#so at that point logic is beating down all of these very intentionally-designed characters just because it doesn't 'make sense'

[smile-files]

i think one of the main issues with me making a fursona or whatever is that my brain doesn't like things without some semblance of logic (like i can only suspend my disbelief so much)... like i can't be an anthropomorphic animal... because those don't exist in real life... and it wouldn't make sense for them to exist in real life... so then i either stick to something quote-unquote "more plausible" (eg. mothman, who's a cryptid), or formulate a whole new, fictional world within my head that anthropomorphic animals could feasibly exist in... so in the end i end up doing so much worldbuilding nonsense just to justify to myself why i'm this animal or whatever :'D

[mozillavulpix]

The Problem With This Plot

I’m not even anti-Hinanami or whatever, I just want to write down how the writing of Danganronpa 3 made everything feel way less interesting.

So I don’t even hate how they write Hajime and Chiaki in Danganronpa 3 Despair Arc. I’m mostly just really indifferent to it, because there’s honestly not much of substance to even get mad about. But it is a really great example of Danganronpa 3′s overall laziness and actively undermining the themes that sit so well in the first two games.

Basically, the way it goes, and the way that Chiaki and Hajime meet in general, is Chiaki is too busy playing a game that she doesn’t watch where she’s walking and accidentally bumps into Hajime next to the giant fountain. And she would have just moved on without taking much notice, but then Hajime just so happens to recognise what game she’s playing, which makes her get super-invested and wanting to see him again so they can play it together next time.

Now I have nothing wrong with the idea of Hajime being a gamer. Sure, it’s not like the game says he is, but the game doesn’t say he isn’t, either. The problem is, honestly, all these series of coincidences (Chiaki bumping into Hajime, Hajime happening to recognise the game and having experience in playing it, it all happening in front of the Atmospheric Fountain) are just way too contrived to the point it simply feels like generic anime tropes. And that’s...not Hajime.

That’s specifically Makoto.

The whole thing about Makoto and his talent as ‘Super High-School Level Luck’ is it feels kind of like a metafiction joke about how anime protagonists just seem to end up in ridiculous situations from plain bad luck (because it makes for good and funny plots).

But the whole thing about Hajime is he is very intentionally different to Makoto.

He doesn’t suffer from crazy coincidences, because he doesn’t have insane luck. He doesn’t have a talent at all.

The theme of his character is that even by comparison to the plain Makoto, Hajime is a real ‘ordinary person’. His design is plainer. He’s a bit less patient with the over-the-top personalities around him. And he didn’t end up in a killing game because of bad luck - he literally put himself in there because of the circumstances that only happened to him because he was completely ordinary. (It’s kind of complicated.)

But basically what I’m trying to say is Hajime isn’t the kind of guy who’d suddenly have a cute girl at school bump into him and just happen to have an obscure hobby he shares.

I think Hajime’s ‘ordinariness’ is a real crucial part to both his character and the themes of Danganronpa (especially 0, 2 and 3). The idea that I got was that not only is Hajime ordinary, he’s also easily replaceable. Sure, he may have admired Hope’s Peak Academy enough to be chosen for the Kamukura Project, but the very reason he was a lab rat is because it wasn’t a big deal to Hope’s Peak if the experiments failed. They could just try again with another applicant. For every one Hajime, there was another 2,356 Reserve Course students harboring similar feelings and willing to do similar things for the sake of a better future.

At the end of Danganronpa 2, he doesn’t beat Junko as super-talented genius god Izuru Kamukura. He stops her as Hajime Hinata, a completely ordinary guy just like you or me who had decided to believe in himself nonetheless.

But by Danganronpa 3 doing this plotline, by making Hajime happen to bump into Chiaki, happen to recognise his game, happen to be good enough to be her gaming partner, it doesn’t just make Hajime lucky or secretly talented, it makes him special. Special enough to be acknowledged by an Ultimate, out of everyone else. Special enough to be seen with a face while the rest of the Reserve Course are featureless blue shadows.

Basically, I think it really undermines the strength of Hajime’s character.

And don’t get me wrong, I know why they did it. The logic seems pretty simple, actually. Chiaki is a character who’s going to die as the catalyst to plunge her classmates into despair. Why not also give her a personal connection to Hajime to not only add to the soap-opera ironic tragedy, but also making her death be a catalyst for Izuru Kamukura also deciding to give a shit, as well?

I do think they could have done it in a really interesting way if they had more time to flesh it out, maybe. Putting in more of a reason as to why Chiaki didn’t talk to the other Reserve Course students, giving more reasons for their relationship to be strained than just Hajime thinking he’s not good enough for her with zero evidence shown to us. Maybe making the other members of Class 77 still treat him like he’s not as important to twist the nail in a bit more.

But as-is, the outcome we got trod on a lot of subtlety present in the original games just for the sake of more clear ‘iconic’ moments. It’s not bad, it’s just...terribly disappointing.

Which is what I can say for most of Danganronpa 3 as a whole.

[jaybug-jabbers]

Pokemon Prism Review

Well I’m currently finishing up the post-game content of Pokemon Prism.

Dang.

What a fun game.

(what follows is an informal review of the game. it got a little long, lol. it has some spoilers for the game, of course.)

My background

To give you a quick idea on my perspective on Pokemon, I grew up with Pokemon Red on the big grey brick Gameboy. After Red, I pretty much stopped playing for many years. My little brother had a Gameboy Color and had Silver, but I never got one myself. Wasn’t ‘til years and years later I found some emulators and played through several generations of Pokemon at once. So, Gen 2 really isn’t nostalgic for me. It’s close enough to Gen 1 to hit some nostalgia buttons, though. I am admittedly somebody who feels Gen 1 is the best gen of pokemon. I don’t care of people laugh or say I’m a genwunner for believing that. Gen 1, I feel, had the raw creativity and charm of the original idea, and it simply sets my imagination alight far more than any other gen does. Those simple pixel designs for those little virtual creatures just opened up a world in my mind. THAT SAID, I did play and very much enjoyed all the other gens of pokemon. I do not shun things just because they are new, and I am not one of those people who says the new designs of pokemon are stupid. I adore plenty of modern pokes.

Blend of Old and New

Anyway! Pokemon Prism, for those unaware, is a ROM hack of Pokemon Crystal. It essentially delivers a brand-new Pokemon adventure for the Generation 2 games. It’s a really neat blend of classic gameplay and modern features. You’ll find species from modern games all the way from Gen 3 (such as Breloom) to Gen 6 (such as Sylveon) but their sprites perfectly integrate them organically into the Gen 2 environment. You’ll get many modern pokemon moves and conviences but also plenty of throwbacks to older experiences. Miss crafting pokeballs from Apricorns? It’s there. Enjoy a simplier time when there weren’t any Natures? Well, there ya go. Really want to call Joey and talk to him about his Rattata? Well, err, no, you can’t do that, but let’s face it, the telephone feature was probably one of the most hated features in Gen 2. :P

But Prism isn’t simply about updating Gen 2 with some modern pokemon, moves and game features. Not in the slightest. It’s full of original mechanics and gameplay concepts, and has tons of original areas and an original storyline. Pokemon is known for experimenting with new gameplay ideas, so it’s really fitting and enjoyable to see these take shape as you play the game. Mining and crafting is introduced in the game, for example, and there are a couple new pokemon types. There’s even a few sections where you can play as your pokemon, Mystery-Dungeon style. Do all of these experiments with new concepts work? Probably not ALL of them– when you try something new, not all of them will work out as amazing as you’d hope. But a lot of them are welcome and fun additions. And the game is bristling with these new ideas! It’s a joy to see so much creativity and novelty.

Sprites

It should be noted the spritework for these games is A+ and utterly fantastic. There is perhaps 3 or 4 out of dozens and dozens of new sprites that I thought were a tad off? Seriously, they look AMAZING and their animations are perfect and they fit in with the style so well I found myself briefly getting confused as to which were originally from Gen 2 and which weren’t. Saying these sprites are good is no small thing, because they are such a vital part of the game. The backsprites were not shafted, either– something even Gamefreak often shortchanged on back then.

Music

It should also be noted the music in this game is really damn good and has a huge variety. There are tons of classic songs, classic remakes of modern pokemon songs, remixes, and original tunes. There were like one or two tunes I was a bit iffy on, but considering that’s only a few out of so many, that’s impressive. The new bike music and Surfing music are probably my favorites, and they are SO GOOD, and those are especially important ones to sound good, because you typically hear those a lot.

Writing

The writing in this game is fairly solid. Not A+, but still not bad. It suffers occasionally from slightly rough and confusing grammar, and the climax of the story is definitely anti-climactic and very weak. In addition, the post-game story basically does not exist, but that can be excused since most likely more story was planned but they ran out of time. (C&D)

I also felt that at times, the story felt out-of-place within the world of Pokemon and went “too far” in the darker direction. The entire prison sequence, especially, and the frequent mention of inmates being mistreated, pokemon being abused, etc., just felt a bit much. Because this game was largely concerned with replicating the feeling of a true Pokemon game (some hacks intentionally focus on making a story that would never take place in the Pokemon world, like zombie survival horror stories or whatnot), I find it relevant to mention that. All of that said, though, its darker departures were at least not *too* extreme. We don’t get the very jarring and frequent problem of some ROM hacks where it’s full of cussing all the time or intense violence. Compared to those it’s still relatively subtle. And while the NPCs in this game I felt were rude a little too often, (holy crap, it felt like 95% of Naljo and Rijon were crankyass people) I do appreciate the attempts at making people a little more “real” and not quite so freaking happy and idealized all the time like Nintendo tends to do. The dialogue often made me chuckle. It did go a tad overboard with that “realness” (because, hey, a variety of people exist in the world, you know, both rude and polite, optimistic and bitter) but oh well.

So yes, the writing had its drawbacks. But overall, it felt like it was progressing a pokemon-style narrative with some interesting ideas, and wasn’t simply a dreary rehash of the same basic tropes Pokemon has been regurgitating for ages now. I just think if the writing were cleaned up a bit– the grammar cleaned up in a few sections, the plot threads clarified a bit more, and the climax reworked– it could take a “decent story” and make it a great one. There’s definitely some neat ideas there, it just needs polish.

Maps

As to the different towns and locations in this game to explore, there are many. This game is ambitious AF. As I said, it’s FULL of new ideas, features, things to do, and places to explore. Naljo is the region you explore in the main game, but post-game you can wander a whole new region of Rijon (the featured location of an older ROM hack, Pokemon Brown) and beat all the gyms there. In addition, there’s a few towns in Kanto and Johto you can visit (I believe they originally planned to open up all of those regions eventually), AND one town in ANOTHER new region, Tunod. The game’s ambitiousness occasionally outpaces what it delivers, but that’s quite acceptable in my mind, since updates with additions to the game were originally planned. So, yes, there isn’t much to do post-game, but that’s largely because a lot of stuff was going to be added.

Back to the locations, though! It’s an important aspect of ROM hacks. Not everyone is good at designing a good town, with logical building placement, intuitive layouts, aesthetically pleasing locations, and interesting things to explore so it doesn’t feel totally plain and lacks character. I’m pleased to say this game does a great job of it, though. I should point out I have a terrible sense of direction and bad spatial memory. Despite that fact, I found myself remembering important features and where they were located– oh, the Move Deleter house is in Phacelia on the left, the bullet train is in Torenia– and that’s a good sign. Physical travel was not a sloggy chore, and it wasn’t bogged down in a confusing layout. Towns were memorable and fun to explore.

Pacing/Level Curve

Another thing ROM hacks can screw up, because it’s a tricky thing to do, is the challenge pacing. How many trainers? What teams do they have? What levels? Are the Gyms challenging without being insane? I actually Nuzlocked the main part of the game. In my opinion it was well-paced. There’s probably fewer trainers overall in this game than a standard Pokemon game. But it did not take me much extra grinding in the grass– and I was only doing that to play it safe for the Nuzlocke. And that’s GOOD. You shouldn’t have to do tons of grinding in the grass all the time just to have a reasonable shot at the gyms. Pokemon Uranium, sadly, seems to suffer from that issue. So, yeah, the pacing was very reasonable to me, good balance of fair and challenging.

… with one important note. Once you reach the League? Well, we could have used higher-levelled wild pokemon in the cave that served as the victory road. The highest in that cave was level 34 or so, and you were facing trainers with teams ~level 55. That’s a huge gap. Not everyone has the same play style. Some people like to do extra grinding before the Elites. Some people are Nuzlocking and may do extra grinding as a safety buffer. Some people might want to adjust their team & add a new pokemon to their team and need to grind them up from a lower level. For those cases, you NEED decently-levelled wild pokemon to grind on. So, yeah, I really do think the Seneca Caves wild pokemon need a level buff. It would also help with the level gap for the post-game. Trainers in Rijon are suddenly at levels 70ish and higher, and for some folks playing, that’s a bit much and they’d like to do a little grinding first.

Puzzles

This game has puzzles. You have been warned, lol. Apparently a lot of people found the number of puzzles a bit frustrating, or felt that some of them were excessively tricky or annoying. I find it very funny, because usually puzzles are my least favorite part of a pokemon game. But I really enjoyed the puzzles in Prism and didn’t find it annoying or offputting at all. I was sick with a cold through most of my play of Prism, and yet even in my dumb brainaddled state, I didn’t find the puzzles too difficult. I solved them all at a pretty average length of time, even the ones some people traditionally found a little unclear or confusing. (the Ruins puzzle often confuses folks, apparently, but I really didn’t have a problem with it at all.) I was briefly confused on one of the switch puzzles (and it contained an element of bad puzzle design imo– there’s a gap that you can leap down into when normally a gap of that size just gives the ‘run into wall’ sound and is not passable) but not for too long. Even the ice slide puzzles, which I traditionally hate with a passion, were not bad!

All except for one thing. The Magikarp Puzzle. Anyone who has played Prism knows what I mean. Haha, fuck that puzzle man. Even the creator of the ROM hack himself has acknowledged the puzzle was not great, heh. To be honest, I find it kind of hilarious, in a way, though. I mean, obviously it’s a nightmarishly difficult and frustrating puzzle and is intensely exhausting to look at, let alone try to solve. But it’s also kinda glorious in its demonicness. I didn’t spend too much time on it before just looking up a solution to it. It’s tedious and not fun at all, and hey, that’s OK, because even the creator realized that.

pls nerf magikarp

But seriously, outside of the magikarp puzzle, I didn’t just enjoy the puzzles in this game– I felt like they were an important part of what gave this game its character.

Fakemon

There are even a few fakemon in this game! Which I was excited to learn because I thought there weren’t! All of the fakemon are Legenderies. Unfortunately, I don’t care for most of their designs. Like, at all. I think Varaneous and Libabeel’s sprites look really, really shitty. They’re ugly and don’t match the style of Pokemon at all. This feels weird to say, since I love so much about this game, but man, there’s just no way around it, I hate ‘em. Everyone has their own tastes, of course. There’s a couple fakemon I have yet to capture– I’m finishing that up now and the very very last of the post-game. But one fakemon I did capture and ADORE LIKE NO OTHER is Phancero.

I happen to know about Phancero’s designer, because I saw their design years ago. They apparently were approached by the team and were asked permission for the use of the design, which is awesome. I won’t rant again about Phancero here because I already ranted about it before, and literally could keep ranting for pages. :P But yeah, it’s a totally creative and awesome pokemon both in idea and execution, and by FAR my favorite fakemon ever created.

Conclusion

This is the best ROM hack I have played in years and probably ever. I haven’t played hundreds of ROM hacks, but I have probably played dozens over the years. I think they are a creative and wonderful expression of the pokemon community, but let’s be honest. There’s a lot of really bad ROM hacks out there. There’s even more ROM hacks that have a lot of potential but are never finished or anywhere near completion. (And that’s perfectly understandable. People run out of time, they have real life get in the way, etc.) The fact that not only did a ROM hack of this caliber get made, but was 95-99% completed? Is fantastic. It was an intensely massive project and I cannot begin to imagine how much work it must have been. Pokemon games are normally developed by an entire team at a company, and folks are paid to do it. The comparatively small team of devs who made this game in their spare time and implemented these amazing things had to do it all on their own. It’s no wonder it took as long as it did for them to finish it; and the amount of effort SHOWS. There is so much loving attention to detail and polish to Prism. (I mean, yes, there’s still some bugs and the occasional unfinished bits, but of course there are, those were going to be finished, but then the C&D hit)

Most ROM hacks are just strong in a few areas, because it’s one or two people who have strengths or interests in a few things. So, you’ll play a hack with a really good story but terrible fakemon and mapping, or you’ll play a hack with fantastic designs of new areas, but no new story, etc. Prism kinda has everything, though. It really did feel like playing a new Gen 2 game.

(It’s now almost 11pm and oh god where did the time go. I have a problem with being concise. :P This was far longer than I intended but thank you if you’ve read this far!)

This is a repost on a new blog. The original post was on Jan 17, 2017.

[murasaki-murasame]

On the one hand, we’re getting Ilia in the next banner as part of a prize showcase that’d be worth summoning on just for the extra rewards alone, but on the OTHER hand, I didn’t manage to get Gala Zena from any of the free summons, and then the worms in my brain went brrr and I think we all know what happened next :)

Also now that I’ve had time to experience the 2.0 update for a week or so, I’ve got a lot of thoughts on that to talk about too

First of all, I got absolutely no 5-stars of any kind from my free summons on the gala banner we got before the Zena banner, so that sucked, lol. I was genuinely tempted to at least go for a pity-break, but I decided against it, since that banner in general was so unappealing to me.

Then for the Zena banner I at least managed to sit back and see how the free summons went, and I got Meene and Midgard Zero off of them, which was nice. But of course that meant that I didn’t get Gala Zena, and I just couldn’t hold myself back from chasing her, lol.

Thankfully I managed to get her after an extra 70-ish summons, so I didn’t have to spend THAT much to get her, but I almost immediately got a dupe Meene from my ticket summons so that kinda hurt, lmao. I also got a dupe Andromeda [who’s now at 3UB], and I think those are the only 5-stars that I’ve gotten from these last two banners. The 5-star dragon ticket from the log-in bonus gave me a dupe Gilgamesh [who’s at 1UB now], though.

In general my summons were a bit more barren than I’d like, but I can’t really complain since most of them were free summons, and I managed to clear out the whole Zena banner, lol.

If I remember right, I had about 270 summons before this, and now I’m at around 200. We’ve still got some anniversary related wyrmite coming in the near future, though, on top of the free summons, so I might still be able to spark on the mid-month gala remix banner if I want to. But I’d probably only do that if Gala Alex is featured and I don’t get her from my free summons. She’s now the only gala unit I’m missing, so she’s a pretty high-priority spark target.

Which is also a big part of why I’m not really that interested in summoning on the Ilia banner, and by extension why I decided to go ahead and chase Zena now. I mean, that was still a dumb decision since if I ended up needing to spark her, that would have drained my entire stash, but still, lol. Ilia’s non-limited, and she seems to be the only new unit on the next banner, so if anything I’d mainly just be summoning for the extra rewards. Also I don’t really have any high-priority dream summon candidates anymore, since I got I-Nefaria and S-Mikoto a little while ago, and I got Meene from this banner, so I could just dream summon Ilia later on anyway.

But mainly I’m just kinda salty about how she’s basically a direct improvement over the new Joe alt, lol. I was hoping she’d at least be flame or wind or something, or even have a different mode type, but she’s literally just Joe but better, which is lame, since I really like Joe, and even if I got Ilia I dunno if I’d want to replace him on my light team. So that on it’s own kinda deflated a lot of the hype I had about Ilia.

Anyway, at this point my main priorities are to be able to get Gala Alex whenever she’s available again, and to hopefully get any new gala dragons when they come out. I’d also really like to go into the New Years banner with a spark saved up, just in case. Even though that’d probably require skipping Christmas. So we’ll just see how that pans out, lol.

All that aside, the 2.0 update has been out for a while now, and boy has that sure changed how the game feels, lmao. I think it’s an almost entirely good update, but there’s a lot of awkward growing pains going on as we have to adjust to all these new and changed systems.

I know that the new wyrmprint system gives us more flexbility than the old one, and that it at least gives a reason to want to use a lot of the 4-star prints, but I really hope they implement some sort of preset option soon, because having to keep setting up 4-5 wyrmprints on every single character is really awful. I’m also not a huge fan of how expensive it is to get extra copies of prints, but I get the logic behind it, and thankfully event prints are extremely cheap to get extra copies of. Which at least means that new players can pretty easily get four copies of Plunder Pals before eventually getting specialized skill damage prints, but I feel kinda bad for anyone who didn’t get all the Megaman event prints, since they cover basically every single important wyrmprint ability, lol. 

Also it’s kinda awkward how the change to having every print just give one ability means that a lot of prints got indirectly nerfed, like Fires of Hate and Resounding Rendition, or Chocolatiers now just being 50% skill prep. Not to mention how so many prints are almost identical, down to the fact that even the affinity bonuses for a lot of similar prints aren’t even different either. So that’s kinda weird. But ultimately I do think this was a good change for the game. I’m also thinking now that one type of new endgame progression they might add eventually is 6-star wyrmprints, since it seems really noteworthy to me that the new wyrmprint UI is a 2x3 grid with only five slots taken up, and the other just being empty space. So they might introduce 6-star wyrmprints to fill in that extra slot later to add even more flexibility to the system.

Then there’s all the changes they made to the weapon system, which I think are gonna take a fair while for me to feel truly familiar with. There’s a whole lot to take in, and even though I think it’s more streamlined and easy to understand at the end of the day, it’s such a huge change from what i was used to that it just feels kinda overwhelming and strange. But I think the only part of it that genuinely feels bad is how it’s now WAY more expensive to fully unbind Agito weapons than it was before, since you have to now buy all of the last four unbind levels, like with HDT weapons, instead of it just being a one-time upgrade cost that gives you an automatically MUB tier 2 weapon if you had a MUB tier 1 weapon. So that really sucks, and I think it really screws over anyone who was holding off on upgrading their flame and shadow Agito weapons until this update hit, since now it’s extremely expensive compared to before. But apparently it’s an intentional design choice and not just an oversight, so I guess we’ll just have to deal with it. I'm also kinda annoyed at myself for dismantling all my 5t3s before this update hit, since now they’re actually worth getting for the weapon bonus system, but that’s not as big of a deal.

And on that note, I know lots of people don’t like how expensive the weapon bonus system is, but I’m just viewing it as a super long-term, end-game grind that intentionally gives relatively minor stat upgrades that nothing in the game is actually balanced around. It’s basically just an extension of the weapon dojo system for people who want to have something to keep grinding for once they hit the end-game.

I do really like how they condensed all the niche void weapons into just one weapon per element/type combo, though, and how their unique weapon abilities are now passively applied to all similar weapons once you unlock them. It gives you a reason to care about getting them, and grinding void battles in general, without forcing you to use super weak weapons if you need their unique ability. I dunno how much I’ll actually grind Void Agni after this, but it feels really nice to just have the scorching air res ability on my Agito/HDT weapons, lol. It’s also really nice that they let you do the same thing with the HDT Bane abilities, since that makes it way easier to grind them, and this update gives us a whole lot of reasons to want to get back into grinding HDTs again.

HDTs are just way easier now than they used to be, which is great. I think Cygames has accepted that they just weren’t very fun or well-designed as endgame co-op raid type content, and that people just want to be able to farm them solo for their drops. And this whole update makes it way easier to do that. On top of the earlier change to nerfing their opening blasts and reducing the damage that AI characters take, it feels like they only slightly raised their stats to compensate for the huge balance patch update, which makes them feel way easier to beat than they used to be. And they also reworked the fights a bit so that they actually have purple indicators for [most] of their attacks, and some mechanics like HBH’s volcanoes now actually work properly in solo, so that’s neat.

The introduction of solo versions of endgame fights is really nice. I think at this point it means that you can go through the entire game’s progression system without touching co-op [outside of events, I guess], which is nice, since I know it’s always been off-putting to a lot of people that co-op is basically mandatory for endgame content.

We also now have PVP [kind of], which is something I never expected, and I ALSO never expected that it’d actually be . . . really fun and well-balanced? It’s genuinely shocking to me that they actually managed to pull off PVP properly in this type of game, lol. This has always felt like the most anti-PVP gacha game out there, if that makes sense, so I never thought PVP would work, but the whole battle royale set-up actually works really well. Mainly because everyone works off of the same blank slate, and your account progress outside of the battle royale mode has absolutely no impact on how strong you are in PVP. It’s more of a skill-based thing, where you’d have an edge over newer players just because you’re more familiar with how to move around in the game and do stuff. There’s also the fact that there’s barely any difference in the points you get between first and last place, so you don’t feel like you’re missing out on much if you keep losing. And most of the stuff you spend points on are just cosmetic skins for the character you play as, but there’s also some genuinely good rewards like sunstones and testaments that you can fairly easily get even if you just grind for it by dying as fast as possible every round. I really hope they keep the rewards the same for each season, since having a fairly consistent supply of 2 sunstones and 4 of each testament every five weeks or so would be really good.

The whole balance patch also happened, and that ended up being a lot more of a big deal than I thought it might be. Even though they only tweaked everyone’s damage mods and not any of their abilities or anything, basically all of the buffs feel like what you’d expect from a mana spiral. A pretty huge amount of characters got their damage mods doubled or even tripled, and then there’s cases like Gala Euden who effectively had both of his skill’s damage mods quadrupled, lol. I was wondering if they might use this as a chance to effectively give mana spirals to old gala units without actually giving them mana spirals, and that’s basically how this went. On top of Gala Euden now being even stronger than before, Gala Mym got basically all of her damage mods doubled, along with a new strength buff on her S1. Gala Sarisse also got her S2 improved so that it always gives a team strength buff instead of alternating effects. And Gala Ranzal got what seems to be a really big improvement to his damage in general, along with his gauges now being easier to fill, so now I think he might at least be on the same level as Leif, if not stronger, which he really deserved.

They even buffed a lot of the weaker shadow units, which I wasn’t expecting, but I’m glad about it. Obviously Norwin was one of the first units whose changes I looked into, and I’m glad that he’s better than he used to be, but it’s kinda awkward to me that he has poison punisher effects on his skills now, when they didn’t change the fact that he has a blind punisher ability, and another ability based around inflicting blind. I think he still needs a proper spiral to fully morph him into actually being about poison, but he’s a lot better than he was before. They also buffed S-Norwin’s S2 for some reason, even though he was really good before this update, lol.

Vice also now has the honor of being the first unit to get straight up nerfed in the game’s history, but even with the nerf, I think he’s still one of the strongest 3-stars in the whole game, and he’s still worth investing in as a low-budget DPS option. I also actually like the fact that he inflicts poison on his S1 now, since it makes him a more consistent source of poison, but it also means he’ll be constantly afflicting poison, which might not always be good. I think it’s a good balance change, though. At the very least I’m able to easily solo eHJP in like one and a half minutes while still using him as my main DPS unit, while also having everyone equipped with gold fafnirs. So he definitely still does his job just fine.

Anyway, we’ve also got the whole second anniversary event going on, and it sure is a doozy. I think I liked Fractured Futures more, but this is still a good event in it’s own way. It’s not as intense or depressing, but I like the focus on lore and world-building, and it’s also just really refreshing to get an entire event where Zethia’s the protagonist for once.

A lot of what the event’s gone over has felt sort of predictable, but it’s still nice to get all this stuff explicitly spelled out, and it also means we get to see Ilia as a socially inept punk biker with a giant rifle, so that alone makes the entire event worth it, lmao. I figured we were gonna get something like this from all the increasing glimpses at how ancient civilization used to be technologically advanced, but seeing it play out like this is still really fun.

It’s also interesting to get the origin story for Morsayati. It’s not quite as interesting as I would have hoped, since it turns out that the Other is just Mordecai’s disembodied hatred, but still. Mordecai’s a surprisingly adorable character, and for a free unit he also feels surprisingly strong, which is nice. Although it does suck that he just straight up outclasses Hanabusa, lol.

One of the more surprising things about this event is that we’re also getting new world-building about the fairy kingdom, which seems to be setting up for how they teased at the main story moving over there soon. It’s pretty clear that sometime after chapter 18 they’re going to release Notte as a playable character [either as a welfare unit or as a gala unit], and I think Meene is kinda like the template for how they’ll handle Notte as a playable character.

We also now know that we’re getting a free character from chapter 16, and like most people I think it’s probably going to be Leonidas as a flame gun unit going by the preview from the digest, but it’s possible that he’ll be the next gala adventurer instead. I also think they might do something with Chelle soon, since I think they teased her showing up in chapter 17, and we also know that she’s apparently the one who introduced manacasters to the world.

The latest This Month post also talked about how we’re getting a new Halloween event for the middle of the month, which is kinda surprising. I think we’re still getting a Halloween event at the end of the month, so I wonder how this upcoming one will go. My current guess is that, since they didn’t say anything about the banner that’ll be run along with it, they’ll just be rerunning the old Halloween banner for it, and the event itself will just be based around the second year Halloween units, since they didn’t get their own event last year. At least that way we’d get two new Halloween events without having to deal with the stress of getting two differently entirely new Halloween banners in one month. I’m also hoping that they make the old Halloween units non-limited like they did with the Valentines ones.

They’re also apparently going another rerun of Accursed Archives [plus the Akasha event], which is kinda surprising, since I thought they’d just add it to the compendium. But at least this means we’ll get an extra set of rewards once they add it to the compendium later, lol.

We didn’t hear anything about a new Halloween event/banner at the end of the month, but we’re probably getting one, and unless Gala Alex gets featured before it, that’ll probably be what I save my next spark for. I’m not sure exactly how they’ll work it now, but I’m hoping that they’ll bundle the new Halloween units into a gala banner that also introduces a new gala dragon, since that’s also something I want to get, so it’d be nice to knock out two birds with one stone.

[zdbztumble]

“Kingdom Hearts II” revisited: Final Thoughts

There’s an obvious logic to having the Drive Form named Final appear so late in the game, but I think it’s introduced too late. By the time I got it to trigger, the Door had already appeared, and I’d decided that there really wasn’t much left in the other worlds of the game that I wanted to do. That meant there wasn’t much opportunity to play around with the Final Form, or level it up, outside of base grinding, something I always hate doing in any game. I do like Final Form, but it should have come earlier in the game to give the player the most value.

And speaking of final - that final boss is really...lame. As in, not fun to play and not satisfying on a story level. You can say a lot about every KH game that’s come after this - and I have, and will, at considerable length - but at least each of them presents a final boss who is a primary character of that game, in a recognizable form, with (somewhat) motivated stages of transformation. Here in KH II, we have to fight buildings, blasters, reactor cores, those bomb things from the Gummi levels (which, I admit, I appreciated - bringing those into the main gameplay), the armored figure in a chair twice, and a dragon-like mecha before we finally get a shot at Xemnas as we know him (in fabulous zebra robes), in a battle full of reaction commands and triggers that seem intentionally designed to make Riku look like a badass at Sora’s expense.

None of these stages are all that hard IMO, nor are any of them that engaging. The brief section where you play as Riku is a low point for me, due to his limited moveset and trouble navigating the space. I’m not opposed to alternating which character you play as during a final boss, but the execution of the idea here is terrible. Denying any role in the final battle to Kairi and King Mickey is a bigger problem, and I actually refused to have Riku in my party until required to because of that. I’m convinced the staff behind this game want players to use him, but I say - if you’re going to ignore every possible opportunity you give yourselves to have the Destiny Islands trio together in a party, then I’m not going to play with your Creators’ Pet. (And he is exactly that. I may have softened on Riku over the years, but he - and Axel, and half the Organization - are textbook examples of a creative team letting their fondness for characters supersede what’s actually best for them in a narrative.)

Of course, the battle itself isn’t all there is to the finale, and there’s more right than wrong to the story here. For one thing, Roxas and Namine get a nice denouement, one that makes it quite clear how they feel - and what they choose - about rejoining with their original selves. As someone who was bothered by the Riku/Namine business at the end of KH III, due to memories of this game, I can concede that there isn’t a whole lot to Roxas and Namine’s relationship here. Their scenes at the beginning are emotional, and their scene at the end is sweet, but their interaction is very limited. The mere fact that they are the Nobodies of Sora and Kairi does a lot of the heavy lifting for their relationship, and that bond is strong enough - and, at this point in the series, still written well enough - to sell the idea, but only just. I daresay this is something that Days could and should have addressed, but we’ll get to that another time.

The lead-up to the final boss provides nice moments between Kairi and Riku, Sora and Kairi, Sora and Riku, and one wonderful moment between the three of them. Setting aside the fact that the whole final boss should have been a second moment for the trio, and the game’s pandering to Riku’s prowess during the fight - the scenes between Sora and Riku after defeating Xemnas are quite well-done, and very effectively illustrate how their friendship has healed and reached a new equilibrium. Even better than that, however, is the game’s final scene. From Kairi’s letter reappearing as the key to the light and the enthusiastic greetings from the Disney cast, to the last flashes of Roxas and Namine and the final exchange between Sora and Kairi (which has some of the best voice acting those two VAs have done in the entire series), it’s an absolutely beautiful finale. The bittersweet, open, and uncertain finale of KH I is still the emotional high point of the series in my eyes, and I continue to applaud the game’s staff for daring such an ending; the way KH II ends is much closer to what one probably would have expected of KH I. But the happy ending of KH II is very much an earned one, and it’s an effective cap, not just on this game, but on everything done in the series up to that point. Kairi’s past remains mysterious and Maleficent is still unaccounted for, but the chain of tragedies set off by Ansem’s research is ended, the last traces of Xehanort are defeated, the worlds are at peace, and the three friends whose lives were torn apart are finally healed, whole, and together again, ready for a new adventure.

...Or, at least that’s what should have happened.

Back when I first played Kingdom Hearts II - fresh off of KH I, unaware that CoM even existed - it was, without question, my preferred game of the two. I would’ve even called it my favorite video game of all time (which wouldn’t have meant much - even now, it’s a very short list of video games that I’ve played from beginning to end.) I would’ve said the same after the second time I played through it, even as certain nagging doubts crept into my mind. Several years and the rest of the series later, I can’t give KH II that level of praise. 

Kingdom Hearts is a series where the first truly is the best, at least so far. Like CoM before it, KH II either introduces or continues trends and ideas that would bring later games down, and they all start to grate here. Elements like the secret reports and Summons lose their motivation in-story, and in the former case become a lazy way to toss out exposition that should have been part of the gameplay and cutscenes. For the first time, certain Disney worlds are saddled with stiff and uninspired re-tellings of their movie plots, devoid of room for Sora to make a difference. The pacing is uneven and it’s easy to lose sight of the main story during certain Disney worlds. Dialogue is often clunky, and fan service and pandering to Creators’ Pets hurts significant moments of the story. A lot of potential in the backstory of Roxas and the fate of Namine is left untapped. The trend of offering Kairi the will and ability to be more involved only to ignore the opportunity continues, Riku’s reintroduction to the group has issues, and Sora is caught in an awkward transition between the hero of the first came and the idiotic and ineffectual would-be messiah of later games.

With all of that said, though...I still love this game.

On paper, entries like Dream Drop Distance or KH III might’ve had greater ambition in the amount or kind of story they tried to tell, but in the actual presentation of the story, KH II is far more daring. From the prolonged opening sequence spent with a new character to the slow burn on the revelation of the Organization’s plans, KH II is quite unconventional in its story structure, and it often works to the game’s favor. Leaving so much of the year between KH I and II untold, even with CoM, is mystery done right, in a way that feels open to speculation and possibilities rather than heavy-handed teasing and baiting for spin-offs. This is the only time in the series where Maleficent and Pete make for an equal and compelling third party, and having that third force at play makes for another off-beat structural element that’s ultimately satisfying, even with the not-insignificant lag during the back half of the first Disney pass. The Organization being a collective villain rather than a single figure (even if Xemnas was its instigator) is a nice differentiation from KH I and CoM, and how pathetic the villains ultimately turn out to be gives them a nice degree of pathos - though that pathos isn’t carried too far.

While KH II is a few steps down the dark road, it hasn’t hit the abyss yet, and things that start to look problematic here are still strong overall. Some of the Disney worlds may have stiff movie recaps, but most are loose and accommodating to the larger KH story. Some may be filler, but most of them - on both passes - are at least technically connected to the main plot, and most of them - even the filler - in a meaningful and engaging way. The reports aren’t strongly motivated, but they’re not a complete crutch either. Roxas and Namine, if unfulfilled in their full potential, are still a force throughout the game (well, Roxas more than Namine) instead of being abruptly dropped.

Kairi’s denied obvious chances to get more involved, but she does get to strike out on her own and play a more active role in the story than she did in KH I. Riku’s pandered too a little too much once he reappears, but his role behind the scenes before then makes for a strong continuation of his redemption arc from R/R and is well-woven into the overall plot. Sora’s on the road to Flanderization, but he still has many of his better traits from the first game, including his greater competence at his missions and his believable, human reactions to the events around him. While he doesn’t have the arc of growth he had in KH I, or go through the deconstruction of CoM, he does have definite goals as an individual, and a pronounced sense of world-weariness as his chances of meeting those goals - finding Riku, going home, and seeing Kairi again - get further and further away.

Most of all, Kingdom Hearts II is still manageable in its story. The two sets of villains have relatively simple (but not simplistic) goals, and they’re revealed in a comprehensible fashion. More importantly, the logistics and pseudo-philosophical notions behind the villain plots don’t override the entire game, or pull focus from the protagonists. The heroes all have stories here, and if there’s an overarching theme to this game (not as clearly presented as the themes of KH I, mind you), it’s completion and resolution. If we may break them down:

Organization XIII, having made the foolish choice to discard their hearts, desperately try to escape the consequences of that choice through evil acts, only to fail and meet their ultimate end.

Roxas, who opens the game with mystery and confusion, comes to learn who he is and completes himself and Sora with his choice to surrender to his fate, something he grows to be at peace with.

Namine, having achieved a measure of peace with who and what she is, completes her tasks from the end of CoM and rejoins with her true self, after first saving Kairi and granting (most of) the heroes an escape from The World That Never Was.

Ansem the Wise, whose curiosity opened the door to everything that went wrong later, turns his back on base revenge and works to set the worlds to right, giving his own life in the process.

King Mickey, the hero who kept a deliberate watch on the state of the worlds and sounded the alert on the danger they were in, uncovers the truth about Organization XIII and plays his part to bring them to peace and finally makes it back home.

Donald and Goofy finally find their king.

Kairi, left alone with fading memories for a year, resolves to set out to find her friends, and not only achieves that goal, but facilitates their reconciliation and provides the means for them to finally return home.

Riku, after finding some measure of peace with himself in R/R, gives his all to see Sora restored and works to help him from the shadows, but fears to face his friends after his actions in KH I. When finally forced to, he learns that he hasn’t lost them, and the last of his self-doubt is discarded as he joins forces with Sora to finish off the last trace of Xehanort and make it back home.

And as for Sora, our chief hero: he is fully restored from his trials in CoM. Though eager - even desperate - to resume his search for Riku and return home, he doesn’t hesitate to start protecting the worlds again and finish off the remainder of the threat he first faced. While an authority figure presents that threat to him, Sora chooses to take it up, and carries it out without being directed or puppeted by Yen Sid at every step. The weight of the ordeals and his constant travels wear him down, the events of the year he lost (and Roxas’s role in those events) challenge him, and he does at one point refuse the call of the Keyblade (”Not yet! I have to find Kairi!”) Yet he persists in defending the worlds, even when it benefits the villains, and he fights his way to their castle to rescue and reunite with his friends. Having set out early in KH I to rescue those friends, he achieves this, finishes off the villain who turned his world upside down, and finally makes his way home to the island, the friends, and the girl he loves.

Kingdom Hearts II’s resolutions to all of these things is so final, and so satisfying, that the series since has had to ignore its finale, and a good chunk of its story, just to keep dragging things out. That’s to their detriment, but not KH II’s. While imperfect and uneven, it is a worthy sequel to the first game - the last such entry in the series - a lot of fun to play, and an ambitious and satisfying story.

And it has, to date, Kaoru Wada’s finest orchestration for the series. I absolutely adore his arrangement of Sanctuary from this game, and it makes me wish I’d kept up with the French horn every time I hear it.

[saltwater-monkey]

Gegen die Wand and the Metaphysics of Hope

Transience and Transcendence

“Are not our extreme possibilities of self-destruction inversely proportional to a certain positive power which ceases to be conscious of itself the moment it breaks its ties with being and challenges or problematizes it?” -Gabriel Marcel

           Gegen Die Wand/Head on (2004), in the masterful portrayal of Cahit and Sibel, has for me shrewdly personified the crux Marcel was trying to unravel in his essay of The Transcendent as Metaproblematic. We are made to confront ‘head on’ the boundaries one can go through in life using the narrative complexity of these two characters -leading to a realization that these boundaries can be authentically broken and transcended. Much like in the first scene of the movie where Cahit, a miserable 44-year-old man who has basically given up on life, intentionally rammed his car on a concrete wall to kill himself in belief that it will set himself free, we are constantly tormented by despair which makes it, for some of us, a very real temptation to finally put an end to it all. However, we learn as he learns in his life’s progression that what can truly set him (and by signification, us) free is love and hope and not death. The wall is passable. Death can be transcended. And freedom can be genuinely had.

           The journey towards this enlightenment is, nevertheless, not an easy one for the characters in this film as it is in our lives. Gegen die Wand, through the character of Sibel (another Turkish German who has resorted to suicide attempts to free herself) made us aware how dangerous our preconceived notions of freedom and happiness are if they’re not conscientiously examined. And as real as it gets, there is but a thin line between a freedom that nourishes self and freedom that destructs self. The same goes with happiness that’s filling and enduring and one that’s emptying and fleeting instead. For Sibel, freedom and, consequently, happiness from freedom is in being able to drink, do drugs, have sex and just enjoy life without any restrictions. We saw how that hedonistic and narcissistic notion of freedom has done nothing but trap her into a constant state of demoralizing emptiness. True freedom, then, cannot be the ability to do whatever, whenever and however you want without limitations -to live in indetermination and impulsivity just like Sibel-as that, counterintuitively, just makes you more unfree a person. Rather, true freedom is in being able to make something that is lasting and binding -a freedom that is actualized in the realm of committing with another person (making possible genuine happiness in life). This was ironically portrayed in the film where Sibel’s marriage to Cahit brought her the fulfilment of her notion of freedom only to find out later how destructive it really is.

But this is not to invalidate the kind of belief that Sibel has because internally, in her heart, she feels that this is how she can authentically live life. It goes without saying that we cannot also invalidate the struggles of people, dismiss them as something that could be easily remedied or solved if they act in this certain way, or reduce them as inherently disordered just so they could fit our own knowledge. By the same token, we cannot simply do away with people just because we cannot comprehend them. It is an imperative that we keep trying to understand the other person and, more than that, to go beyond our understanding of them -to always be bothered to love.

And surely, even in the most ironic way and between the most narcissistic and self-absorbed of people love can be found. Cahit and Sibel found love in each other and it set both of them genuinely free from their despair -or at least momentarily until we’re pulled back with the crazy turn of events when Cahit accidentally killed Niko with a blow in the face.

From there, we regress into an understanding of the world as absurd; of which we ask -Why now? Why does it have to happen when Sibel has finally realized that she loves Cahit? Why did that had to happen at all? Like with the many questions that we ask about life and about God -Why does terrorism exist? Why are there people who willingly, knowingly, and grievously hurt other people? If there really is a God, why does he let these things happen? Why does he let the best of us suffer irretrievably and unconceivably? In front of all the misfortunes and tragedies we experience in life one cannot help but question the logic and ‘intelligent’ design of our creation.

One may see that it is in fully wrapping ourselves around the reality of the absurdity of life that we are free from any conceit or delusion about living. We eventually understand that we can only have so much control in life. For some of us, this is a very harsh reality to deal with. It makes us weak and powerless. It makes us feel like there is no point in even trying as everything, in the long run, will eventually get absorbed by the futility of it all. It makes the idea of committing suicide -of leaving everything and everyone -a very real temptation.

And it is here when we are faced with the deepest and darkest of our demons that we can conceive an actual redeeming possibility existing in the sphere of our relationship with someone -of Hope. Where a negative freedom that can be accomplished by suicide can present itself as a very real possibility, there exists a positive one that can be accomplished in hoping (which is a very real possibility as well; not a sort of delusion or social construct that we just use as a coping device like some people would think).

We see how these two actualizations of freedom are explored in the film juxtaposingly and even ironically. Sibel, who was living outside the prison, was in actuality more imprisoned than Cahit was inside an actual prison. Sibel, who refused to hope but instead continued to live her life in the same perspective and understanding (or rather, misunderstanding) of freedom as can only be achieved in the negative, has relied on alcohol and drugs for immediate but temporary solace -to which she was bound to an almost complete destruction of herself leading to her being beat up and stabbed in the ally. Cahit, on the contrary, has remained in hope. He held on to the belief that one day he will be finally reunited with Sibel and that this hope will be enough for him to get himself through the shackles of his imprisonment -which in the latter part of the film has proved that, indeed, hope was enough. Hope had liberated him from his material condition and had renewed him as a person as he understands that it is no longer about himself only. He has to remain strong for Sibel, for the person that he loves. From here, we are led to a metaphysical understanding of hope which Marcel has phrased as “I hope in thee for us.” It is an authentic sense of faith that exists beyond the boundaries of knowledge and certainty but still in it we remain; of sheer trusting that there is another, and even more, an Other who will not fail us. Where suicide provides a finality, Hope offers a transcendence.

Now, to answer what seems for me to be the central question provoked by the film –can suicide, regardless of it being in the negative sense, still be an authentic freedom of oneself in response to despair? To which I answer a conditional yes and no. Yes, because, as we have sketched earlier, only in the authenticity of suicide as a real possibility will the authenticity of hoping also be a real possibility. In this sense, we can say that suicide can authentically eliminate despair. However, in a deeper reflection – if authentic freedom is primordial in our pursuit of meaning and happiness in our lives, isn’t it that suicide does not only eliminate despair but completely obliterate the space where both despair and happiness is possible? In this sense, we can understand that, no, suicide will not genuinely set us free -it can only offer us an easy escape; an easy way out of life.

Here, we are led to ask a more essential question about life –doesn’t it all come down to the question of what is the humane thing to do? Yes, because after all, we are humans. And we are to do what is more characteristic to being human; to being true to our humanity. Wouldn’t that be to hope, love, and remain in an openness to life?

[gyrlversion]

Stephen A. Smith and the Lure of Losing

SPN’s Stephen A. Smith. Photo: ESPN

If you will forgive this Deadspin founder who spent many years making giddy sport of the man, I have to admit: I have sort of come around on ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith. He’s a completely absurd character whose commentary is designed to be the precise opposite of enlightening, and that he has become the signature opinionator on everything for that network is a daily open admission that many of the once-grand journalistic ambitions of that network have been dropped entirely. (My friend and Deadspin successor Tommy Craggs once joked that Smith’s one talent was “the ability to be emphatic on command.”) If Stephen A. Smith is more powerful than ever, and he is, it’s definitely a sign that the early sports blogosphere lost the war.

All that said, I am not immune to the charms of this.

DAMMIT!!!!! Typical KNICKS!!!!! pic.twitter.com/rn0hDF0JdE

— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) May 15, 2019

It’s a video with everything, beginning with Smith simply screaming, “DAMMIT!!!! DAMMIT!!!” into his phone, seemingly from a moving vehicle, before putting his head in his hands and mournfully shaking it as if he’d just witnessed a cute animal being run over by a train. For reasons unbeknownst to any sentient person, this television professional, one of the highest-paid media personalities on the planet, has not provided any light for his close-up, giving the video a confusing Blair Witch feel. I might love the way he closes the video the most, wailing in his best Leave Britney Alone voice before nearly breaking down and moaning, in a startling Stephen A. admission, “I don’t even know what else to say.” He ultimately sticks the landing: “Hopefully I’ll calm down before First Take tomorrow,” bringing the whole thing home to nail the promo this was all about in the first place. Friends: Two million people have watched this video. I give up. Stephen A. wins. I accept it. In a sports-media world of disingenuous hucksters, blatant liars, and Barstool, this sort of lunatic performance art has a certain dignity to it. Good for you, Stephen A. If someone has to reign, it might as well be you.

Anyway, the reason for Smith’s kabuki rant is perhaps instructive, not just for Smith’s (mostly wrong, however amusing) histrionics but for what it means to be a sports fan in the year 2019. Smith — who, I feel obliged to point out, is a national commentator and therefore technically not supposed to be so directly aligned with one team (go Cardinals) — is bemoaning the fact that his beloved New York Knicks did not get the No. 1 overall seed in Tuesday night’s NBA Draft Lottery, dropping to the No. 3 pick, which will thus deny the Knicks the opportunity to draft all-world talent Zion Williamson, who will now play for the New Orleans Pelicans (whose disgruntled superstar, Anthony Davis, the Knicks had considered trading the rights to draft Williamson for in the first place). In watching it, you would have thought that obtaining the No. 1 pick was a layup for the Knicks that they nonetheless contrived to choke. “I knew it,” Smith says, almost tearing up. “They get close, they tease us, then they never get it done!” He then yelps a few times and punches something soft, hopefully fake leather car upholstery. “Typical Knicks!”

Of course, this is not what happened last night. The banshee-like shrieks of Knicks fans in the wake of the draft lottery, it must be said, made no logical sense. The draft-lottery balls did not fall against the Knicks; they fell for them. As Nate Silver noted, the Knicks had a 60 percent chance of ending up with the No. 4 or No. 5 picks, which means they beat the odds to pick as high as they did. (They had only a 14 percent chance of landing Zion with the No. 1 pick.) The two teams with the exact same odds to receive the No. 1 seed as the Knicks did, the Cavaliers and the Suns, will actually pick behind the Knicks with Nos. 5 and 6, respectively. The Hawks had nearly the same odds and ended up all the way back at No. 8. This draft is generally considered to have three superstar-level talents: Williamson (a step above the other two), Murray State’s Ja Morant, and Duke’s RJ Barrett. The odds were against the Knicks’ having the opportunity to land any of them. And yet now they’ll get one. The Knicks were lucky. The Knicks won.

But Smith is hardly alone in feeling like his team failed him again. “A ZION SHAME,” the Post blared, and the Daily News went with the always-clever “RIGHT IN THE BALLS: Knicks take one last kick from NBA gods as they draw No. 3 pick and miss out on Zion.” Part of this is simply life as a Knicks fan, which always begins and ends with the basic assumption that everything is going to be terrible and is only going to get worse with time and that your job as a Knicks fan is not to have hope but instead simply to sit there and take it. But the larger issue is the sense that, by having had such a terrible 2018–19 season, the team and the fan base somehow deserved the No. 1 pick. We have suffered so much. Give us what we have earned. The Knicks’ missing out on the top pick wasn’t a statistical probability; it was just another kick in the balls.

Thus has the dubious logic of tanking — the art of intentionally losing (or not trying to win) in order to increase the odds of receiving a high draft pick — gained respectability. Of the major American sports leagues, the NBA is the only one in which tanking is a proven strategy, and for good reason: In a sport where one franchise player can be the difference between a losing record and a championship, in many cases the most direct strategy, if you don’t have that player, is to try to lose enough games so you have a chance to get one. In an age where fans are more sympathetic to the perspective of team management than ever before, they’re likely to tolerate — even embrace — a strategy of losing to win later. You take your medicine for future reward. This wasn’t just the Knicks’ plan: It was the Suns’ and the Cavaliers’ and the Bulls’ and the Hawks’. Sow pain now; reap glory later. Fans of the Philadelphia 76ers famously turned this emotional-investment plan into a rallying cry: Trust the Process.

But sports can never fulfill all these promises: By design, only one team gets to win. Fans feel betrayed by ping-pong balls when they don’t get their Zion, but it’s their teams — and, really, themselves — that are truly responsible for the betrayal. We only get a few spins around the Sun in this life, after all, and sports are supposed to provide us with a distraction and escape from all the fear and suffering that surrounds us. You watch your games and if your team wins, you are happy; if it loses, you are sad. There is a simplicity in sports that is unavailable to us elsewhere. But tanking messes this whole process up. It tells us that losing is good and winning is bad. These games are finite; the opportunities to cheer your team to win are rarer than we realize. I humbly submit that if your first instinct when you turn on a Knicks game is “Please lose, Knicks, my favorite team,” I am not sure how much of a fan you really can be.

Tanking, to paraphrase an old David Mamet line, is like paying interest on a debt that never comes due. It allows teams like the Knicks to get away with bad management for years and call it Process. That yearslong 76ers tank? The one that much of the NBA is now modeling itself after? It has resulted in Joel Embiid, which is great, but they still lost in the second round of the playoffs and are now facing a potentially destructive offseason roster reckoning. And that’s the best-case scenario! The Cavaliers and Bulls and Suns made the same deal with their fans that the Knicks did and ended up even worse off. Losing doesn’t guarantee later winning. It just guarantees that you are currently watching your team lose.

The NBA has done what it can to minimize tanking, and the results of this year’s lottery are the proof. The Knicks’ horrible record, the worst in the sport, got them that 14 percent chance at the No. 1 pick, nothing more. But knowing that being the worst team gives you only a minuscule chance at the No. 1 pick and actually accepting it as empirical truth are two very different things, as witnessed by all the crying Knicks fans this morning. It is almost as if there might have been value in the Knicks’ not being as terrible as they could last year. But then again: What else were fans to do? If you don’t have hope in sports, what do you have?

So what did the Knicks ultimately get for their lost season? Furious fans, more pain, the mockery of the sport, and the continued sense that the universe is out to get them. And they were the lucky ones. Tanking doesn’t guarantee anything but wanting to beat up the upholstery and scream.

Will Leitch’s Games column runs weekly. Email him at will.leitch@nymag.com.

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The post Stephen A. Smith and the Lure of Losing appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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[alexanderwrites]

Twin Peaks - Season 3, Parts 1 & 2 Review (Mild Spoilers)

If Twin Peaks' original run taught us to expect the unexpected, the first two parts of Twin Peaks' 3rd season have taught us to expect the unprecedented. Because that's what the first two hours of this revival truly are: unprecedented television. You can look at this premiere and easily see fragments of Lynch's earlier work in film (Eraserhead is evoked pretty strongly by a new haunting addition to the Black Lodge), but seeing something this bold, frightening and esoteric on Television is unprecedented and completely thrillingly new.

Seasons 1 and 2 broke new ground for television, ushering in a new era of cinematic sensibilities and long-form storytelling in the medium. To be this groundbreaking again, Season 3 could not go back and lean on nostalgia – as pleasing as that might be, it wouldn't make the show feel vital. It had to break new ground again and that's exactly what it does over the course of two hours. However, it would be remiss not to mention that there is some nostalgia to be had, particularly in the revisiting of familiar faces. It's hard not to feel warmed and giddy at the site of Andy Brennan and Lucy Moran, who look almost identical 27 years on. It's hard not to feel a well of emotions on hearing that iconic guitar twang on the opening credits. Hell, I was even delighted to see Jerry Horne again (David Patrick Kelly has always been one of my favourite recurring Peaks actors – instantly watchable and full of charisma).

But though they are revisited, there is not much space in these episodes for “Hey, remember this!” nostalgia, and instead there is a focus on new storylines, characters and most strikingly, new locations. In fact, most of the runtime of these episodes is not spent in Twin Peaks. Whether it's the streets of Manhattan filmed gorgeously from above like they're glowing and pulsing, or an oppressive grey jail cell that feels a bit like hell, Lynch's mastery of set design and cinematography makes sure that every new location is bent and twisted into something unique and fitting within the show.

The storylines are all instantly engaging, thanks in part to Frost and Lynch's enigmatic scripting and some top-notch performances. I didn't think i'd find myself saying this, but Matthew Lillard is almost my favourite part of Twin Peaks. Really. In the screen-time he gets, he gives a performance that develops so quickly and fascinatingly that the most obvious comparison would be to Ray Wise's Leland Palmer, in its magnetism. There are hints into where his story will fit into the other strands of the story, particularly “Mr. C's” story, which sees the Black-Lodge escaped Cooper-gänger living out in the world and wreaking havoc. It's disturbing to say the least to see the excellent and nearly permanently likeable McLachlan in villainous mode, partly because he does it so effectively. It's incredible that the same actor that brings such immense warmth to Cooper can play what is ostensibly a demon so effectively. There is intentionally very little going on behind his eyes and that makes it almost hard to look at him. His story brings levels of violence that might trouble lovers of the original series, but which should be no surprise to fans of the underrated prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The darkness, violence and probing explorations of these episodes make it feel like this is what Frost and Lynch had wanted to do all along. It makes you wonder how the original run would've turned out if they'd both had complete creative control and no network censorship, and luckily, we now get to find out.

The free reigns they have is evident in another plot strand– the most mysterious and frightening of all, which involves a New York skyscraper, a glass box and the scariest, most desperately-fumble-for-the-remote-to-turn-the-volume-down moment in Twin Peaks, or Lynch's history. This plot, coupled with Lillard's story, give us the meat of a gripping mystery which, though totally unlike the central Who Killed Laura Palmer, is equally as engaging and thrilling in its own bizarre way. The nightmare imagery that pervades the glass box story (i've got to take a second to mention the incredible sound design by Lynch in these scenes – the throbbing, droning rumbles are absolutely dread inducing. Some have complained that there wasn't enough Badalamenti music in these episodes, and while admittedly there isn't much of it, lets instead admire what Lynch is doing with the sound here. Incredible stuff) is dotted throughout the show, particularly in one brief jail-cell set image that comes straight from one of Lynch's paintings and directly into your nightmares. It's simple, inexplicable, and for me, mouth-coveringly scary.

And amongst these stories, somehow it seems to be the Black Lodge based scenes that are the most easily explained. That might have something to do with the context, and the fact that in the Black Lodge, logic is non-existent. We almost don't need to understand what anyone in there is talking about. We can sense it instead. They are beautiful, deeply strange scenes that live up to the standard of those iconic dreams of Dale Cooper in Season 1. There might not be a dancing little man this time around, nor much dreamy jazz music, but it is just as hypnotising and gorgeously realised.

And then, just when we're exhausted and expecting the next sucker-punch moment, we're rewarded with a familiar, non terrifying sequence which takes us back to the bang bang bar and reunites us with some familiar faces, all while the Chromantics play their dreamy synth-pop version of a Twin Peaks song. It is almost a relief whenever we return to the town in these episodes, a brief respite to a place that, though foreboding, is at least familiar. And it's where the heart of the show still beats. These episodes might not have the quirkiness and lightness that the original run sometimes possessed (no pun intended), but there is warmth to be felt, particularly in the interactions with The Log Lady, Margaret Lanterman, and Hawk. She has always struck me as a poignant character, one who knows too much about the human condition and human behaviour, and this seems to leave her overwhelmed and desperate to help and advise. And seeing her talk to Hawk in her soft, gentle voice, but looking so frail (actress Catherine Coulson passed away in 2015), was the closest these episodes came to choking me up. Perhaps she points the way forward as she always did, and perhaps we should remember that the beating heart and light of the show is still there, but is overwhelmed by darkness and fear.

The darkness and fear is what these new episodes are about. They seem to be set in a world where the evil has escaped from The Black Lodge and runs amok. It is hard not to think ahead and have certain hopes for the series, and it will be hard for some more casual fans to not think back and remember what the show was and wish it was still that. But I think it is still that, but a new, modified version of that. The themes are all still there only they have been presented to us in a way that lacks the comforts of the original series. But when has Lynch ever cared about comfort? And since when have we ever wanted him to?

VERDICT

Uncomfortable and unprecedented, these new episodes take Peaks in a bold new direction few expected, but those wishing for something genuinely new, challenging and yes, groundbreaking, will be delighted by it. A mixture of old, comforting faces mixed with dangerous new avenues make the show feel as vital as ever. I cannot wait to see where this story leads, and we can rejoice now that the show we like is coming back in style. And it's absolutely brilliant.

[casualarsonist]

Nostalgia Killer - Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

I used to have a podcast, and this was a segment on it. I’m going to be extensively shitting on Uncharted 2, so this seems like the best banner under which to do that - at least this way you’ll know what you’re in for.

Before booting up Uncharted 2 (the remastered edition) I’d had delightful premonitions of what I was going to write here, largely based on my memories of my last two or three playthroughs of the game. I was keen to witness the visual upgrades of the PS4 version, of course, but I was also looking forward to talking about Among Thieves’ wholesale gameplay improvements over its predecessor, the improvements that solidified its place as one of the greatest adventure games in video game history. So I started the game up and worked my way through the iconic opening section as Nate wakes up in a crashed train dangling precariously over a cliff edge…and after I’d finished it I put the controller down and didn’t come back to it for six full months.

Something had changed. Not within the game itself - the remastered edition is exactly the same as the original, 1080p upgrade aside. And despite the accuracy of H. Bomberguy’s life-ruining video accusing the series of being completely devoid of freedom, offering little more than a collection of expensively animated tunnels that one is relentlessly forced down, it wasn’t this revelation that had shaken me either. No, something had changed in me - perhaps in my expectations, or in a misremembered idea of the game’s qualities, but this was not the enjoyable experience I recalled. Finishing Uncharted 2 this time around was a chore, and my nostalgic review became an article, and my rose-tinted memory darkened to a crimson scorn. Here I come kiddies, ready to shit on your memories again. This is Nostalgia Killer.

                                                                    ***

For the uninitiated, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is a 2008 third-person action-adventure game, and the second of Nathan Drake’s grand Playstation 3 adventures. To Naughty Dog’s credit, they worked hard to tighten up and polish a lot of the ideas and mechanics of the first game (reviewed here) with more enjoyable gunplay, more lifelike animation, and more varied and detailed environments. The narrative improvements are marked, and they’ve been particularly ambitious when it comes to the interactions between characters both in cutscenes and otherwise. But while the game succeeds in being a refinement in all these areas, there are still some serious growing pains evident in its design, especially ten years on from its release. I’ve said of Uncharted 4 that if you’ve played one Uncharted game, you’ve played them all, and it was here in Uncharted 2 where that adage begins, where all the familiar beats and tropes would be defined and repeated ad nauseam. Sadly, this isn’t a trend only visibly when viewing the series as a whole, but glaringly obvious within this game alone.

The story follows Drake as he’s dragged ‘back in’ to a life of roguish non-legal adventuring by a pair of shifty old colleagues - Harry Flynn and Chloe Frazer. Coaxed by the thrill of uncovering the location of Marco Polo’s lost fleet and the treasure it carried, Drake and Flynn infiltrate a Turkish museum to steal an artefact containing a map leading to their next location. Flynn double-crosses Drake in a stunning twist (sarcasm), and after serving three months in a Turkish prison, Drake is freed with the help of Chloe and his old friend Sully. Chloe reveals that she is a mole within the army of Serbian mercenary Zoran Lazarević - the man who hired Flynn, who subsequently hired Drake, to find the treasure. The two groups then cross paths back and forth for the next six hours as Drake invariably discovers the next clue to the location of the treasure, and the bad guys invariably show up immediately after to take it away from him.

And while I can understand what they’re trying to do with the format - that is, to make an interactive Indiana Jones film - it’s not long at all before the formula gets tired and very predictable, not the least because the first two acts are essentially one plot point repeated over and over again. See, the thing that Indiana Jones films had going for them was the fact that they’re only a couple of hours long, and one can pretty easily fill a couple of hours with exciting content, even if your bag of tricks is relative small. But when you scale the length of your film up to the equivalent of a quarter of a day whilst retaining the same limited bag of action movie cliches, soon you need to start repeating yourself - a tactic that offers diminishing returns when you’re relying not on depth of story or character to engage people, but on a short-lived dopamine rush inspired by seeing someone hanging off the edge of something precarious. Indiana Jones only fell of a bridge once, not once every ten minutes, and given the Uncharted series’ three types of gameplay (cover-based shooting, climbing, and ‘puzzles’), there simply aren’t enough ideas to sustain a six-hour run-time. Running and gunning - ON A TRAIN; running and gunning - UP A MOUNTAIN; running and gunning - IN A COLLAPSING BUILDING. It’s the same thing Call of Duty has done to death (running and gunning - IN THE FUTURE), and the reason why no-one buys those games for the single player any more. Change the location as many times as you want, but if the people and the situations in your story just repeat themselves again and again and again, you’re not building a game that someone can come back to repeatedly and get the same level of enjoyment out of.

But then again, perhaps that means that they’ve gotten it exactly right - the Transformers films aren’t made to be watched twenty times, they’re designed for maximum impact the first time around - and the first time round, Uncharted 2 is a blast. It’s also accessible, undemanding, and easy to pick up and play at pretty much any time. But much like the Transformers films, the bright lights and flashy colours are designed to distract you from the overwhelming emptiness at the game’s core. Who is this Serbian war criminal? Why do you care? Why is he seeking the Cintamani stone?Because ‘power’. How is it that his group keeps finding Drake at the exact point that he locates the next clue? Stop asking questions. And why do all these bad guys keep threatening to kill people and never actually do it? I said stop asking questions! And just how the fuck did he get hundreds of troops and weapons and vehicles and a fucking tank up to the peak of a forgotten, remote mountain buried deep in the Himala-AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Again, one can overlook this kind of narrative short-changing if you’re watching a dumb ninety minute film, but if you’re paying £50 on launch for a six-to-ten hour game, the sheen really starts to wear off when the boards you’re climbing up crumble from beneath you for the 400th time.

But hell, you say, this is just the Uncharted we know and love, right? Sure, it doesn’t have a lot going on, but what it does, it does really well. I imagine that just as many people will feel justified in loving the series for these reasons as much as I feel justified in complaining about them. But I can’t imagine anyone looking back fondly on that level with the tank that will one-shot kill you, or the bit in the mountain temple with the snipers and rocket launchers that will one-shot kill you, or when you’re on the train and have to fight the helicopter and the armoured shotgun troops that will one-shot kill you, or the final boss battle where you run around in circles so he doesn’t one-shot kill you. Because what you forget when you haven’t played the game for a while is that it’s filled with the most horrendous and incongruent difficulty spikes. Enemies take anywhere between one and a dozen hits to kill depending on when the game decides it’s going to change the rules, and while some times eliminating everyone you see will allow you to progress, other times hordes of belligerents will then suddenly spawn from nowhere just because. I’d say that it was dreadfully archaic design that comes from the days when monsters would literally wait in a closet until you stepped on a specific floor texture, except that even Doom kept its enemy health consistent.

I know that it’s ‘action movie logic’, but there’s something uniquely frustrating in Uncharted 2′s design when you’ve just spent fifteen minutes getting fucked over and over again by a handful of enemies, only to be blowing them away by the dozen five minutes later with the exact same weapon you’ve been using all along. Noticing the change just adds insult to injury, and all the while the game autosaves every minute because the developers know that if they made you restart from the beginning every time you died you’d throw your console into oncoming traffic

Which is a shame, because while it is indeed a far more polished release, Uncharted 2 still exhibits the same bad design habits that plague the first Uncharted game - design habits that I know Naughty Dog can leave, behind because I just replayed The Last Of Us, and that game is fucking superb. It still contains a lot of the cover-based shooting gameplay of Uncharted, but there’s something about the balance in difficulty, as well as the variation in weapons and enemy types that makes all the difference in the world - when the developers decide they need to change the pace they don’t change the rules of the game, instead they change the scenario, and this means that while each new set of circumstances might present a greater and greater challenge to the player, your skills at playing the game can improve to meet them as you become more acquainted with the game’s internal rulebook. You’re not coddled for hours before being thrown into an intentionally unwinnable battle, then coddled again, then punished, then coddled, etc, etc. The end result here is that Uncharted 2 often feels cheap in how it tries to challenge and thrill the player, and I can’t go and put myself back in the mindset of a person playing it for the first time in order to understand why it’s seen as something so perfect.

If you still love playing Uncharted 2, I’m not here to convince you that you’re wrong. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of writing this article is at all, other than to document the fact that I went back and played one of the most lauded video games in history expecting to write the glowing follow-up review to the first game that I’d promised to do so long ago, and found that without the initial thrill, and contemporary comparisons to make, a lot of its lustre is stripped away. Uncharted 2 is fine, and it’s certainly a hugely influential work, but it’s actually pretty fucking annoying in retrospect. And the fact that you can forget that so easily is perhaps the game’s greatest achievement.

[flicksnfilms]

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

As the Avengers and their allies have continued to protect the world from threats too large for any one hero to handle, a new danger has emerged from the cosmic shadows: Thanos. A despot of intergalactic infamy, his goal is to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of unimaginable power, and use them to inflict his twisted will on all of reality. Everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment - the fate of Earth and existence itself has never been more uncertain.

Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo Writer: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely (screenplay), Stan Lee, Jack Kirby (Marvel comics), Jim Starlin, George Pérez, Ron Lim (comic book story) Cast: fucking everybody IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Official Site

Watched: on 25 April, at the IMAX cinema, and 28 April, and 01 May

Reaction: ± Thanos demands my silence. I will say that i wasn’t half as prepared as i though i was. I'll edit this in like a week with my actual reaction since i assume by then it'll be far enough down any follower's (who hasn't watched - IN A WHOLE WEEK AFTER RELEASE!) dashboard to not be seen unless you're looking specifically at this blog.

Memorable aspect of the movie: + So many things. (Soon.)

Would I recommend it? > Fuck. Yes.

[EDIT:] So, reaction. After more than a month because i haven’t been on in a while, and under the cut because it’s hella long (like, super fucking long) and rambling in my geeky joy. :D It’s in 3 parts, from the three times i watched it.

[Take 1] ± It was an EXCELLENT, WELL BALANCED FILM. They have the Marvel Cinematic Universe formula down pat of comedy and drama, action and reaction. It’s so perfect and fun to watch. They were able to give the gigantic cast fairly equal screen time as well as balancing the personalities on screen. [See bonus content at the very end.]. That they split up the teams and threw them with other franchises was a great choice for both balance and dynamic. The visuals -- cinematography, CGI, costume, make up, set design --, as always, are a feast, with the coloration of the film striking a balance between all the different tones from each individual franchise. 

[Take 2] Memorable [aspect] moments of the movie: + D:  “I am Loki, Prince of Asgard... Odinson.” + XD “I’ll get you a metaphysical ham on rye.” + Doctor Strange and Tony’s interactions. It was interesting repartee and good chemistry. + Stark-raving Hazelnut and Hunka-Hulk-a Burning Love. I need to try these flavours, and also i need to know the flavours for every other Avenger. + <3 Tony brings the stupid flip phone around with him! AND there’s a message!! + XD “Squidward” + XD “Dude, you’re embarrassing me in front of the wizards.” + XD Bruce trying to beat Hulk out.  + “Wong, you’re invited to my wedding.” + XD The singing. Mean faces. “Language. ... Ever since you got a little sap.” OMG. You GOT a little sap. Oh, puberty. “ XD “He is not a dude. You are a dude. He is a man. A handsome, muscular man.” “It’s like a pirate made a baby with an angel.” “God man.” + XD Mantis’s attack form. + XD Quill’s jealousy and mimicking. + “All words are made up words.” Well, that’s actually a good point. + “Is there a 4 digit code? A birthday perhaps” Thor’s really gotten into Midgard culture eh? (Which is a good carry over from Thor: Ragnarok.) + XD Rabbit. Tree. Morons. Ah, Thor’s nicknames. It’s fun, cause he doesn’t mean them maliciously and he says them with such regal diction that they feel kind of acceptable as nicknames. + The intro sequences for the rogue Avengers. STEVE!!! <3 And Sam! And Nat!! The whole fight sequence too! + D:  “Where to, Cap?” “Home.” !!! (ESPECIALLY IF YOU REWATCH AGE OF ULTRON AND SEE HOW STEVE REACTS TO SAM SAYING “Home is home,” AT THE PARTY. TT_TT )  + “The kid watches more movies.” Well, that’s a good enough strategy. + “WHAT ARE THOSE??” The two teenagers use the same (meme) phrasing. + “Doctor. Do you concur?” + <3 “I’m not looking for forgiveness. And I’m way past asking permission. Earth just lost its best defender, so we’re here to fight. If you want to stand in our way, we’ll fight you too.” ICONIC. STEVEN FUCKING ROGERS, EVERYONE. + <3 The reunion greetings with Rhodey.” + XD “This is awkward.” + XD “It was an elective.” I NEED TO KNOW WHAT OTHER ELECTIVES THEY OFFERED ON ASGARD, PLEASE. + “I am Groot?” Evidently translates to: Are we there yet? The question of all kids in travelling vehicles everywhere. + D:  “What more do I have to lose?”  + Giant Peter Dinklage. So weird. + D:  Quill and Gamora. + Quill actually got Thanos’s approval. So like, thanks, dad? Hahaha. + “We don’t trade lives.”  + Nebula. What a badass. + XD “Blanket of death” + XD “Where is Gamora?” “Who is Gamora?” “Why is Gamora?” + “You’re from Earth?” “I’m from Missouri.” “Missouri is on Earth, dumbass.” + XD “Kick names. Take ass.” + Tony’s face. He’s so done with everyone. + Rhodey & Bruce. Ahh, what are friends for. XD + Steve & Bucky. Both of you are “hundred year old, semi-stable soldier”s. + Shuri! Wakanda! Man, i love this place. It’s great. + D:  Gamora!! + “Get out of the way, Sammy.” SAMMY! + Thor jumping onto and then sitting on the pod. What a cutie. + “It’ll kill you.” “Not if I don’t die.” “Yes, that’s what killing you means.” + XD “Magic! More magic! Magic with a kick!” + Bucky & Rocket + “New haircut?” “I see you’ve copied my beard.” This is SO MUCH better knowing they ad-libbed it.  + “This is my friend, Tree.” “I am Groot.” “I am Steve Rogers.” Of fucking course. Such a polite cutie pie, this guy. + XD Okoye’s reactions, and the “Why was she up there all this time?” + “She’s not alone.” FUCK YEAH. LET’S GO LADIES!! + “Oh, screw you, you big green asshole. I’ll do it myself.” Banner is super funny, situationally in this film. + “Tony Stark.” “You know me?” Hell yeah, you deserve to be acknowledged all over the universe, Tony. + The power of Doctor Strange and the mystic arts. SO COOL.  + Tony ran out of nanoparticles! O_o + D:  Wanda & Vision + “Steve?” TT___TT D: Bucky! Sam! My King! “Steady, Quill.” “I don’t wanna go!” TT__TT FEELS.

[Take 3] ± The familial hits get me more than the romantic ones. My reactions per viewing gave me three different experiences; It was personal, then intellectual, them empathic, in that order, for me. There are some moments i paid particular attention to, for a few characters:

Loki gets to come full circle with the “We have a Hulk,” line along with his redemption arc continuing on in from Thor: Ragnarok. Thor is an odd amalgamation of Shakespearean proper and slangy modern. “A little bit.” “So cool.” “I bid thee farewell and good luck, morons.” “Bye.”

The interplay between Tony and Strange. Excellent. It’s a real battle of egos at the beginning which turns to a mutual respect. Tony is a true leader. He intuits other people’s emotional reactions and attempts to keep them in line long enough to complete the goal.

A lot of shots in the Avengers compound are just Steve’s reactions. What bearing will this have? How does he feel about the cost?? Are they showing how tired he is from paying for his decisions?

The kid’s all heart. The first thing Peter does, once their plan goes awry, is try to save everyone even if he can’t remember their names. Okoye is a warrior to the core. She refuses to attach even these fuckers from behind. Bruce is such a goof and it shows now that he can’t disappear mid-scene. “Oh, you guys are so screwed!” And all the talking-to he gives Hulk.

Thanos’s voice really goes soft for Gamora, as a child, and the “I’m sorry, daughter.” “Tony Stark. ... You have my respect. I will wipe out half of humanity. I hope they remember you.” That’s amazing. The cost, the deterioration, is up to his arm and his neck. That’s an interesting detail which kind of implies that the Infinity Gauntlet (in the MCU at least) can only be used for something of this scale a few, if not only one, times.

I love that Marvel is really invested in antagonists that aren’t villains purely for the sake of being evil, but are fleshed out beings with emotions and purpose and passion, even if their goals are morally misguided. They have complex backstories and three dimensional personalities. Their goals are logical and intelligent, if a little beyond what’s reasonable. Their thought processes within the realm of imagination but a step too far for civilians and heroes.

The ending of this film is superb. I’ve seen many a peer say they think it’s too short or unresolved but i think they fail to appreciate the story. That sometimes the “good guys” don’t or can’t win (for now). That there are outcomes we’d rather not fathom and costs we’d rather not pay. But they happen. And the MCU gets this. That things happen and there’s a balance to it. There’s collateral and there’s gains and losses. And not just for the protagonist. (But for every character.)

Thanos achieved his goal, but at great personal cost. He won but lost all at once. Likewise, Killmonger achieved some of his goals but failed at others, died but did it with dignity in his eyes; Hela brought was released from her bonds and gained power but didn’t wind up ruling Asgard as it was swallowed by Ragnarok; Zemo sowed discord and ripped the Avengers apart from the inside, but was prevented from shooting himself and joining his family. 

[BONUS:] In some of my movie reviews i talk about the characters and their stories in relation to Joseph Campbell’s Heroic Monomyth. And, i dunno, i suppose it my complete emotional roller coaster watching this film along with all the geek out moments, i completely missed its inclusion in this, given that the beginning of the monomyth takes place before the beginning of this film. I was delighted to find it pointed out to me in this post by The Screen Junkies - The Dailies Facebook. It’s a really good breakdown of the way the writers (maybe intentionally) incorporated the Heroic Monomyth in Infinity War despite it featuring like 7000 characters and all of Hollywood. :)