#the sincere appreciation of a player and their narrative

[riacte]

i thiunk watching false in mcc is not just a habit but a whole lifestyle

[cerastes]

What are some of the greatest/most impressive feats of strength in Arknights’s story?

Taking the overall narrative and worldbuilding into account, I believe the most effective aspect of Arknights' narrative is that they managed to make Terra feel like a breathing, living world and setting instead of a vehicle for the point-of-view character to exist in and act upon. This is specially remarkable for a mobile gacha game, as settings in these tend to be exactly that sort of vehicle instead of world that give any hints of existing when outside the player's immediately vision. The way I like to think about it is, "if a tree fell somewhere in this setting while my intended point-of-view or self-insert character isn't there to see it, did it make a sound?”. In Arknights, Girls' Frontline and SIGH Epic Seven (credit where it's due), the answer feels like a yes to me, whereas in every other game of this kind, it feels like a no, if you know what I mean.

This is intrinsically tied to the cast of characters: It is an inevitability that games where a guiding principle is to release an immense number of characters throughout its lifetime will have characters that will never have any relevance whatsoever besides existing as a minor piece in the world, and Arknights is not immune to this. Even other works of a different base nature and with a much smaller casts will be victims to this: In Trails of Cold Steel, for example, you have a pretty big cast of playable characters, some of which are very well developed and have a lot of screentime and development, and others who are Gaius Worzel. However, this leads to two aspects of Arknights as a narrative and as a game telling a story and fleshing out a world that I appreciate:

The first is that those characters that do get used, are for the overwhelming majority fun and interesting to see and accompany throughout their narrative, and rarely for me, I include the usual point-of-view character in this, Doctor. I tend to have a pretty big dislike, if not disdain, for characters you're meant to self-insert into, I sincerely cannot stand them. Doctor definitely has a big of a self-insert nature to them, but there's also a lot of the Doctor that is actually pre-established, such as them being a weirdo, tending to be very effective but also causing troublesome aftermaths that others then have to clean up, and being particularly good at bonding with assassins and underworld types, among other things. More importantly, Doctor is not present in most side-stories. This is fantastic and leads to the second aspect I appreciate.

This second aspect is that the cast has legs to stand on without needing the protagonist or POV character. You'd think this is a problem mostly limited to gacha games due to their usually flimsy narratives and structures, right? Except, this is actually a huge problem in pretty much every corner of narrative art! I can think of countless comics, manga, cartoons, anime, light novels, novels, and much more, eastern and western, that just tend to have worlds and casts that center entirely around the protagonist, for the protagonist. Whether it be a US author writing out their post-apocalyptic hoarder fantasy or a Japanese author detailing the trials and tribulations of a relatable nobody that a myriad of girls want to have sex with, and even some other pieces of art perhaps not so comically easy to make fun of, it's a consistent aspect of them that the protagonist is the center of the universe, both in terms of events and what the rest of cast thinks about, talks about, and takes action upon. Obviously, this results, in my opinion, in weak worlds and weak casts that have no legs to stand on. I appreciate that even without Doctor around, Arknights does a good job of having protagonists of their own little stories in the side stories: Olivia Silence is a joy to follow when she takes the lead in a Rhine Lab story, Kroos has been one of my favorite characters to be able to experience events through with the Sui stories, Skadi and the Abyssal Hunters are exciting to watch in Abyssal Hunter stories, and the latest event as of the writing of this post filled me inspiration, seeing Reed star in a character piece that tells us more about someone so immensely reticent to open up. It's by having interesting world events occurring throughout Terra that don't have the input of Doctor, and thus lets us see more and more of this huge cast of characters taking the lead that I think is a fascinating experience for me as a reader that keeps things fresh. It's even allowed me to come to appreciate characters I initially didn't care about, such as Bagpipe and Magallan, and see, in most games of this nature, if I don't care about a character frame one, it's probably going to stay that way because, well, if I didn't care about what their limited assortment of pre-cooked lines had to sell me on, then I'm likely not going to care about that character likely not showing me a new aspect of themselves impactful enough to change my mind in an event they'll likely just be an accessory to.

It's upon this base that I think Arknights stays interesting and fresh: A solid foundation that I can agree with and that keeps things dynamic and interesting. Specific events and story beats that I think are interesting are a natural result of these baseline aspects, but it all traces back to the cradle, to these baseline aspects that facilitate those cool narratives in the first place.

[cjlinton]

📖🔮?

📖 My favorite class or playbook from a game. Since it’s my third time answering this one, I will finally give my easy / go-to answer, which is The Veteran from Wanderhome.

I’ve joked that this playbook is crafted in a lab for me specifically because it encapsulates the sort of character I love to play. I think, more subtly, the playbook thematizes trauma, violence, and complicity without reducing or fetishizing those experiences—something that is easy to do in a playbook or role mode, where a character/narrative is typified by that thing.

Everyone I have talked to who loves The Veteran playbook loves the sword and they are right to love the sword. I love fucking love the sword.

The introducing flavor text is fire but I also really appreciate how much of a story lives in each of the descriptors, a really great example of how giving less can open up such a world of possibilities.

The “When did you realize that I’m a good person?” question is also one of my all time favorite “Ask one to the right and one to the left" questions, although all of them in this playbook are so well-crafted.

Just a really damn good playbook! I think it is very unlikely I would ever pick a different playbook in Wanderhome.

🔮 One of my favorite memories playing a game by someone else. A few years ago, I played Sukeban Dracula by Weird Age Games (“a small side-scrolling-brawler-inspired RPG, designed to be run as a one-shot adventure”) and it was a blast. My character was a stereotypical bad boy/greaser who was secretly a huge nerd (riding his motorcycle off the roof but also quoting Star Wars in a pivotal moment of conflict, that sort of deal), and all of my fellow players similarly leaned into deeply affectionate and sincere portrayals of teenage cringe.

I don’t know if I can call out any specific moment, but it was a game where every single player was really present and high energy, and looking for places they could uplift other folks in the game. It’s a neat, smart RPG that does exactly what it says on the tin phenomenally well.

ask game to hype other people’s ttrpgs »

[magicweirdos]

I did this last year and everyone seemed to like it, so here’s my entirely unranked, incomplete, and uncategorized list of things that made me a better writer and storyteller in 2023:

- Across the Spider-Verse

A spider-man movie where the narrative is structured around Gwen Stacey is already genius, but when you take surrealist animation and the philosophical deconstruction of “Canon” into consideration… I can’t believe this movie exists.

- Kesha: Gaga Order

Kesha has always had an unhinged brilliance, but this is next level of both.

- Godzilla Minus One

Spectacle shouldn’t be what they remember from your story.

- Oppenheimer

I’m growing obsessed with the idea of a literary, poetic presentation of real lives. That’s what makes biopics fresh. (See also: VICE)

- The Adventure Zone: Steeplechase

When a storyteller uses any medium to reconcile complicated feelings about things they love, it’s the stuff of dreams. People sense it.

- They Cloned Tyrone

No one needs me to provide a Caucastic analysis of this movie, but I always appreciate when meta-aware stories use their meta-awareness to let characters break the tropes society builds for them.

- Lakota Nation vs. The United States

May be the perfect documentary. Gentle but searing imagery.

- Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine

I’m a James Webb Telescope groupie, and this is a celebration of its triumph that made me say “Maybe… maybe we’re exploring more than we give ourselves credit for.”

- Barbie

Goofy gleefulness and sincerity are really, really not that far apart from each other on the emotional spectrum.

- The Last of Us

The game is already my favorite story of all time, so I’m biased. But I can think of no higher form of art than presenting a character doing the wrong things for selfish reasons, but doing so in a way that makes you go “yeah, of course, I’d do the same thing.”

- Percy Jackson and the Olympians

We only have three episodes so far, but I’ve never seen ANY media for kids (even THAT one) that takes kids’ complicated emotions so seriously.

- Baldur’s Gate 3

For me as a DM and player, this game did that magical thing where it jumped mediums to give you the best experience both have to offer.

Honorable mentions:

- Leave the World Behind

- The Creator

- Super Mario Bros. Movie

- Asteroid City

[govindhtech]

“Tales of the Shire” by Weta Workshop and Private Division

Introduction

Based on Middle-earth created by J. R. Tolkien, a fanciful new game named “Tales of the Shire” Designed by Weta Workshop and released by Private Division, the game which centres on Hobbit life is an interesting and odd experience. This novel perspective to the Tolkien universe has drawn enthusiasts, especially those interested in the Shire’s pastoral side. We’ll discuss the game’s development, fundamental gameplay mechanics, narrative, setting, and expected impact on gamers and Tolkien fans in this article.

Developing Background

Renowned for their work on visual effects and props in “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” films, Weta Workshop has entered game production with “Tales of the Shire.” This amazing change in visual effects to game design reveals the company’s passion of Tolkien’s universe.. Wētā Workshop worked with Private Division, a publisher recognized for promoting innovative projects, to produce a realistic and engaging game that reflects the essence of Hobbit life.

Focusing on the Shire and its people gives Middle-earth games a new perspective. Many games in this setting have focused on big battles and grand missions, while “Tales of the Shire” focuses on Hobbits’ everyday joys and adventures, creating a peaceful yet compelling gameplay experience.

Game mechanics core

“Tales of the Shire” is a cosy life-simulation game inspired by “Animal Crossing” and “Stardew Valley.” As a Hobbit, players will experience the lovely Shire lifestyle. Farming, crafting, cooking, and Hobbit socialising are key gaming aspects. The game emphasises creativity, relaxation, and exploration, letting players fully experience the Shire’s beauty.

Farming and Gardening: Players will raise food and flowers in their gardens. This component of the game supplies cooking and crafting resources and personalises the player’s home. The straightforward and rewarding gardening techniques encourage players to try different plants and arrangements.

In “Tales of the Shire,” players can craft furniture, tools, and more. The building feature lets players customise their Hobbit hole, encouraging creativity and ownership. Explore and trade to gather materials for crafts and house expansion.

Players can create traditional Hobbit dishes in Cooking and Festivities. Social gameplay includes sharing meals with neighbours and attending local events, representing the Shire’s collaborative attitude.

Socialising with other Hobbits is key to the game’s charm. Community can be fostered through talks, favours, and community activities. The dialogue and exchanges are touching and sincere, showcasing Hobbit society’s hospitality.

Story and Setting

In “Tales of the Shire”‘s relative serenity, players can explore the Shire without violence or gloom. The game follows the player’s integration into the Shire community as a newcomer. Players will learn about Shire history, population, and traditions through quests and events.

The Shire is deliberately created to match Tolkien’s bucolic splendour. Beautiful hills, meadows, and villages set the scene for the player’s excursions. The architecture of Hobbit holes, farms, and communal places are meticulously detailed to create a realistic, true-to-source experience.

The game‘s soundtrack, with its serene and melodious Shire vibe, increases immersion. The music and nature noises provide a relaxing atmosphere for players.

Expected Effect

The gaming community and Tolkien lovers may be affected by “Tales of the Shire”. Its novel take on Hobbit living sets it apart from previous Middle-earth games that emphasise warfare and heroic missions. This serene and creative approach may appeal to casual gamers and those seeking a healthy gaming experience.

“Tales of the Shire” lets Tolkien fans explore the Shire in unparalleled detail. Fans of Hobbit life’s charm and simplicity will appreciate the game’s authenticity and embrace of Hobbit culture. The game lets players live as Hobbits and experience their daily routines and celebrations, giving them a new connection to Tolkien’s universe.

Tales of the shire Release Date

The forthcoming cosy Hobbit game, “Tales of the Shire,” is scheduled for release on October 4, 2024. This game, created by Wētā Workshop and released by Private Division, transports players to the enchanting Shire universe and provides an engrossing and touching experience. Enthralled readers of Tolkien’s works will anticipate discovering the gorgeous scenery, participating in a variety of activities, and getting to know well-known Shire characters. Make plans to embark on a lovely voyage through Middle-earth, ideal for anyone looking for a peaceful and captivating experience.

Conclusion

“Tales of the Shire” is a charming and original Middle-earth video game. It offers a new viewpoint on Tolkien’s cosmos by focusing on Hobbit life’s calm and uplifting qualities. The game, developed by Weta Workshop and Private Division, is greatly anticipated by gamers and Tolkien lovers due to its excellent quality and authenticity.

Players will enjoy the simple delights and strong sense of community of the Shire as they grow gardens, craft unique objects, prepare wonderful meals, and make friends with other Hobbits. “Tales of the Shire” will be more than a game it will invite you to dwell in a tranquil, beautiful, and friendly world. This game is a lovely and fascinating tour into the Shire for Tolkien fans and newcomers to Middle-earth.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

[blazingblorbos]

   Honkai Impact 3rd is a love letter of a game

  In its creation, and throughout its conception, the story that it sought to tell is one filled, so completely, with the concept of love and thanks.

  It's a medium of appreciation. The story thanks everyone and everything that it comes into contact with.  Its creators, developers, player-base, and characters.

   I think the story is perfect, not necessarily because it's masterfully well-written, or because it's groundbreaking in its approach, but because it served its purpose so well.  The pride and joy of Honkai as a game, is the way its community feels so united in its experience with the story.

   Every time I think about it, I feel like I just know that these developers care so much about their game. About their characters, their story, and the world they've created. And they never fail to try and let the playerbase know this.

   Recently - especially - they've dedicated the last couple shorts to the collective community. Uniting us in their message "Fight for all that's beautiful in the world"; and their sincere dream: "May all the beauty be blessed"

It's been through its ups and downs, but personally I think that only contributes to its sincerity. I've seen and heard so many beautiful stories about the way this game has helped others. How other players feel so deeply connected to it, because something about it - the narrative, the characters, the music, etc - just resonated within them. And it really is the case for the majority of us.

I haven't had experiences with any other piece of media that loves its community so much.... Whose community seems so deeply connected, related, and intertwined through their shared - HIGHLY EMOTIONAL - experience with the game.

   And I feel so at home here, despite not really directly interacting with others. 'Cause I'll browse posts made by other people- other players, about how excited they are for the next version, or how scared they are to watch the new short.  How loudly they sobbed over the lyrics of the latest song, how much they've saved for that one character...

      This game, this story, has left such an impact on us all. It's the reason we're still here,  it's the reason we stayed. Some people quit after the first hour of playing, and it's understandable because the beginning of the game is far from amazing.   But not us. We kept going - for one reason or another - and eventually settled in and stayed for so many more reasons.

And now that Part 1 is over, Graduation Trip managed to tie together everything about this ~7 year old journey into one tender 7 minute piece of masterful emotional expression.

 It's a little hard to say goodbye, but it doesn't hurt anymore.  I cried because I'm happy, and I'll look back at the story that once was with fondness.

   It is the culmination of everything we've been through - all of us.  From creators to veterans to new players. They're thankful for all of it, and this short is the epitome of their gratitude. It's their love letter to the story we all made.

   It's a love letter to her.  To her who inspired them, and inspired us.  A love letter to us. To us who inspired her and them.  The devs created this story. The story reached us, affected us, and as a result we - the playerbase, who game developers naturally depend on - managed to affect the story in return.

Thank you

[denimbex1986]

'How do you pick the best performance in a film defined by literally dozens of them? Christopher Nolan assembled a murderer’s row of talent for "Oppenheimer," his grand historical drama about the birth of the atomic bomb and the consequences of its power. It contains a veritable smorgasbord of leading icons, character actors, former child star favorites, and faces you forgot you love so much. There’s certainly a case to be made for so many among this ensemble: the steely-eyed determination and rattled conscience of Cillian Murphy in the title role; Robert Downey Jr.’s charisma shattered by the petulance of bureaucratic squabbles; David Krumholtz as the warm friend whose pragmatism punctures his ideals. However, the face you leave the film remembering for days afterward comes from an actor whose character isn’t even given a name.

Alden Ehrenreich plays a Senate aide, a figure who is one of the many government workers standing behind and to the side of the head honchos helping to grease the wheels of power. He has been tasked with guiding Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) through Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination as Secretary of Commerce to President Eisenhower's cabinet. Ehrenreich is essentially a PR guy, a guide for Strauss and the audience through the tangled web of Cold War-era D.C. and the front-stabbing figures who have turned politics into a battlefield. He is, by design, not that important. Dozens of other nameless aides are waiting around the corner to do this job. Ehrenreich just so happens to be there at the right/wrong time.

Being an audience avatar is often a thankless role in any film, and it’s a trope that Nolan often struggles with. Discussions of process and ideas often weigh down his films and inserting a figure of relatable naivety into this risks disrupting the narrative flow. "Oppenheimer" often gets away with not having one during the glut of the story since it’s so heavily focused on conversations about science, ethics, and consequences. The scenes with Strauss and Ehrenreich are a break from this, an insight into a post-Oppenheimer world and how it has impacted the system that helped to create him in the first place. Ehrenreich is not unaware, nor is he expected to play catch-up with Strauss and company. Rather, he’s the constant reminder that scientists did not do what happened at Los Alamos alone. That he is unnamed and a fictional creation of Nolan (a sharp contrast to a film populated by real historical players) hammers home the disposability of such an aide. Ehrenreich’s job is to blend in, to keep a straight face against the peacocking Strauss. It’s a role that could, too, have disappeared into the background, but Ehrenreich knows that the best scene stealers are the ones who react to the carnage.

Ehrenreich, a character actor with the face of a 1950s leading man, has always excelled in parts where he tempers his natural charisma with a dash of something sharper. In "Hail, Caesar!," he steals the show from one of the Coen Brothers’ starriest casts as Hobie Doyle, the adorably clueless singing cowboy the studio tries to reinvent as a Noel Coward-esque debonair leading man. He’s the safe port of sincerity in a storm of Hollywood cynicism. As the younger brother of the tempestuous Tetro in Francis Ford Coppola's indie drama, he is appealingly innocent yet imbued with the abrasive arrogance that only a dolt of a teenage boy could truly possess. Even in "Solo: A Star Wars Story," the unfairly maligned prequel of the new Disney/Lucasfilm era, Ehrenrich’s Han is less concerned with traditional hero expectations. Audiences seemed furious that he didn’t look or act exactly like Harrison Ford. Still, Ehrenreich understood the giddy enthusiasm of the pre-jaded space cowboy and how the character doesn’t work if he’s always cool (which Ford never was in the original trilogy, something fans often overlook.) The best Ehrenreich performances allow him to dig into humanity's absurdities and petty mundanities, offering either the freaky flipside or a welcome dose of warmth. It’s never as interesting to be cool when you can be weird, dark, or earnest.

The Senate aide is clearly used to being the quiet man in the room, the punching bag against whom others launch their egos. His smile is halfway between charm and smarm, with Ehrenreich excelling with those side glances at Strauss as he enters another rant about his battle of attrition with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Everything the aide says feels loaded with subtext, the ruthless efficiency of a worn-down Washington professional. He’s also used to dealing with political players with more bluster than substance, most evident when he has to appease Strauss without rocking the boat. There’s a deadpan quality to him, as though he’s used to being a babysitter more than an advisor. When Strauss reveals his hand and his selfishness thoroughly exposed, Ehrenreich's subtle reaction most effectively conveys the weight of this moment. It’s not so much that he feels betrayed—he’s clearly too much of a D.C. man to have ever been optimistic—but rather, he’s underwhelmed that years of machinations and supposed patriotism have boiled down to the equivalent of a playground tiff.

And it is Ehrenreich who gets the best line in the film. As Strauss gets ready to face the scrum of ravenous press after the Senate rejects his confirmation, Ehrenreich subtly hides his pleasure, but reveals enough to let Strauss know his feelings on the matter. Strauss is consumed by the possibility that Oppenheimer turned the scientific community against him, including Albert Einstein. He repeatedly returns to a perceived conversation between the two that must have made Strauss Einstein’s enemy. Before opening the door to the wolves of the media, Ehrenreich says, "Maybe they were talking about something more important." Uttered with such casual devastation, the nail in Strauss’ coffin confirms how the fate of the world often means little in the face of one man’s petty grievances. It’s probably for the best that Ehrenreich chose acting as his profession because he would be far too good as a politician.

"Oppenheimer" is, indeed, about far more important things than a politician’s job interview and the concerns of his nameless aide. The Manhattan Project exacerbated humanity’s inevitable self-annihilation, but for rooms full of suits and cigarettes, it was just another day at the office, another tool to be wielded less for destruction than personal bartering. It’s the aide, the one without a name or background or tangible connection to Oppenheimer’s work, who exposes that reality with a crooked smile and killer one-liner. Like a great scene-stealing supporting player, the aide is the one who cuts through the crap to seek the truth. Ehrenreich has long been great at that, and "Oppenheimer" is a welcome new zenith of his career. Here’s hoping there will be many more in the future.'

[bellshazes]

I love what other people love, which ought to make me a fair-weather fan and bandwagoner, except I'm just as like to hop on a bandwagon of one as one thousand. It's not the volume that entices me to chase the unfamiliar, as new love often first blooms from the concentrated strength of one passionate individual whose own love is so large it colors their delivery, their mannerisms, falling into a series of gestures when language fails to fit the love inside it.

DOOM is famous and beloved, and famous for being beloved, so it's not surprising I got suckered. The original game is a year older than me, but I never took to my dad's early FPSes which are more or less indistinguishable from the Win95 maze screensaver in my memory. Once - and only once - I attempted DOOM Eternal and decided that it would be as good a game as everyone said if I could get good at it, which I never would. Any nostalgia I have for this title is secondhand, borrowed.

Watching people describe the particulars of a pivotal and historic game franchise is just as good, if not better: the lifetime players, the code-wranglers who dissect the meat from its bones, the modders who frankenstein its components into something new and sometimes more. A curious strain of something not solely nostalgic, often calling out why certain features or mechanics were products of their time. Although a person may measure remakes or remixes against the feeling those features made odd and offputting by time gave them, it's usually threaded with an appreciation for what these games begat, the lineage within and outside of its franchise that permeates the games of today. This love presents a compellingly beautiful tableau of history stretching out like a long road across a vast landscape, surveying all the landmarks between your position in space and time and the turning point, and then looking still further at the old path that lead to the first turn and all the potential promise of the road ahead of you, its landmarks yet unbuilt along unseen future turns. As described, the history of this road is a series of impressive decisions and miraculous happenstance that enrich your appreciation of this present moment, one you can traverse by playing those games now even if they don't build them like they used to anymore.

By proxy, I have come to love System Shock, too; a comparatively less mainstream title significant to DOOM for its fundamental differences in design philosophy that shaped its own subsequent genre of immersive sims, though it, like DOOM, refined and enhanced the foundations laid by prior games. I have at least beaten Dishonored, whose lineage I too can now trace back to System Shock, but my love of that game is personal, particular, individuated, and unaltered by this new knowledge. It is love of my playthroughs of the game and all the challenges and triumphs and comedically absurd failures I, personally, experienced, the product of my interactions with the game and its interactions with me.

Secondhand love is exemplified by individuals but isn't a single voice; it is love, spectated in aggregate, an amalgamation of all the harmonies and dissonances of so many voices all pontificating or shouting or insulting one another. The dissonances and even vicious disagreements only heighten the feeling: among the rubble of the most aggressive discourses between the Souls games' 'get gud' crowd and those who disdain them, you can find almost poetical, lavishly sincere overtures to what the games have come to mean to people on either side, pure sweetness among the ashes.

It is the exact feeling of some impossibly generic movie scene where a love interest discovers the mean bad boy has a soft spot for baby animals and falls head over heels, too archetypal to be real. It feels absurd and a little narratively cheap, but I fall doe-eyed for it over and over. Even beyond the fishhook feeling of sharp surprise that softens, the discovery that these are fights people think are worth having not solely out of anger but out of love of something colors all my perceptions after. The assholes remain irritating, the mild revulsion at people who have perspectives and philosophies of games and the world that are deeply incompatible with my own persist.

Sometimes love grows so large that it breaks free, the jagged edges of the hole it punches in language or polite discourse letting in a sunbeam through a broken window throwing its object and all its dirty, rough, ugly imperfections into sharp relief. The thing is suddenly illuminated so perfectly it is obviously unlike any other thing on earth even as the wider world floods in through the hole love left, seeking connection - and sometimes, peering in through dusty windows or passing by an ancient landmark on some unrelated journey, secondhand love finds me.

[ingek73]

Mark Bolland: the PR guru whose job was to ‘make Camilla more presentable’

Royal ‘spin doctor’ Prince Harry mentions in his memoir is widely believed to be Bolland

Caroline Davies

Fri 24 Feb 2023 16.00 GMT

As Camilla is crowned alongside the king at Westminster Abbey on 6 May, might she cast her mind back some 20 years and reflect on the debt of gratitude she undoubtedly owes to one man in particular?

If the Duke of Sussex is present – though it’s not certain Charles’s avenging younger son will be – might he too dwell, with less appreciation, on the part played by the same man in his stepmother’s once unthinkable transformation from mistress to queen consort ?

As he writes in his memoir, Spare, Harry sees himself as collateral damage in the campaign orchestrated in the late 90s and early 00s to rehabilitate Charles and pave the way for marriage to Camilla, partly though “the new spin doctor Camilla had talked Pa into hiring”.

Unnamed in the book, he is widely believed to be Mark Bolland, who meticulously choreographed those early first steps towards the realisation of his royal master’s non-negotiable ambition: to reign with Camilla seated on the throne beside him.

Today, Charles’s popularity soars compared with the “sagging” reputation Harry describes immediately following Diana’s death. And Camilla’s acceptance reached its zenith when the late Queen Elizabeth II used her platinum jubilee message to express her “sincere wish” she become queen consort.

Bolland, described in Valentine Low’s book Courtiers as “clever, charming, manipulative” and “one of the most colourful and interesting players in the royal drama of the last 30 years”, is now long gone from palace life. He departed St James’s in 2002, after six years as assistant then deputy private secretary, to set up his own PR consultancy, initially with Charles and Camilla as star clients until ties were severed in early 2003.

Yet the way he seemingly set about his task, which at the time sent shudders through a Buckingham Palace old guard unfamiliar with Bolland’s brand of PR alchemy, clearly made a deep impression on a then teenaged Harry. Indeed, from Harry’s narrative, it may be possible to detect some of the seeds of his trenchant loathing of the press and his accusations of palace collusion with the fourth estate back to the, some would say, overzealous methods Bolland is alleged to have employed.

“Bolland’s number one job was to make Camilla more presentable. And he was very, very successful. Very good at it,” said one royal observer.

“If you look at Camilla now, she’s on the privy council. She was a firm favourite of the queen. And when she became queen consort, that was the culmination of the job that Bolland started.”

The problem was that at Buckingham Palace, just down the Mall from St James’s, they simply did not know how to deal with him. Stories unflattering to other royals were appearing.

And the way they were dealt with caused concern. The Earl of Wessex found himself trounced. And Harry has lamented being spun “right under a bus”.

Critics attributed this partly to Bolland, and claimed he operated on a “Charles good, all other royals bad” basis in his quest to augment the then Prince of Wales. It’s a claim Bolland has previously denied, insisting it was put about by Buckingham Palace courtiers jealous of the success of Charles’s team.

During the Bolland era there was consternation at Buckingham Palace. People feared leaks. People were saying that bad things were happening and discussing where they were coming from, the Guardian has been told. Everybody was very stressed.

“But he did a great job for Charles. What people – what Harry in particular – call ‘leaking’, well that’s just information. There’s a difference,” said the royal observer.

Reportedly called “Lord Blackadder” by William and Harry – another sobriquet for the smooth operator was, apparently, “Lip Gloss” – Toronto-born Bolland, who was schooled at a Middlesbrough comprehensive, was definitely different from the traditional idea of a courtier. Depicted in the latest season of The Crown as young, dynamic and decisive, he was lured to St James’s, aged 30, in 1996 from the Press Complaints Commission, where he was director, and enjoyed easy access to Fleet Street editors. He was friends with Rebekah Brooks, then Wade, who at the time was editor of the News of the World.

Under his auspices, Camilla was introduced to New York society in 1999. That same year, the first photograph of Charles and Camilla together, leaving her sister Annabel’s 50th birthday party at the Ritz, attracted so many photographers that the British Epilepsy Association reportedly urged broadcasters not to reuse footage in case it triggered seizures. A first meeting with the queen and Camilla, at a Highgrove party for ex-King Constantine of Greece, followed.

Then there was the PCC’s 10th anniversary party, hosted by Bolland’s then partner who became his husband, the Conservative peer Guy Black, who is now deputy chair of the Telegraph Media Group but back then had succeeded Bolland as director of the PCC. Stars mingled with politicians and royals against the backdrop of the Gilbert Collection at Somerset House: an “unadulterated, alpha plus, 24-carat triumph”, one admirer told the Observer. With Charles, Camilla and William together in public for the first time, it was another significant milestone.

The narrative was changing. But at what cost?

Harry certainly believes he was sacrificed in the process, along with his brother. In Spare, he points the finger at the unnamed Bolland for aiding and abetting the “pinpoint accurate” details that appeared of 16-year-old William’s first private meeting with Camilla, though “royal sources” have reportedly denied these claims made in the book of leaking on behalf of Camilla.

He also writes of being “horrified, sickened” at a seven-page spread in the News of the World, which had obtained a dossier of evidence of his teenaged drinking and drug taking. Bolland, on not being able to deny the story, had in response informed the newspaper of a visit Harry had made to a rehabilitation centre. The result was an overspun story: “Worried Charles chose to terrify Harry away from drugs by sending him to therapy sessions with hardcore heroin addicts.” A “family friend” was quoted: “He has never done drugs since.” A win-win for Charles.

Except the rehab centre visit had taken place two months before the evidence obtained by the newspaper and was a “typical part of my princely charitable work”, according to Harry’s book. Bolland later explained, in a rare newspaper interview in the Guardian in 2003, that he had told the News of the World about the visit, but had subsequently been “embarrassed” at the newspaper’s overzealous attempts to be helpful. “They presented it in a much more triumphalist manner than was justified,” he said.

Harry’s conclusion is he was spun “right under a bus” in order to portray Charles as a “harried single dad coping with a drug-addled son”.

Another alleged example of Bolland’s discomfiting spinning occurred when Prince Edward’s Ardent Productions crew failed to obey palace instructions for all media to leave St Andrews after a photocall with William while at university. Stories appeared quoting a “royal aide” saying Charles was “incandescent” and called his brother a “fucking idiot”. Bolland later told the Guardian: “I doubt I used that language, but it’s probably got my fingerprints on it.”

Bolland declined the offer to comment for this article.

In December 2001, the Daily Telegraph, in a highly critical article, called Bolland “the real power behind” the future king and asked: “Has the puppet master of St James’s finally pulled one string too many?” Another, in the Spectator, asked: “Charles’s spin doctor may be good for the prince’s ego but is he good for the royal family and the nation?”

Bolland, who was about to set up his own PR consultancy, departed St James’s in February 2002, although he retained Charles and Camilla as clients until 2003. Relations between him and Charles’s new private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, imported from Buckingham Palace, over the handling of stories were reportedly strained.

After his consultancy contract expired, he maintained links with Camilla for several months, until it became too difficult. “That’s when I said to Camilla: ‘I love you dearly, let’s have lunch or dinner a couple of times a year, but I can’t be at the end of a phone any more,’” he said in a 2004 interview for the British Journalism Review.

But he did not disappear completely, rocking up as a columnist at the News of the World, called Blackadder, in which he sometimes shared his critical analysis of Charles and his aides. He disbanded the column little more than a year later, finding it too time-consuming.

In 2006 he surfaced again, this time in the form of a witness statement on behalf of the Mail on Sunday, which was embroiled in legal action with Charles over its publication of his travel journal, in which he described some Chinese officials as “appalling old waxworks”.

In the statement, he not only said Charles’s travel journals were not especially private – being circulated to between 50 and 75 people – but also revealed Charles “often referred to himself as a ‘dissident’ working against the prevailing political consensus”.

It was revealing, too, about the way Bolland operated.

Back in 1999, when Charles did not attend a return banquet hosted by the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, during his state visit to the UK, a St James’s Palace spokesperson denied reports it was a “snub” by Charles, a known admirer of the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, and saying the prince had a previous engagement.

Roll forward to that 2006 witness statement, and Bolland attests he was given “a direct and personal instruction” by Charles to draw the media’s attention to his banquet boycott and that Charles was “delighted” at the ensuing coverage.

One former royal correspondent wonders how proactive Charles himself was back in those Bolland days. “I suppose the question is how far Charles himself led that campaign. How much he was on board with it. He must have been, otherwise Bolland wouldn’t have done it.”

Bolland’s task was to “win over the Mail and the Sun, particularly, because they were very pro-Diana”, added the correspondent. In that, he very much succeeded.

Years have since passed. Camilla’s stock continued its ascent. But few could disagree over who first laid the foundations for the journey that will ultimately culminate on 6 May when the crown is finally and firmly placed on the head of the nation’s new queen consort.

[bjorgian]

every so often, d&d posts cross my dash and for you page. (your influence, I'm sure.) but there's been a slew today, and they're reminding me I'm very, very, very, very, very, very, very glad we have you as a dm. as much as I grapple with you about mechanics and story sometimes, you spoil us. you let me use rope trick to be a menace for an entire campaign. you built an entire world and populated it with jiaoren and octopus gods and lesbian tieflings because I want them. you give us squishy babies and brothers in law with which we develop complex relationships. you killed the old man emperor and replaced him with a tiefling child con artist. I give each character one more mom than the last, and you give them each their own literal and figurative voice. you made contingencies for if I literally married strahd instead of slapping him to death at the altar. once we negotiated our way out of an entire climax, and you literally let us do that. with a primordial time worm. you won't introduce dragons within my vicinity that are likely to eat me when I inevitably kiss their noses even though you keep threatening to let that happen to me. sometimes I fall asleep mid-session, and when you ask me if I'm asleep and I try to gaslight you for suggesting it even though I was asleep and have no idea what's happening, you don't even remind me that I'm the one who insisted we keep playing. I keep making authoritarian cult islands, and you let one run the entire coastal economy (after weeks of me throwing tantrums over the relative value of my ore and god-granted divinity, but nevertheless). you let my characters have increasingly abstract post canon marital strife even though the story is literally no longer about them anyway. I am a terrible, brat player who is preternaturally beloved by the dice to such a discomfiting degree that I sincerely sometimes think you no longer technically qualify as an atheist; and you only occasionally punish me for my hubris. the one time I DM'd, you thought I would literally require you to castrate your character to resolve the conflict and were absolutely fine with that, like, narratively, with regard to your faith in me as a storyteller. all of my characters and their wives have increasingly upsetting height differences, and you're not at all concerned about where I'll take this when I grow bored of humanoids.

anyway. I appreciate you 🤎 I'm sorry for being a terrorist 🤎 but I appreciate and admire how you work with me and who I am to fit my terrorism into satisfying narratives 🤎 and maybe by the time we're forty, you'll have domesticated me 🤎 and my seven weed smoking naga wives 🤎 which where I think the height thing is going btw 🤎 horizontal 🤎

Friend I have never once considered you a terrorist. You are one of the best people I could have sitting at my metaphorical table while we play. You are fun and clever and delightful. You were perhaps also designed in a lab to be able to find the simplest answers to my complex plans. But that is also part of the fun. I love having my narratives and plans challenged in innovative ways and both you and Sarah are excellent at finding the alternative that I never considered. If I was allowed to sit and just make a story by myself and you guys didn’t try and talk down the primordial time wyrm where would we even be. Plus you have done so much to expand my horizons. Our world is made so much better by putting all the things you love to see in it and letting them thrive. I mean when we first started you guys had to point out my gender distributions were out of wack and now I’m throwing toxic yuri every where I can. That being said I know I can take a bit too long to mule over ideas all the while I’m pushing back which can be pretty frustrating on your end but I do hope you know every suggestion and comment I do spend many hours considering and reconsidering. I love having you as a player and can only hope to have you as a DM again soon. And all I truly love being your friend.

Btw I don’t think much domestication is going to happen here these days. I think we’ll be lucky if I don’t get more feral ❤️. Also I look forward to one day having to flirt with you as a naga ❤️

[what-we-fight-for]

So I don't ship Caiatl and Zavala for many reasons but I thought if asking someone else and what they think of the ship and also if you think that Bungo would actually make it cannon or nay cuz everybody apperantly going crazy for that ship. (Let's not forget the fact that Zavala still cares for his pervious dead wife but that just my opinion) *shrug*

What @thefirstknife said.

I don't think anyone is going to argue with you that Zavala is grieving over his wife and has been for a long time. I'm going to assume you asked this in good faith, but given that you asked at least one other person and phrased it differently, I honestly don't know whether you expect this to be some kind of own. But I'm not going to argue that people are in fact sad when they lose their partner. Caiatl has lost a lot of people as well, so it's not like Zavala is alone in that.

I observe that Zavala and Caiatl have a healthy mutual respect and that with time, it could possibly grow into something more given the right circumstances. Especially with the rather innuendous exchanges they make over the radio in most of Proving, and now with a more sincere element post-Season which was already better touched on by others.

Also contributing to this is her response to the attempted assassination and the repeated subversion of expectations on her part, which lends a lot of narrative suggestion for romance to a lot of people. Enemies/rivals to lovers is a well established pattern. If you position characters against each other but keep subverting and forcing them to reevaluate each other while maintaining tension, that evokes such a pattern from a meta standpoint.

If Bungie is interested in showing an interspecies relationship (of which they have shown several friendships already so this would be a mere step up), they could feasibly make it canon. It's possible they intend to already and are working up to it, but at this point it's impossible to tell. Some people see the potential, others prefer not to contemplate.

"Apparently everybody is going crazy for that ship" I don't share this perspective. A few days' activity on your dash or in tags doesn't constitute everybody going crazy (I assume you mean in support of it). This pairing as a concept wasn't even really in the public eye in a serious way until Tassi made a video, and now the overwhelming response outside of Tumblr has been toxic and negative.

Before that, I saw no negative response to it, but no overwhelming positive one either. It was something I contemplated privately and maybe said a word or two about with friends. I don't really consider my appreciation of the concept "shipping" so much as interpreting the source material. I made a flippant post about it because I was nettled and I saw that others were nettled, but my response was to the disgusting misogyny on Twitter and YouTube, not to people challenging a pet ship. You all can do what you want.

However, for people who decry this as impossible or unthinkable because "ewww Cabal are nasty" I remind you that a solid chunk of the player base want to bone Eliksni, and there are a fair number of Hive enthusiasts as well. If you really expect nothing but sanitized heteronormative same-species relationships from Bungie, let alone the fandom, then you have either not been paying attention or hanging with the wrong circles.

[cerastes]

What do you make of Specter's operator record? Personally I liked it, but that's with the knowledge we're getting more Specter backstory soon.

Ok, so! Just as you pointed out, I went into it with the knowledge that:

We're getting Under TIDES soon.

Specter gets a second Operator Record later, some time after Under TIDES.

And with that in mind, I'm fine with it, but if I was a CN player and all we got was Specter's first Operator Record without any knowledge of the future, I would be pretty pissed, lmao. In fact, CN players were pretty pissed, the reception to her Operator Record was pretty bad. Specter is a popular character both in terms of gameplay and character (the latter more so in China, she gets a steady influx of cosplayers, fanart and fanfic in Weibo, Lofter, and such). It's believed that Hypergryph announced her second Operator Record because of this backlash.

Now, with the context and preamble on the table, I want to say: Great idea, not so great execution. Overall, I enjoyed it, but again, that's only with knowledge of the future. Despite that, I sincerely praise Hypergryph for actually having the balls to try a narrative approach like this one on a mobile game. The thing is, just because an idea is interesting doesn't mean it's good, and I think a lot of aspiring writers and designers need to hammer that in their head, especially armchair game designers that like to theorize oh so much about how cool it would be to have a game that did this or that. I don't care if it's cool or not, is it enjoyable to experience?

And that's just the thing with Specter's Operator Record: It felt lackluster in many regards. The approach was definitely interesting, bold, I'd even say, but that doesn't really matter too much if the result isn't a success, now, does it? Let's immediately address the Originium Slug in the room: Specter doesn't even appear in it. Now, is that an interesting approach to an Operator Record? Sure! Is it good? I don't really think so, especially with a character that fans really have been clamoring to see more of in actual cutscenes, given the wealth of clues they've put regarding Specter in other places:

Blue Poison' Files -> We learn that Blue Poison knew Specter personally before her descent to madness, addressing her with her real name.

Skadi's Dialogue -> Skadi implies that Specter was on a very important mission, and more or less confirms she knew her before she went crazy.

Several pieces of official art -> Specter is associated with the phrase "All seas are singing your name".

Ceobe's Fungimist -> It's implied the cursed painting depicting the end times is the same confusing painting Specter painted in her Token.

Rosmontis' Files -> It's confirmed that Specter's spinal cord is filed to the brim with originium fluid, and the Medical Team theorizes that, just like Rosmontis, her infection was artificially induced. It also confirms that they have no idea how Specter is able to fight such an insanely high level of infection.

So, see, this has been a character that fans have really been clamoring to see again. The only cutscene Specter's ever been is the secret cutscene of Grani and the Knight's Treasure AKA the very first event in the game. Understandably, after two years of the game existing, people were a bit miffed that once again we just get breadcrumbs and a non-participation 'appearance', to say the least, in what's supposed to be her day in the limelight.

Now, personally, I kind of get how they are handling her, and the Operator Records are a very faithful reflection of this: Specter is meant to be this mysterious force that we don't have clearance to know about, as Kal'tsit herself is the only one authorized to treat her or even enter her containment quarters. And, in this regard, I think the Records succeed:

It all starts innocently with Suzuran drawing Specter in a Secret Santa and then having to start deep diving to find out who the hell even IS Specter, because absolutely no one knows of her. Eventually, Suzuran lucks out by asking Meteorite, who did participate in a mission with Specter once, to which Suzuran immediately reacts: "Hey hold on, don't they send you on pretty dangerous missions all the time?", and Meteorite's answer is, "Yeah, and she's right at home there."

Now, this is really interesting because we, as Doctor, have some level of clearance: We know things about Specter and can even converse with her to a certain degree, because Doctor is a high authority in Rhodes Island, but the average Operator, like Suzuran, Aosta and Chiave, doesn't even know of her existence. She's one of Rhodes Island's well kept secrets, even within Rhodes Island. Even Meteorite, a veteran Sarkaz mercenary and a bombardment expert, only knows about Specter in a need-to-know basis (because they deployed once together). More telling is the fact that Meteorite doesn't think she'd get along with Specter, simply based on the fact that, just on that one operation, the level of violence and carnage brought upon by Specter unnerved even her, a Kazdel Sarkaz veteran. Well, to be precise, it's not the sheer level of destruction that Specter is capable of that unnerved Meteorite, it's the fact that she does it all seemingly without a care in the world, expressionless, soundless, simply following orders to the letter without showing or taking in a single emotion. To paraphrase Meteorite, "someone that can unleash such destruction and violence upon others so easily, and that can then just not mind it in the slightest, has something wrong and concerning going on with them, no doubt".

Next up, we also learn that Folinic has very restricted, also on a need-to-know basis access to Specter. Keep in mind that Folinic is extremely competent and not at all a stranger to danger: She handles Phantom. So this is a huge hint: There's perhaps more to the secrecy regarding Specter than just her being a dangerous, unstable element. Folinic could reasonably handle Specter professionally, but it's not about whether she can or not, it's about information, and this brings us back to Grani and the Knight's Treasure: Kal'tsit makes it clear to Skadi that Specter is, as a whole, inaccessible to everyone but her, that only she has clearance to access Specter's quarters. Keep in mind that Skadi does not operate in the same conditions, despite also being an Abyssal Hunter. In fact, it's well known that Skadi is infamous among other Operators for being unreasonable and obstructive in operations, as well as unapproachable outside of them (unless you are Grani, who managed to successfully befriend Skadi and vouches for her). There's things about Specter that are so sensitive, so important, that Kal'tsit can't risk them getting out, and even using her as an Operator is something reserved for very dangerous operations. Not even Warfarin, senior staff and Operator that's been with Rhodes Island for a very long time, has full access to Specter, but she clearly knows the importance of keeping her under curtains, given she immediately diffused the Folinic-Suzuran situation by coming up with a compromise on the spot.

There's another interesting contrast between Files and the Operator Record: Meteorite describes Specter as "dead silent". Mind you, we knew from before, thanks to Specter's Files, that the shark is completely silent in battle, but we also do know that she incoherently rambles quite a lot. Folinic sheds some light onto this, explaining that Specter intentionally stays silent most of the time so as to not say anything that could be misunderstood when around others. When she's in a more private setting, however, she does let loose with the insane talk. This is confirmation of something that had been hinted at before: Even though she's insane, there's a fervent part of her clinging onto sanity for dear life with bloodied, splintered fingers, and it manifests itself in how she'll never harm an ally, and how Specter is, to a certain degree, aware of how far gone she is, and thus keeps her mouth shut around others that aren't Doctor or Kal'tsit, so as to not spook them out or accidentally threaten them with her insane rambling.

Then, at the very end, after Suzuran managed to get her present to her, Specter does in fact deliver a thank you present back to Suzuran: A music box, consistent with Specter's love for the arts. Of course, the gift might have been chosen by a proxy of hers (Skadi or Blue Poison, both known to also enjoy music), but the message is all the same: Specter clearly appreciated the gift, and was mentioned to see an improvement in her condition after receiving the doll Suzuran gave her.

So, in paper? All of this? I love it. Of course I do, she's my favorite character, and it was such a bold way to present her Record, too, I respect them trying out new things, it managed to capture the essence of "the mysterious, terrifying fighting machine Operator they don't want us to know about that's actually a pretty sweet and decent person, just going through some really hard stuff" that they've been going for with Specter, it's just, I can also understand (and agree with) fans because... It's been two years, bwahaha, let us see her again, you know? It's her Operator Record, we've gotten some VERY good insights into the lives and days of other Operators through those, like with Angelina's or Kroos'! Of course we also wanted something like that, bwahaha.

What I would've loved, and what I think would've made it all better with fans, is if the final scene had Specter actually show up in Suzuran's room like the cryptid she is, with Suzuran noting the security door had just sort of been casually pried open, Specter's perpetual smile on her face as she's holding her thank you gift before Warfarin and Folinic just sort of storm into the room like "DUDE, WE SAID YOU CAN'T--", she thanks Suzuran wordlessly, gently hands her the music box, and then she calmly turns back and walks back to her confinement quarters.

But, yeah, I've gone on for long enough. I appreciate it overall, knowing what's coming, and I appreciate the idea, I just think they could've handled it better, but the whole essence and message of it, I think lands pretty nicely.

[buffaloborgine]

Of Zack Fair, Genesis Rhapsodos and the strange narrative POV of FFVII-Crisis Core (Part IIIa)

Part I: https://buffaloborgine.tumblr.com/post/650462647672766464/of-zack-fair-genesis-rhapsodos-and-the-strange

Part II conclusion: https://buffaloborgine.tumblr.com/post/653809930861674496/of-zack-fair-genesis-rhapsodos-and-the-strange 

_______________________________________________

Warning: Sincerely, this part takes on a very controversial route. Please read the previous parts first before reading further on this part. (I did have the link to part I in case you are new reader)

Also, please keep an open mind when you read this. I appreciate any kind of discussion about theories, but please, try to keep your bias out when we discuss on an objective subject. Thank you. 

_________________________________________

Before we get to the main problem of this part, let me introduce you to a term that maybe you have heard somewhere before: the Rashoumon effect. 

The Rashomon effect is a term related to the notorious unreliability of eyewitnesses. It describes a situation in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved. 

This is a kind of effect that is used very frequently in detective stuffs, as a way to fool the audiences, driving them away from the main problem, the objective truth.

Why am I telling you about this? Well, in many Japanese stuffs, ranging from movies, books to games, no matter what the genre is, the Rashoumon effect is utilized to create plot twists. And of course Rashoumon effect is also used in FFVII as well. 

Take one example, the Deepground incident in Dirge of Cerberus. While Vincent and the WRO believed that Weiss is the one leading Deepground at that time, and we don’t even get to know the truth that Nero is the real leader of Deepground until Vincent and Yuffie finally barged in the throne hall in Reactor 0. It’s just one of the clearest example of the Rashoumon effect in FFVII. And if you have read the other parts of this theory series, you may see the pattern of Rashoumon effect in both events that I have pointed out: the Genesis’s parents’ grave and the Seven Wonders. 

So, let’s move onto our main problem this time. 

_________________________________________

The Mails (a). 

One of the strangest systems that occurred in Crisis Core, is the mail system, 

Zack can access the mails through his phone, along with many other systems like Materia Fusion, Equipment, Shop, DMW, Mission and some others. 

Problem with the Mails is that, reading one mail from one person may give you a contradictive information to the info you took from the mail of another person, and it even contradicts with the details you discovered in places around the game. Because mails are written according to the view point of the writers, will get confused with many info that the mails provide. 

However the worst problem with the mails is that Zack only receives the mails, he never answers them. We never see Zack point of view in this, which in turn, forcing us to use our own point of view to examine the information given by the mails. 

Here, I want to discuss the reliability of one of the most well-known CC mails: the 1sts’ fanclubs’ mails. 

Keepers of Honor 

Fanclub of Angeal, the group releases mails that provide “unauthorized” info about Angeal’s profile. While there is not much to take from the mails of Keeper of Honor, there is one particular mail we have to look into. 

“Angeal Fan Club Newsletter 313

Today's update features a conversation between Angeal and Genesis.

G: You'd better do something about those plants in your room.

A: Those plants represent nature. Some of us converse with nature to hone our spirit and honor.

G: And some of us are getting bugs in our rooms because of those blasted things.

A: Come on. Don't you remember? We used to have bugs in our rooms all the time when we were kids.

G: That's why I hate them. And the past? It can stay there. We're in Midgar. We're not supposed to have nature here.

City-born Genesis, and nature-lover Angeal: so completely different, yet friends all the same.” 

Just when Zack came to Fort Tamblin with Angeal, Angeal told Zack about the dumbapple. And one those lines is: 

Angeal confirmed that Genesis, his childhood friend grew up with him in Banora. But in the mail above, the Keeper of Honor believes that Genesis is “city-born”. Although the word itself can be understood in two ways, one is “born in the city” and the other is “having city life style”, if you first read into it, you will immediately think that they mean Genesis is born in the city, which is not true, the other meaning may fit with the situation more, perhaps? So we could agree with them that Angeal loves nature and Genesis has a city lifestyle, thus, Genesis gets annoyed with nature, right? 

Guess what? When Zack found out Genesis’s diary, the info may get contradictive. 

Consider the fact that Genesis won an award for inventing the Banora White Apple juice, it means that he has to have a great love for nature, especially the apple trees and the fruit to actually spend time to invent the juice. 

This info and Angeal’s confirmation contradict with the info given by the mail from Keeper of Honor. This means the fanclubs’ mails themselves are just sources with medium reliability, especially when the fanclub of one person wrote about a different person in the trio. Besides, the event described in the fanclubs’ mails may not even exist, because in Keeper of Honor’s mails, those are “unauthorized” Angeal’s profile. 

In conclusion, by not showing Zack’s replies to the mails to the players, Crisis Core forced the players to check the reliability of the mails given to Zack through their own perception, not everything written in the mails are true because they are affected by the POV and biases of the ones giving them out. 

I think that’s enough for the beginning of this part, we will continue on the other ambiguous mails in the next parts. Thanks for coming to my Ted-Talk and have a nice day. 

_________________________________________

Part IIIb: https://buffaloborgine.tumblr.com/post/656350606029701120/of-zack-fair-genesis-rhapsodos-and-the-strange

[davidmann95]

How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

*  Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

[hotwaterandmilk]

What are some of your favorite and least favorite things about Shamanic Princess?

Sincerely,

a totally unbiased party

Oooh good question, my unbiased friend :D!

Favourite Things

- I love the way it took risks like an 80s OAV at a time when a lot of 90s OAVs were feeling very formulaic.

- I truly appreciate that it was an original work, based on Watanabe's concepts, rather than an adaptation of something else. Original animated works need to be championed.

- Ishida Atsuko is a great character designer and I feel like outside of Shamanic Princess and Magic Knight Rayearth, her talent for fantasy designs hasn't really been explored.

- I think the characters are interesting and I am a fan of titles like this that seem like we're just witnessing a snapshot of their lives and outside of the series they've probably had a lot of other interesting adventures.

- I really like the way the series isn't afraid to slow things down at times and be introspective. It accentuates rather than diminishes the action scenes.

- Fantastic music.

- Tiara is a well-written heroine with strength and flaws like anyone else.

- Never overstays its welcome.

Least Favourite Things

- Nishimura's direction on 5 & 6 feels far more generic than Hongo's on episodes 1 & 4. So while I like the narrative turn in the final two episodes, the execution (to me) isn't as strong.

- Although I like the way the series can take time for those slower moments, these elements also serve to highlight one of Hongo's major flaws as a director which is not knowing when to lay off the slowness. I feel like he took it riiiiiight to the line here.

- Lena really could have used more development, I felt like of the main players we explored her feelings the least. I'd have liked to have seen a bit more to her than just the whole Kagetsu-thing.

- There is no BD release where is our fucking blu-ray?!

[playernumberv]

Returnal may be the best game I’ll probably end up leaving unfinished

But wait, I hear my imaginary audience ask - if a game is that good, how and why would I possibly leave it unfinished? And indeed, when I leave a game unfinished, it’s usually because I don’t have much good to say about it, and no longer deem it worthy of my time. I left Assassin’s Creed Valhalla unfinished after 30 hours in it, for example, because it just kept dragging on and on and on and I just got incredibly bored. That’s not the case with Returnal at all. 

In what has been for me a relatively lull year in games (with nothing having reached my personal standard for being a GOTY contender yet), Returnal has been the most compelling and fascinating title I’ve played. It is just utterly stellar. I love how intriguing the sci-fi psychological horror/thriller setting is, and while sparse, the little narrative there is compels me to want to find out more about Atropos and Selene. The third-person shooter combat is visceral and fluid, and is a mad rush of pure adrenaline and exhilaration that is complemented by an overwhelming smorgasbord of eye-melting visual effects. Audio design can only be described as majestic, with thunderous combat soundtracks that catalyze the already sky-high intensity of the game’s combat, and the deafening roar of enemy cries truly tear right into you, making you feel as if you were truly confronted by terrifying alien monstrosities. Level design and art design are similarly masterful, creating an alien world that genuinely feels alive and horrifying. And have I mentioned how indescribably good the dualsense implementation is? You can feel the pitter-patter of raindrops; you can feel the kinetic rush of dashing; you can feel the recoil of gunfire. If Astro’s Playroom was a technical demonstration of what the dualsense could be capable of, Returnal is an applied demonstration of how the dualsense can truly elevate gaming experiences. Every aspect of this game comes together and just oozes an unprecedented level of quality in the level of immersion it achieves - it bombards you with near-endless bursts of visual, auditory, as well as sensory feedback, and in so doing creates a truly next-gen gaming experience that feels extremely immersive. Short of VR experiences, I daresay no other game has ever come close to such an immaculate level of immersion, so much so that can say unironically that the game actually makes me feel like I’m stranded on an alien world.

Again I hear my imaginary audience ask - this makes no damn sense, if Returnal is as magnificent as I claim it to be, why would I leave it unfinished?

And to that, my answer is this: Returnal is simply far too punishing and inaccessible. For a working adult who—I’m ashamed to say, despite my immense love of games—isn’t especially skilled at gaming and who has relatively limited time and energy for gaming, Returnal simply demands far too much. It’s utterly soul-crushing. To begin with, I am not a fan of the repetitiveness of roguelikes, and even a roguelike as polished and well-designed as Hades did not especially impress me, as I mentioned in my earlier review of it. Yet Hades’ roguelike is, ironically enough, heavenly compared to the genuine hellishness of Returnal’s roguelike, where permanent upgrades are extremely scarce to the point of being nearly non-existent. Virtually everything resets with each death. Your weapons: gone, reduced to ashes. Your suit upgrades, health upgrades, all gone. And that may have been fine were the game itself not nail-bitingly hard—it’s not uncommon at all to have to spend an hour or even more on preparation, only for one small mistake to be severely punished before you even manage to reach the boss, and to have to restart from zero all over again. Furthermore, as is standard of the roguelike genre, there is a fair bit of randomness—and so how successful each run is may in part be determined by whether you luck out on obtaining the desired suit upgrades or your desired weapon. This randomness further compounds the amount of time that needs to be spent on preparing, failing, being unlucky, and trying all over again. That may have been fine once in a while, but repeat this cycle enough times, and Returnal becomes a miserable punishment. It’s utterly soul-crushing to have to waste hours on preparation, only to fail and have all the preparation completely reduced to nothing. And this isn’t even accounting for how gruellingly tough the boss fights can be. Returnal makes you squander hours upon hours—it severely punishes failure, to the point where its rewards, majestic though they are, become overshadowed by its punishment.

Yes, yes, I can already hear a portion of my imaginary audience chanting. ‘GIT GUD’, they say, and I don’t deny at all that I am not good at Returnal. But I am certain that there are other gamers, who like me, do not play games to be punished, challenged, and pushed to our limits—we play games for entertainment, for relaxation, and for escapism from the stresses and difficulties of the real world, something that may be especially important in the broken, pandemic-stricken world we live in currently. Returnal is the utter opposite of relaxation, and if a (mostly) healthy, able-bodied person like me finds it inaccessible, I imagine it to be even more so for a huge proportion of others out there. To be fair, I hesitate to call any of this a ‘flaw’ on the part of Returnal, and I do understand the sentiments of the ‘git gud’ crowd—there’s a strong charm to Returnal’s unflinching adherence to its vision, and its insistence on having an identity of relentlessness and challenge is in its own way very respectable and charismatic. I also do understand the immense elation and satisfaction of surmounting a seemingly-impossible challenge—beating the bosses of the first and second biomes of Returnal filled me with a raw euphoria no game has given me in ages. In part, having no recourse towards an easier way out is part of this charm. Knowing that one cannot simply choose an easier option, for there is none, truly does magnify the immense satisfaction of conquering a challenge.

With all that being said, I cannot help but think that sacrificing a small part of that charisma and charm in the noble pursuit of accessibility is a worthy cost. This need not even involve sacrificing the roguelike genre in favour of a more generic third-person action-adventure style of gameplay—although admittedly, given my general disdain for roguelikes, this would probably have been a better fit for me. I do have to say that the roguelike genre is perfect for Returnal. Its central narrative theme of being stranded on an alien planet where the main character returns by death—wait, wrong series—provides perfect ludonarrative harmony when melded with the roguelike genre, and this harmonious complementation between game-play and narrative is truly brilliant. Even maintaining its roguelike genre, I sincerely believe that Returnal could have been made to be substantially more accessible and less punishing, and to shift the mechanics away from randomness and towards granting more player control. Having difficulty options provide a convenient way to accomplish this, but I do believe the roguelike itself could also learn a number of lessons from Hades. For example, even maintaining its present difficulty levels, a larger number of permanent upgrades would go an incredibly long way in making Returnal’s roguelike far more meaningful and palatable. More forms of permanent suit or health upgrades, as well as more permanent weapons—being stuck with only a pistol at the start of every run is extremely unwelcome—would be immensely appreciable as well. Implementing these changes would indeed compromise some of Returnal’s unflinching and unrelenting vision. But would it not be a worthy trade-off if a greater number of people can experience the utter majesty of what Housemarque has accomplished here in terms of audio design, game design, art design, and narrative?

I truly am impressed by Returnal, and when awards season comes by at the end of the year, I think it unquestionably deserves every accolade it will almost surely obtain, be it in audio, narrative, or gameplay. It is the best game I’ve played this entire year so far, and even as I type this, I feel a rush of sheer awe at just how unbelievably excellent Returnal is. Unfortunately, my affections for Returnal feel unrequited. My circumstances and my relative incompetence as a gamer make it near-impossible for me to ever experience in full all that Returnal has to offer, despite my great desire to be able to. So, it seems, despite my deep affections for Returnal, I may never finish it, and I will think back to this years later with deep regret, wishing that I were in more suitable circumstances, wishing that I were a better gamer, and wishing that Returnal could have been more accessible. Alas, these wishes were not to be.