#unfairly maligned

[vintageterror]

[lizzardtown]

forget everything i said about john taylor's acting career it was all ok because he was in one episode of that 80s show and in one scene with glenn howerton

[shitpostingkats]

Man I've been playing through dual destinies and the visceral Apollo and Athena contrasts are making me go insane.

Your name is Apollo Justice. You are a lawyer. You're a pawn. You're a weapon. Your mentor is a jackass and your rival only sees you as a ghost of his brother. You're pushed around town to run chores you aren't being rewarded for. You are volunteered to deliver revenge on behalf of your jackass mentor, who refuses to tell you anything because it might spoil his game. When you falter, everyone tells you to learn to stand up on your own. Your mother finally learns of your existence, but she isn't ready, so everyone agrees not to tell you. After all, it's her feelings that are at stake. Apollo? It's never about Apollo.

Your name is Athena Cykes. You are a lawyer. You got here all by yourself, clawed your way to it all on your own. Your mentor set aside space in his life to take you under his wing, to offer advice and security. He takes over when you falter, and walks you through everything he's doing, so you can one day stand without assistance. You keep working, so so hard, because everyone in the courtroom is a familiar face. Your childhood friend. Your mentor. Your coworker who is slowly losing it, and you're not sure why, but you're pretty sure it's your fault. The man who gave up everything for you. Athena? Everything is about Athena.

Neither of you is okay.

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

I have to say, much like other people have been forced to give Tucker Carlson credit for calling Ted Cruz out, that I hate to give Ted Cruz credit for something but “Iran’s population is primarily Shia Persians” is in fact something that Ted Cruz knows about Iran, and presumably he could have said other things about Iran and why he thinks the US should go to war with it had Tucker Carlson not jumped down his throat saying that he doesn’t know anything about Iran.

[mikesbasementbeets]

like don't get me wrong, i also have issues with season 3 and i would probably say either season 1 or 2 are my favorite. but i'm not making it everyone else's problem by complaining about it on their gifsets

[despazito]

I hate that pelican video, I'm glad you said something about it.

THE PELICAN WASN'T BEING NAUGHTY IT WAS BEING A PELICAN!! it's that shitty facility's fault for having a duckling within range of a pelican, and if it wasn't meant to be there that's also their fault for having a terrible setup!

there's unfortunately many lackluster animal parks in asia, but there's also plenty in america as well (look up seaquest). i'm not gonna use velvet gloves just because the facility is in another part of the world, welfare is welfare is welfare.

[poorlittleyaoyao]

elaborate in the tags and go here for the other polls!

[essektheylyss]

"[The Matron] IS a Virgo, that's CANON!" TRUTH, CORRECT, EARTH SIGN QUEEN

[trashpandacraft]

another entry into the endless discussion of how long it takes to knit a sock.

it's not bound off because i wasn't sure if my kid would want some 1x1 ribbing at the top, but they say no thank you, so this is it done. i bound off just now and it took less than ten minutes.

we watched the extended edition lotr movies over the last few days, and i knit this whole we watched. i started out working on a jumper, but by the time frodo was leaving the shire, i'd realised that i didn't want to be faffing about with underarm stitches when they were, say, in the mines, so i grabbed some sock yarn and cast on for mindless knitting instead.

i was knitting a little intermittently, since i can't knit when crying uncontrollably, and we didn't watch all the credits, and also i started a bit after the movie did. the movies are about 11 hours and 40 minutes, including the credits. so the sock, beginning to end, took less than 11 hours of knitting, and honestly probably closer to ten.

socks are fast and easy, i swear! let 2024 be the year you let handknitting socks into your heart!

[wizzard890]

dragon age being back in the tumblr zeitgeist means that I'm seeing more and more terrible anders takes on my dash and god if you think the fandom is activating you have no idea what kind of fucking single-issue-voter manchurian candidate you've got in me.

[unionize-lumon-industries]

ok but the ballad of ambrose and gunnel is such a bop

[telumendils]

"we need more problematic female characters!!!" you people can't even handle morrigan dragon age........

[hypokeimena]

my dad just started unprompted defending yoko ono (mentioned on pbs), a woman he claimed was unfairly maligned. he keeps saying "paul broke up the beatles!" which is true

[karlachian]

what i will say. about a charisma caster class. is that if you can’t make it work for you. you are simply maybe bad at the game

[wellnoe]

jjk season 1 is like. a pretty good anime with a lot of interesting stuff going on with at least one nigh unwatchable scene per episode bc they insist on using this muddy smudge/blur effect. jjk season 2 starts with a banger of an arc, has much much better artistic sensibilities, and elaborates on most of the most interesting parts of season 1. it is genuinely really good imo.

[spacevixenmusic]

Unfairly Maligned Games, Vol. 3

Games I loved that got low scores, review bombed, or have some other weird negative stigma attached to them that I think is unfairly earned.

NOTE: I don't believe in giving games a number score or a letter grade. Maybe I'm just bad at criticism or very easy to please, whatever.

Indivisible [2019]

Mostly only known as the "from the makers of Skullgirls" game, Indivisible is another prime example of a game that was crowdfunded as one thing but turned into another, and gets a bad rap for its association with the ever-present controversiality of Skullgirls' creators. That said, I still think - as always - that it's crucial to view a game for what it is, not what it isn't. And what it IS is an extremely engaging mish-mash of genres and endearing characters, oozing with style and appeal, that fills a very particular void left behind by some of the most classic RPGs of a bygone era.

At its core, Indivisible is a 2D Metroidvania/RPG hybrid with an unusual battle system that plays similarly to an old PSX game series called Valkyrie Profile. During combat, each character's gauge will fill up, allowing them to take action(s). Your four party members are each assigned to one of the four face buttons on a controller (e.g. A, B, X, Y), and pressing that button will - in real-time - execute an attack on the enemy. Using it in combination the D-Pad allows for several different types of attack. All party members' attacks can overlap simultaneously, allowing you to string together combos to really rack up the damage, or juggle enemies to prevent counterattacks and break their defenses. The Metroidvania and platforming portion comprises the rest of the game, with a heavy focus on using those same action skills to scale massive environments, solve platforming puzzles, and dodge spikes. Typical Metroidvania stuff.

Story-wise, in our modern world of RPGs that is dominated almost exclusively by Japanese and Scandinavian narratives, Indivisible is breath of fresh air that focuses heavily on South and East Asian mythology and themes. Heavy inspiration is taken from the cultures of India, Tibet, Mongolia, and the South Pacific. This is reflected not only in the characters and their various ethnicities, but in the game's approach to spirituality, reincarnation, second chances, and being a teenager hellbent on destroying god. Our main protagonist Ajna is a teenager studying martial arts who isn't quite as in touch with her spirituality as her mentor would like her to be. When war strikes the land and burns her home to the ground, she gets pissed and sets out on a quest for retribution, discovering in the process that she actually does possess certain godlike powers of destruction, and also that she can absorb certain people into her head, which is just a cute way of lampshading having a Party System.

I've seen Reviewers and big Opinion-Havers on the internet criticize the game's writing for having a bull-headed protagonist who boldly rushes into confrontation, unleashing her wanton destruction without first considering the catastrophic consequences for civilians. It's almost like they've forgotten what being a teenager and making poor choices is like. But I say fuck 'em. I say we need MORE stories about uninformed teenagers with immense godlike powers and no sense of nuance making rash decisions and fucking up royally. That alone is crucial to understanding the rest of the game's themes about atonement, reincarnation, and understanding why you believe what you believe in. That's what Indivisible is all about. In many ways, I feel like Ajna shares a common story arc with Korra from the Avatar series, and it's very cool to see how she learns to deal with the damage she's caused and what insight that gives her when facing down the Big Bad.

Of course, what is a good story without characters to flesh it out? The characters in this game are absolutely charming and multifaceted, coming from a wide array of different cultures and personalities, many of which are vastly underrepresented in not only RPGs but video games in general. Personal favorites include, but are not limited to, big booba water mom Thorani (based on a buddhist deity of the same name), Leilani the Hawaiian sharknado (spins around in a cyclone attack using a leiomano, a Hawaiian shark-tooth sword), lesbian pirate mom Baozhai (based on the famous Chinese pirate Ching Shih), and of course, local nihilistic swamp witch Razmi (a loose mishmash of Korean and Persian Zoroastrian shamans). The full cast of characters is enormous (well over 20 playable ones alone), and each one comes with a unique moveset and playstyle that not only keeps gameplay interesting, but matches their personality and the role they play in the story.

But if there's one thing I truly want to focus on when I gush about this game, it's this. Indivisible has one thing over most other games of its genre, something that modern RPGs in particular suffer heavily from a severe lack of, and that's its strong commitment to multiculturalism. Indivisible made a clear decision to not only feature characters from around the globe, but to blend their cultures together in interesting and exciting ways that don't diminish or water them down. Every character is allowed to shine in their own way without diluting what makes them stand out in the first place, which is why you can have a game that features a gunblade-wielding cowboy, a Namibian songstress, an armless Chinese dancer, a Kamen Rider knock-off, and a Mongolian archer who people keep mistaking for Pearl from Steven Universe. This sort of melting-pot cultural stew used to be common in classic anime and 90s RPGs, but kind of fell out of fashion with the rise of gacha waifu games and Elder Scrolls derivatives. Now more than ever, I feel like Indivisible is exactly the sort of injection the gaming world needs to rekindle those flames of pure imagination that the old classic era brought us.

All that said, one of the biggest reasons Indivisible will always have a dark mark next to its name is of course due to the fact that its lead designer (the studio head) was involved in a sexual harassment case that resulted in everyone on the team either quitting or being laid off, and the rights to the work and characters getting lost in the shuffle. Additionally, the game was still finished and released as intended, but did not feature any of the guest star characters that were promised during crowdfunding, most of whom were indie darlings of the time (Shovel Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, and Super Time Force to name a few). Naturally, this has left a sour taste in many folks' mouths, so it is somewhat understandable why the game would have a negative stigma attached. There are also a few bizarre and possibly off-putting cameos hidden among the NPCs (a few outdated meme references and Zone-tan, of all people), but these are entirely skippable and serve only as background extras.

Sour grapes aside though, I wholeheartedly recommend Indivisible for anyone looking for a fresh take on action RPGs. The neat hybridization of Metroidvania and real-time RPG with fighting game mechanics gives it a very unique identity, and if the compelling spirituality of the story doesn't grab you, the charm of the characters absolutely will. It certainly took me for a ride. My only word of caution is to follow the game's own suggestion and get good at Blocking in combat as early as you can!