by the fact that this is a Polish movie and you might have to read subtitles.

This movie tells a story of harnessing the power of social media like a weapon against those who may or may not deserve it.

Continue Reading Below

It’s highly relevant in today’s world of disinformation amplification yet it’s not really about social media in the same way that a movie like Taxi Driver is not about guns.

Both movies, Taxi Driver and The Hater, share a theme of the misfit trying to fit in and not really able to find a way in until circumstances create an opportunity.

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4. Emily in Paris, 2020

Comedy-drama

Netflix

I cheated.

This isn’t a movie.

But so many who have an interest in social media marketing and movies will find this so interesting that I had to fit it in.

The central character – Emily (duh!), is a social media marketer from Chicago who is sent to a Paris office where she’s met with skepticism.

She changes her Instagram handle to @emilyinparis and starts posting photos, her account goes viral.

The series is from the mind of Darren Star, the writer behind such hits as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and Sex and the City.

If any of those are your favorites then it’s likely you’ll enjoy Emily in Paris as well.

There’s a bit of suspension of disbelief necessary regarding the social media, but Emily in Paris is fundamentally a fantasy not a documentary.

A little fantasy helps to get through these dark and pandemic times.

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5. Die Influencers Die, 2020

Horror

Roku

This is a B-Movie slasher exploitation flick about a group of easy-to-hate influencers meeting dreadful ends.

What’s not to like right?

Millions of social media followers are dangled in front of a small group of social media influencers in exchange for spending the night at a reportedly haunted studio in Las Vegas.

Continue Reading Below

For those who enjoy heavy metal, are annoyed by social media influencers to no end, and harbor a fondness for killer clowns…this movie is for you.

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6. Spree, 2020

Social media satire/Horror

Amazon, Vudu

A spree is defined as a sustained period of time during which an unrestrained activity is indulged.

That’s pretty much what this movie is about, a rideshare driver going to the ultimate extreme to achieve Internet fame.

Starring Joe Keery (“Steve” in Stranger Things), Spree is a dark and violent comedy that’s not necessarily for everyone.

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7. #realityhigh, 2017

Dramedy

Netflix

This is a teen dramedy about a girl going through the social media popularity rabbit hole and becoming another person to please others.

Continue Reading Below

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8. Hard Candy, 2005

Thriller/Horror/Revenge

Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

This is an under-the-radar movie that might make some uncomfortable.

It stars Ellen Page (Juno, Umbrella Academy), Patrick Wilson (Conjuring, Watchmen, Aquaman), and Sandra Oh (Killing Eve, Grey’s Anatomy, Sideways, Princess Diaries).

The movie won several awards including three at the 2005 Sitges Film Festival (Best Motion Picture, Best Screenplay, and an Audience Award for Best Motion Picture) and four awards at the 2006 Spanish Malaga Film Festival (Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Cinematographer).

Ellen Page won Best Actress at the 2006 Austin Film Critics Association Awards.

This is an intelligent suspense and thriller.

But it’s not for the squeamish.

It can get grueling for some.

Ellen Page stars as a 17-year-old teenager who entraps an older man via a chat room.

Continue Reading Below

Expecting illicit activities the teenager turns the table on him.

Again, I must warn that this movie is not for those with delicate sensibilities.

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9. Searching, 2018

Thriller

Amazon, Vudu, YouTube

A movie starring John Cho (Harold & Kumar, Star Trek) in the missing person genre.

The daughter goes missing and police lack leads, so the father takes to the Internet to trace the daughter’s virtual steps to find her.

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10. Ingrid Goes West, 2017

Comedy

Hulu

Stars Elizabeth Olsen and Aubrey Plaza.

Continue Reading Below

Aubrey Plaza is a great actress who consistently surprises with the quirky nuance she brings to her roles and that’s also the case here.

This film is in the stalker genre but it’s also a satire of the influencer world.

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11. The Social Ones, 2020

Comedy

Amazon Prime, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

This is a mockumentary and parody of the influencer culture, taking swipes at Instagram stars and fashion bloggers.

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12. A Simple Favor, 2018

Comedy/Thriller

Amazon, Hulu, Sling TV, Vudu, YouTube

This is a Paul Feig movie about a video blogger who gets in over her head after she befriends a woman who causes her viewership to soar.

Continue Reading Below

It’s like a noir because it has a femme fatale.

The mystery and thriller quality of the story kept me watching.

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13. Smosh: The Movie, 2015

Comedy

Amazon, iTunes, Vudu

Satire of YouTube stars starring two actual YouTube stars.

Directed by Alex Winter, star of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

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14. Friend Request, 2016

Social media mystery/Horror

Amazon, Hulu, Vudu, YouTube

A woman accepts a friend request whose mysterious death sets off a series of deaths of those who are friends with the woman.

Continue Reading Below

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15. Unfriended, 2015

Social media horror

Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, Vudu

Instead of a group of young people at a camp getting murdered, it’s people on a group chat that are meeting their demise one by one.

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16. The Assistant, 2019

Comedy/Satire

Amazon

Short film 13 Minutes, available on Amazon Prime.

Comedy/satire of being an assistant to a social media influencer.

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17. The Circle, 2017

Thriller

Amazon, YouTube, Vudu, iTunes

Starring Emma Watson, John Boyega, Bill Paxton, and Tom Hanks.

Continue Reading Below

This is a cautionary tale of living life on social media based on Dave Egger’s novel.

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18. Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, 2016

Documentary

YouTube

A documentary that explores how the Internet affects society today and may affect it tomorrow.

It asks probing questions like “will our great, great-grandchildren grow up in a world where they have no need for human companionship?”

Werner Herzog is a consistently thought-provoking filmmaker.

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19. The Great Hack, 2019

Documentary

Netflix

A chilling documentary about not just about Cambridge Analytica but about the surveillance Internet.

Continue Reading Below

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20. The Social Network, 2010

Drama

Netflix

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, this movie is based on the story of how Mark Zuckerburg came to found Facebook.

Highly acclaimed and a must-watch movie.

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21. American Meme, 2018

Documentary

Netflix

Featuring Paris Hilton and DJ Khaled, it’s a behind the scenes look at what it means to be a social media star and the conflicts between the reality and what’s presented.

Continue Reading Below

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22. Disconnect, 2012

Drama/Thriller

Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube

Starring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Alexander Skarsgård, Frank Grillo.

Three stories interweaved around human interaction via social media.

Lives are changed, conflicts arise, some characters face a reckoning.

All of the actors are top shelf, including a strong performance by Frank Grillo – a character actor who’s been in dozens of popular films including Mambo Kings, Minority Report, Zero Dark Thirty, and several of the recent Marvel superhero movies.

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23. Catfish, 2010

Documentary

Netflix

Documentary and indie film of two brothers who strike up a relationship with a woman over Facebook, with both sides misrepresenting who they are and their motives.

Continue Reading Below

The movie is the origin of the term Catfishing, which is the practice of pretending to be someone you are not – like pretending to be an associate of a famous person over the Internet in order to woo someone.

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24. Chef, 2014

Comedy-drama

Amazon (free), iTunes, Pluto (free), Vudu, YouTube

Starring Jon Favreau, Scarlett Johansson, John Leguizamo, Sofía Vergara, Robert Downey Jr.

This is a feel-good dramedy.

A chef gets a bad review over Twitter and he responds in kind.

The Twitter argument goes viral and results in unanticipated events in his personal and business life.

It’s partially about the transformative effect that social media can have on a life.

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25. You, 2018

Dramedy/Thriller

Netflix TV Series

This is not a movie.

Continue Reading Below

Again, I cheated.

Yet it deserves to be included in a list of things to watch and chill.

The show is absolutely binge-bait, it grabs you from the beginning and you hang on tight as the story takes unexpected twists and turns.

Without spoiling anything, the series is about a smart likable guy who meets a cute college student who is between relationships.

What seems like a romantic comedy turns into something else entirely.

An enjoyable series, well worth a try.

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More Resources:

Continue Reading Below

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rwbyconversations · 6 years ago

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The weaknesses of Volume 6

As someone who had sub-zero expectations going in, Volume 6 was overall a really good season of RWBY- in fact I’d called it the best overall Volume since Volume 3, if not overall, the best season we’ve had so far. Everything seemed to come together for this season, and most of the fandom has agreed that the opening salvo of episodes was the best the show had, and that the season hadn’t had a dud episode until the group reached Argus. I know some parts of the fandom don’t love the Argus episodes but I found something good in nearly all of them so I can’t say it was a complete waste of time.

But, every cloud has a silver lining, and while Volume 6 was unmistakably a huge improvement over the previous Maya seasons, especially Volume 5, there are still several areas the show can seek to improve on as the show moves to the chilly frozen north of Atlas. So in this essay, I’m going to highlight the (ultimately small but notable enough to warrant talking about them) weaknesses I found in Volume 6.

1) The show needs to more efficiently handle its villains (and why Cinder and Neo’s plot was a drag)

Weird that I’m saying this in the season that gave its longest episode to exploring Salem’s origin story, but Volume 6 had a lot of difficulty managing the pacing of its villains, and the largest subject of its focus arguably didn’t need to be in this Volume. I’m talking of course about Cinder and Neo’s plot this volume.

Now on paper, giving Cinder more spotlight should be what I want. After all, I wrote an essay last year detailing why parts of the fanbase weren’t fond of Cinder, so giving her focus should ideally be able to remedy those problems, right?

Well, that’s the problem. In that essay, I talked about how Cinder’s two biggest flaws as a character were that she was very boring, and how her lack of backstory made it difficult to really care about her as a character. Cinder has effectively been the same character for six volumes in a row and much like Volume 4, the show has a golden opportunity to finally change that and give her a new narrative arc only to waste it.

Volume 6 should have been a drastic wake-up call for Cinder. Unlike at Beacon, where she lost due to Ruby’s sudden intervention and the awakening of her Silver Eyes, Cinder lost at Haven entirely thanks to her own failings. Raven beat her handily in straight combat and goaded her into the entire train-wreck of an operation to begin with, which for a power-focused individual like Cinder, should have really been an igniting spark to get her to begin seeking some introspection on why she’s lost twice in a row in failing to burn down the Academies. But sadly, just like in Volume 4, right as Cinder appears to be getting an arc about her recovering from her loss at Haven, she just ignores it and goes right back on her murder-Ruby train, as if she’s stuck in a Groundhog Day loop.

Cinder’s refusal to move on from a basic arc of “Plan to destroy an academy, enact the plan, get slaughtered, blame Ruby, rinse and repeat” has made her easily the least interesting villain in the entire show. At this point we’re six years in and barring a few contextual clues, Cinder has no backstory, no sympathetic traits, not even any character development to differentiate her from her Volume 1 self. And this after the season where she dominates the villain screen-time until the final third when Adam hijacks the plot.

Cinder’s plot in Volume 6 is therefore largely just setup for Volume 7, in that it explains how Cinder survived Haven and how she reaches Atlas. Along the way, she encounters the in case of bad season break glass button Neo, whose out for revenge and gets a really cool fight scene that’s ultimately just there for fanservice.

Let me repeat. Good fight, really liked it. Let me also repeat- just there for fan-service. This is not an inherently bad thing, but it does have weaknesses.

Neo was always coming back to the show and part of me feels like she was always being held in reserve in the event of a really bad season, so that the next one could have her return and generate some hype since her fan-base are that loyal. And sure enough, Neo’s return did see a notable collection of fans who had dropped the show after 4 and 5 coming back to see their ice cream queen return in a non-Chibi format. I won’t fault the crew for using a plan that worked. Where I take umbrage is that this fight was not necessary. It was a good fight, but I’d have much rather taken a Cinder scene of her actually recovering from Haven and thinking about why she lost again. Instead, Cinder and Neo effectively hijack all the villain screen-time for the rest of the season. And as someone who doesn’t adore Neo like her fans, this made their arc very tiresome, especially when the hints we got of the other villains were far more intriguing. I could talk a lot about the symbolism and thematic choices of the Mercury/Emerald scene in Chapter 9 but I’d struggle to find a lot to say about Cinder’s plot that wasn’t just “Setup for Volume 7.”

The other problem of course is that the rest of Team WTCH are sorely underdeveloped. Hazel at least is interesting again now that he’s several miles away from Ozpin, Tyrian came back and was a delight and I loved seeing him all-but-begging Merc and Em to run so he could hunt them, but Watts remains crucially underdeveloped. He really needs to step up in agency in Atlas because his sardonic wit can only carry him so far, and the man’s voiced by Christopher Sabat, what more reason do you have to give him more to do? The man made the virus that Cinder used to cause the Fall of Beacon, can he be given some agency now please?

Ultimately, Cinder’s plot didn’t need to be the focus for the villains and yet again, the fragments of focus they got showed how much more interesting they were as antagonists. While ultimately Volume 6 did finally give Mercury and Emerald more screentime than Volumes 4 and 5 combined and reminded the audience why you should be paying more attention to them, the rest of Team WTCH desperately needs development, Watts in particular. Cinder remains the worst villain in the entire show in my opinion, and it’s a shame that she’s almost guaranteed to be the one that makes it to the end of the show. I can only hope in Atlas she finally gets time devoted to what makes her tick, but at this point I’m almost at the point of not caring. It’s been six years, I won’t start caring for Cinder now if the show finally remembers to tell us why she joined Salem.

... also I just think Cinder’s new costume sucks and I’d rather Em and Merc get new ones over Cinder and Neo buying extensions for their wardrobes.

2) Cordovin was a joke and she really shouldn’t have been

Show of hands, who actually took Cordovin seriously? Yeah, me neither.

Even during the fight scene, the heroes don’t take it seriously. Having a fight the characters aren’t taking seriously isn’t an inherent flaw but it does mean you can’t expect us to turn around and take it seriously five minutes later.

Cordovin was a wasted character, and one that the show shouldn’t have undershot in all of her scenes by making her the punchline of nearly every joke. Her long-winded rant at the gate scene in Dead End is a huge factor in why a lot of fans, myself included, consider it the weakest episode of Volume 6 despite picking up in the back half. It just drags on for so long that Cordovin outstays her welcome from her first scene.

Additionally, the show not taking her seriously steals a lot of gravitas from the mech battle, and plays a large role in why I think the mech fight failed to really excite a lot of fans outside of key moments like Ruby’s missile run and canon shot. Being alongside Adam’s confrontation with Blake and Yang didn’t help but even on its own, the mech battle drags. Not quite to the same extent as Haven dragged, but on rewatches I was making liberal application of the skip button. That lack of gravitas itself goes on to hamper Cordovin’s serious moment in the season finale where she realizes that her ego allowed the Leviathan a straight shot on Argus and undergoes a soft redemption to let team RWBY leave the city. However, this moment of taking Caroline seriously comes after the plot has made it clear that the entire reason the Grimm attacked Argus was because of Caroline over-reacting to Maria and breaking out her mech instead of scrambling fighters as Qrow predicts they will. Caroline is solely at fault for the Leviathan getting as close to destroying Argus as it did, so it’s difficult to care when she pulls her head out of her ass to do her job.

A lack of investment also means a lack of emotional dedication, which I think showed in the lack of fanart Caroline has generated since her reveal. Her design being very drab and militaristic doesn’t help matters but unlike say, the Yang/Adam rematch where the stakes were present on an emotional and thematic level, Caroline failed to excite the audience beyond a few funny memes.

The additional problem with lacking in emotional dedication/investment is, again, we don’t have enough interest in Caroline to take her seriously, she goes in one episode from the Kooky Racist Grandma to someone we’re expected to sympathize with. And additionally, asking the fans to sympathize with a character whose opening scene includes a not-too-subtle dig at her Faunus traits was asking a lot of the fandom, especially after the previous years showed that the show’s handling of the Faunus racism plot was... varied in quality.

In short, Cordovin basically took a shotgun to her own foot in her first scene. Establishing her as an over the top comic relief character before expecting the audience to care when she broke out a walking advertisement for gen;LOCK was an extensive reach for the writers to try and unfortunately they fell flat. Trying to make the audience care for the problem she herself created is a similar long-reach. Hopefully this extended comedy sequence depiction of the Atlas military will be left behind as Volume 7 heads into the heart of darkness itself.

3) Oscar desperately needs limelight

Oscar’s been in the show now for three volumes. He spent much of Volume 4 on his own, much of Volume 5 as Ozpin’s meat-sack, and now in Volume 6 he finally gets to... get some clothes. I like them, but they’re not suitable compensation for the character development that he clearly had stolen from him.

Oscar is easily the most underdeveloped main hero right now, and it’s a problem that’s haunted the series since Volume 4. Oscar wants to be a hero much like Ruby herself did as a child, but this sole fragment of backstory is never used to make a connection to Ruby. Aaron Dismuke, bless his heart, is giving this show his all and his impression of Shannon McCormack’s tones must be applauded, but much like Cordovin he’s not given much to work with. In a way, he’s almost the hero’s version of Cinder- a character who keeps finding themselves in situations where they should realistically develop as a consequence... only for each time they do, it either gets shuffled into the next volume or relegated to offscreen happenings.

Volume 6 really should have had Oscar undergoing some kind of arc, be it his fear at being persecuted by Team RWBY and Qrow due to harboring Ozpin, his fear as his days as himself become more and more numbered, his acceptance of the fight against Salem or, most glaringly, his running off while the team is in Argus. But every time, Oscar just powers through these circumstances and never gets to develop from them. He never holds it over Qrow that he attacked a child, that Yang indirectly called him a bastard, he never thanks Ruby for having his back after the train crash, and he brushes off Jaune’s apology for smashing him into a wall and alleging he’s Ozpin masquerading himself as Oscar.

Argus is really where Oscar should have stepped into his own. I was looking forward to him going solo and having to fend for himself for a short while, maybe have a scene where he forces Ozpin to come out and talk or gets to chat with Ozma himself about his place in the war against Salem. Have him be scared of losing his personality and just becoming another body for Oz to inhibit, have him be angry that his dreams of being a hero have been cruelly dashed on the rocks for some agenda he never signed up to. Oscar should be an emotional hurricane and instead he’s just a gust of wind.

Seriously show, you had a golden opportunity for an Ozma and Oscar scene since we know Oz can speak to his past selves, and you know Arron has enough range to do both roles at once, why do you spite my farmboi.

But he got a coat now so I guess that’s technically development. Kerry admitted in the Rewind for Volume 6′s finale that some parts of the season got pushed to the next one as they usually do, and I can only hope that Oscar finally expressing emotion was one such scene because Christ alive, he needs it after all the times he just got over crap offscreen this year. I want to like Oscar, he could easily have one of the most tragic arcs of the entire show if they went with it, but the show really needs to give me something to like about him in the first place. Or else he really will become the heroic Cinder, trapped forever in a nightmarish world of never getting to properly develop in spite of countless opportunities being handed to them on a silver platter.

... I still think Oscar lifted Qrow’s wallet for that costume btw.

4) The reaction to Jinn’s story felt lockstep

I don’t have as much to say on this point but I find it rather saddening that all of the characters have much the same reaction to the truth of Ozma’s past- “Salem can’t be killed, you were leading us on for nothing”- when the weeks around the Ozma reveal had the fandom reacting to the story in a far more diverse way. Even in the hiatus we still have arguments over whether Ozpin was truly in the right or if the story was painting Salem as the true innocent party, to say nothing of the takes that Salem and Ozma’s relationship could be seen as an early iteration of Arkos or even Taruadonna with Salem as the abuser.

The fandom had such a diverse range of reactions to Jinn’s story, with everyone seeming to have their own take on the episode and the truth wherein. Some people even used this to ponder if Summer Rose had learned the truth during her time and tied it in with Red Like Roses 2, where she laments having made a necessary sacrifice, to ask if Summer had learned the truth and bitterly signed on to the war against Salem in the hopes that she’d be able to turn the tide thanks to her Silver Eyes.

“Just because I have to give you this origin story doesn’t mean you’re gonna take the right lessons from it.”

Some idiots even decided that this meant Oz was the main villain now, but I’ve learned to drown those people out.

But the show itself has a very flat range of reactions, with nearly everyone in-universe only taking away from the story that Salem cannot be conventionally killed and that therefore their entire journey is pointless. Everyone had the same reaction, with the only levels of variance being how angry they were at Ozpin and Oscar, ranging from Ruby’s “ask first if they have a plan and then be angry at Oz specifically” to Qrow and Jaune’s “physically assaulting a fourteen year old child.”

It almost makes me wonder, if the characters themselves didn’t take anything from the lesson barring Maria connecting the Silver Eyes to the God of Light and that “SALEM CAN’T BE KILLED,” why should the fans? No one took this and went “OK so we can’t stop Salem with force, maybe try talking her down?” Their minds all immediately went to not just being able to shoot her.

Jinn’s story was great, but the reaction to it in universe felt very lacking and I only worry that the more people are told about it, the more chances we’ll get to hear a variant of “Salem can’t be killed.” It’s a shame that such a morally gray out of universe debate has been stripped to its raw components in-universe.

Conclusion

Volume 6 was really good, I really liked a lot of it and it still warms my heart that I can say that about a season of RWBY post Volume 5. But there’s still a lot of work that can be done behind the scenes to fix up the flaws remaining. I chose three big flaws here but there are a few more I could bring up for quick points (mostly: Weiss getting shafted entirely in V6 feels like an overly corrective backlash to her constantly getting slaughtered in V5, Ruby’s agency does not substitute for a character arc and she still needs one, the introduction of the Faunus in Ozma’s flashbacks felt very contrived, Ren and Nora continue to feel useless to the wider plot but at least this time Ren wasn’t getting bodied every fight, so on and so forth), but ultimately we got more good than bad, and you don’t throw out an entire batch of apples just because of one rotten one near the top. I can forgive a lot more when the overall product is good, and Volume 6 certainly was a good season. Hopefully with these smaller problems fixed, which mostly just extends to “Give Cinder and Oscar onscreen development,” Volume 7 and onwards can keep the show moving forward into a brighter future and a better tomorrow.

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dailybestiary · 6 years ago

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Patch Has Issues: Dungeon #2

Issue: Dungeon #2

Date: November/December 1986 (Pretty sure my Christmas haul that year was full of dope toys from The Transformers movie/show.)

The Cover:

(Use of cover for review purposes only and should not be taken as a challenge to status. Credit and copyright remain with their respective holders.)

Ah, Clyde Caldwell. He, Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley, and last issue’s Keith Parkinson were the mainstays of TSR’s amazing stable of artists. I have a soft spot for Caldwell. He did the covers for the D&D Gazetteer series, which means his work emblazoned some of my absolute favorite books from my middle school years. (At the time I had the whole series except the two island books, GAZ 4 & GAZ 9 (which I’ve since collected), plus the Dawn of the Emperors box set. My favorites, for the record, were GAZ 3, 5, 10, and 13. I...may like elves...a little too much.) And even as I sit here, other covers demand to be named. The very first Dragonlance adventure, the iconic Dragons of Despair? The Finder’s Stone trilogy? The first Ravenloft box? Dragon #147? Yep, he did those covers too. He was amazing.

But hoo-boy, we also have to talk about the not-amazing parts. Once Caldwell settled on a way of doing things, that’s how he did them. Points for consistency, but man, he had tropes. Even his tropes had tropes. He had a way of painting dragon’s wings. He had a way of painting swords and boots. He had a way of painting jewelry, and belts and coins—ovals upon ovals upon ovals.

And his way of painting women was with as few clothes as possible. Everything I said about Parkinson last entry? Yeah, that goes double for Caldwell. He never paints pants when a thong will do. His take on the reserved and regal Goldmoon—thighs as long as a dwarf and bronzed buttcheeks exposed—reportedly left Margaret Weis in tears. Magic-users (God, I hate that term) famously couldn’t use armor in D&D and AD&D, but Caldwell’s sorceresses pretty much stick to gauze just to be safe. And the Finder’s Stone trilogy I mentioned above? Yeah, the authors of Azure Bonds took one look at Caldwell’s cover art and literally had to come up with in-text reasons why the heroine Alias—one of the most surly woman sellswords in existence—would wear armor with a Caldwell boob hole.

Don’t get me wrong, I love cheesecake as much as the next dude. (Actually that’s not true; I came up in the grunge ’90s—our version of cheesecake was an Olympia brunette in three layers of thrift store sweaters reading Sandman while eating a cheesecake. Hell, that’s still my jam.) But context matters. The sorceress from “White Magic,” Dragon #147’s cover, may barely be wearing a negligee, but she’s also in the seat of her power and probably magically warded to the hilt—she can wear whatever she damn wants; it’s her tower. So no complaints there. But this cover’s pirate queen Porky Piggin’ it seems like an unwise choice. (The friction burns alone from clambering around the rigging…)

It’s clear from reading The Art of the Dragonlance Saga that TSR was trying to turn the ship around when it came to portrayals of women in fantasy, however slowly. And in Caldwell’s defense and to his credit, he definitely delivered women with agency—in nearly every image, they are nearly always doing something active and essential. They just tend to be doing it half-dressed.

Which is all a way of saying I dig this cover—the explosion, the churning sea (even if it does more look like snow drifts than waves), the sailors all running to the rail to look—but yeah, that pirate captain needs to put on some damn pants.

The Adventures: Before we get started, I have to note that though we’re only an issue in, already the magazine feels more noticeably like the work of editor Roger Moore. This is 100% a guess, but it really feels to me like Dungeon #1 was made of adventures that the Dragon office already had laying around, whereas Dungeon #2 was composed of adventures that Roger Moore and the new Dungeon team had more of a hand in sifting through. (He also has an assistant editor this time in Robin Jenkins, which had to have helped.) Even the cartography looks better. Again, I have zero confirmation of this, but the feeling is strong.

“The Titan’s Dream” by W. Todo Todorsky, AD&D, Levels 5–9

PCs visiting an oracle accidentally walk right into a titan’s dream and must solve some conundrums to escape. What an awesome concept this is! (Spoilers for “Best Concept” section below.) It’s a shame I don’t like this more.

First of all, dreamworld adventures are really hard to do well. And for them to work, there usually need to be real stakes—and not just “If you die in the dream, you die in real life!”—and/or a real connection to the PCs in your campaign. The latter, especially, is really hard to pull off in a published adventure; typically it’s only achieved through tactics that critics deride as railroading. (For instance, @wesschneider’s excellent In Search of Sanity does a great job of connecting the characters to their dream adventures...but it does that by a) forging the connection at 1st level, and b) pretty strongly dictating how the adventure begins and how the characters are affiliated. It works, but that’s high-wire-act adventure writing.)

Being a magazine adventure, “The Titan’s Dream” doesn’t have that luxury—it’s got to be for a general audience and work for most campaigns. That unfortunately means the default “Why” of the adventure—a lord with a child, a wedding, and an alliance at stake hires the PCs to chat with a wise titan—is little more than that: a default.

On top of that...I cannot get excited about anything Greek mythology-related. To me, just the fact I’m seeing it is a red flag.

Look, Greek mythology is why I got into this hobby. Hell, it’s why I got into fiction, period. (For some reason I somehow decided I had no use for fiction books targeted to my age, with the exception of Beverly Cleary. Then in 4th(?) grade, I got a copy of Alice Low’s Greek Gods and Heroes, and the rest is history.) But Greek mythology is often the only mythology anyone knows. When people think polytheism, that’s where most people’s minds go. Which is why, if you ever played D&D in the ’80s, I pretty much guarantee your first deity was from that pantheon. (In my first game, my first-level cleric pretty much met Ares and got bitch-slapped by him, because that’s what 4th-grade DMs do.)

So to me, putting Greek deities or titans in your adventure is the equivalent of putting dudes riding sandworms into your desert adventures—you can do it, but you better blow me away, because that is ground so well trod it’s mud. And this one doesn’t do the job.

The format is three dreams, each with five scenes. Parties will move randomly—a mechanic meant to represent dream logic (or lack thereof)—through these scenes, until all the scenes from one dream have been resolved. This is actually kind of fascinating, and I wonder how it would play at the table—I have a feeling observant players will dig it, but others may find the mechanism’s charm wears off quickly, especially if they have difficulty solving the scenes or get frustrated with the achronicity of events. I also like that every scene has a number of possible resolutions, so the PCs aren’t locked into achieving a single specific objective like they were stuck in a computer game.

But...I can’t shake the feeling of weak planning and execution (or even laziness?) that stayed with me throughout the adventure. Like, okay, the first adventure is a cyclops encounter out of the Odyssey. Cool! But then...why does the Titan follow it up with pseudo-Norse/Arthurian encounter? Did the Odyssey not hold the author’s attention? (Nor the Iliad, the Aeneid, or Metamorphosis? Really?) And then why is the third dream “drawn from the realm of pure fairy tale”? Like, were you out of pantheons? Horus didn’t return your calls? Or be more specific—why not German fairy tales, or Danish, or French Court, or Elizabethan? It feels like a class project where one group was on point, one group got the assignment a little wrong, and one didn’t even try.

Again, it’s not even that this adventure is bad—I honestly can’t tell if it is or not; I’m sure a lot of its success is determined at the table. And I could totally see throwing this at a party if I was out of inspiration that week or we needed a low-stakes breather before our next big arc. But the instant I think about it for more than a second, it all falls apart for me.

Have any of you tried this one? Let me know what you thought. And for a similar exploration into dream logic/fairy tale scenarios, I recommend Crystal Frasier’s The Harrowing for Pathfinder.

“In The Dwarven King’s Court” by Willie Walsh, AD&D, Levels 3–5

Willie Walsh is a name we’re going to see a lot more in issues to come—he’s a legendarily prolific Dungeon contributor, delivering quality, typically low-level, and often light-hearted or humorous adventurers issue after issue after issue. His first entry is a mystery with a time limit: A dwarf king is supposed to make a gift of a ceremonial sword to seal a treaty, but the sword has vanished. Brought to the king’s court courtesy of a dream, adventurers must find the sword and the surprising identity of the culprit before the rival power’s delegation arrives.

At first I was going to ding this adventure for its “What, even more dreams this issue?” hook...but here’s the thing with Walsh—never judge his modules until you reach the final page. Nearly every time I’m tempted to dismiss one of his sillier or more random adventure elements, it turns out that it makes sense and works just fine. In this case, the cause of the dream is haunt connected to the mystery, and I feel dumb for being all judgy.

So anyway, the PCs are given leave to search for the stolen object and the thief, but of course it turns out there is a whole lot of light-fingeredness going around. As Bryce (see below) puts it, “It’s like a Poirot mystery: everyone has something to hide.” This castle has as much upstairs-downstairs drama as any British farce, with nearly every NPC having either a fun personality and/or a fun secret (and with the major players illustrated by some equally fun portraits) that should make them memorable friends and foils for PCs to interact with. Not to mention the actual culprit is definitely a twist that will be hard explaining to the king...

GMs should be ready to adjust on the fly, though—a) it’s a lot of characters to juggle, and b) since the PCs are 3rd–5th level, the right spells or some lucky secret door searches could prematurely end the adventure as written. You may want to have some last-minute showdowns, betrayals, or other political intrigue outlined and in your back pocket if what’s on the page resolves too quickly.

Overall though, I’m a big fan of this adventure, and look forward to the rest of Walsh’s output. Also, given the dwarven focus and the geography of the land, this adventure could be a very nice sequel to last issue’s “Assault on Eddistone Point.”

“Caermor” by Nigel D. Findley, AD&D, Levels 2–4

Look at this author’s list of writing credits! Findley was amazingly prolific, and his work was pretty high-quality across the board, as far as I know. I particularly loved the original Draconomicon, one of the first and only 2e AD&D books I ever bought as a kid. I also loved his “Ecology of the Gibbering Mouther” from the excellent Dragon #160, and some of his Spelljammer supplements are currently sitting upstairs in my to-read pile, recently purchased but as yet shamefully untouched.

Now look at his age at the time of his death. Life is not always fair or kind.

(Speaking of unkind, man is the bio in this issue unfortunate in retrospect: “[H]e write for DRAGON® Magazine, enjoys windsurfing, plays in a jazz band, and manages a computer software company in the little time he has left.” As Archer would say, “Phrasing!”)

Anyway, this adventure is simple: An otherworldly force has been murdering the locals. The locals have pinned the blame on a handsome bard from out of town, and their own prejudices and general obstinacy are sure to get in the way of the investigation—that is, if the true culprits, some devil-worshipping culprits and and an abishai devil, don’t get in the way first.

All in all, this is a tight, well-written adventure, so I don’t have much to say about it, other than that if you like the idea of sending your party to help out some young lovers and save some faux-Scots/Yorkshiremen too stubborn to save themselves (and maybe slip in a valuable lesson about prejudice and xenophobia as well), this is the adventure for you.

One thing that does jump out to a contemporary reader, though, is the comically overpowered nature of the baddie pulling the strings in this adventure: Baalphegor, Princess of Hell (emphasis mine). Overpowered, you-won’t-really-fight-this-NPC happens with a lot of low-level adventures, when the writers want a story more epic than characters at the table can handle or are trying to plot the seeds for future evils. But still, any princess of Hell would already be a bit much...but an 18-Hit Dice, “supra-genius”, the Princess of Hell? Like, what the f—er, I mean, Hell?

If you use the adventure as written, the only way to have Baalphegor’s presence make sense is to eventually reveal that the area is an epicenter of some major badness. (Maybe that explains the lost nation of evil dwarves in the adventure background.) For a good model on how to seed early adventures in this matter, Dungeon’s Age of Worms Adventure Path and Pathfinder Adventure Path’s Rise of the Runelords AP, both from Paizo, are exemplars of small-town disturbances that eventually have world-shaking implications.

It’s also fascinating in retrospect to note Ed Greenwood’s massive impact in the hobby. Any article that appears in Dragon has the sheen of being at least semi-official, but it’s clear that Greenwood’s content was a cut above even that. In this case, an NPC from a three-year-old article of his is not just treated as canon, but also supplies the mastermind behind the adventure! It’s no surprise that in the following year his home campaign, the Forgotten Realms, would soon become AD&D’s newest and then its default setting.

Two final thoughts: 1) There’s some fascinating anti-dwarf prejudice in this article. Nearly every mention of dwarves paints them as exceptionally greedy and/or villains. And 2) how did one even begin to balance adventures in those days? This adventure is for “4–8 characters of 2nd–4th level.” There are a lot of difference at the extreme ends of those power scales…

“The Keep at Koralgesh,” by Robert Giacomozzi & Jonathan Simmons, D&D, Levels 1–3

One of the problems of BECMI D&D being known as “basic D&D” is that writers often assumed the players to be basic (that is, younger/new) as well. Which probably accounts for some of the early suggestions to the DM we get at the beginning of this adventure—like some pretty patronizing advice along the lines of not immediately announcing to PCs what the pluses are on their magical swords.

Fortunately, after that the article settles down and gives us Dungeon’s first real D&D adventure. In fact, not just real, but massive: 20 full pages of content—nearly half the issue! It’s a fully fledged dungeon crawl that has the PCs taking advantage of the summer solstice to open a shrine door that will lead them inside a long-ruined keep said to hold great treasure.

Now, I imagine in the coming installments it’s going to seem to many of you like I’m grading D&D adventures on a curve, because of my love for the system and the Known World/Mystara. That’s a fair accusation, but a better way to consider it is that I’m reviewing D&D adventures for what they are—adventures from a separate system, with a more limited rules system and palette of options than AD&D. You don’t go to a performance of Balinese shadow puppetry and compare it against Andrew Lloyd Webber; you look at it for what it achieves in its own medium. Since they appear side-by-side in the same magazine, comparison is going to be inevitable, but that’s with the understanding that AD&D was the kid coloring with the 64-crayon box of Crayola, while D&D was getting by with just eight.

On its own terms then, “The Keep of Korgalesh” is a decent, if not superlative, success. I love that it’s practically module-length and that we get three complete levels—a far cry from the previous issue’s side-trek-at-best, “The Elven Home.” We also get two new monsters, which absolutely fills my inner BECMI D&D player with glee. And I like that what starts as a dungeon crawl/fetch quest evolves into a “kill the big bad thing” and “find out what really happened to this city.”

There are issues, though. If the whole city was destroyed, getting to see some of it besides the keep would have been nice. Some of the ecology for the dungeon inhabitants is questionable. There pretty much wasn’t a single pool or fountain in this era of D&D adventure design that wasn’t magical, and this adventure was no exception. One of the new monster’s names makes no sense except that “tyranna” and “abyss” are cool words (I mean, I guess you could read that as “tyrant of the depths,” but still…) And there are painfully obvious borrowings from other works, especially Tolkien—a door that only opens at solstice, a lake monster, an orc with a split personality that is clearly a Gollum homage, etc.

What this adventure really needs is stakes—just something to give it a bit more oomph beyond the dungeon crawl. (Finding a blacksmith’s lost hammer is the hook offered in the adventure but it’s pretty flimsy.) Perhaps the PCs are some of Kor’s last worshippers, and clearing out the dangers here and resanctifying his temple is one of their first steps toward returning him to prominence. Maybe the PCs’ grandparents were involved in the city’s demise and restoring Koralgesh will restore the families’ honor. Or you could keep it simple and have a band of pirates or a rival adventuring group also trying to clean out the keep, turning it into a race (with the tyrannabyss causing the scales of fate to wobble at appropriately cinematic moments).

So the final analysis is this is a decent dungeon crawl upon which you can build a good adventure. The real reward of this module isn’t treasure; it’s finding out just what happened to Koralgesh. But for that to matter, it needs to tie into the PCs’ pasts, futures, or both.

BONUS CONTENT FOR KNOWN WORLD/MYSTARA NERDS: Kor is almost certainly a local name for the sun god Ixion. The chaotic deity Tram is probably a local version of Alphaks, though Atzanteotl is another strong candidate, especially since deceit was key to the pirates’ success. Koralgesh could be located somewhere on the Isle of Dawn, the northern coast of Davania, or an Ierendi/Minrothad Isle that those nations haven’t made it a priority to rebuild.

Best Read: “Caermor.” Nigel D. Findley was a pro.

Best Adventure I Could Actually Run with Minimal Prep: “The Keep at Koralgesh,” as a well-written, straight-ahead dungeon crawl. Every other adventure here relies on a pretty strong handle of very mobile NPCs and their motivations, or a Titan’s dream mechanics.

Best Concept: “The Titan’s Dream,” as noted above. It’s a great idea very worth exploring, even if I wasn’t about the execution we got in this case.

Best Monster: This was actually a monster-light issue. Despite some awesome art for the tyrannabyss, I have to go with the epadrazzil, a scaly ape from a two-dimensional plane of existence that has to be summoned via a painting. All of those details are just so wonderfully and weirdly specific it has to win. (Extra points for anyone who noticed the thoul—a classic D&D monster (though it did make its way into AD&D’s Mystara setting) born from a typo.)

Best NPC: Since this is a role-playing-heavy issue, there are a bunch of contenders, and the final verdict will go to whoever your party sparks to at the table. Obviously King Baradon the Wise should get the nod for [spoiler-y reasons], but I also really like the opportunity the executioner Tarfa offers, thanks to his incriminating goblet and how it might bring the PCs to the attention of a far-off assassin’s guild at just the right level.

Best Map: All together the maps from “The Keep at Koralgesh” form an extremely appealing whole. But for best single map I have to go for the palace of Mount Diadem—that is a bangin’ dwarven demesne.

Best Thing Worth Stealing: Jim Holloway’s illustrations of dwarves. Good dwarf, gnome, and halfling art is hard to find, and even the good stuff often leans stereotypical. While Holloway’s art is often humorous—I have a feeling he and Roger Moore jibed really well, though that’s totally a guess based purely on what assignments he got handed—his dwarves, especially in this issue, are fresh, specific, and unique. You could identify them by their silhouettes alone—always the sign of good character art. If you need an image of a dwarf NPC to show the players, “In the Dwarven King’s Court” is a great first stop.

Worst Aged: Female thong pirates on magazine covers. Also using the actual names of actual mental illnesses in game materials.

What Bryce Thinks: “This seems to be a stronger issue than #1, although half of the adventures are … unusual.”

Bryce actually almost likes “The Titan’s Dream,” confirming my loathing of it. He in turn loathes “In the Court of the Dwarven King.” Like me, though, he is pro-”Caermor” and sees potential in “The Keep at Koralgesh.” (Also credit where it’s due: I might have missed the condescension at the start if he hadn’t called it out.)

So, Is It Worth It?: If you’re a Clyde Caldwell fan, this issue might be worth searching out in print. So much of Caldwell’s work from this era was dictated by product needs, cropped and boxed up in ads, or shrunk down to fit on a paperback cover. So to get this cover in full magazine size, with only the masthead tucked up top to get in the way—that could be well worth a few bucks to you.

Also, if you’re BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia-era D&D fan (or know someone who is), again, this one might be worth having in print. “The Keep at Koralgesh” is a legit, proper BECMI D&D adventure, spanning 20 whole pages and with two new monsters to boot. I would have practically have cried if someone had given 7th-grade me this.

Beyond that you can probably just rely on the PDF. But both “Caermor” and “In the Dwarven King’s Court” have strong bones worth putting some modern muscle and skin on.

Random Thoughts:

The Caldwell cover painting was also used for the Blackmoor module DA4 The Duchy of Ten. PS: I’m not trying to tell you what to do or anything, but if you do happen to run across a physical copy of The Duchy of Ten or and of the DA modules, holla at ya boy over here.

Since this is our second issue, we now have a “Letters” column. Turns out Dungeon had been announced in Dragon #111 with a really detailed set of writer’s guidelines; most of the correspondence is questions re: those. In the process of answering, we get some surprisingly frank talk about payment. The $900 for a cover seemed low until I converted it to 2018 dollars, and ~$2,000 does seem right to my ignorant eye. I then made the mistake of converting my current salary to 1986 dollars and felt a lot worse about myself and what I’ve achieved.

Apologies this took so long to post. I had the issue read by early October and most of this review written with the next week or two after...but then I got involved in dealing with a 4.5 week hospitalization and aftermath...and then a second still-ongoing hospitalization...and even though I only had about four paragraphs left I just couldn’t find time to put a bow on it.

Notable Ads: The gold Immortals Rules box for D&D. (I also still don’t have that one yet, and Christmas is coming. Just saying, guys, if you happen to find one in your attic.) ;-) Also an ad for subscribing to Dungeon itself, starring “my war dinosaur, Boo-Boo.” No, really.

Over in Dragon: Beneath a glorious cover, Roger Moore is the new editor of Dragon #115, three authors (including Vince Garcia, who I like a lot) share credit on a massive six articles about fantasy thieves, a famous article proposing that clerics get the weapons of their deity (people were still talking about it in the “Forum” column when I was buying my first issues two years later), and a look at harps from the Forgotten Realms (notable because behind the scenes Ed Greenwood’s home setting was being developed for the AD&D game for launch in 1987.) A photographic cover and a 3-D sailing ship are served up in Dragon #116, along with maritime adventures, more Ed Greenwood (rogue stones), and articles for ELFQUEST, Marvel Super Heroes (Crossfire’s gang), and FASA’s Dr. Who game (looking at all six(!) doctors). (Incidentally, I had an Irish babysitter around this time who first mentioned Dr. Who to me—I wish I’d explored more but I was too young to understand what I’d been offered.)

PS: Yes, I’ve heard about the upcoming Tumblr ban. It is a terrible idea that will affect way too many of my readers. It shouldn’t affect me much (and I have all my monster entries backed up at the original site), but I will keep you posted as I learn more, particularly if I find you, my readers, packing up and going elsewhere.

#daily bestiary #patch has issues #pathfinder #paizo #3.5 #dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons #d&d #dnd #ad&d #becmi #dungeon #dungeon magazine

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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years ago

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Homicide: Life on the Street seasons 1-2 full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

7.69% (one of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

20.58%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Zero.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Five (season one episode three ‘Night of the Dead Living (16.66%), episode six ‘Three Men and Adena’ (11.11%), episode eight ‘And the Rocket’s Red Glare’ (15%), and episode nine ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ (11.11%), plus season two episode one ‘See No Evil’ (12.5%)).

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty. Five who appeared in more than one episode, one who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixty-eight. Eighteen who appeared in more than one episode, nine who appeared in at least half the episodes, and five who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Surprisingly good, even progressive for a show from the early nineties. There are some very self-aware considerations of race, gender, and sexuality, and clear distinctions between what is considered ‘depraved’ and what is merely ‘alternative’ (distinctions which modern-day conservatives twenty-five years later seem to still be struggling with). The place where the hammer of judgment falls hardest is on any cop who allows personal prejudice to interfere with their work (average rating of 3.15).

General Season Quality:

Magnificent. To some fans, the first season is undoubtedly the best of the series, and it is certainly true that the show in that initial raw form achieved a beating heart of idiosyncratic realism that future seasons rarely - if ever - matched. That, really, is the highest praise one might levy; at its best, the show feels like reality. There have been many pale imitations of H:LOTS since its heyday, but no equals.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

I know, I didn’t do any individual episode posts. I didn��t accidentally publish this review without posting the other ones first: I decided not to write individual episode posts for this show. To be honest, I don’t love the decision, and if I ever do summary-posts-only for a show again, it’ll be under very special circumstances, because it’s really not ideal and there’s a good reason I chose the individual-episode-posts format for this blog in the first place. The only reason I’m pushing against my better judgment and doing summary-posts-only for this show is because, frankly, I think there are only maybe three people on tumblr who ever watched H:LOTS. This is possibly my favourite show in the world (top three, for sure), but it has been largely lost to the memory of history, and it’s also not generally in the habit of giving me a lot to talk about in the context of this blog, episode by episode. It has some good fodder - some fantastic fodder, even - but if I broke it down one episode at a time I fear I’d end up with a Hell of a lot of posts without a lot of content, and with even less of an interested audience. So, I’m gonna cut to the chase, and just do season summaries, touching on the good (and the bad) content in collective instead of stretched over 122 episode posts. My apologies to the three people who wish I would draw this out.

Also worth noting as we segue into actually discussing the show: I’ve combo’d seasons one and two here because they’re only nine and four episodes long, respectively, and they are frequently packaged together (my DVDs put them all in one box). Sometimes the two seasons are actually labelled and sold as ‘season one’, and season three is consequently labelled ‘season two’, and so on, but I have avoided that unnecessary act of confusing streamlining to refer to them as they were intended and presented when they aired. There are immediate differences to be noted between the first nine episodes and the four that comprise season two: the beige colour-grading of the first season (sometimes so desaturated it almost looks like it’s in black and white) has been lifted to a more vibrant look, and the cases are a little more sensational/unusual than season one’s primarily drab and simple murders. That drab simplicity was what made the first season arguably the best, the key to its realism: murder is rarely an art, rarely complicated, rarely cleverly committed or cleverly covered up. Most of the cases in the first season are lifted directly from real-life cases depicted in journalist David Simon’s non-fiction novel Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the exploration of the Baltimore Homicide Department upon which the show is based. Sensationalism or strangeness are not often part of the first season because they are not often part of reality, and the show is about the job, not the cases. It’s about the life, the people who have to dig into the ugliness of murder, and the way they deal with that, the world that their work shapes around them. I’m not normally a fan of cop shows for the way they wallow in gratuitously sick ideas, always searching for a ‘hook’ to make the crime they depict interesting by being more awful, more grisly, more voyeuristic than anything you’ve seen before. In a word, more sensational. I’ve also made no secret on this blog of my sincere disdain for so-called ‘gritty realism’, because it is commonly wildly unrealistic, and just an excuse to tell stories about horrible people being horrible to each other while the show tries to insist that that’s just how people are. Homicide’s avoidance of sensationalist narratives and its reliance on realism-for-realism’s-sake allow it to avoid the common pitfalls of both cop shows and try-hard ‘gritty realism’. It was a shake-up of the standard tv formula that almost had the show axed after one season, and which led to that ridiculously tiny second season as the network grappled with a critically-acclaimed, Emmy-winning series that was just never designed to be a big ratings winner. What made Homicide great was also what the network slowly squeezed out of it over time as they tried to shape a more traditional cop show, and it’s why no matter which season a fan chooses as their favourite, you can pretty much guarantee they won’t choose the last one. But, we’ll get to that. For now: seasons one and two.

The obvious thing we have to talk about (it is why we’re here, after all) is the ladies. Or, the lady, singular. This is not a female-heavy show, but there is at least one solid reason for that: the presence of only one female homicide detective is not a piece of token inclusion for the show, it’s an accurate reflection of the dynamics of the real-life Baltimore Homicide Department at the time. It’s an important reality here, because it’s something which significantly impacts that single female detective’s life: Kay Howard, as a character, is forced to interact with the conspicuousness of her womanhood on a regular basis. To its credit, the writing does not define Howard by her gender and she is able to have a personality and be a detective first and foremost instead of being ‘the woman, who does woman things, handles woman cases, and talks about being a woman all the time while the male characters feel compelled also to mention her femaleness whenever they notice what a woman she is, which is always’. That said, her gender is something that Howard cannot escape from in her context, something which inevitably sets her apart. This is brought up in particularly notable ways in ‘A Dog and Pony Show’, the only episode that passes the Bechdel (and does so more than once), in which Howard comes down hard on young female officer Schanne. Howard’s partner Felton calls her on it, suggesting that she hates other women, and Howard insists that the reason she is tougher on women than on men is because she expects more from them. As the only female homicide detective in town, Howard feels a strong pressure to represent her gender with conduct beyond reproach, and she takes it as a personal slight when she encounters other women whom she perceives as letting the team down, or of being appointed to their positions to satisfy quotas rather than earning them through merit. Later in the same episode, Howard and Felton have an awkward moment when Felton says he’s not even remotely attracted to her, and Howard pushes him to be honest - not because she wants him to be interested, but because she’s offended by the thought that he has stripped her of her gender in his own mind in order to perceive her as ‘just one of the guys’. Howard’s relationship with her womanhood is rife with contradictions; she is both proud of it, and dogged by internalised misogyny. She wants to be recognised as a woman with merits, but she also doesn’t want her gender to hold sway over her career or be treated as notable. She wants to represent a strong example for other women, but she also hates the expectation. And despite herself, she still wants to believe she’s attractive to men and retaining a traditional feminine appeal, at the same time as dressing in masculine attire and forgoing most of the trappings of traditional femininity. She is caught in the web of imposed societal expectations vs her identity as an individual who cannot be so plainly defined, and she doesn’t want to conform, but she does want to belong. In similar or different forms, it’s an impossible situation that is awfully familiar.

Though she only ekes some Bechdel action out of the one episode, Howard does interact with other women variously, though they all either have no name, or they talk about men the whole time - there were a lot of almost-passes, and some of them very strong gender-relevant interactions, too: Howard and the therapist Kerry Weston discuss Howard’s relationships with men in terms of dealing daily with crimes largely perpetrated by men and against men, and what that means for her in also trying to form romantic attachments to men (obviously, the conversation fails the Bechdel, but it is insightful observation of the position Howard is in as a heterosexual woman in a male-dominated field), and in ‘Night of the Dead Living’ (an all-around great episode for every character), Howard has a conversation with the (unfortunately nameless) cleaning lady about the lack of funding for medical research into women’s health issues and the relationship between that and the lack of women in congress (she also has multiple conversations with her sister Carrie over the phone in that episode, but those don’t pass the Bechdel either since we only hear Kay’s side). Being the only major female character around doesn’t completely define Howard’s character, nor does the show position her in complete isolation from other women in order to tell the story of her conspicuous womanhood; there’s a good balanced recognition of gender within the narrative, and though it doesn’t score well in the raw statistics, it does do nice things for the content rating and for the messages being communicated to the audience. The complexity of Howard’s relationship with her female identity has a sad, truthful ring about it, and it’s a reflection on society and its habit of treating women like they have to sink or swim on behalf of their entire gender. It’s good stuff.

As for the non-female portion of the show, i.e. the bulk of it: I’m still pretty impressed. I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t acknowledge the show’s honest and thorough representation of Baltimore as a predominantly black city, and the navigation of racial issues, tensions, and prejudices - both within and without the police force - factor significantly in the tapestry of the series (season two’s ‘See No Evil’ and ‘Black and Blue’ are prime examples). Another episode that I was particularly impressed with for its sensitive handling of content was ‘A Many Splendored Thing’, in which Bayliss and Pembleton investigate the erotic asphyxiation death of Angela Frandina, whose sexual habits are an affront to straight-laced Bayliss. Bayliss’ reactions to the particulars of Angela’s life - including working as a phone-sex operator, and frequenting a local BDSM club - range from hilarious oh-golly innocence to the decidedly un-funny taint of bigotry, as he implies that people who enjoy consensual but ‘dehumanising’ acts are sick in the head, and that Angela can’t have been a good person if she was a part of that lifestyle. Pembleton gives Bayliss a thorough wake-up call in a magnificent speech about virtues and vices, advising Bayliss to get his head out of his ass and stop pretending to live on some pure moral high-ground from which he cannot conceive of the natural variance in human behaviour. The only character who is really judged by the narrative is Bayliss, and his closed-mindedness is exposed as a dangerous precedent and declared unequivocally wrong. It’s a refreshing stance, especially for something which, in the early nineties, was even more of a poorly-represented fringe element than it is now. This episode and a few others also include measures of queer representation in an off-hand, judgment-free fashion, extremely notable in context since the AIDS epidemic was still in full-swing at the time. It’s pretty significant, for a show which is almost as old as I am.

Other good things: the episode ‘Three Men and Adena’ in season one, aka the episode that single-handedly saved the series from the chopping block by being an Emmy-winning triumph of every possible element of film-making, and, oh, maybe objectively one of the single best episodes of television ever made. No big. Likewise, ‘Bop Gun’ in season two, which utilised the late Robin Williams in a gut-wrenching dramatic performance and consequently saved the series from the chopping block a second time, allowing it to finally start running full-length seasons as of season three. Respect, for the somewhat bizarre decision to use Ned Beatty’s Bolander - this guy:

- as the romantic contender for the series, warts and all as he variously self-sabotages and talks himself out of testing the waters of the dating pool for the first time since 1970; any thoughts of including romantic subplots for titillation are banished when you’ve got ‘The Big Man’ Bolander raging around, and thus those forays into awkward relationships are strictly character pieces, and all the better for it. And points, also, for healthy acts of support between men, toxic masculinity be gone; most notably, Crosetti with his recently-injured and bedridden friend Thormann, who is struggling to adjust to the changed world of his disabilities. Thormann is angry and despairing, declaring himself ‘not a man anymore’ after he loses control of his bowels in his bed; “It’s a natural thing that’s happening here,” Crosetti reassures, soothing Thormann’s embarrassment as he steps in to help his friend clean up, holding his hand and rubbing his back with the gentle patience of a parent. Crosetti was my first favourite character on this show, outstripped by others in the end, but beloved in his time. This review is going live on the 2nd of September for me, but it’s still September 1st in the USA, and therefore, the second anniversary of the death of Jon Polito, our dear Crosetti. This one’s for you, Jon.

Of course, there are a few little quibbles I can raise with the show, and it would be pointless for me to bother with any of this if I didn’t go ahead and raise them. Howard having a prior romantic entanglement with Tyron feels like a needless cliche, and perhaps one of those season two concessions meant to make things seem ‘sexier’; the show is better than that. Kerry Weston uses the example of female seagulls observed to form lesbian bonding pairs as an analogy for why ‘birds of a feather shouldn’t always flock together’, and it doesn’t feel like it’s intentionally homophobic, but it sure does come across that way anyway. Munch is a primarily comic-relief character, and good at it, but his volatile relationship with his girlfriend Felicia (who never appears onscreen) has disturbing shades about it that are never quite clear enough to be soundly condemned, and the general comedic attitude surrounding Munch and his delivery of any and all information regarding Felicia rubs me the wrong way. All things considered, these are pretty small-fry complaints (and almost completely contained within season two, jus’ sayin’), and in that sense they’re pretty reaffirming of the quality of the show as a whole. The characters are realistically flawed - sometimes very deeply flawed - but not horrible people, just struggling, just trying their best, sometimes ignorant of their ignorance, sometimes pushing back or lashing out in the wrong directions. They are forgivably flawed because they are realistic, and it makes them easy to engage with even when you disagree with them; the core humanity is eminently recognisable. It doesn’t seem like it should be hard to achieve that realism, and yet, here we are. Watching Homicide: Life on the Street, a show without equal, even decades after it began.

#Homicide: Life on the Street #HLOTS #Bechdel Test #female representation #full season review #Homicide: Life on the Street season one #Homicide: Life on the Street season two

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schraubd · 7 years ago

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David's Personal Top Ten Video Games

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It is a personal list, reflecting the games that have stuck with me the most over the years. I'm not enough of a gamer to claim it is anything comprehensive, and it has a strong bias to the sorts of genres that I like. Nonetheless, I'd stack these games against any that have been made in my lifetime. Anyway, without further adieu ....

Honorable Mentions:

Portal 2: How can a game with virtually no “dialogue” (if that means conversations between two characters) have some of the best spoken lines in all video game history? I have both the original and a capella versions of the Turret Opera on my iTunes (yes, I have “Still Alive” as well).

Railroad Tycoon II: A brilliant simulator that makes you actually feel like a turn-of-the-century robber baron (by far, the game is most fun to play when set in the late 19th century). If every man goes through his “trains!” phase, this was mine. As in real life, I am not good at playing the stock market.

Horizon: Zero Dawn: Robot dinosaurs! Incredibly, Horizon: Zero Dawn takes a core concept that sounds like word association from an over-caffeinated twelve-year boy and makes an entirely serious game about it—and it works. It works so well, in fact, that I loved it despite the fact that the plot and entire world-building background centers around my single greatest phobia (no, not that—being alive for the extinction of humanity).

10. Sid Meier’s Gettysburg: I find it odd that very few games have sought to replicate Gettysburg’s spin on an RTS—focusing combat around regiments rather than individual units and prioritizing morale over raw numbers. But the thing I like best about Gettysburg—and sadly it’s mostly unique too—is in how it concentrates on controlling territory (and terrain). Many RTS games, for me, might as well have a blank screen over 80% of the map between my base and my opponent’s base. You build up your force, and then try to swarm your opponent before he or she swarms you. But in Gettysburg, the goal of missions is not “wipe out your opposition”. It’s to capture and hold a ridge, or dig in and hold an exposed farmhouse.

My only critiques are that I want this game to be bigger. I want it to encompass dozens of map spanning the entirety of the Civil War. I want to be able memorize even more obscure Union and Confederate generals and wonder if they really were “mediocre” or if that was just a game balance decision. The random battle generator is okay, but this game screams for user-created expansions which I’ve never been able to find.

9. Crimson Skies: A pulpy fun flight simulator taking place in an alternate history 1930s where America has fractured and Zeppelin travel rules the day. The game doesn’t hesitate to lean into its concept (phrases like “broad” and “floozy” abound), and it does a great job world-building in a relatively short period of time. Somehow, I could meet an enemy “ace” for the first time in the middle of a mission and yet still feel like we had a history of epic dogfights together of which this was only the latest. Meanwhile, each of the locations the game takes you to (Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest, Hollywood, the Rocky Mountains, and New York City) are a blast and a half.

A sequel, High Road to Revenge, was released on Xbox and leaned a little too hard into the arcade-y elements (power-ups, automatic evasive maneuvers with the press of a button, and so on). But the original PC game was just right—planes flew exactly like how someone who knows nothing about planes thinks planes fly, which is just perfect. You felt like an ace pilot because of your skill (even though behind the hood the game is really holding your hand). Piloting a gyrocopter through half-built New York City skyscrapers, or a prototype single-engine through the Hollywood "O", is great. Doing it to evade local security, then doing a loop and turning both guns on them -- well, that's the cat's meow.

8. Mass Effect (Trilogy and Andromeda): As far as I’m concerned, the definitive space opera (even muscling out Halo). Fabulous voice acting (listening to Martin Sheen play evil Jed Bartlett is one of the great joys of my life) and memorable plot lines pair with a morality system that at least inches away from “basically decent person or utter asshole.” The universe feels genuinely alive, like there’s an ecosystem and civilization that you’re very much apart, but also moves in your absence.

I can’t really separate out the core trilogy games from one another (each sequel seemed to simultaneously step slightly forward and back), which is not I think an uncommon position. What may be more uncommon is that I think Andromeda stands right in there with the core series. Yes, it was disappointing that it took us to a brand new galaxy and only gave us two new species (while eliminating many of the more backgrounded Milky Way aliens). But I was much more disappointed that there will be no DLC or sequels to continue the story and tie up loose ends.

7. N and N++: There can’t be any serious controversy that N is the greatest Flash game ever made. While Flash demands simplicity, N is not so much simple as it is elegant. It is the perfect balance of speed and control, thoughtfulness and twitch-trigger reflexes, serene relaxation and butt-clenching tension. Once you master the floaty physics and the unique enemy styles, you will truly feel like a ninja—stripped to its core essence and deprived of all the usual but unnecessary bells and whistles. A virtually unlimited supply of levels guarantees you endless gameplay.

And so it is unsurprising that N was one of the rare flash games that made a successful jump to a full true game (in the form of N++), one that has a strong claim on being the greatest platformer ever made. The developers were wise not to disturb the basic formula: run, jump, and slide around a level, dodge obstacles and traps that will kill you instantly, reach the exit. Repeat ad infinitum. But N++ adds just a splash of additional flavors and spices into the mix. A perfect trip-trance soundtrack that sets the mood perfectly (and may single-handedly stave off keyboard-smashing frustration). A few new enemy types that deepen the game without ruining its austere grace. And perhaps most importantly, it adds a bunch of extra, semi-secret challenges (which can be used to unlock still more levels) waiting for the very best-of-best players.

Of all the games on this list, I might be in absolute terms “best” at N++ (there are a non-trivial number of levels in the game where I have a top 100 or even top 10 score on the global leaderboards). And yet there is not the slightest chance that I will ever perfect this game, or even come close to it. Nor is there any chance I will become permanently sick of it. A simple concept, executed brilliantly. The perfect N++ level is also the perfect description of the game.

6. Final Fantasy IX: The question was never whether a Final Fantasy game would make this list, only which one. I’ve long had a soft-spot for FFIX, which I feel is often overlooked inside the series (in part because even on release it seemed players were already looking ahead to the Playstation 2). Yet it’s hard to find fault in Final Fantasy IX as an emblem of a straight-forward JRPG. It has a moving story, fun gameplay, beautiful music, loads of quests to do and places to explore, a fabulous supporting cast (Vivi might be my favorite Final Fantasy character ever written), and a lead character you don’t want to punch (*cough* Final Fantasy X).

Final Fantasy IX is often described as “nostalgic”, and despite the fact that it was only the second game in the series I had ever played, I got that feeling instantly. Try listening to the soundtrack for “Frontier Village Dali” without feeling a little melancholic. You don’t even have to have played. But I recommend that you do.

For the record, my ranking of Final Fantasy games that I’ve played goes: IX, VII, XII, XV, X, XIII.

5. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood: One difficulty in judging games within a series is how to compare an earlier game which still had some rough edges but represented a quantum leap forward versus a later game which didn’t do anything super-novel but tweaked the formula to perfection. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Now, for me, this is an easy call for idiosyncratic reasons—I played AC:B before AC II, and so I experienced the former as both the perfected model and the quantum leap forward as compared to the original game. But I respect that for those who played the series in order, this is a harder call.

What should be easy for anyone is to agree that together, Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood represented the AC series reaching its full potential. Ezio continues to be the best protagonist the series has seen to date. Renaissance Italy likewise is the ideal setting for both AC’s vertical and horizontal platforming elements and its shadowy-conspiracy/secret-history plotline. As a franchise, Assassin’s Creed really launched the parkour/open-world exploration genre, and Brotherhood was the first game where every single element of what that genre could be came together. Other more recent games have been tons of fun (Black Flag and Syndicate are I think highlights), but these two games are the reason this series is so iconic.

4. Might and Magic VI: The same problem posed by AC2 versus Brotherhood emerges with Might and Magic VI and VII—except here, I did play them in order. Like the previous entry, I do think that VII ultimately improves upon the formula set out in Might and Magic VI. It’s more versatile, has more replay value, a touch more balanced (and that’s not getting into ArcoMage) … all in all, probably a better technical game.

But Might and Magic VI is for me iconic—it may well be the first RPG I’ve ever truly loved (and given the way this list is stacked in that direction, that’s saying a lot). Virtually all the things that characterize what I love in games today, it had in at least skeletal form. Open world exploration? Check: It was the first game where I felt like I was a true pathfinder—meticulously crawling over every corner of the map to find each obscure bandit’s cave and goblin fortress. To this day I still have the lay of the land in Enroth basically memorized. Overly detailed worldbuilding text to read? Absolutely: my obsessive-streak came out in reading every single artifact description, conversational option, and quest backgrounder (it is canon that Enroth, and the entire planet it resides upon, was blown up in a magical explosion—a fact I’m still resentful towards 3DO for long after it disappeared into bankruptcy). Slight genre-bending? The splash of Sci-Fi onto the fantasy setting was delightful to discover for someone who had never played any of the prior entries in the series. And some of the music—well, the White Cap theme is a thing of beauty, and on my computer “Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ” is still listed as “Church Dungeon Music.”

3. Heroes of Might and Magic III: If comparing earlier, more revolutionary games against newer more polished ones presents a problem in the Assassin’s Creed and Might and Magic series, it presents no trouble at all in Heroes of Might & Magic. That’s because the third installation in the series both represented a huge jump forward from what came before and is unquestionably the best entry in the overall sequence.

Sure, some of the expansions are a bit goofy, but they still work—sharpshooters and enchanters are massively overpowered, but they’re generally used in missions that would otherwise be impossible. But the main campaign is fabulous—a surprisingly intricate and interwoven plot that bridges Might and Magic VI and VII compliments outstanding strategy gameplay. And that doesn’t even get into the acre of standalone maps provided, plus countless more available on the web thanks to a map editor so intuitive, even I can use it (I’m terrible with map editors).

As a result of all of this, Heroes III is maybe the only game on this list that can compete with N++ regarding infinite replayability. This is fortunate, because—given the fact that Heroes III was a full-budget release and was not supposed to be “simple”—it ages incredibly well. Even the graphics hold up (no need for that remastered remake—which doesn’t even include the expansions!).

2. Witcher III: As you may have noticed, this list has a strong bias towards RPGs. My preference is toward “Western” RPGs (which have a go-anywhere/do-anything exploration mentality) compared to “Japanese” RPGs (which are more linear and story-driven), but Witcher III does an incredible job of synthesizing the best of both. It has a huge open world to explore, one that feels alive and dynamic—but there is also an incredibly rich story filled with deep, well-written characters (of which Geralt—the player character—is but one).

Gameplay-wise, Witcher III really hits the perfect balance. I simultaneously felt like the biggest bad-ass in the room, but also like a single slip in concentration or bit of overconfidence and my corpse would unceremoniously end up at the bottom of whatever cave I was in. But Witcher III particularly stands out in how it subverts certain common RPG tropes. You are a hero, but you’re not particularly well-liked. You’re a powerful warrior, but you’re still ultimately treated as a pawn in larger political machinations. Your interventions do not always save the day, and sometimes don’t even make things better. If a mission starts with a villager worrying that their beloved has gone missing, nine times out of ten that person has been devoured by a monster well before you ever get there. While many games claim to place the hero in difficult moral dilemmas, Witcher III is a rare case of following through (some games might give you the choice to let a trio of witches eat a group of kids whom you recently played hide-and-seek with, but few make it so that might actually be the more moral of the options in front of you). There’s even a quest where you help a knight rescue a lady in distress from a curse, then lecture him that he’s not entitled to her romantic attention as a reward (talk about a timely intervention in the video game genre!). Over and over again, the game reinforces the message that being really powerful and doing “the right thing” isn’t enough to fix a fundamentally broken system.

Most impressive is the emotional impact that Witcher III dishes out. Sometimes this is a result of rich character development that pays off over the course of the entire game (as in “The Last Wish” quest). But sometimes it shows up in even relatively minor sidequests—the epilogue of the “Black Pearl” quest was one of the more brutal emotional gut-punches I’ve experienced in a video game. Ultimately, this was a game where one always felt like each character was a person—they were imperfect, they had their own interests, hopes, dreams, strengths and foibles, and while you were a little better with a sword and gifted with some preternatural abilities, you were still only one player in a much bigger narrative. As a result, Witcher III might well be, in my estimation, the perfect RPG.

Oh, and Gwent is ludicrously addictive. Let’s not forget that.

1. TIE Fighter: I don’t think this list has a particularly “modern” bias. Still, there’s something impressive about the number one game on this list also being the oldest by some measure. TIE Fighter originally came out in 1994, and the definitive Collector’s Edition was released in 1995. It is, to this day, one of the best games ever made. And that’s not a retrospective assessment. Star Wars: Tie Fighter holds up even played right now.

For starters, it is one of the few elements of the Star Wars universe to get the Empire right. I’m not saying that the Empire is the real protagonist of the series. I am saying that they wouldn’t view themselves as evil—as much as naming spacecraft “Executor” and “Death Star” might suggest otherwise. TIE Fighter is quite self-assured in presenting you as being a force for law and order in the galaxy, battling not just seditious rebels but pirates, smugglers, and other anarchic forces that threaten to tear civilized life apart.

Let’s start with something often overlooked in TIE Fighter: the music. It’s probably the only context that the phrase “kick-ass MIDI soundtrack” makes sense. But that’s not even the half of it. The iMuse system dynamically and seamlessly arranges the musical cues to reflect what’s going on around you in the mission—you can literally follow important mission updates (e.g., a wingman being shot down, or reinforcements arriving) simply by the way the melody shifts. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered anything quite like it since. To this day, the number that accompanies an incoming enemy capital ship fills me with exhilarated dread.

Gameplay-wise, TIE Fighter is almost shockingly rich. The core mission requirements are challenging, but by no means out of reach. But embedded in each level are a series of secondary and secret bonus objectives. These unlock a parallel plot of the Emperor’s Secret Order—but always present a brutal risk/reward calculus. That’s not unrelated to the fact that you’re often flying, well, TIE fighters (not noted for their durability)—but the challenge extends well beyond physical peril. TIE Fighter actually gives you an “invincibility” option if you want it, and yet even with it on some of the later missions and bonus objectives will strain every piloting skill you’ve ever developed.

Most importantly, the secret objectives usually are more involved than “blow up everything in sight.” They reward initiative and exploration. Maybe your primary mission objective is to destroy a rebel space station. But just before it goes down, you spot an escape shuttle fleeing the station. Take it out? Maybe—but maybe the occupants are VIPs best taken alive. So you switch to ion cannons and disable it for capture. Yet that extra time you just spent has given the rebels enough breathing room to summon reinforcements—now an enemy cruiser is bearing down on you. Take out its missile launchers and clear path for bombers while praying that your own Star Destroyer will arrive soon to back you up. All on the fly. All while dogfighting starfighters, dodging mines, giving your wingmen orders … it’s insanely, beautifully chaotic.

Did I mention this is all happening in 1995? 90% of games released today don’t have that kind of depth or spontaneity. In terms of playability, replayability, and just plain fun, TIE Fighter stands alone, and unchallenged.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2HbDTEl

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moiraineswife · 7 years ago

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TOD SPOILERS/RANT BELOW

accidental-rambler replied to your post “I haven’t read so much as a page of T0D and I’m still disgusted at the...”

I don't even care about tog tbh but when I saw that she decided to do a quick switch with couples so that ofc Chaol ends with his healer because OF COURSE POWER OF LOVE CURES IT ALL and I mean, OF COURSE she would do that because having a disability is not sexy at all, right? How could she possibly write about Chaol not being able to walk and having to learn to cope with it in any interesting manner, THAT'S CRAZY, better to pull off a good ugly oldie like this trope.

Straight up, Chaol was my favourite character in that series but I have absolutely zero desire to read the bullshit that t0d appears to be.

This could have been SUCH a compelling arc and story for Chaol as a character, and for representation of a young person finding themselves with a disability and learning how to cope with it and still grow and find happiness and fulfilment in their life but oh no.

And I’m annoyed because again it’s that potential that sort of floods through all of her books. She has so much interesting and compelling set-up that she then resolves through tasteless cliches and painfully overdone tropes, you know?

Like, before TOD came out I was kind of excited to see what this would do for Chaol’s story. It kind of reminded me of Jaime’s arc in ASOIAF? Both characters were kind of...defined by their physical abilities, you know?

Jaime was the greatest swordsman in the realm, kingsguard knight, etc, etc. His entire identity, worldview and approach to life and everything in it was genuinely based around his status and ability with a sword.

Chaol’s isn’t quite as extreme as that but...A huge part of his identity was dependent upon his ability to physically fight. His position as captain gave him purpose and pride, he lived for his job, for the honour he found there, and that was slowly starting to become undone in QoS with his worldview and perspectives changing...and he started using those skills for something else instead. But he still relied heavily on his skills as a swordsman and a warrior - it was the only way he felt he could act and contribute.

And in both instances, the authors offer a story that involves their characters being stripped of that defining trait. They both suffer physical disabilities that makes it impossible for them to continue the things they’ve literally built their lives around.

But then they both take...such different twists. Jaime gets...a truly beautiful character arc (in the books, idk wtf is going on with the show rn but we’ll not talk about that) that involves him learning how to cope with this. He becomes a much better man when he can no longer force his way through every single situation with brute force. He learns diplomacy, he takes his role in the kingsguard far more seriously, he forces himself to change and learn and grow. (And this is...Maybe this sounds like the arc/my view of its benefits is romanticising disability in some way, which is not my intention, nor I think is what happens in the books - I’m just talking purely from a literary/narrative/character arc point of view here, and what can be done for a fictional character and how this arc can be handled....better than in tog, anyway)

But with Chaol it just....It doesn’t force him to change, it doesn’t force him to examine himself and explore different strengths and different aspects to his identity (which would have been SO GODDAMN IMPORTANT WITH THIS CHARACTER HOLY SHIT) there’s just...this magical solution which, as far as I’m aware, sets him back to where he was again and it’s just like...a magical undo button for his disability which....doesn’t exist and shouldn’t be considered as a ‘happy ending’ for this kind of arc, you know?

But that’s not something i really want to talk about too much, mostly because it isn’t my place but...The thing that’s really, truly unnerving about this whole thing is, as far as I’m aware from the spoilers...Chaol’s health is literally bound to Yrene???

Like...If she’s tired/at a distance/drained of magic....He’ll be negatively impacted/physically disabled again and...I’m not physically disabled in any way, so I can’t really speak about it on that level but just...The idea that another person’s well-being/state of mind/whatever has any bearing whatsoever on my health is...terrifying. The idea that if a person connected to me is tired or exerts themselves one day...I’ll find myself with far worse health as a result of that is honestly and genuinely terrifying to me.

And it creates this really horrible power imbalance as well? What if they fight one day and Yrene decides to spite him with this connection? What if they want to separate? What if she gets manipulated and hurts him through this thing? What if, what if, what if. I don’t care how much they love each other, or how well suited they are to each other, they’re human beings. Humans are flawed, they fight, they fall out, they change, they move on....and they’re tethered to each other in such a deep way that it’s just...This can never be healthy. Even if they’re guaranteed to be together and in love and plain sailing forever and ever....There’s this hideous power imbalance where she can literally control his health by her actions.

And it sucks for her too??? Like...There’s this huge pressure on her to always be on the top of her game and always make sure that she’s healthy and functioning etc and etc because otherwise it’ll negatively impact him. And what if she falls out of love with him one day and wants to leave but can’t because of the guilt and the pressure because she knows if she leaves, she takes his health with her?

It’s just so...Deeply unhealthy. It’s like feysan/d’s suicide pact at the end of ac0war on steroids. And not the good kind. And I’m aware that I may have gotten some of the details wrong here, and maybe I shouldn’t comment at all on this since I haven’t read it....but the idea of being entirely dependent on another person to sustain your health for you, giving them that level of control over you is just...It’s horrifying to me, it really is, and it’s messing me up because like...how did she EVER think this was a good story to tell?? (And it also throws up some...really uncomfortable metaphors for caregivers and loved ones which I...won’t try to comment on because I’m sure someone has a better insight than I do but its’ just...it just gets more and more messed up the more I think about it)

SORRY FOR THE RANT. I JUST HAVE VERY STRONG FEELINGS ON THIS THING I DESPERATELY WANTED TO LOVE BUT HAVEN’T EVEN READ BC OF HOW BAD IT IS.

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poppopopopopi · 7 years ago

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Settos Top 10 GOTY 2017

Hey guys it’s your mostly inactive friend Setto here. It’s that time again and I’m here to swarm you with my terrible taste in videogames for 2017. SO STRAP YOURSELF IN FOR A LIST THAT’S PROBABLY BETTER THAN WATCHING JUSTICE LEAGUE.

10: Cuphead

A game years in the making, Cuphead brings a fluid and visual masterpiece onto the scene. A fast paced action game based around Boss fights and platforming stages, Cuphead is challenging in all the right ways. The hand drawn art style is a marvel to look at and it plays like a dream. I saw this game all those E3′s ago and never in my life would I imagine it would turn out as such an incredible feat of game design and animation. If you like your games about Cartoon cup men fighting Satan then BOY is this for you!.

9: Sonic Mania

Hey are you tired of SEGA’s fruitless attempts at making Sonic games?. I mean Colors and Generations were good but STILL. Handing a project to Christian Whitehead is the best decision SEGA has ever made. The game is filled with nostalgia from all walks of Sonics life. It has brilliant gameplay that almost perfects the classic Sonic formula and will have anyone smiling all the way through. The physics, the music, the BLAST PROCESSING. This game is the biggest love letter to Sonic that’s ever been produced and I urge you to pick it up even if you have never played a Sonic game before.

8: Digimon World: Next Order

Did you guys ever play Digimon World 1 on the PS1 and think “Boy I wish they made a sequel to that game that improved on every aspect but kept the Digimon raising in real time”?. WELL GOOD NEWS, This game delivers on that front. It mixes in loads of new mechanics with the town building from the original. There’s a big world to explore with loads of side quests, loads of in depth mechanics for digivolving and LOADS of Digimon to collect. It has plenty of content to keep you playing even after you beat the game and is honestly some of the most fun I’ve had this year. If you want an engaging experience filled with plenty of cool as fuck monsters then get this game.

7: Nier: Automata

Nier and Drakengard are one of my favorite series ever made. I love Yoko Taros insanity and design that he works into the franchise, I love the deep and complex stories with great characters, deep background lore and plenty of comedic moments. Nier Automata is no different except now platinum are behind the combat which has improved MASSIVELY since the original Nier.

I can’t really go into depth on the game and besides everything that needs to be said has been said already. I’m just gonna say that the game is an incredibly well written and engaging marvel. If you like emotionally devastating storylines that will make you think about what it means to be human then you need to pick up Nier: Asstomata.

6: A Hat In Time

An ADORABLE platformer with perfect controls, great settings, cute as hell characters and loads of the things that have made classic Gamecube platformers a staple in history. This game is just pure joy to play and is the second best Hat based platformer of the year. I’m not gonna go into detail because I don’t want to spoil how great every single stage of this game is since each one changes up the formula to the point where it’s like playing a whole new story. If you like collectathons and great writing then you deserve to treat yourself with this creation of absolute happiness.

5: Yakuza 0

I’ve written about how good Yakuza is like a million times. Yakuza 0 is probably the best entry in the franchise alongside Yakuza 5. While Kiwami also came out this year, it was 0 that came out on top for me. It’s got so much side content that kept me coming back for weeks.

With entire side missions dedicated to real estate and being a hostess manager, the game drags you back in to its great mechanics, satisfying combat and gripping storyline. Seeing the backstory of Majima is heartbreaking and Kazuma getting tangled in this new web of insanity is just as engaging as always.

Yakuza 0 is probably one of the best games I’ve ever played and stands as a beacon of “THIS IS HOW YOU WRITE A STORY, I’M LOOKING AT YOU HORIZON ZERO DAWN”.

4: Gravity Rush 2

The other cutest game of the year goes to Gravity Rush 2. One of the most creative and enjoyable franchises I’ve ever played.

As Kat you shift gravity around yourself to explore an incredible world made up of floating islands. You fight off horrible and mysterious creatures called the Nevi all while doing dumb things for townspeople who can’t do shit themselves clearly. These things include marketing ice cream, delivering fast food, stopping the inevitable destruction of your entire planet...wait what?.

There’s loads of costumes to get for Kat, loads of furniture for your tiny sewer house and plenty of fun gravity shifting to do.

There’s also some horrible abominations of mankind to fight against with an oppressive government.

Sony have basically sent this series to die and are shutting off the servers a year after launch, thanks sony. Guess it wasn’t as good as your terrible looking reboot of God of War.

3: Persona 5

A fucking visual masterpiece and a lesson in how to design something so good looking that it makes me look at myself in the mirror and consider why humans are capable of making such beauty.

Persona 5 is an engaging and incredible RPG that has great characters, great combat, Amazing music and the style of The Fonz if he ascended to godhood.

Everyone has already said how amazing this game is and it’s a fucking SMT game that’s up for the actual GOTY awards nomination.

What else is there to say?. other than Kawakami is best girl.

2. Super Mario Odyssey

I don’t want to spoil a single thing in this game for anybody. I don’t want to show a single screenshot, talk about a single world or even mention any music.

The game is one of the best games I have ever had the pure joy of even touching. I haven’t been this happy playing a videogame in almost all of my life. This game oozes charm and deserves every single bit of attention it is given.

There is nothing that can top this masterpiece of mechanically perfect happiness.....OR IS THERE?.

1: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Look I know people have issues with this game, I know people have loads of weird nitpicks and bad opinions. That’s fine. But you don’t get what this game means to me.

After Wind Waker I haven’t purely enjoyed a Zelda game on the same level.

This game defied all expectations I had of it and not only set a standard for Zelda games but set a standard for all open world games.

Every single thing in this game made me realise why I hadn’t been enjoying any open world games in almost a decade. It takes all conventional ideas and turns them into something magical. I never wanted to stop exploring this world.

Every corner has something new, everywhere you go you will see something else you want to go to and I guarantee you something will be there.

Being able to climb any surface takes away all busy work of navigating around small cliff faces just to get somewhere, being able to glide takes away all busywork of having to work your way down. There is so much freedom of choice in this game that you can just go straight to the final boss if you want.

Never have I played something so non linear, so open and so purely incredible.

You can tell they put effort and love into the world they built, you can tell every single inch of this game was thought out to insane lengths.

Horizon Zero Dawn came out the same week as this game and that game is the most by the numbers, basic ass open world games I’ve ever played. I have no goddamn idea why it’s so popular when it’s honestly a fucking wreck compared to this masterpiece.

You can go anywhere without being restricted, you can do anything in any order, you can see something in the distance and just climb the fuck out of it.

I love this game so much, it’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with games and something I will never forget.

That about does it for this year, I hope you guys tune in next year!.

#goty #me #settos goty 2017

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