#seriously feel such a big disconnect from all the characters of that terrible book

[lieximhuman]

Maybe if my teacher had chosen a book with gay little ppl then I would bother to actually read it -n-

[azzziiiii]

Dazai Deep Dive???

TW for Suicide, Depression, Alienation, and other things. Please read with caution.

Disclaimer, I of course don't think any of the bad things Dazai did were okay, but I am gonna explain why I think he did them and his reasoning. Reasoning of course does not equal an excuse and explaining why does not mean I condone any of this

Inspired and based on this post by @raventhekittycat

Dazai uses the pronoun "watashi" the most in the anime and manga. Its a very gender netural, and somewhat formal pronoun and very common, but not usually for males in Japan. SO, here's where this gets fun. Dazai is based more off the character from the book No Longer Human than the actual author and in that book a big thing is like alienation and shit. Basically one reason anime/manga Dazai uses 'watashi' is because his character is written to feel alienated and out of place, like he doesn't belong, so using 'watashi' allows him to have the most distance, from people and language and all that shit, cause its the MOST neutral pronoun. It's not that he sees himself as being genderless, it's that he sees himself as being humanless (this is why his ability No Longer Human always hurts me cause I've always had the feeling he didnt feel human). Also, fun fact, in 15 Dazai uses the male-typical pronoun of 'boku', and I think its cause he was comfortable with Chuuya, with his life at the time, but as time goes on he starts using 'watashi', he's using it by the Dark Era episodes. He's using 'watashi' to feel a disconnect from being a human, because he doesn't feel human (No Longer Human hahahahaha cry). He's also letting himself not get as close to people, and for him, using 'watashi' helps him feel that disconnect he thinks is there.

Knowing that Dazai doesn't feel human, that he feels a disconnect from his humanity and other humans, this could help explain why he did some of the things he did. Let's keep in mind he has a record of 138 counts of conspiracy to murder, 312 counts of extortion, and 625 counts of assorted fraud and other crimes. So not a good dude basically. One big thing would be his abuse of Akutagawa. Probably one of his worst crimes in the eyes of the fandom (and I don't disagree with that at all). But, I think a big reason he was willing to do so much is cause he does feel a disconnect from being human. With him not feeling human, he doesn't think it matters what he does. He was told to train Aku and make him strong. So he did, and it didn't matter to him how he did it because he's not 'human'. We see Chuuya be more kind and questioning about many actions that go against his morals, but Dazai frankly doesn't care. Why would he have morals when he doesn't feel human? Morals are definitely a very human thing, and as I've said already, he tries to distance himself from things like that.

"Now the main character in 人間失格/Ningen Shikkaku/No Longer Human states he plays up the part of being the clown, the fool. Because then he can predict people’s actions and he is less scared of them. Fast forward to now. We see Dazai doing that constantly. And we have seen actual suicide attempts by him—the river and the barrel bring two. Dazai is hiding his actual emotions more, wearing the mask of the fool more. He’s doing objectively worse and doesn’t seem to be trying to do better. The only thing that is carrying him through is Oda’s words telling him to be good. But Oda also told him he would never fill the hole in his chest he felt. He told Dazai he is never going to feel better. So Dazai is now living, acting like a better human while feeling that otherness in his chest. So him using 僕/boku the natural masculine pronoun in 15 was a way of indicating that he was actually doing better, feeling more, acting the fool less. But now he’s 22 and suicidal again and hiding behind his pretenses and we can’t see his real emotions as much. And he’s distancing himself from himself and from others by using 私/watashi. And though it’s gender neutral, it’s also neutral on more levels than that and that is why Dazai is using it. If he sees himself as genderless it goes beyond seeing himself as genderless, he sees himself as lacking humanness." (from this post)

THIS ^^^

Oda may have been important to Dazai, but what he told him is always gonna be with Dazai. That he will never fill that hole in his chest. And I love Oda, I do, but I hate him for that. Cause he shouldn't have told Dazai, someone who wants nothing more than to fucking end it all, that he'll basically never be happy. I know Oda was on his deathbed when he said it, and it was spur of the moment, and I think that's why it was done like that, cause I can't truly hate Oda for saying that when I look at what was happening when he said it. Basically Oda's words are gonna be with Dazai forever, and he believed everything Oda said, he's always gonna believe he'll never find a reason to live, something to fill the hole in his chest.

Okay, so we have covered the fact that Dazai is clearly in a bad place mentally, and that he is not getting better, in fact, he is likely getting worse. And as many of us likely know, to get better you have to actively work on it, you have to want it. So why isn't Dazai working on it? If he knows he's doing terribly, why wouldn't he work on himself? I think there are two different reasons for this. The first, clearly, is that he sees himself as lacking humanity, so he doesn't see himself as needing help, needing to get better. In fact, he may not even realize just how poorly he's doing. His morals are already very warped, and he never grew up in a place that cared about his feelings at all. He grew up in the mafia, where he was likely taught to kill at an EXTREMLY young age. He has np sense of doing well or doing poorly. The other reason, Oda's words. Oda told him he was ever going to fill that hole in his chest (a terrible thing to say to be honest). As I've already covered, Dazai hung onto ever single word Oda said, he is never going to forget that. So, if Dazai does know he's doing poorly and is in a bad place mentally, he likely does not care. He's already been told he'll never "fix" himself, in a sense. So why would he ever put forth the effort? To him it's a complete waste of time and energy.

Kind of branching off from the fourth paragraph, Dazai's suicide attempts in present time are seen as annoying and not unusual for the agency, even Atsushi, when he sees Dazai in the barrel, acts annoyed with done with it already. And this brings up the question, why? Why is no one taking it seriously. Suicide shouldn't be used for comedy, but it is. And I kinda think there's a reason for it. Dazai is masking his true emotions. We know he has pent up grief and anger and hatred, but he barely ever expresses it. Dazai very purposefully makes his suicide attempts seem like jokes to the agency, the way he talks about it, the way he asks for help, he makes sure this behavior is not only normal, but expected. He knows that it's a problem, but he wants it to be completely normal and expected, cause for him, one day he is gonna follow through with it. He doesn't want it to be suspicious. Making everyone find him annoying is his whole plan. He doesn't want people attached to him cause he doesn't feel human (although we all know that there's a lot of people who would be affected by his death). He wants to not be missed cause he doesn't think he's human, that he's worthy of being loved. So he acts this way on purpose.

Another thing to add before I finish; As we all know pretty well Dazai calls Chuuya, well, Chuuya, and Chuuya is Chuuya's first name. Obviously there is a close bond there for Chuuya to not be too bothered by Dazai calling him by his first name. However, not once have we ever seen someone call Dazai by his first name, Osamu, but with their bond surely Chuuya would be calling him Osamu instead of Dazai? So, this means its probably pretty likely that Dazai has made it a point to not let anyone call him by his first name, as it would connect him to his humanity more. I'm willing to bet that Chuuya and Dazai had a fight over this too, and Chuuya didn't understand at all, cause to him Dazai is human, Dazai is what keeps Chuuya human. so the whole thing didn't make sense to him.

To sum up, Dazai has a fuck ton of trauma and needs therapy, but seriously, he is a very complex and well done character and isn't just a suicidal maniac.

[olivieblake]

As a writer or even just a consumer of media do you find people are less willing to accept “flaws” in characters and stories? I’m not talking like this character is a murderer he’s evil no one should like him type stuff, though as someone who started off writing dramione I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of that but just like when characters are ever short of perfect. Like when a strong female character is kinda insecure or a couple isn’t communicating well or has a heated fight everyone gets mad that it’s a toxic relationship or bad writing. I once read a review of a book where someone stopped reading it after two chapters cause it had bad therapy practices, ie. the character still had shit to work through and therapy isn’t magic therefore they weren’t always doing the healing right and it’s like? that’s the whole point!! it’s an arc the character is gonna grow! It’s also made clear early on that the therapist didn’t agree with the coping methods (overly controlling their life) so it wasn’t like they were trying to portray it as a good thing. I know you’ve mentioned people have ✨opinions✨ about your DFS Hermione for having flaws and staying flawed and her flaw is just that she kinda thinks she’s right a lot and maybe isn’t the most self aware nothing even serious lol. I’m not saying don’t be critical of media but it’s kinda overwhelming reading think piece after think piece about why this thing you enjoy is actually the literal worst™️. Like am I toxic for having some of the same flaws ? Am I a problematic creep for enjoy stories where everything isn’t always sunshine, I don’t want to have a train wreck of a relationship but sometimes reading about one can be kinda fun? Is that terrible?

there’s a lot here that I’d like to discuss and I’m thinking about how I’d like to do it (I’ll inevitably chat about it in a video because it’s interesting and complex but I think I may have too many topics for this monday)

let’s see I think I will start by saying: in general, critical discourse about media (books, tv, film, fanfic) is a good thing, but it has definitely gone awry from what I consider to be its origins. I think the whole point of viewing media critically and making observations about what we are portraying via fiction is crucial for amplifying/protecting marginalized stories and reducing harm—specifically, the harm that minorities and women face by being inundated with bigoted, prejudiced, hateful, or ignorant tropes, caricatures, or relationship dynamics. I definitely believe that we should consider what we consume and how we consume it, particularly when it comes to the marginalized voices who do not see themselves represented well or fairly in white male dominated media

that being said, I do think it has led to the expectation that fiction cannot have ANY problems, which is absurd and counterproductive. it’s also extremely reductive, particularly when it comes the Strong Female Character™ thing you mention, where a woman STILL only has value if she’s strong in the “correct” way. I mentioned in one of my other posts and also last week’s video that there’s some kind of disconnect between the VERY GOOD intentions of things like #ownvoices or the movement to empower female characters and the actual outcomes, which make it so that any flaws in a marginalized fictional character are magnified to represent the entire group. the very reasonable request to see ourselves in fiction has somehow become an exponentially convoluted demand to see ourselves a certain way in fiction, where any character who does not reflect our personal experience is bad and wrong. previously, the expectation was that white male stories were universal whereas everything else was only for that specific group, and now, ironically, everything that is created still has to fit that universal quality and please everyone, despite that not being the point. the problem is when you only have ONE movie about this topic or ONE book about this ethnicity, then of course it hasn’t done enough to exemplify an entire subject or culture. there has to be an entire body of work the way there is with white-dominated media, where no single film or book accurately represents the experience of being white

plus we have twitter which is a horrifying hellscape where you get rewarded by the algorithm for making loud, obnoxious points so add that to the list (yesterday I saw that one of the top 3 reviews on Beloved by toni morrison is a 1-star review written by a white man and I was just flabbergasted by the lack of self-awareness) 

but anyway that’s like, more of a macro look at what I think is going on but you’re right that people are not very forgiving of flawed characters. to some extent, I get it; the one thing we don’t want our characters to do is annoy us, and that’s fair. but I also think people have lost the sense that “oh, this thing isn’t for me” and thus can’t successfully identify the difference between critical failure and personal dislike

now. as for Divination for Skeptics. let me start by saying it’s not like I don’t understand why people find hermione in Divination for Skeptics annoying, because I get it. if you’re taking the story very seriously then sure, maybe you want her to change her behavior and it’s frustrating that she doesn’t. fair enough! to that I say it’s a comedy and if you don’t find it funny you’re perfectly welcome to dislike it, it’s not a big deal to me if I don’t make you laugh. however, I DO take issue with people who claim she’s too flawed or doesn’t grow, because they almost always do it in a very specific way: they say that she doesn’t show enough empathy, aka how dare she not read draco’s mind and simply alter her personality and behavior to suit his. it genuinely infuriates me that in my opinion, people who voice that particular “criticism” have seemingly internalized the belief that women should be emotionally perceptive; that for them, hermione’s “flaw” is that she does not take on the emotional labor that draco refuses to perform. (her actual flaw is that her survival technique/coping mechanism is a hyper-rationality that incorrectly assumes she has perfect information; i.e., that everything she knows is accurate, and therefore all of her decisions must be sound.) whereas draco knows this about her—knows and acknowledges it—and yet cannot bring himself to voice his feelings out of a fear-based desire to hedge his own emotional risk. who, then, is more flawed in the context of the story? 

I don’t really have a conclusion yet so I’m going to pause for now and we’ll revisit this; I think mainly it’s that the more media diversifies, the more people will struggle with the preconceptions they have and the presumption that everything they consume is for them, and therefore that they are the metric for whether something is “good.” I think good art, good media, will reflect the world as it exists, but it will still only be the world according to one tiny fraction, a sliver of the actual human experience. does bad representation mean bad art? when it harms people yes. but when it speaks to a deeper truth (the truth of “we are all given to vice and imperfection even if it is not this specific version”), no. but that requires quite a degree of sophistication and self-awareness to identify, hence the discomfort of continuous vitriol or bad takes

[newmayhem]

Reading and ranking the entire Den of Shadows series

Check out my other Den of Shadows reviews HERE.

After a year such as this one, I wanted to close it out with something fun so I spent the past month marathoning the entire Den of Shadows series- rereading the original quartet and then reading for the first time the new TDOS books. I was originally going to post reviews/reactions for each book, but that got too cumbersome. Instead, I’m doing one big post of my personal ranking so I can discuss each book and talk about the series as a whole.

Spoilers for the entire Den of Shadows series below.

Personal Ranking

I based it on several different criteria but mainly: 1) How much I enjoyed it, 2) Writing/storytelling quality, 3) If there was anything glaringly ‘problematic’ (which I’ve found is usually a big factor in how much I enjoyed it), 4) How it fits in context of the entire series.

9. Shattered Mirror It hurts to put this one last on my list because Shattered Mirror was my intro to The Den of Shadows and to ahar’s work. Reading this again as an adult was frustrating because I can see why I loved it the first time around and how most of that doesn’t hold up today. Sarah was a great main character who deserved so much better than the ending she got. It was just wall to wall rape culture and misogyny. I hated Christopher and how he was a creepy pedophilic stalker framed as a romantic hero, I hated how Nikolas got some copout backstory so he would look like a good guy even though he beat a girl to death for rejecting his brother, and I hated how Nissa was enabling both of them. I really hated that this was meant to be a racism/prejudice metaphor because that doesn’t work out when the ‘oppressed’ group does actually harm innocent people. Aside from that, I felt like the pacing was really off- the events unfold over the course of a little over a week and we’re supposed to believe that after hanging out with them twice Sarah’s developed a bond with these vampires strong enough to override the prejudice she’s been raised with since birth (and that Christopher’s in love with her). And then there’s that whole anti-climax when it turns out that the ‘villain’ was Kaleo all along, but instead of having the book end there, there’s another 20 pages where we have to watch Sarah get attacked and changed against her will and then have it framed as a happy ending. I did like that she decided to not stay with Christopher in the end, though.

8. Midnight Predator I was actually surprised by how much I liked this one because I didn’t remember anything from it at all except for like, two scenes and some character names. It felt more mature in writing style, thematic content, and aesthetics. I also liked that we got a main character who was a little older and that the world was, for the most part, very removed from the human world. It was a good way to close out the original quartet in that it touched on a lot of the themes that had been explored in the books previous. That said, I had a lot of problems with how the issue of slavery was handled and also with how victim-blamey the moral of the story turned out to be. It just didn’t sit right with me that at no point did anyone bring up the idea of, you know, ending slavery at Midnight, which Jaguar had all the power to do. I hate that we were supposed to be sympathetic towards Jaguar and treat him like a good guy because he doesn’t abuse his slaves (for reasons that center on him) like everyone else does when he easily could just...not own slaves. Tying in with the victim blaming stuff, it felt like we were supposed to be satisfied with Turquoise freeing herself but being ok with letting slavery continue. And the big character arc that leads to her getting revenge on Daryl was framed as her ‘not letting herself be a victim anymore’, which is an objectively terrible take on this issue. Aside from that, I also had issues with the pacing here. We were promised a story about Midnight and a mission to assassinate Jeshickah, but all of that goes out the window in an anti-climax about two thirds of the way through the book (and two days into the timeline), and then the rest is a plodding montage leading to a very abrupt end. I also didn’t like how Daryl was supposed to be the real villain of the story but was also portrayed as a snivelling idiot that no one liked anyway, because that lessened the impact of Turquoise finally getting up the courage to kill him.

7. Demon In My View This was a good followup to ITFOTN in that it struck a balance between being standalone and having ties to the previous book. That said, I found the tone to be surprisingly more immature. I mainly didn’t like how the main character and the antagonist were handled. Jessica, while being a great reader insert/power fantasy, wasn’t very interesting because she didn’t go through any character development or have to sacrifice anything, but still got everything she wanted in the end. Fala was too much of a buttmonkey and her motives were too weak to be taken seriously. It also didn’t sit right with me that she’s the only canonical woc so far and she’s being portrayed as this incompetent cartoon villain even though objectively, like, she does have a point. But I do love the introduction of my favorite underappreciated side character, the ultimate MVP: Caryn Smoke!

6. Token of Darkness This book had a lot going against it, mainly in that it’s the most disconnected from the other TDOS books in terms of not only characters and setting, but also with introducing beings that hadn’t been mentioned before (in text, at least). I think especially as one of the new TDOS books, it would’ve helped to at least offhandedly namedrop some people/events/places. My second problem with this book was that everything felt very underdeveloped. I loved the new characters that were introduced, but I was disappointed that we didn’t have a lot of time to get to know them. I would’ve liked to see Cooper actually start training under Ryan, I would’ve liked to learn more about the LeCoire family and what it means to be a sorcerer. I also just wanted more Delilah because she’s such a fascinating character (I loved her reckless and unapologetic ambition). Kind of like ITFOTN, I felt like this lacked an Act 2. I think the story should’ve started earlier so we could see more of the investigation part of it, so we can get all the characters together earlier and have them working together (while Delilah has her hidden agenda on the side) to figure this out and build towards that climax. Even with the pacing and development problems, this is higher on the list because I just really enjoyed it- it was light and fun and I hope we get a chance to see these characters again.

5. Poison Tree This was something that I really wanted out of a new TDOS book- it delved deeper into parts of the world that had been mentioned before- the Bruja Guilds, SingleEarth, the Mistari, and all of that serves to set the scene for Promises to Keep. The concept was this cool deconstructed/reconstructed whodunnit story. It was more complicated than the typical TDOS plot, so I appreciate the ambition. That said, the execution wasn’t great- I often had to pause and go back in order to keep the facts straight and figure out who knows what, which was distracting. Another reason why this didn’t rank higher was that for some reason, I didn’t connect as much with these characters as I have in other books. The pacing was odd, I didn’t like that it came to a point where everyone had figured the main part of the mystery out, but instead of going directly to the climax, it took a detour into relationship drama, which slowed down the momentum. I think it would’ve made more sense to put Sarik and Alysia into a situation where they were forced to work together (rather than that brief but drawn out thing with Sarik and Christian). There would’ve been more tension, conflict, and forward momentum, and because they’re the two leads that were supposed to be focused on, it would’ve felt less like a detour.

4. Persistence of Memory This was a very good return to TDOS. It feels very familiar in how the new characters fit into the world. It struck a good balance between introducing new characters and having them coexist with concepts and characters that we’ve heard of before. I felt the same spark while reading this as I felt when I first read the original quartet. Like, this entirely new book made me feel nostalgic, and that’s not to be underestimated. I really loved the two protagonists and I was very invested in both of their stories. I particularly loved Shevaun because her struggle with her fear of becoming human again is one that we don’t often see in vampire fiction. I also think both she and Adjila are the perfect embodiment of beings who’ve been around for centuries and just don’t have the same morals and boundaries that humans do. I don’t normally read these books for the romance, but both canon ships here were really well done and believable, and also paralleled each other in an interesting way. And I loved the oddly wholesome focus on found/chosen family. Also, this gets extra points for everyone dunking on Alexander every time he’s mentioned.

I didn’t rank this higher because I wished Erin was more involved in figuring out what was going on with her. I didn’t really like that after a certain point, it felt like Sassy took over as protagonist. Still, I really enjoyed it, the ending was very satisfying (I loved that it was a straight up happy/optimistic ending instead of a bittersweet or abrupt one like most of the TDOS endings had been so far).

3. Promises to Keep This was a bold ending to the series. It took a lot of guts to basically blow up the world that you spent nearly 20 years creating and I admire that. It was a really engaging story that truly showed the full extent of what ahar was capable of as a writer at that time and the full extent of what a TDOS book could be. I think this time ahar really nailed the pacing (which was something that had always been a bit shaky in the past). We got to spend enough time with Jay and get to know him (it was a good choice to have the protagonist be a character we’ve met before but could still get to know more). I liked seeing everything we’ve learned from all the previous books come together and come into play. And I especially loved that our MVP Caryn got the HEA she deserves. The little epilogues at the end were fun to read (only, I’m mad we didn’t hear anything about Risika. Especially because she does get mentioned (and we finally know that 1) she found out about what happened to her mom, and 2) she and Kaleo have active, ongoing beef over it)). It really felt like a finale, but at the same time, it felt like a new beginning and I can’t wait for new books in this post-Promises world.

This could’ve ranked higher, but I did have a problem with Brina. In terms of personality, etc., I loved her and she was fun to get to know, but I can’t get past the whole slave owner thing and how that aspect of her was handled. I wished that her character arc was more about realizing that enslaving people is objectively bad rather than having her keep pointing out Jay’s incidental hypocrisy as if it weren’t a false equivalence. Her happy ending just felt a little unearned- the only real ‘penance’ she performed wrt being a slave owner was a tacked-on apology during the ritual and a sentence about how she freed her own slaves (again, no mention of whether or not all slavery has ended), and even though she was turned human, it’s not framed as a great or permanent loss, and on top of that she also gets witch powers.

2. In The Forests of the Night I admit, this ranking is mostly based on nostalgia...but it’s still a very solid book to kick off the series, set the vibes, and introduce us to this world and what kind of series this will be. It’s not the best of the series in terms of writing quality, plot, or scope, but of the original quartet, I think ITFOTN holds up the best. For a YA book of that era, especially one written by someone of its own target demographic, this felt very mature. It wasn’t trying to talk down to its audience and that meant a lot to me. It showed me that YA could be dramatic without being overwrought, serious without being an ‘issues’ book. It tackled questions of identity, morality, faith, power, and freedom, all framed within a fast-paced revenge story. Most of all, Risika is such an interesting, complicated character and her journey was both relatable and entertaining. Of all the endings in this series, the ending of ITFOTN was the most satisfying for me in that the main character had to change and sacrifice, and in the end she got what she truly deserved even if it wasn’t entirely happy. My only complaint is that we don’t see more of Risika throughout the series, especially when there’s clearly more to her story.

1. All Just Glass The TDOS books are fine as standalones and it’s cool that each one makes it feel like whoever you’re reading about is just a small part of a bigger world, but All Just Glass shows how good it can be when we go deeper into a particular story and give it more time to develop. That said, I don’t think it would’ve been as good as it was if it was written right after Shattered Mirror. There’s a very clear improvement in writing quality and storytelling that can only come from 10 years of experience.

While it didn’t fix all the problems I had with SM (mainly, I would’ve preferred it if Sarah didn’t go back to the Ravenas in the end), AJG made a great choice in shifting to a different, more cohesive theme and illustrating it across a compelling ensemble cast. It cleverly plays on our expectations of the Vida line that were based on the limited scope of SM in order to show that contrary to what we’ve seen previously, this is actually an institution that’s in decline. The Vidas aren’t this great power ruling over the rest of the Macht witches- they’re actually these fundamentalist/extremist outliers who are on the fringes clinging to the ‘old ways’ while everyone else kind of does what they want and their decline is directly related to their obsessive adherence to tradition at all costs. What’s so great about this is that it’s not just a sequel, it’s a subversion of SM that also sets the tone of the new TDOS series in anticipation of the inevitable end.

General Notes

I loved reading these all back to back and watching ahar grow as a writer, watching the world unfold right before my eyes.

It was interesting to see the difference between the two series. I found most of the books in the new series to be generally more engaging because they’re based around a central mystery (What’s the connection between Erin and Shevaun? Who is Samantha? Who attacked SingleEarth? Who’s the shapeshifter?). I also liked that rather than shy away from mentioning technology and trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist or that we’re still in the early 2000s, ahar really leaned into it and in doing so, made the stories feel more realistic.

The original quartet was very aesthetically cohesive, it was a series of vignettes that purely aimed to explore a particular piece of the world. The new series, however, felt cohesive in that each of the books is building towards the end and showing a piece of the puzzle that sets the scene for PtK (PoM gives us more about the Tristes, ToD gives us the elementals, AJG and PT are about groups that are on the decline with their fates based on whether or not they choose to align with the rising power of SingleEarth).

On kind of a petty note, I wanted to mention how much I hate all the new covers (both for the new TDOS series and for the re-release of the original quartet) and I was really disappointed in how low-effort the marketing was for the new series. Even just reading the synopsis for PT and PtK was painful because they seemed slapped together at the last minute like no one cared. I think it was a real missed opportunity to draw in a new audience because they were coming out just as the YA boom, particularly in vampire fiction, was happening.

The biggest takeaway I got from this marathon is a huge respect and appreciation for this extensive world and cast of characters that ahar built (and then had the courage to entirely upend). I know mainstream attention isn’t everything, but I just really hope ahar gets their flowers because this is a great (and highly influential) body of work that’s so different and even ahead of its time.

Anyway, that’s my take on the series. I might make this re-read an annual thing because this was fun. Also, as I was reading, I made sure to note factual info about the world and the characters, so I’ll be making new additions/edits to the reference materials soon.

[tanadrin]

I think I’m starting to understand the difference in philosophies that underlies the two kinds of video game RPG better. I think of them as the Bethesda and the BioWare RPG, but more accurate terms would be the simulationist and the character-driven RPG. Which is not to say that the two categories are exclusive--they’re different points on a spectrum. The extreme simulationist RPG would be Dwarf Fortress’s Adventure Mode, where the entire world is procedurally generated ex nihilo, including attempts to procedurally generate things like history and politics and whole systems of magic. I’m not sure what the opposite would be--maybe something like the original Mass Effect, whose levels are quite cloistered, or the first Deus Ex, where you’re playing a character who is extremely defined as a person, but you still get to choose how the plot unfolds.

Each has aspects I like. I like that in character-driven games I have a strong narrative I get to operate within, and I get to make choices which affect the emotional outcome of the game. Bethesda games lack that, because for all the influence that in theory you have over the world, the ultimate outcome is usually always the same: Mehrunes Dagon is defeated, Alduin is killed, you’re sitting on a pile of treasure. What outcomes you do control tend to be binary yes/no levers (did you do the College of Winterhold quests? Congrats, you can add “Archmage” to your extremely long list of titles an honors), and moving through the game’s programmatic implementation of the plot feels more lack racking up Steam achievements than anything else.

Buuuut the price you pay for actually feeling like you inhabit these worlds is feeling like the worlds themselves are pretty two-dimensional. Skyrim was the first RPG I played where I felt a strong sense of place, like even though the experience was mediated by a computer screen and a mouse and keyboard, I could imagine what it would be like to stand on the road outside Riverwood and feel the cool breeze and look up and the foggy mountains. At the time I thought it was just the (then) shiny new graphics, but I bought Morrowind the other day just for fun, and I don’t think it is--I think placeness is just a thing Bethesda excels at in their games, because they pay close attention to it like BioWare does to characters. Morrowind’s graphics are much more primitive than Skyrim’s, but Vvardenfell definitely still has many of the same qualities Skyrim does in that respect, even with its blocky character models and super-short draw distance.

(Also, playing a little Morrowind has made me appreciate just how much the Dragonborn DLC is a love letter to Morrowind fans, which is neat.)

Are the two approaches compatible? Like, is one side of the spectrum necessarily exclusive of the other? I think they might be. The problem with the simulationist world (and this is a problem STA:GOB2:DF(AM) has in spades) is that you run the risk of a world a million miles wide and a millimeter deep (see also Elite: Dangerous, and No Man’s Sky reportedly but I haven’t played it myself), but Tarn Adams’ extreme fetish for procedural generation simply throws into relief the problem of a lot of these games, which is that random is not actually a substitute for complex, and even conceptually sophisticated Perlin noise is still just... noise. Utterly interchangeable. You can generate a million Dwarf Fortress worlds, and they’ll all be superficially identical.

Even a world like Daggerfall’s, which is the size of Great Britain, is mostly nothing. And it turns out (as fast travel and compass markers have shown us) that for most people, working your way over miles of empty country road and hunting for quest objectives is not the fun part of epic fantasy narratives, which is why most epic fantasy narratives... skip those parts.

(Tangent 1: I understand the impulse to huge fantasy worlds in video games, and I think it’s a positive one, mostly. Theme parks don’t feel real, which is why Azeroth has no sense of place. It could--it has some wonderfully atmospheric zones--but everything about the placement of NPCs and the way you interact with the world screams animatronic Presidents, Disneyland with the Burning Legion, so it lacks... worldlikeness. The problem with big, detailed, simulationist worlds is that if you’re inhabiting them from a pedestrian’s viewpoint, 99.5% of all that is going to go to waste. Either you will fast-travel past it or it will be Desert Bus With Dragons, but honestly, you don’t need to simulate weather fronts and biomes and a realistic medieval economy if all you’re doing is trying to assemble the Staff of Chaos so you can whack Jagar Tharn over the head with it. As soon as your viewpoint becomes even a little bit more elevated, though, that stuff is interesting, and even important. The fact that every merchant in Spira will buy your stuff for exactly one half the price you sell it for is an irrelevant triviality if all you ever see is one merchant’s storefront at a time. But as soon as you begin to piece together anything like a bigger picture, the world needs to make sense. I would combine this observation with the fact that no matter how important you become to the world of Skyrim, you never actually wield any political or administrative authority. Sure, nobody wants to play Dean of the College of Winterhold or have to spend half their time playing Skyrim marking freshers’ essays on the elementary principles of transmutation, but it’s also weird that you can be one of Skyrim’s foremost property owners, thane of nine holds, political counselor of the High King, and you can’t get a guard to so much as hold your horse for you while you pop into the blacksmith’s. A game where accomplishment actually translates into political authority is a game where the worldbuilder’s urge to detail every element of the life-cycle of the lesser mana stoat becomes a little more important, if, say, you need to manage the mana stoat farmers. Although that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate nods towards believability--Skyrim’s tiny-ass farms that couldn’t feed a family of four in a wintry climate, much less a tenth of a goddamn continent, are a major failure on that point. Visual believability is important. Noteworthy here also is landscape architecture: one reason Skyrim does well at placeness is that it feels reasonable, even though it’s a geographical absurdity. Something like the world of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, where even the “plains” regions are wacky moonscapes designed to maximize walking time, so as to substitute boredom for size, are failures in level design.)

(Tangent 2: I once had the idea for a fantasy film or comic book that involved all the usual players: a Scheming Villain, a Terrible Macguffin of Power, a band of Plucky Heroes, romance, war, intrigue, excitement, etc. Except all the big, exciting moments would be entirely implied; the actual story told would be of all the quiet moments between the battles and confrontations and tragic death scenes. The sitting around the campfire singing songs. The tossing and turning on hard ground or in lumpy, unfamiliar beds. The quiet conversation or the anxious exchange of looks before a battle. The moments of reflection or subtle self-doubt before committing to a course of action that could save or doom the world. I don’t actually know if it would make for an interesting story, but I think it would be a lot of fun to write.)

Bethesda for its part is firmly committed to the tabula rasa silent protagonist, and I think that’s a mistake. I don’t think you increase player agency in a world where your protagonist must remain mute, I think you only highlight the disconnect. I may be unusual here, but one of the things I love most about BioWare games, and which makes me feel most embedded in their plots and connected to their characters, is the fact I get to hear both sides of the conversation, and how I choose to respond has a lasting effect on the kind of person the other characters seem to understand me to be. That feels much more interesting to me that the cipher that moves through Bethesda worlds, about which little can be known, because little can be specified. Yes, such a cipher can have any history you want, but only because such a cipher can have no substantive history--so, like the details of a procedurally generated world, the history of such a protagonist, their motivations and intent, is rendered trivial. And for escapist fantasy, where part of the goal is to not be trivial, but to be important, vital even, I think that’s a failure. Unless your goal is to, like, RP a cabbage merchant, in which case--success!

What I really want, what I really feel is a seriously under-appreciated possibility in video game RPGs, is an open world with some of the simulationist aspects, but built around, or laid on top of, a strong central plot skeleton. One with rich character interaction and consequential, emotional choices (and no, Dawnguard does not qualify), and I think the payoff would be that we are so used to vast worlds that are ultimately quite shallow that even a few substantive concessions in this direction would feel like we had suddenly discovered benthic depths.

[abdicatedarchive]

the aftermath || chase and marina

𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍: chase’s house // 7th of february 2021.

𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: chase x marina.

𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐑𝐒: none?

𝐃𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐒: chase is devastated by his breakup with gabrielle, and marina comes over to comfort him.

@chasinwaterfalls: single :( not by choice 🤡🤡🤡

DMs: @marinaholly: you okay? maybe a quest can help!

DMs: @chasinwaterfalls: biggest quest I am doing is moving from the couch to my bed

DMs: @marinaholly: :( what happened?

DMs: @chasinwaterfalls: she dumps me all the time, but i think she was actually serious this time, she hasn't talked to me in a few days

DMs: @marinaholly: im sure everything will work out. i can come over if you want?

DMs: @chasinwaterfalls: i am a mess, but please do

DMs: @marinaholly: omw

Chase usually kept a pretty clean house, but there were dishes crowding the sink and bags of trash waiting by the door for him to take out. The maid usually came by once a week, but he had told her to go away this morning. He was too ashamed to have her clean up his mess. He had been watching Bachelor re-runs of his favorite seasons for the last two days, and eating whatever he felt like ... if he did feel like eating. He had sweatpants on and a big baggie hoodie, just becoming one with the couch.

Marina decided to stop by a connivence store and grab a bunch of candy for Chase in hopes that it would cheer him up a bit. She also snuck a bottle of wine from her house, hoping her mom wouldn’t catch on. Though Marina was technically the one to do the breaking up in her relationship with Kyle, she was very familiar with heartbreak. Once she got to the Hale’s property, she made her way over to Chase’s house and knocked on the door. She would have dressed up a bit more, but it was Chase. She was comfortable being around him in the casual clothes she was in.

Chase heard the knock at the door and called out loudly, "ITS UNLOCKED, COME AND MURDER ME!" Chase felt beyond exhausted to begin with. All his friends were so happy right now, and the break ups usually didn't last ... but this one felt more real than the others. He hadn't even seen his daughter in a few days, he had just been absorbed by the couch. "Hey Marina" he said looking over at her, not moving his body at all.

Marina opened the door and noticed how messy the house was. He usually kept it pretty clean, but she understood how it could get to this state considering the fact that he just got dumped. They had been together for so long, this must have hurt so much. She was in a groupchat with Gabrielle and Juliette, but she hadn't mentioned anything yet. It was actually pretty quiet in there recently. Marina made a mental note to clean the place up later. She headed to his room and walked in slowly, "Hello. Deliver for Chase Stephens." she said as she held up the candy and wine. "How are you feeling?"

"I feel like death" said Chase, realizing he had not brushed his teeth in a hot minute. "I will be right back, make yourself comfortable in the depression crevice." Chase headed off to his bathroom to go brush his teeth and quickly came back, "Okay now I'm not completely disgusting" said the boy as he plopped back down on the couch, "You want to watch the bachelor?" he joked as he turned the TV off. Chase put his head in Marina's lap, "Thanks for coming over here, the guys just don't get it. They're all way too happy right now."

Marina frowned at her friend and sat down on the couch as she waited for him to come back. "Well we could if you want." she said, trying to keep the mood as positive as possible. "Whatever you want, I'm up for." she nodded once. Marina looked down at Chase once he laid his head on her lap. She automatically began to run her fingers through his hair, it was just something she did a lot to Kyle. "Of course." she spoke softly. "Do you want to talk about it? Or maybe I could talk to her for you? I don't want to make anything worse for you though."

Chase sighed as she ran her fingers through his hair, "I know we're gonna get like ... back together at some point. There was a lot of crying, and she was really mad and I was really mad. I think I did the breaking up in the end, but she definitely started it" Chase rambled, "It just sucks because she just ... she fucking keeps me on the line all the time because she knows I'm going to come back to her". He was weak like that. He loved her so much, and he would do anything for her. It had all just become too much. "It's just bullshit, because when we started dating in the 8th grade, I wasn't really wondering things like if she liked what I liked or anything like that. She just thought I was funny, and that was what made me happy. That I could make her laugh, and I love her laugh. Like I seriously love it, but I just feel like other than that we have nothing in common sometimes. Like there's this huge disconnect."

It hurt to hear Chase say that Gabrielle simply knew he would come back to her. Marina was in a very different situation, it almost felt wrong to try and find some common thread between his relationships issues and hers since she was the problem, but sometimes she felt that way. That no matter what Kyle did, who he hooked up with, she would go back to him in heartbeat. It was just a matter of when he'd actually ask her to be his girlfriend again. She settled for what he was giving her right now. "Don't let her have that hold on you. It doesn't seem right for her to treat you however she wants because she knows you'll go back to her. That's just not fair." she tried giving some kind of advice, but it was hard. "Maybe you both could try getting into each other interests? I mean, if you want to try and fix things with her. Like, maybe bring her to a LARPing session. That might be fun." she suggested with a small smile.

The missing piece of the puzzle was of course that Chase and Gabrielle had a kid together, and he lived there. That's what made it all messy, and made him love her just that much more. Chase shook his head when she suggested he bring Gabrielle along, "She doesn't even like dressing up for sex. Closest thing she'd ever do to Larping is she dressed up for Halloween" he replied. They had argued about it a bunch, and they didn't even do a couples costume. "It just doesn't make sense, because she does the costumes for the theatre department. It has to do with the fact that she thinks her dressing up for me is like ... me imagining her as someone else. Which is bullshit, it's just having sex in a character. It's fun, I'm ... I'm fucking assuming. I haven't gotten to try it. I'm off on a tangent, please just tell me to shut up."

"Oh. She won't even try it out once? I've also heard it's fun. Haven't tried it out myself, but here's to hoping one day I could." Marina raised her shoulders and laughed under her breath. She wasn't sure if her ex would be into that, she hadn't brought it up to him before. "No you're fine. Rosie & I go on tangents all the time. We get so off track, it's insane." she smiled, thinking about how chaotic her and her sister's conversations could get. "Plus, it's good to get it all out. You said you couldn't really go to the boys about it, so I don't want you to hold back." she told him. "Have you ever talked to Gabrielle about this? That you feel like there's a disconnect between you both?"

"What am I gonna do, say hey babe. You don't like anything that I like and that sucks. It's just gonna hurt her feelings if I talk like that, I can just keep doing what I do and slowly showing her stuff until she finds something she likes. Not that it matters right now because we're done currently" Chase continued on. He felt like he was putting a lot of weight on Marina, "I'm sorry for being so angry, I'm just so frustrated and I'm tired of crying. I'm ... I'm ready to be mad" he added.

"Well I know she doesn't have to like the things you like, but she could always be supportive of it? Maybe that's not the word." Marina shook her head, trying to find the words. "Like with Kyle, he's super into music. That's his life. I'm terrible with all of that, but I would always go see him perform wherever it was. Even if it was for the marching band back then, I just liked going for him. It made him happy. I would even ask him to teach me how to play something every now and then even though I knew I wouldn't catch on." she explained with a dumb smile on her face as she thought back on those times. "Our interests or hobbies could be a very big part of who we are, so I get why you're frustrated." Marina shook her head as Chase apologized, "Oh please, I'm the last person you need to apologize to for being angry. If you need to get mad, get mad." That wasn't the best advice, but Marina wasn't very good herself at controlling those type of emotions.

"And that's really sweet of you, but music is cool and entertaining even for people who don't participate. She doesn't want to hear me explain my comic books or show her my action figures" said Chase, cooling off a little. He sighed as he sat up to face Marina, "It just sucks, because in a few days she is going to have some guy over and I'm going to hear about it at school, because that's what always happens. One time they were in the pool and I saw them flirting and whatever right in front of my house. I've kissed three people that weren't her in my entire life, and she's had sex with other people" said the boy, "and then we're going to date again and I'm going to have to think about that, and it's ... it's just all shitty. Do you want to watch a movie? I feel like a movie would make things better. I need to distract myself"

Marina nodded her head as she listened to Chase. She understood where he was coming from, but she always enjoyed hearing people gush about the things they were passionate about, though she kept that comment to herself. This wasn't about her, or making Gabrielle look worse, this was about Chase right now. "So why don't you try getting with someone? Maybe it'll take your mind off of it." Yet again, not great advice, but Marina was naturally a very jealous person and liked to make things even. "We could watch a movie. What do you have in mind?"

He looked at her when she said that he should try to get with someone, he immediately had a horny idiot boy thought about being with her. He shoved that thought straight out of his mind, that would be so chaotic and messy. She was his best confidant, and the only person in town that wasn't Jonah that shared all his interests. They had a LARP campaign together, it was a dumb thought. Chase turned to Marina with a smile, "Why don't we ... simply just watch all the bring it ons?" Chase loved the bring it on franchise, "I have all the DVDs don't worry" he said, getting up and opening up the DVD cupboard, pulling all the disks out. "Obviously I don't own a physical copy of cheersmack, but we don't need to watch that anyways" he added with a laugh as he put in the first disk and came back to the couch to sit next to her.

Marina noticed that Chase didn't comment on her suggestion and she quickly regretted bringing it up. If he wanted to get back together with Gabrielle, it was best to not try and mess anything up. She also couldn't help but feel like a bad friend towards Gabrielle. Marina was definitely closer to Chase, whether his ex-girlfriend knew that or not, but she was slowly getting closer to Gabrielle through Juliette. She didn't want to ruin anything. As he began to speak, she could have sworn he was going to suggest that they do something together, something physical. But he brought up watching Bring It On and it caused her to let out an awkward laugh. She was almost embarrassed for thinking that. "There's never a wrong time to watch Bring It On. We can definitely pass on cheersmack. The only good thing about that one is Imogen from Degrassi and Christian from Dance Academy." she said as she passed him the candy she bought him.

"Stoppp, don't say Dance Academy to me. Now I'm either going to have to watch the sammy death reactions on youtube or watch the whole show over again" Chase said with a laugh as he took the candy and opened it up. "You're the best, you know that right?" he said as he passed her the open box.  "Did you want wine? I also have some here if you don't want to get in trouble with your folks" Chase added as he got up to go get them two wine glasses and the bottle opener.

Marina sank into the couch once Chase mentioned Sammy's death, "Oh god, it gets me every time. But I will happily watch the whole show over again with you. Rosie and I haven't watched it in so long." She looked over at him with a proud smile, flashing her teeth in his direction. "I try my best." she stated before taking some candy for herself. "Nah don't worry about it. It's already out of the house, I've accepted my fate." Marina and her mother had been getting into more arguments lately, whether it was from her constant fights at school or her frequent partying. One more fight won't make much of a difference at this point.

"I cry like a bitch, I will be honest" said the boy, smirking a little at the admission. He put the glasses over by them and opened up the wine bottle, pouring two big glasses. "Are you cold?" he asked as he passed her a glass and held his own, "I have some big blankets". The movie was already playing, but it wasn't like they were really going to miss anything. They had both already had seen it so many times. Chase pulled the blanket up over the both of them as he sat next to her. "Cheers" he said as he clinked his glass to hers and started drinking. He kept thinking about what she had said though, that little voice at the back of his head. Telling him to get even with her, level the playing field. Maybe he should ask her to tell Gabrielle that they did something, that was stupid though. He had gotten caught in that lie last time.

"Aww I'll make sure to bring some tissues so you can wipe your tears." Marina teased the boy, as if she doesn't also cry like a bitch over the character's death. She grabbed the glass and nodded her head in response to his question, "A little." Once the blankets were over them, she unintentionally scooted a bit closer to him. It didn't mean anything, she was just a fan of cuddling. Who could blame her? "Cheers!" she repeated before tapping her glass against his gently and taking a big sip. As she was taking her sip, she noticed the bracelet she gave him for Christmas on his wrist. "Hey, nice bracelet. You get that from someone? They must have great taste." she joked with a grin on her face.

Chase was immediately comforted by Marina sitting close to him, he was just so used to cuddling with Gabrielle during movies if she wasn't chasing their kid around. Chase was taking a sip when she asked about the bracelet, "Oh this old thing? Had it forever, cute girl gave it to me in another life" he teased back. Chase wondered if he was pushing some kind of boundary, he would have acted exactly like this when he was dating Gabrielle. Maybe he would have sat a little further away, but calling her cute was nothing new. He felt like he was making up the tension that was building for him.

Marina's small smile grew as Chase mentioned the girl being cute. No matter how insignificant it was for him, comments like that meant a lot to her. She needed to be told something like that to actually believe it, just for a little bit. Hearing it from Chase felt a little different though, maybe it was just the fact that she was particularly lonely right now, but she tried not to think too hard on it. "From another life and you're wearing it now? She must be real special then." she continued to tease him. "I got a feeling you mean a lot to her too."

"My writer thought it would be good for continuity if I wore it across all multiverses" Chase teased as he broke the fourth wall. "Oh is that so" said the boy as he took another sip of wine, the movie playing out in front of them, but neither of them were paying any attention. He was just making eye contact with her and smiling. He knew that he was going to go crawling back to Gabrielle, but something about this made him want her to come crawling back to him. Something about the way she was looking at him.

"Very smart of them." Marina giggled as she nodded her head. "Mhm." she hummed as she shifted a bit to be facing him more directly. "I get why too. You just seem to draw people in." she said as she looked into his eyes. She should have held back and just continued watching the movie, but she couldn't stop. Part of her didn't want to stop. "It might be the hair, it's powerful." she said with a smile. "Or maybe it's that biiiig smile of yours. Very cute." she told him as her eyes travelled down to his lips.

This was most definitely a signal, and this was his only chance. If he blew this he would never kiss Marina Hollingsworth. Not that he had really thought about it at all until right now, but he definitely wanted to. He wanted to pull her in for a kiss, but let's face it. He's a bottom and a whimp. There was no way this girl actually wanted to kiss him, she was just naturally flirty. So was he. "You have that effect on people too" said Chase, staring at her mouth. He was still thinking about kissing her, but he just didn't have the balls to do it.

Marina found herself inching closer and closer to him as he spoke. Any thought of being a good friend to both Chase and Gabrielle went straight out the window. They were both in weird situations with their relationships. But that was the thing, they both weren't in relationships right now, they were free to do what they want. "Yeah? Do I have that effect on you?" she asked as she looked up to his eyes, their lips almost touching at this point.February 9, 2021

He knew he shouldn't be doing any of this, first things first ... she was a teammate. Second thing, she was his larping teammate. Third thing, she was definitely friends with his ex on some level. Fourth thing, she was one of his closest friends. Fifth thing, Chase put his hand on the nape of her neck and pulled her in to kiss her slowly and softly as he put his wine glass down on the table.

Marina closed her eyes as she felt his lips on hers, moving in her closer to him as he did so. She shouldn't have let it get this far, but she was too into the moment to stop. This would be something she'd worry about later, not right now. Marina placed her glass on the table beside his before wrapping her arm around his neck and slowly moving her hand up through his hair.

Chase was sure he should stop, but he couldn't bring himself to. He put his hands on her hips to guide her onto his lap. Chase felt like he should say something, "Is this okay?" he asked under his breath. That was such a stupid thing to say, why did he say that. He was so embarrassed, her put his lips back on hers before she should answer.

Marina placed her hands on Chase's shoulders as she moved on top of him. She was about to answer when he immediately went back to kissing her. It caught her off guard, but she pulled away to speak anyways, "Is this okay?" she asked back. "Should we stop? Do you want to stop?" she asked quietly, her nerves were slowly kicking in. She was worried she was doing something wrong or wasn't pleasing him in some way.

Chase looked up at her and put his hand on her cheek, "You are so hot, it's kinda making me stupid" said Chase honestly. His brain was cloudy from all the crying and sleeping he had been doing for the last few days. His body definitely wanted Marina, that was more than evident. He just didn't want to use her, and he knew he would be with Gabrielle again. "Do you want to keep going?" he asked.

Marina couldn't help but smile at Chase's comment, it slowly eased her tension. She was so fragile when it came to her self esteem. Anything could set her off, but simple compliments fueled her confidence. She needed this kind of distraction anyways, they both did. "Yes, definitely." she said sweetly with the nod of her head before going back in to kiss him slowly.

She said definitely, his whole body relaxed a little. She wanted to do this, and Marina wasn't just doing it out of pity ... well at least not entirely. She put her lips back on his and he moved his tongue into her mouth for a while as they kissed. When their lips parted, Chase knew he was putting his foot in his mouth, "Just two friends, doing very good friend stuff" he replied nervously, "You can shut me up anytime".

Marina cupped the sides of Chase’s face and moved her body up against his as they continued to kiss. She looked at him with a small smile on her face as he spoke again, she couldn’t help but find his nervous comments endearing. “You do this with all your friends? Now I don’t feel so special anyone.” she teased him before kissing down his jaw and to his neck.

This with Marina, it felt like Chases first time all over again. That same nervous excitement, it was an intangible high that he had completely forgotten. He had never done anything like this with anyone. Yeah he had kissed Chanel and ... Thalia. But this was so different. Chanel Hampton was beyond beautiful and very sexy, but that was very transactional. The only rush he had gotten from it was the feeling of getting under Gabrielle’s skin. This? With Marina? It was life giving. “Me and Jonah every Monday night mid clone wars” said Chase, a little out of breath as she worked her way down his neck, letting out a little laugh from the joke and because it tickled.

Marina was quickly becoming more comfortable with all of this. She always felt like she needed to be the best at everything she did, but being around Chase was a breath of fresh air. When she LARPed with him, she never had those worries and that sense of comfort was transferring over to this moment. “That’s some stiff competition.” she continued on with the joke. “But I don’t like to lose.” she told him before sitting up straight and removing her shirt. Marina couldn’t tell how far they were taking this, but her confidence was kicking in again and she didn’t want to hold back. She leaned forward once more to give him a hickey right on the side of his neck.

Chase was going to make a comment about how Jonah is a straight up stud, but when the girl took her shirt off his mind went blank. “Wow, wow” said the boy. He knew it was stupid to say, but he honestly couldn’t control his mouth when hers was on his neck. Chase was aware she was leaving a hickey, but he honestly was going to need the reminder that this wasn’t a dream. “Do you want to go to my room?” he asked as he put his lips on her neck, moving down slowly to the exposed skin.

- Fade to Black - 

[stompsite]

Autopsy: Mass Effect Andromeda

Games are like dogs. You want to call all of them “good boy” and pat them on the head and tell them how wonderful they are all the time, because everyone’s a lot happier when you do, but some games are bad dogs, and you’ve got to take them out back behind the barn and shoot them in the head.

Games are difficult to make. Unlike a film, where you’re photographing what already exists, or a book, where you only have to use words to make things happen, a game requires loads of people to work extremely hard to build an entire reality. As a developer, you have to create spaces. You have to create physics. You have to control lighting. When two objects touch each other, you, the developer, have to ensure that they don’t simply clip through each other. As a developer, you might slave away for years of your life, working impossible hours alongside dozens, even hundreds, of other people, to ship an entire hand-crafted universe.

Games are places you get lost in, and places you call home. Only in games can you travel places, talk to people, and live the impossible. It’s why you mow lawns in the summer, saving up enough cash to buy that new graphics card so you can run the biggest hit. It’s why you wait, shivering in the midnight cold, outside a tacky GameStop to pick up the sequel you’ve been waiting years for. It’s why you draw fanart and write fan fiction of your favorite characters. It’s why you part with your hard-earned cash. You want to go there. You want to live that. You want to experience something new.

Mass Effect Andromeda is a bad dog, and I hate that I have to say that. Hundreds of people  put five years of their lives into Andromeda, but the end result was a disappointment. Due to a lot of complicating factors, they weren’t able to make the game they wanted to make. There’s a tendency among gamers to criticize bad games harshly--when you’re eating ramen every day in college, you want an escape. You save up. You budget. If the game is bad, you have no recourse. Good reviews don’t necessarily mean you’re happy with what you got; after all, there’s often a big disconnect between reviewer tastes and player interests.

So it makes sense to lash out. It makes sense to want to have some fun at the expense of the game that caused you so much trouble. It makes sense to want to joke and mock and scream about just how bad it is, and how mad you are that you wasted your time on a game that the publisher spent years promising you was amazing as fuck.

The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games. It was so good, I found myself swimming around the game’s oceans, just trying to lose myself in the world, performing every task, no matter how repetitive or mundane, so I wouldn’t have to leave. I didn’t want it to be over. With Andromeda, I finally gave up on the side quests, focused on the critical path, and installed as quickly as I could after the credits rolled.

Developers have a tendency to be defensive, and it’s completely understandable. No one wants to feel like their time was wasted. The secrecy of development mean a lot of myths arise. Sometimes leadership makes poor decision, technology doesn’t work like it ought to, pressures to hit deadlines lead to compromised work. You, the individual developer, do not have nearly as much power to make or break a game as players think you do. It’s a miracle any game gets made. Even something like “opening a door” is incredibly complex. And there’s no guidebook, no science behind it, no easy way to simply have an idea and make it work.

I say all this because I want set the ground rules. We’re here to talk about why a game didn’t work. We’re not here to vent our frustrations, as justifiable as that may be, and we’re not here to complain about the developers. It’s human nature to want to blame someone for something bad, and it’s just as human to want to avoid the blame. I’m going to avoid human nature, cut through the bullshit entirely, and try to diagnose the product.

Andromeda had a metascore of 72. It sold so poorly that it went on sale today for $15--that’s 75% off in less than six months after its release, something that only happens for games that sell poorly. If you’re one of the two people I know who loved the game, I’m not asking you to stop loving it, but I am asking you to acknowledge that the game didn’t work for most people. I think we ought to find out why.

This is not a review, this is an autopsy. I am not here to tell you whether or not you should buy the game. I’m here to explore why it failed. In order to be clear and informative, I’m working on the assumption you haven’t played the game, but I won’t be avoiding spoilers either.

So, now that we’ve set the stage, let’s look at the game.

1. Narrative

Mass Effect Andromeda is a clean break from the Mass Effect series. There’s some overlap in the lore--little references here and there--but for the most part, it’s completely its own thing. You, a human, and a bunch of aliens from the Milky Way have flown to the Andromeda galaxy in search of a new home. It took 600 years for your ships to get there.

Somehow, the Andromeda Initiative--that’s the organization running everything--had the ability to see what the Andromeda galaxy looked like at that point in time, despite the fact that light takes about two million years to travel between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. At some point between the time you set off and the time you got there, a catastrophe occurred, and some weird, uh… like… energy coral spread throughout space.

On one hand, it’s sci-fi, so we don’t need everything to be perfect. On the other hand, Mass Effect has always leaned a bit more towards hard sci-fi than most games. They acknowledge relativity frequently throughout the series--ships can’t travel between worlds without using these big ‘mass relays’ that were seeded throughout the galaxy millions of years before the story starts. Bioware created an element, Element Zero, to explain how how a lot of the tech in their universe functions. It was internally consistent.

Andromeda suddenly decides that ships can fly at something like 4200 times the speed of light, we can see a galaxy in real-time somehow (but only looked once), but we can’t use quantum entanglement to communicate with Earth any more, even though that’s a technology that’s been in the series since the first game. Andromeda breaks a lot of the series’ own rules to get to where it is.

This alone does not make Andromeda a bad game, but it does do a good job of illustrating a big problem: everything feels thoughtless. I’m not sure how a game spends five years in development and has a script that seems so… careless. Nothing in Andromeda feels logical or natural. In writing, there’s this idea called the ‘idiot ball.’ It comes from the writer’s room for The Simpsons, where one character would get to hold the ‘idiot ball’ one week, making bad choices that lead to the story’s drama. It works in a comedy. Not so much in a game that wants us to take its narrative seriously.

The idiot ball is why the crew of an Andromeda Initiative Ark, the Hyperion, wakes up next to a planet that wasn’t inhabited 600 years ago to discover that the planet is now uninhabitable and the aforementioned weird energy coral thing nearly destroys their ship.

Scientists are generally pretty careful. Don’t get me wrong, they take risks, and they occasionally do stupid things like licking test samples, but you’d think that the Andromeda Initiative might have done some recon first. Maybe, I don’t know, stopping just outside the galaxy, using their recon tech to see if anything had changed in six hundred years? Heck, why not stop outside the solar system to see if it had been colonized, or situations had changed? Of course they end up in a bad situation, because everyone in the game holds the idiot ball.

This isn’t a new problem for the series--remember when a giant robot attacked the Citadel and destroyed most of the Council fleet, and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, on the Citadel saw it and the robots murder lots of people… and then pretended the giant robot threat wasn’t real? Mass Effect, starting with 2, has always had stupid people making stupid decisions that make no logical sense.

But--and this is incredibly important--they still worked, because they created dramatic moments.

Drama is the tension created by the conflict between a character, their goal, and the thing keeping them from attaining that goal. It’s difficult in the best of conditions to maintain the right amount of tension; a player who is constantly being told they’re the savior of the universe while only being tasked with hunting for wolf pelts is going to feel that the experience doesn’t match the premise. Great drama has stakes that feel important and make sense. Characters who constantly make poor decisions lose sympathy, which reduces dramatic tension, and we, the audience, stop caring.

The Council’s ignorance in Mass Effect 2 is awful writing, which isn’t surprising, since the entire game is a terribly-written mess. But at least it rings true! We can believe the government would ignore an imminent threat to our lives (see: global warming), and it makes us feel like we want to take action. Mass Effect 2’s “Oh yeah? You don’t believe in an alien menace? Well, I’m gonna prove it to you!” is exactly what makes a game work, even if the setup is poorly done. As long as it delivers its dramatic payload, it works.

Andromeda has nothing like that. Everything is twee. There’s some guy on one planet, named The Charlatan, and it’s obvious who he is as soon as you meet him, even though he plays it coy. This Charlatan fellow vies for control over a tiny little spaceport on an uninhabitable planet. He’s trying to wrest control away from a forgettable evil space pirate lady who spouts cliche lines in the vein of “guards! Seize them!” I don’t remember why I cared. I can remember every quest, every reason for doing anything in the first Mass Effect (Saren bad, Protheans cryptic, learn more about protheans, find Saren’s base, interrogate Saren’s sidekick), but in Andromeda, uh…

Yeah. I just finished the game and I’ve forgotten why I did anything. This is because the game never did a good job of making me care about things. Don’t get me wrong, it had situations that I ought to care about, but it made the Bioware Mistake.

What’s the Bioware Mistake? Okay, imagine that some guy walks up to you and says “hey, it’s me, your brother! I’m being chased by ninja assassins, and I need your help!” You wouldn’t believe him. It’s a case of someone telling you that they’re important, rather than the person actually being important to you. I felt nothing saving the Earth. I felt a lot more when I lost Mordin Solus in Mass Effect 3. Bioware makes this mistake frequently in its A-plots, but it usually makes its character interactions matter so much more in the B-plots that we can overlook the main plot shortcomings.

Andromeda does the A-plot thing: everyone’s lives are at risk unless you, the single most important human in the story, save them all. It just forgets to do the B-plot thing. There are nice little conversations between characters on the ship and in your party, as you might expect, but conversations with the characters are a drag.

It’s a problem with the game’s dialog on the whole. When you talk to anyone, they… well, they remind me a lot of that great liartownusa photoshop of a fake Netflix movie, “The Malediction Prophecy.”

“It's been 3,000 years since the Malediction, the spirit-plague created by The Order, a fabled army of immortals seeking to unravel the genome of the were-shaman Erasmus Nugent, who seeks to rebuild La Cienega, a bio-weapon capable of stopping Honcho, the deathless vampire king who sseeks to conquer the Fontanelle, the mythical fortress of demon hybrid Gary Shadowburn, who seeks to unleash angel-killer Larry Wendigo Jr., who seeks to release the Bloodfroth, a terrifying evil that seeks ot return the world to darkness.”

People don’t talk like people talk. They talk like fanfiction writers write. Have you ever seen one of those cringe-inducing tumblr story ideas that is just so bad, because everyone’s got these cutesy nicknames and the premise is super goofy and very “I’ve only ever read YA fiction in my entire life”?

Andromeda’s like that. People talk weird. They say things like “excuse me, my face is tired,” and make jokes without charisma. I have this urge to be really critical of the writing team, because they had, I presume, five full years on this game, and they work at a company that is literally built to make story-driven games, and the end result is an experience worse than Dragon Age 2, a game that was rushed through development in 18 months.

I don’t know how this script made it through editing.

This is the kind of writing we tore apart in our sophomore screenwriting classes back in the day. I can understand narratives not working on a larger, more plot-based level, because that requires a lot of coordination between a lot of teams. But basic dialog? How is it so bad?

Seriously, what is this? How did someone write this scene and go “yeah, yeah, this is good stuff.” How did this make it past animators and editors and marketing? How did this scene make it into the final game?

When your father sacrifices his life for you in the opening of the game, bestowing his role as Most Important Person to you, a character, apparently his friend, demands answers. She looks like Marge in that episode of the Simpsons where Homer uses a shotgun to apply makeup to her face. She asks you “what happened?” Your character, for some unknown reason, replies “to who?” Addison responds “it’s ‘to whom, and your goddamn father.”

I cannot envision a world where someone would: A) not understand that The Most Important Guy’s Death is the topic, B) correct grammar, or C) say “your goddamn father” in that context. It reads like someone trying to write charming and badass, but the situation is “a dude we all care about just died.” It makes no sense. What emotion was the writing team striving for? Did the voice actor ever think to go “uh, this makes no sense”? What the hell happened? How did this make it into the game?

The game presents us with a myriad of unlikable characters who do nothing but screw things up--Tann, Addison, Kelly, and so on. I can understand that disaster can stress people, but I also know that, in the face of disaster, most animals, humans included, have a powerful tendency to stick together in order to face off against a greater threat. In the case of Andromeda, the vast majority of living beings you encounter in the game are Milky Way characters who chose to abandon the colony and become criminal scum in the process. That Sloane Kelly lady, whose name I only remember because I just looked it up? She was the chief security officer of the program. No one should be more highly vetted than she is, but no, after a few months, she cracks and starts a criminal empire.

Why is this story important? Game design is the art of getting players to perform specific tasks that bring about some form of emotional fulfillment. In other words, it’s about establishing motivation. When the premise is stupid, the stakes are meaningless, and the characters unbelievable, it’s hard to compel players to keep moving. What is there to enjoy? What do I gain by playing a game where everyone’s an idiot?

How does a game, from a studio known for its stories, suck this bad after five years of development time? How does that happen? I’m exasperated with the game. I feel insulted by the script. I genuinely want to know how this game got as far as it did, because so many core ideas feel rotten from the get-go.

2. Technology and Presentation

Much has been made of Andromeda’s many animation glitches and bugs.

So, uh, just watch this vid if you want to understand how the game ended up:

Personally, I struggle with Frostbite, as an engine. EA’s doubled down on it, pushing the tech across all their studios, and I think for the worse. It seems like EA’s development times have skyrocketed since switching from Unreal to Frostbite, and developers have complained at length about the engine. That Kotaku piece linked earlier indicated that wrestling with Frostbite was a big reason Andromeda took so long to develop.

On my computer, Frostbite games are among the buggiest, most unstable games I have. People complained about the load times in the Unity-powered ReCore, but I’ve yet to encounter a Frostbite game with shorter load times. It’s a big issue with the engine. The lighting seems to work really well in the hand of DICE artists, but nobody else seems to have the hang of it.

Suffice it to say, the technology has been called out by a lot of people by now. The animations--in a game that was in development for five years--look worse than they do in an Unreal Engine 3 game from last gen. From a technical perspective, Andromeda needed more time on the cooker. Maybe six months of crunch would have done it, but that team was crunching for a while as it was. The end result was a game that simply does not compete with any other AAA game on the market.

But then there’s the art.

Great fiction often relies on the power of its iconic imagery to engage the audience. Star Wars movies always feel like Star Wars movies. There’s nothing quite as distinctive as the Lord of the Rings movies. Studios like Bungie and Arkane thrive on creating visually distinct universes. Even Bioware’s first three Mass Effect games were fantastically realized.

Mass Effect Andromeda seems like generic sci-fi art you can find anywhere. The alien Kett have some really cool Geiger-influenced stuff, but I couldn’t begin to describe the other two alien species. One’s a robot race that has lots of squares and blocky shapes in their art design, and it feels like I’ve seen it a million times before. The other species, which looks like bad Farscape fan art, looks, uh… pretty normal. Nothing you haven’t seen before.

It’s all incredibly forgettable. If you played Dragon Age: Inquisition, then the vast desert worlds and limited selection of geographical oddities won’t surprise you. Seen the Giant’s Causeway? Someone at Bioware sure loves it. Hexagonal rock pillars are everywhere in Andromeda, some natural, some not.

Again, I don’t really understand how, in five years, the art design ends up looking like… well, this. You know how people made fun of the suit design in Bioware’s other sci-fi series, Anthem, for looking like the bad CG models you see on off-brand GPU boxes? Andromeda has the same problem. It’s weird going from a game like Destiny, where every location feels distinct and fresh, to Andromeda, where it feels like the art just doesn’t have any creativity put into it.

And it sucks to say this.

It sucks to be so harsh. I wanted this game to be great. They were saying the right things about trying to nail that sense of exploration, and early plans for the game, as mentioned in the article I linked earlier, make it sound like they were going for a much more ambitious, exciting game, but they were hamstrung by the technology. That doesn’t explain the writing or the art design, though.

As some of you may know, I’m working on an indie game codenamed G1. I created it, wrote the plot, did most of the design work, stuff like that. Anyways, I wanted to create a really cool, distinct sci-fi universe that sticks in players minds as strongly as Star Wars or Half-Life does. Being a volunteer-only project for the time being (I’d love to pay people, but I am so poor I literally went homeless this summer and am now staying with some family members who are in danger of losing their home as well!), we’ve seen some interesting people come and go. Way back in the day, we had some guys who really wanted to change the game’s entire setting to a much less interesting, more generic environment. Later, we had some guys who were big fans of Ghost in the Shell and wanted to make our character art reflect that instead.

My point is, I get that a lot of people want to do what seems and feels familiar, but I think, for a big, AAA video game, distinctive is what people remember, especially in sci-fi and fantasy. Nothing looks like The Witcher 3, or Dishonored, or Halo, or the original Mass Effect trilogy, Half Life, or… well, you get the idea, right? Distinctiveness rules. Sameyness drools. And for whatever reason, Andromeda is the least-inspired AAA video game I’ve seen in a long, long time.

3. Design.

This, for me, is the big one. I can deal with bad storytelling in a game, because almost all game storytelling is garbage. I can put up with bad technology, because I grew up gaming on the PC, where modding could often turn my games into an unbearable slideshow, and sometimes, I’ve found games that were fantastic despite their poor presentation. But if the design is bad… then we got a problem.

And the design is bad.

As much as I want to speculate on why the design is bad, the truth is, nothing productive can come of that. I don’t know why it’s bad. I don’t know who made what designs, or how much the technology is to blame, or anything like that. All I know is that the design is bad, and I’m going to tell you what makes it bad, so if you decide to develop a game in the future, you at least can be armed with the knowledge of what Andromeda got wrong, and hopefully avoid it yourself.

If you asked me to use one sentence to describe Andromeda, I’d probably call it “a waste of time.”

I mean this literally. I’ve never played a game that wasted more time than Andromeda. Like… holy crap. So much time wasting. People complained so much about certain time-wasting aspects of the game, Bioware patched some of it out.

Here’s an example, and I’m going to italicize it so you can skip reading the whole thing if it gets too boring. Because it is super boring.

If you want to go explore the planet of Kadara, you have to go to the star system, which involves an unskippable cutscene as you ‘fly’ from where you are to where you were. Then, in the star system, you click on the planet, and you fly over to it. You fly too close to it, then zoom back out (this happens every time you move between planets in the game; I have no idea why). Then you rotate the planet on your display until you can select the city, which is on the opposite side of the planet from you.

Now click on that landing zone. You must then verify your loadout, because the game won’t let you change it without seeking out a loadout station, rather than just letting you open your menu and swap gear. You will be faced with an unskippable cutscene showing you landing on the planet. Then you will spawn somewhere that’s nowhere near where you want to go. Turn around. Click on the machine behind you, and select the “go to slums” option.

You will now be around 100 yards away from the slums and the mouth of the cave. Run out of the cave. It’s a big, empty field, so this takes like 20 seconds to do. Jump over the fence. Run another 100 yards or so to a big terminal that lets you summon your car. Congratulations, you have finally spawned. Now spend ten minutes driving wherever you need to be around a planet that’s a pain to drive around.

Every planet is this bad. You’d think they might let you spawn wherever you’d like, and maybe even set up a few different spawn zones on the planet, but no, that’s not how it works in Andromeda. It takes way too long to do basic things. Fast travel points aren’t in convenient spots, but there’s nothing interesting to find other than some crates with trash you might as well break down. Any time you spawn in a base, you’re usually quite far from the person you actually want to talk to. You’re going to spend a time walking across flat surfaces to get to where you need to go.

Contrast that with a game like Destiny 2, which has multiple spawns on each planet, and keeps the social areas with vendors nice and small, so there’s not a lot of down time simply getting between points. Usually, these spawns take advantage of the game’s joyful movement system, as opposed to the flat, empty space in an Andromeda.

There are other ways it wastes your time as well. Consider the UI, which decides to put everything in a list. I do mean everything. There are something like 10 distinct tiers of weapon, for every single weapon in the game. Like the Dhan? Cool, your crafting list will include the Dhan I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X, which is weird, because it’s a straight upgrade every time, so there’s literally no point to keep the Dhan I blueprint around when the Dhan X is craftable.

Chances are the Dhan X won’t be craftable, because there’s no reliable method of farming research (I did almost all the quests on all the planets and scanned as much as possible and couldn’t get beyond the Dhan VII), but still, it’s weird that they’d put literally all the guns and their ten variations in one gigantic list of the 20-30+ guns in the game. That’s like 300 something entries in your crafting menu, and you can’t sort between any of them.

Gun mods? Same thing. Rather than letting you, say, sort mods by location type (barrel, magazine, etc), you’re just stuck with a gigantic list, and for some reason, you have to carry them on you, even though the game only lets you swap them out at various stations. Wouldn’t it make more sense to store the mods in the stations themselves?

You end up wasting so much time just navigating menus, trying to find the one thing you want, or being forced into seeking out the physical locations in game that will let you access the menus, because you can’t swap items out at will… it’s frustrating.

There’s this weird fascination with diegetic UI in games, and it sucks. Seriously, there isn’t a single game that benefits from having you go somewhere to access basic menu options. I don’t want to have to go to a terminal to swap out my guns. I’d much rather just press a button, open a menu, and swap my loadout there. Destiny got it right. Fable 3 did not. For some reason, Mass Effect Andromeda wants to be like Fable 3, if Fable 3’s weird menu space had huge amounts of dead space where nothing interesting occurred between the menus.

It’s awful. And I don’t know how the game shipped like that.

But the worst thing of all is the mission design. If you've played Dragon Age: Inquisition, you know that the mission design was extremely repetitive. Every location you went to would have the same few basic missions, no matter where you went. It got predictable. Andromeda is the same way. Go to two big towers on the map, solve a puzzle, go to a vault, press a button, run to the end of the vault, voila, you’ve done it. Scan a bunch of corpses on a planet. Pick up some rocks and plants. Go find the glowing orbs on the planet, and you’ll be rewarded with a poorly written cutscene. Fight the exact same boss on every planet, but don’t look for the variety found in Inquisition, where every dragon had something unique going on that made it kinda cool.

On and on it goes. Every planet, the same thing. There’s a point in the game where you have to go to a place called Meridian, and you go to some ancient alien city, and it’s not actually Meridian, but you don’t know that until you get there. To proceed, you must go to two different towers, solve two puzzles, and then go to a third puzzle, and do a new thing. When you fight the final boss, you will have to engage two similar phases, followed by a third, more unique phase. Every single fucking quest in this game seems to be “do two things, and then the third thing will be different.”

Find out who did a thing? Talk to two colonist, then the third one will say something different. Get artifacts for a museum? Three things. Every quest. Every single quest. Do three things, then move on.

I don’t want to be the generic internet gamer type here and accuse the developers of laziness, but I can say that the end result feels lazy. I remember, years ago, a Bioware writer saying on their forums that Bioware had decided that three was the ‘perfect number’ or something, and so they did everything in threes. Well, sorry, dude, but you’re wrong. Doing everything with the rule of threes sucks.

You know why? Because it robs the player of dramatic tension. Yeah. It all comes back to that. When you teach your players that they’re going to do two meaningless things for every quest, the player stops giving a shit about your game. When you claim to be making a game about space exploration, but there’s settlers on every single planet you visit, and the quests are the same every time, it doesn’t feel like you’re exploring, it feels like you’re a space janitor.

The rule of three makes everything predictable. Great games don’t have it, unless they disguise it really well. Bad games wear it on their sleeves.

If players can predict what’s going to happen in your game, the tension is lost, and the desire to continue is dampened. Word of mouth dies, nobody recommends your game to their friends, and your sales dry up and you can’t even justify making DLC for your game.

Rule of three design is garbage. It is that simple. There is no case where it is great game design, ever.

I have no idea why Bioware decided to make a game with nothing but rule of three design, but they did. And even when they try to make it interesting, it’s not interesting. One quest had me go to a location, where a person told me “I need a thing,” giving me some absurd reason as to why I couldn’t help them another way. I went where they sent me. Turns out the thing wasn’t there. That’s two places where I wasted time not completing the objective. At the second place, I was told about some big bad gangster dude at the third place. I killed the big bad gangster dude without even realizing it at first. Got the part, went back to the first location, and ended the quest.

The stakes never matter in Andromeda. You’ll always be forced to do something pointless before you can do the thing that does matter. Once, I found a place on a map, but the door was locked, and I could not get in. I finally found the quest that let me in that location, but I had to go to someone’s office. I went there. I tried to interact with a crate that obviously had loot in it, but I could not. Scanning something else gave me a map marker to the original location. I returned there. The door was open. It wasn’t like I’d found a key or anything, the door was just open. Then a vendor from the other side of the map showed up. We had a conversation. The next quest step was to see her… all the way on the other side of the map. Couldn’t we have had the conversation while she was still at the first location? No? Anyways, it was only after this point that the chest became interactive, and I could sift through its contents.

Contrast this with Divinity: Original Sin 2, where my excessive exploration has got me into numerous areas I shouldn’t be in. Look at a game like Skyrim, where someone can say “yeah, take the reward, it’s in that box over there,” but you stole it hours ago while you were sneaking around.

The game forces you around empty and pointless maps for no real reason at all. At least Bethesda places its objectives far across the map as a means of taking you through interesting and distracting landscapes. That’s part of the reason that Bethesda is such a popular developer. Their worlds are easy to get lost in.

I’m not gonna lie, I’d love to sit down with some leads at Bioware and talk about how to make their games better, because right now, their games seem formulaic as hell--Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda are virtually identical games in their broad strokes, with the only real differences being the result of the setting.

If you’re a professional writer, you’re probably going “why is Doc using so many words to say things he could be saying much more simply?” Well, I’m being a dick and using this rhetorical device of wasting your time to give you the idea of what it’s like to play Andromeda.

It’s a waste of time, and it’s broken on the conceptual, writing, design, presentation, and technical levels. Nothing works here. Everything is broken. I don’t know how this game made it this far without being canceled. I don’t know how the writing standards for this game were so lax. I don’t know why anyone recommended this game to me, because it is quite literally the worst AAA gaming experience I have had in years.

Ultimately, it comes down to drama. Nothing Andromeda does is dramatic. It tries to use dramatic music and awful cliches to make things feel dramatic, but it doesn’t earn anything. The art isn’t inspiring, the stakes are rarely, if ever, high, the quests are so predictable that all tension is gone.

And it sucks that I feel this way. It especially sucks because the game actually starts out being interesting, making you curious, prompting you to ask lots of questions. By the second planet, you realize just how predictable it all is. By the end of the game, you’re wondering why you stuck with it this long. That 40-or-so gigs of hard drive space would be better off empty.

There are so many other problems with the game. Why do most mods either have negatives that outweigh their positives, or positives so miniscule there’s no point to using them? Does a 5% recharge timer in a 5 second timer really matter? Does a 3% damage boost on a gun with three shots have any perceivable effect? Nope. We could dive into the problems with dozens of quests, more specifics about the writing, and so many other things. There’s so little good to find in this game. It wastes all its time thinking it’s better than it is.

Drama is everything. Use your mechanics and your narrative to create drama. That’s what gets players playing and talking. That’s why they spend money. If you’re not going to do that, don’t bother making video games.

[drink-n-watch]

One thins that I really have to give Somali and the Forest Spirit is that it’s really beautiful. At the very least, I think so. And I have since the first episode. That means a lot to me. And a land of witches and magic is the perfect setting to exploit the strengths of such a talented team of artists.

I made it no secret that the last few episode (well mostly the last one) were not really my favourites. In fact’ I didn’t like them much. As a result, the magic wore off a little from this show for me. I wasn’t ready to drop it or anything but I wasn’t looking forward to it as much and I got a little bored.

In my head, I had decided that this was due to a sort of tonal mismatch between the anime only arc of Uzoi and Haitora and that things were going to get back on track this week. I was pretty disappointed to see these two front and centre in the opening scenes of the episode.

I should make it clear, I have nothing against the actual characters, I just didn’t like the narrative in this arc and the execution was hamfisted which is a pretty big departure from the first episodes.

The conclusion of Uzoi’s arc and the goodbye to these two characters was fine all things considered. Golem once again revealed his limited lifespan but since we have this type of reveal just about every week, it doesn’t quite pack the same punch. Particularly when talking to a man that’s likely to bite the dust in a week or so. But it was generally o.k. No annoyingly melodramatic moments, no ridiculous backstories.

Yet I was just sort of bored and I started to worry that maybe I was over it.  The desert setting didn’t help either as I found it much less visually interesting and monotone. Right after Golem and Somali part ways with Uzoi and Haitora, there’s a series of still images showing their travels and I was about to write that those were my favourite part of the episode. Those stills really were quite sweet and I wouldn’t mind having them framed on a wall.

See, aren’t those adorable. I didn’t manage to capture all of them but even just a few gives you a feel for the sequence.

Point is, it was a good sequence that reminded me of what I liked most about the show but it was also just a few still frames. That isn’t enough to hang your hopes on.

But the Somali and Golem arrive at the witches’ village and you know what witches mean: Magic! In mere seconds, it was all back. The spellbinding visuals that made my eyes want to seek out and savour every little inch of the screen. The light and cheerful atmosphere softly cradling foreshadowed bitterness. Lovely characters that interact calmly and naturally and make you want to talk to them as well.

This was it, the show I had so loved in the first episode. The latter half of episode 7 is possibly on of my favourite halves so far.

And it doesn’t hurt that Hazel’s character design was appealingly rubenesque, at least when compared to the average anime character.

In short, the witches horde knowledge from all over the world and keep it in a huge library. Somali and Golem hope to find some information on humans there. I notice that Somali seems much more interested in her roots than before. She knows nothing about humans and it seems to be making her feel disconnected and incomplete. She is taking the quest more seriously and personally than she has up until now.

Unfortunately, I did not manage to capture and screenshots of Golem’s Swiss army wings but they were impressive and terribly sad. The scene itself reminded me on the early Ancient Magus’ bride OVAs that had so enchanted me. There was a droplet of steam punk aesthetic in the way those things moved and were put together. The imagery was in fact blunt but when compared to the last few weeks, it seemed much more restrained.

I noticed that Golem didn’t hesitate to jump in when Somali seemed in danger. He very much leaped before he thought, even in a situation with a lot of unknowns that could easily have left him, Somali or both seriously injured. See, that’s the Golem I’ve come to know!

Although the book holding some potential answers was lost in a confrontation with a giant book eating fish. (It really was a fun second half). There is some hope as the mysterious head librarian might remember something from its pages. I’m certainly full of renewed hope for the next episode! I hope you liked it too.

Somali and The Forest Spirit Episode 7 – Return to Magic One thins that I really have to give Somali and the Forest Spirit is that it's really beautiful.

[panpanpanini]

Thoughts on MLP The Movie: Unpopular Opinion Edition

(I made a small post about this a few weeks ago, closer to when the movie premiered, but now that the hype has kind of fizzled out I thought I’d take the time to fuss more in-depth.)

So... I really thought the MLP movie was bad.  Terrible.  I had sooo many problems with it, so where do I start?

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!! 

My two biggest complaints are:

1) The movie didn’t hold up in terms of quality-- nevermind MLP expectations, it was just a bad movie in general.

2) Target demographic was noticeably shifted (downwards), especially when compared to the show.

Let me start by saying I’m not at all notorious even among friends for being this grouchy, self-elevated, overreaching entertainment critic/analyst.  I can enjoy most things at face value, ie. MLP.  I despise fanaticism (not fandom, fanaticism), and I’m long past the mindset that if I like something, I have to be blindly uncritical of it.  

Please also note that I have not read the movie prequels or supporting media, and I went into this movie with only limited knowledge of those materials.

*deep breath*

(1) So, starting from the top: “It was just a bad movie in general.”

Visually, the movie barely held up for me.  Anyone who’s even had a basic flash animation class knows about this thing called ‘motion tweening:’ it’s an optimized process for creating movement, with which you can set a path for objects to move and deform as opposed to painstakingly animating each frame one by one.  It’s a much quicker process, but the (immediate) result often looks way more mechanical than its traditional counterpart and can often come off as... soulless, or even lazy.  It was unbelievably easy to notice this throughout the movie and it was a huge distraction for me.

You can more easily see what I’m talking about here.

As a side note, I was never really on board with the ToonBoom style from the get-go; I eventually got used to it, but I was never able to totally immerse myself in it-- the whole tweening thing just cemented my dislike for it.  

Continuing my comments on style, the new character designs were interesting, but... so many of them felt too disconnected from established MLP universe conventions.   In fact, the only ones I could only get on board with were the hippogriffs (with a preference towards their seapony forms).  My biggest problem with them has to lay in the fact that nearly all of the new characters-- background and supporting-- were bipedal, when in-show nearly every new race introduced has been on all fours like our titular ponies... and to add insult to injury, so many of them had hands!  Their designs just felt too distant for me to connect that they live in the same world as our pony heroes.  

Note: I realize most of these creatures inhabit lands self-defined by Celestia to be ‘beyond Equestria,’ but that doesn’t dismiss that they still felt like they belonged in a movie not prefaced with ponies.

(Tempest is a little different.  She was visually darker than most ponies than we’re used to seeing, and to the surprise of nobody the poster child for edgy pony OCs, complete with the perfect voice.  Unfortunately, her intimidating demeanor was sometimes too much for me, as it’s much more *effectively* threatening than what we’re used to seeing in-show-- the closest being the Shadow Pony in the S7 finale.)

On a more positive note, I really enjoyed the new environments.  Just the fact that we had new locations to begin with was endearing already, but unlike a lot of the other stuff (see above) they were on par with what I was expecting from MLP on the big screen.  I seriously think the environments had more character/place in the MLP universe than most of the (we’ll call them NPCs) NPCs that occupied them.

Speaking of character, I can forego most of what I’ve talked about above in lieu of a good story (spoilers: the story wasn’t even all that fresh, it was predictable and full of classic kid’s movies tropes).  What I can’t ignore is blatant out-of-character writing.

“But Salt Mom, if you hate out-of-character writing, why are you still watching the show post-season five?” -Most Starlight Glimmer Opposition

As I mentioned at the start, I still enjoy the show at face value.  We’re seven seasons in; our beloved ponies have seen some noticeable character development over the years, which is what some people (perhaps those ruled by nostalgia for the earlier feel of the show) like to label ‘out-of-character writing.’  But the changes are justified by their development, which is why I don’t see it that way.  The movie, however, seems to completely forego character development and reduces them to (at times, vapid) caricatures of themselves and the out of character writing is now completely obvious to someone like me who doesn’t typically enjoy ponies through heavy analysis.  

Pinkie was by far the most glaring.  Pinkie is already one of my least favorite ponies, so maybe I’m biased here, but she was for the most part written as comic relief.  She wasn’t a pony Grubber-- she did play the part of ‘voice of reason’ in the climax with Twilight-- but she had an irritating tendency to completely downplay the seriousness of their situation, as they all did (she was just the most obvious, second being tied between Dash and Rarity).  Since when have they all been so naive?  Except for Twilight, all our heroes had minimal speaking roles (and even more damning, speaking roles with substance), most notably Fluttershy.   

Other problems included the princesses (once again) being victims of weak writing-- they’ve been proven to be capable of putting up more of a fight than we were shown, jeez!-- for the sake of putting the Mane 6 in the spotlight, probably something some people would call ‘forced progression’ (related: bad pacing).  

... Which leads into the movie’s general issue with logic.  

OH BOY.  I had so many issues with the movie logic.  As mentioned before... the ponies’ general naivety, their blatant disregard for the grim nature of their situation...  Capper betrays them, doesn’t explain his reasons, doesn’t get a proper chance to apologize, and our ponies are totally cool with him by the falling action sequence of the movie?  Celaeno’s crew (and similarly, the seaponies) is swayed into changing allegiances with a simple, three-minute song?  The Mane 6 add six or so characters to their posse and suddenly it’s possible to take back Canterlot, after being overwhelmed so easily in the beginning, when the princesses weren’t yet turned to stone?  Really?  How could Tempest-- a pony who comes off as smarter than the rest-- be so desperate to have her horn back that she couldn’t foresee the Storm King’s betrayal?   

*angry flailing motions*

In summary: the animation was mechanical, character designs suffered from a serious disconnect with established MLP canon, and everything from logic to pacing to character behavior suffered from bad, trope-y writing.

---

(2) “The movie demographic was shifted noticeably.”

(A lot of what I’ve addressed above can also be applied to this section of grievances.)

Very few times have I watched anything in general and walked away feeling like a real dumbass.  This was one of those times.  Everything from the humor, the songs, the logic (see above)... it all came together to make me feel dumbed down and like a huge moron for even buying a ticket.  Overall, it was extremely apparent to me that they’d knocked the target demographic down a few years, and that the movie was made with younger kids-- rather than families as a whole-- in mind.  

The brand of ‘humor’ (I use that term loosely) employed by the movie has to be the cringiest one in the book.  It was clear that it was the most vanilla one they could have gotten away with and I found myself rolling my eyes a lot because honestly, none of it was funny at all.  Grubber was purely on the screen for comic relief (we literally don’t see him again after the finale); Pinkie’s naivety was obviously supposed to be funny, as were Rarity’s trademark dramaticisms-- They got close sometimes to pulling a laugh, but then it just... fell short and wound up feeling more pathetic and forced than anything.  Was it even humorous to the kids? 

I laughed literally once during the entire movie, and that was at a very transparent marketing joke (perhaps not deliberate) made towards the beginning, after the Mane 6 fall from Canterlot and band together to decide how to proceed.  They end up saying something to the effect of “hungry, hungry, hippos” as they’re brainstorming and I chuckled because... Hungry Hungry Hippos is also a Hasbro property. 

I thought I might be able to find solace in some of the songs-- I’d heard SIA’s contribution in the days leading up to the movie and thoughts it was a decent tune-- but alas... They turned out to be completely vapid, with the sole exception of Tempest’s song.  Compared to the extensive library of songs we’ve gotten in the show, the lyrics and melodies we got in the movie were neither clever nor catchy (I recall thinking that rhyming schemes were nearly non-existent) and I found myself waiting with bated breath until they were over.  “Time to be awesome?”  Blegh.  Completely forgettable.

IDK.  Maybe I need to see the movie again to confirm my position with it; after all, I had already decided I didn’t really like it before the end of the first act.  For the better part of a year I couldn’t get away from the hype surrounding MLP The Movie, but when I finally saw it it didn’t deliver on the same level and ended up being a huge let-down.  It was lacking in a lot of things standard to its TV-counterpart, including what makes the in-show universe so appealing (lore, memorable songs, and magic), and if they end up putting out a sequel I hope it can bounce back in the same way EQG2 built on the shortcomings of its predecessor.  

That’s all I’ve got.  If you’ve managed to get this far, thanks for reading.  ✌

(Bonus) Things I would have liked to see: an entire pirate fleet (instead of a single crew); more Capper and time spent in Klugetown; more Storm King and the land he comes from; the hippogriffs actually doing something (isn’t Queen Novo supposed to be friends with Celestia?) to contribute to the finale, even if it was them swooping in just before the final fight.