#so far i'm LOVING the remake like... surprisingly more than the original. the way they r handling akane.. SO GOOD. SO TASTY

[tendoujo]

[joyfullywizard]

Hi! Really would like to know your opinions about Nosferatu remake considering everything?

Hey! Well, lol, it's all quite funny really in a way. Of course, I'm basing my opinions thus far on promotion materials only like trailers and stuff.

Cause  it seems that surprisingly remake is shaping up to be very tropey. Tropey in a sense that it uses lots of fanfic-ish tropes and  tries to insert some form of shipping  of Ellen  with Orlok. And since Nosferatu brand is very much built on “vampire brings plague which destroys city and woman sacrifices herself to kill him and stop him” mode, and it’s kinda a fixed point of 1922  Nosferatu movie  and its 1979 remake, it  seems the author of the 2024 remake had to work it backwords and make up the reason how Ellen, who still needs to sacrifice herself to Orlok and die, could still be into vampire. So, they gave her some death-wish, death-kink  in the remake or something based on the trailer. Which is quite interesting, because it basically  changes her whole sacrifice and death. Like in 1922 movie her sacrifice was a big act of heroism, and it was spelled in the movie   “A woman pure in heart, who will offer her blood freely to Nosferatu and will keep the vampire by her side until after the cock has crowed”.  Her entire deal  was  that she’s good and pure and sweet. Here Ellen is attracted to Death, dying, so on, it’s mentioned in the trailer that she has a secret and has her condition since childhood – so it’s not Orlok’s influence that made her suddenly into all that stuff, she seems to be like that since forever and Orlok is merely tapping into that. So when Ellen will be giving herself to vampire it will be  less about saving the city from plague and vampire who spreads it, while eating half of city’s population, like in 1922 original and its 1979 remake[though I suspect remake!Ellen must be also sad about all that stuff, cause they can’t make her into full blown psychopath] and more about her getting off and getting what she always actually wanted.   Something, something sexual liberation and fulfillment which she couldn’t get in life otherwise, but getting now   via having sexy times with vampire, even if she dies in the end in the process but it’s all fine, cause she was actually very  happy with Death and bonking vampire anyway, lol .

Speaking of which…another big glaring trope is that remake seems to be shitting on Ellen’s human life partner aka husband – Thomas. The trailer puts down Thomas and spells that he sucks in bedroom or something. Which is definitely a choice, but also kinda a huge cliché for vampire media since…a long time. It didn’t happen in 1922 movie or 1979 movie.  I mean such stuff is obviously done in order to push forward Ellen-Orlok combo, by introducing reasons why it’s actually understandable that Ellen falls for Orlok. Like yeah, he’s walking cadaver, ugly and smells like rotting meat and he brings Black Death and stuff, but hey, he fucks better than Thomas (metaphorically at least) and vibes with Ellen’s uber goth nature and he's basically the embodiment of Death, while Ellen is super into Death.   Extra predictions: while Thomas is supposed to be a good guy overall, based on 1922 movie and its 1979 remake, apart from dunking on Thomas’s sex performance remake probably will be undermining their relationships in other ways, by like showing that Thomas doesn’t  really understand Ellen, she’s too weird for him or  maybe even scares him at times, with her behavior,  so he wouldn’t trust her, etc.….Bonus predictions: at some  point in the remake Ellen-Orlok’s deal will be referred to as “dark romance” or “dark love” or something like that to drive a point across that Thomas not only lost by not killing vampire and not saving his wife’s life, but also by losing his wife emotionally and like sexually, because of  all that stuff.  TDRL: Thomas is getting cucked in more  ways than one by narrative  in the remake, it seems.

Another weird stuff I got  from the trailer is that Ellen seems to be not that smart in the remake actually. Like in 1922 original movie Ellen is the one who takes the lead, does enquiry on her own, reads occult literature and learns  about the way how to kill Orlok. Then she comes up with a plan all on her own and sets it in motion all by herself, inviting vampire in and keeping him occupied  with her blood until sun destroys him. 1979 remake only  built on that  - Ellen (named Lucy in remake) not only researched a way how to kill vampire all by herself, but also went and purified vampire’s coffins on her own, and even tried  to reason with the townspeople, who didn’t believe her  and local blink-and-you-miss-him Van Helsing, who was  absolutely useless,  then she  made up a plan and  invited vampire  in and kept  him with her until the sun destroyed him. Yet in the trailer of the remake we got a scene of local Van Helsing variant  character or someone like that giving Ellen a  lecturing pep talk about how only she could redeem the town. Eh, lol, what? OG Ellen didn’t need any  pep talk and lectures  from anyone, she was smart and capable and brave enough herself, both in original movie and its 1979 remake. If anyone, it would be Ellen who would be giving  lecturing pep talks to people -and she did in 1979 remake actually.  So, like, Ellen in the 2024 remake does not seem to be actually that brave – cause she’s already giddy with concept of Death, plus has some type of hysteria (?) and most likely would be not-so-secretly only happy to die because of her death-kink, her husband doesn’t seem enough for her, Ellen also doesn’t seem to be that smart either – cause she needs another character, a male character specifically, to give her lectures on the issue (???), like is remake giving the whole making up the plan how to kill Orlok to an old dude now (?!),  what was that about?

Again, I’m only speculating and throwing out suspicions- predictions on the wall, but so far the trailers gave me huge  tropey - cliché vibes from a lot of vampire media, but which previously definitely weren’t in Nosferatu movies.

[gillianthecat]

my thoughts on the GMMTV trailer drops: more or less in the order of my interest in them

Queer Love

Only Friends - I'm excited. I love mess and drama and entanglements. I'm into messy friend groups and people hurting each other because they're confused and have too many feelings and fears. The trailer also visually looked really good and professional. The show I'm looking forward to most.

Dangerous Romance: I am intrigued! I did not expect this of myself when starting this BL journey a few months ago, but apparently I am into high school romances. I like the enemies-to-lovers, spoiled rich boy x ambitious poor boy dynamic. I liked the feeling of this couple on screen together, and the style of humor. I'm kind of excited about this one actually. The trailer seemed very high quality - like it's edited from actual footage rather than just shot as promo - which a) makes me hopeful the series will actually come out and b) probably increases the show's appeal for me.

23.5 Degrees - I'm looking forward to this one too! I'm into crushes and pining, and popular one/wallflower romances, and as I said above, apparently also high school romance. I like that they're giving Milk and Love entirely new characters and not just another variation on Ink and Paa. The story seems sweet and simple from the trailer, and its hard for me to tell if it really is that basic or if it's just being presented like that for promo purposes, but either way I'm interested. And yay for more GL!

Hidden Agenda: I've seen people saying it looks derivative of 2gether 2 and some other shows, but I haven't watched any of those so it's not an issue for me. The trailer actually appeals, surprisingly. One character tricking another to seduce him could bother me but he seems so straightforward about his trickery, at least as shown in the trailer, that instead it seems interesting. I like crushes and "practice" kisses and inexperienced characters figuring themselves out. It doesn't seem too slapstick in its humor, which would be my main concern with something like this. And it looks a bit messy and apparently today I am very much in the mood for mess.

Last Twilight: The trailer looked very intriguing. I'm not sure how the story is going to handle a blind charter. It is in general a problem that most of the stories about disabled characters that get told are about the tragedy of them becoming disabled. I don't know how it is in Thailand, but in the USA we have way too many of these. That said, this show still intrigues. I'm not blind and perhaps I would feel differently about it if I was, but seeing characters have to adjust to a difficult major change in their life does make for a compelling story. The trailer looked expensive and well made, which always helps. I confess I don't find Jimmy as appealing as many people seem to -something about his voice and his face I find irrationally irritating. But that actually works well for the asshole character that he's playing here, so I think I would enjoy him in this. I like the asshole-for-asshole dynamic they start off with, and it makes it interesting to see how they will soften and fall in love. So I am looking forward to this one, but with some nervousness about how they'll manage it.

Cherry Magic remake: I am very curious about this one. I liked many things about the original Cherry Magic but was also frustrated by it, so the idea of another version does in general appeal to me. I've never seen Tay or New in anything (as far as I recall) so I have no thoughts on them in particular. I don't necessarily trust GMMTV to fix the things I didn't like, and I'm worried that they'll lean ever more into the slapstick stuff. Basically, what I want out of a new Cherry Magic is something that gets a little darker, a little messier, lets the Kurosawa character be more of a co-protagonist than a love interest, and digs a little deeper into this ideas of virginity and the Adachi character’s feelings around sex and desire. I could see GMMTV getting more into the stuff around sex and desire, but I don't nessarily have faith about the rest. The odd little interpretive dance piece they threw together at the last minute to replace the trailer and the conversation that was only 20% subtitled told me basically nothing. Hopefully they'll resolve their licensing issues soon and we'll get to see the actual trailer. In summary, I will likely watch this out of curiosity to see just how they decided to adapt this. (As with all of these, assuming it ever actually comes out.)

Our Skyy 2: I was so confused by this trailer until @heretherebedork kindly explained it's not actually a series, just a label for GMMTV's collection of "special episodes" of one-off sequels for other shows. I don't think I've seen any of their other special episodes so I don't know if I'd like them. Bad Buddy I'm probably interested in because I love Pran and Pat, and also their story wasn't one that felt like it needed to stay within the container of its series; it doesn't feel like it would take away from the original arc to find out what happens later. I confess I still haven't watched the final episode of The Eclipse (I had all these Feelings and kept putting it off and now it's become this big thing) so I don't even know yet if I want more of Akk and Ayan, but I probably do. I don't think I recognized any of the other couples, except Puen and Talay from Vice Versa, which I dropped at episode two.

Cooking Crush: I'm not sure what I think about this one. I have actually really liked Off and Gun in both things I've seen them in (Theory of Love and Not Me) but for some reason the idea of them in things never excites me. I also tend to be turned off by food themed shows. Part of it is my own current complicated relationship with cooking (and food) and part of it is there are just so fucking many of them and it somehow feels... lazy? derivative? I don't know what exactly. All these aesthetic shots of chopping/or food in a pan or glamorously plating a dish makes it feel like an instagram video. And I'm just feeling very over the metaphor of food as love. That being said, it doesn't necessarily look like Cooking Crush is going that route. The trailer does look very bare bones - like they just filmed the parts they needed to get investors, so I also feel like I really don't know what the show will turn out to be and am keeping an open mind.

A Boss and A Babe: I'm generally not a fan of office romances. Part of it is often when they get into the details of the business itself it annoys and bores me, but if they leave it too generic it makes the whole show feel too ungrounded. (Old Fashion Cupcake walked this line beautifully. Oddly enough Senpai, This Can't Be Love!, despite its many flaws, also did this pretty well.). Part of it is very much a me thing and about my complicated feelings around employment and office work.

And a third part, which crystalized for me while watching this trailer, is that while I do want shows about adults, watching an office filled with 22 year old looking actors, and a boss played by someone who looks like he could convincingly play a high school student in another show, somehow feels even less adult to me than university set and even high school set shows. It feels like a teenager's fantasy of adulthood, like the old CW type show about college students aimed at young teens. Something about that makes me feel even older and more out of touch than just watching university students. (That's another thing that was so wonderful about Old Fashion Cupcake, it was about actual grownups, played by actors who were visibly actual grownups.

All of that aside, while the power dynamics of a boss hitting on their subordinate often would bother me, the boss in this show seems so odd that it somehow doesn't here. Overall the show doesn't particularly appeal to me, but it seems weird enough that the tropes and humor style I normally dislike don't actually turn me off, and it's something I might want to watch when I'm in the mood for a certain type of ridiculousness.

Heterosexual Romance

Speaking of actual grown-ups, I think I will be giving Find Yourself a pass. Part of it is my general extreme pickiness with heterosexual romances, part of it is my recoiling from a woman who is actually slightly younger than I am being depicted as this super old character, and part of it is that the aggressive pursuit by the younger guy, which seems to be a staple of these noona romances, is really a turnoff for me. I am intrigued by older woman/younger man romance pairings as a concept, but this version does not appeal to me at all. I haven't looked into it much, I don't know if there are any existing ones that do. I would love a good one!

The Interest: It's a film, so I have no idea if it will ever be available internationally, but the trailer looked very moody and intriguing. Yet again, apparently I'm in the mood for messy and edgy. It appears it's going to be a het romance? I appreciate a trailer that gives me just enough to pique my curiosity without giving away the whole story.

Beauty Newbie: Love triangle(?) het romance that may also be an examination of lookism, beauty standards, and possibly even misogyny? The concept intrigues and could be wonderful if done the right way and very annoying/frustrating if not. The tone of the trailer did appeal though, so I may try it when it comes out, if I even remember its existence then.

Faceless Love: My same general feelings about office romances (especially with such young casts) and het romances apply, and this doesn't have enough in it that attracts me to overcome that. The leads both seem very appealing and I like their chemistry. I also like the male lead's suits. I wish they didn't give the female lead that generic looking make-over. sigh. My understanding of face-blindness was that it didn't stop people from recognizing facial expressions, but apparently that is true for some types of prosopagnosia. I can't tell how well they'll handle the depiction of a disabled character. Highly unlikely I will watch this, but you never know, I could change my mind when it comes out.

Loneliness Society: A While You Were Sleeping remake! Nostalgia alone is a big draw, but otherwise this trailer didn't actually appeal all that much, at least not enough to overcome my general reservations about het romance.

the one with no English title: Highly unlikely I will watch this. Extreme height differences and very baby faced female leads apparently fall outside of the narrow range of things that appeal to me in het romances these days. The story seems pretty bare bones as depicted in the trailer - a girl with a crush and maybe a love triangle? Even if it wasn't het, I don't know that I'd be that excited about it, but I might check it out anyways, if I even remember that it exists.

Not (Necessarily) Romance

Wednesday Club - The idea intrigues me, the trailer itself somehow didn't. Clearly I'm in the mood for messy friend groups because I’m into the drama of all these college kids creating a club based on feeling like outcasts and then creating these ridiculous unhealthy rules that guarantee drama. That said, the trailer made it seem like it wouldn't necessarily be well written. But it could also just be the way it was summarized and edited for a 3 minute pitch, so I will keep an open mind on this one too. I can't even tell if there will be any queer story lines in it, but either way I'm intrigued enough to check it out when/if it's released.

The Jungle: The trailer doesn't have subtitles yet so I'm confused about what's going on. Some sort of glamorous gang or something? It does not seem to be any sort of romance, queer or het, at least. That said, it looks very glamorous and "edgy" and dramatic and I am cautiously intrigued. As I said, I'm in the mood for mess. Plus Off and Nanon!

Enigma: The trailer did intrigue, even though I'm a bit of a scardy-cat about supernatural horror type stuff recently. I can't tell if it's going to be het romance or if that dude is going to be the bad guy, but the trailer did get me curious about him and this whole world.I may end up watching it.

Midnight Museum: The trader seems very much a promo sort of thing so I'm not drawing any conclusions from its vibe (which honestly feels pretty amateurish). I haven't been that into mystery type stuff recently (is it also kind of horror? supernatural? I'm not sure) but if I am in the mood if/when it actually comes out I might try it.

Double Savage: Mostly I was confused by the trailer. It neither appealed nor turned me off. Really I just have no thoughts on this one at all yet.

[uriel-darc-angel]

Final Fantasy VII: Remake

Been waiting for this game for a long time...Finally the time has come where we can get our hands on the remake of what is easily my favorite video game of all time...

I've been watching the development of this game for years...Optimism fighting internally with pessimism at how Square was going to handle this remake...

Would they rework everything so that it no longer felt like the original...?

Would they drastically change the story...?

Well now we know the answers to those two basic questions...

Yes, and yes...

However, those changes are not as terrible as I originally feared...Actually quite the opposite...

The story changes are actually quite nice...Building upon the original without drastically changing what we all remember from the original...They have fleshed out Midgar, Shinra, Avalanche, as well as every playable character and even the general npcs that wander the streets of Midgar...These changes have made your time in Midgar feel more like you're actually in a living, breathing location...The npcs feel like they have lives of their own and it can sometimes be difficult to watch how the actions you take affect their lives and the lives of their families and friends...These changes add a sense of gravity to everything you do...

The story changes are slightly more subtle...Expanding on the lore in many instances without seeming to sacrifice anything to make those changes...All the original story beats are here and have been expanded upon in many places allowing for better depth on the characters growth over the 40-50 hours of a casual playthrough...

The one main change I've noticed, and I'm going to try to word this explanation as carefully as I can to avoid spoilers, is that they've slightly tweaked a few things as though they were adapting the original story to fall more in line with some of the post game content such as movies...Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children seems to be a pretty strong influence on some of the biggest changes to the original story...

We'll have to wait and see how these changes affect the games yet to come...

Now let's move onto the elephant in the room...

The Combat System...

I have to say this is the thing that has caused me the most concern over the last few years as I watched this game come together...Moving from the classic turn based combat of the original to a real time 3rd person action style that looks and plays like a hybrid of FFXV and FFXIII...It actually works rather well...

You can easily not only switch directly between the character you are actively controlling but you can also give your other party members orders without switching directly to them...There is a surprising amount of depth to the combat here...

Switching between the characters is simple and necessary...You'll find yourself having a very bad time if you tunnel vision yourself on a single character...However if you switch often you're able to set up some really impressive damage bursts on the bosses if you're careful on the setup...

When you are digging through the very classic style menus, time doesn't stop completely, though it does slow down to an extremely slow rate which gives you plenty of time to think without lessening the tension of the moment...You can't open a menu and go make a sandwich but unlike XIII's system you have a few moments to consider your options...

There are problems with the AI though...They are slow...They build up their ATB gauges so painfully slowly that it can make some situations rather frustrating...Also the AI will ignore your targeting directions...

You can lock onto a target (creature, or even a particular body part of some of the bosses) by pressing in the right stick of the controller but the second you switch to another character the AI starts ignoring your locked target and will wander off and do their own thing even if that thing they're doing is completely useless...Once you switch back though you'll find that your original target is still locked onto...

It's very frustrating as many, if not all, times you are going to be wanting to Focus Fire either a particular mob or part on a boss...

Hopefully we see a fix to this in the future...If not a patch for this game, an update for the next...

Some of the encounters seem like they may not have been play tested also...Pretty much all the bosses are fantastic however some of the "trash" packs between them are very much not...Either you'll be ambushed by a pack of something that is FAR more difficult than anything you've had to deal with, or you'll encounter something with a mechanic that just feels as though it wasn't thought through very well (the whack-a-mole robots in Hojo's lab)...If you've played it, you know exactly what I'm talking about...

I haven't found a situation in this game that requires anything remotely looking like grinding...That's good and bad in different ways...Good in the fact that the game is paced well enough that you never really feel "stuck" and bad in that there really isn't a good place to actually grind...

The loss of random battles also shares this good/bad feeling...Good that you can actually see what you're about to pick a fight with so you can adjust your Materia loadout for the encounter, but bad in that there are quite a few times where it feels a bit bad to just be running so far from place to place without seeing anything...It can make Midgar feel a little empty...

The music...

Oh the music...Every song in this game is a love letter to the original...It varies so wildly from place to place and the songs seem to flow into each other as though the computer is remixing the music in real time as you move from place to place and encounter to encounter...To me, it's amazing...I love everything about the music here...

Overall the game is an amazing reimagining of the original...The characters all feel right, the locations are iconic and surprisingly faithfully built into a gorgeous 3d live environments for you to explore, and the story expands upon and fleshes out your time in Midgar in fantastic ways...

If you're a fan of the original don't let this remake pass you by...

If you're too young to have played the original then this is a great place to start...

This game is good...

Very good...

If Square/Enix cleans up the combat system and takes a bit more care of some of the unbalanced encounters, the following games in the FFVII series could easily end up being 9/10 or even 10/10 games moving forward...

As this game stands I have to give it a pretty solid 8.5/10...

Definitely a must play for anyone that enjoys JRPGs or even those who like 3rd person action games...

This game hits almost all the right notes for almost anyone that enjoys games...

Give it a shot...

I doubt you'll be disappointed...