#fake tvtropes analysis

[shachihata]

stories about predestination and fate and justice and the lack of it make me feel so fucking crazy in the head it’s not even funny. i LOVE it when the character is aware that they’re a character in a prewritten narrative. i LOVE the crushing inevitability of taking steps forward in a direction that isn’t your own. i LOVE unreliable narrators who are cognizant and complicit with their role in the plot. Im going insane

#ciphertexts #fake tvtropes analysis

[shachihata]

everyone go away i need to be left alone with my thoughts about the nature of free will in video games and how the erratic, dramatic atmospheric shifts in tsp (between horror, tragedy, lighthearted comedy, genuine warmth) work together with the ever-so-subtly shifting dialogue and worldmap in order to make the entire office seem alive, like it’s actually reacting to player choice whenever you do something “right” or “wrong,” and yet at every moment you do not have choice and the narrator is constantly reminding you of this because the NATURE of a story is inherently that you DON’T HAVE CHOICE and making a story with branching paths that reacts to every decision you make in a planned, calculated way can only conceal that fact in an illusion for so long and yet it is SO EASY to get immersed in the game and truly believe you have choice within it simply because somebody else is talking to you and walking you through it (even if it’s all prerecorded lines) which makes you seemingly part of a conversation with the game itself which really just makes tsp just a commentary on the nature of games themselves as a method for providing the illusion of player freedom through the loss and restriction of player choice which can be broadened in a sense to talk about real-world mobility and the controlled ways in which we navigate our life and how conversations with others are still burdened by these invisible restrictions that we’ve grown so accustomed to that we see even our most restrained choices as “free” because of the knowledge paradigm that we’ve been socialized to accept AND ALL THIS TO SAY THAT the narrator and stanley had crazy gay sex they got married and divorced and just kept having gay sex and THIS IS THE EXTERNAL KNOWLEDGE that you should be making every one of your decisions in tsp through THIS IS THE SOCIAL NORM, THE LOSS, THE RESTRICTION that controls every action you take in the game THE NARRATOR AND THE PROTAGONIST FUCKED and this is the invisible burden that the player must keep in mind every time you make a choice in this choiceless game THEY HAD SEX THE NARRATOR AND STANLEY HAD SEX

#ciphertexts #Sorry. Had to get this out of my system #fake tvtropes analysis

[shachihata]

rainbows end was... an interesting novel. i think my ultimate consensus is that I Like It but good god did it leave a lot of things at the end open to interpretation in like, a weird way that felt thematically satisfying but at the same time like, really Narratively unsatisfying, if that makes any sense?

the way that vinge just sort of dumped you into this super high-tech, technological-singularity, artificial-reality world i initially thought was really weird but it worked with the actual way that the plot developed really well. as robert (the protagonist) gained more and more familiarity with the hyper-technological world around him, You As The Reader Also started getting more and more accustomed to all the terms and technology that the author was using, which i always think is verrrry cool to see in narratives... having reader knowledge about literally the world itself develop side-by-side with the narrator’s awareness of the world. similarly, the plot itself was super fucking complicated. which in many cases i would side-eye really hard, but once again, it worked well with the actual narrative and setting + everything came together with the actual climax in a really cool way that emphasized how all of these individual’s schemes and plans finally came together and were, in turn, foiled by the Very Individual who’d set them all up in the first place. something something the rabbit’s omnipresence, relative invisibility, and ultimate shutdown represents the manipulative, god-like nature of what would happen if the world becomes hyper-integrated with technology... ouroboros-esque “snake eating its own tail” in order to flex its own ego and demonstrate how powerful it is it ends up destroying itself and getting distracted by too many things at once, and ultimately it’s only human intervention that can see the “truth” behind the affair, with human agency eventually surpassing even the omniscience of hyperadvanced technology...

at the same time, the novel introduced a lot of things that felt like they should’ve been chekhov’s guns that simply were never answered, by the end of the novel? the rabbit’s pdf, for example, was used to help miri and robert escape but then never really brought up after they were “debriefed” post-librareome incident. consequences for the credit suisse shutdown that broke the rabbit’s back were never ever actually explained because... “well miri and robert were both in the hospital at that time and only re-entered the world after the mess was cleaned up!” the ENTIRE concept of ygbm technology was brought up very very briefly at the beginning, was the main driving force of the conflict, and... was never actually fully explained or explored to the depths that it really SHOULD’VE been, for how big of a deal it was (considering that, once again, LITERALLY the novel’s entire plot revolves around it). The Fucking Rabbit. i can excuse the total obscurity of the rabbit on a thematic, “it’s meant to be vague and omniscient because it represents the World Wide Web as a whole” basis, but from a NARRATIVE basis, having a couple paragraphs edge dangerously close to exposing him as a human fucking being foiled by one credit company and then NEVER ADDRESSING who he really is behind the mask? Is such an awful fucking tease. Like come on.

overall it really felt like vinge bit off more than he could chew, like the plot itself started off superrrr complex and superrrr grand but ultimately wound up too complicated before everything could snap to a shut in one long, drawn-out (like. really drawn out. like 50-100 pages) climax before ultimately gasping for air and dying with a pretty bad, narratively unsatisfying ending overall. the pacing was just weird throughout the novel. and i have to say that while i LIKED most of the characters, robert’s characterization was suchhhh a fucking copout... making him an abusive father/divorcee that essentially got amnesia and had to be rebuilt into a new person where “oh he’s nicer now because of the trauma memory wipe his main character motivation is that he just needs to cure his permanent writer’s block (also because of the trauma memory wipe)” IS SO. it’s so. Come on man. You can do better than that. it’s not that i WOULDN’T recommend the novel (the setting and setup ARE genuinely very fun and very interesting), but to enjoy it, good god you’re going to have to close your eyes to some major fucking plotholes/pacing issues and really suspend your disbelief to an Un-fucking-imaginable level. Anyway. Can i get closure on the rabbit now

#ciphertexts #fake tvtropes analysis

[shachihata]

my favorite mario video essays on youtube (no commentary)

here’s a link to a full commentary version of this post. this post bolds the essays that i included on the other post. the unbolded links are to essays that i still very much enjoyed, but cut because i was limiting myself to one video/channel, i thought they were too technically-detailed for General Casual Consumption, i liked them but didn’t have much to say about them... and so on!

sm64 - watch for rolling rocks - 0.5x a presses (pannenkoek2012)

sm64 - stomp on the thwomp - 6x a presses (pannenkoek2012)

enter the secret aquarium - 0x a presses (commentated) (bad_boot)

super paper mario - the greatest mario story ever told (kayjulers)

super mario 64 tool-assisted speedrun world record explained (bismuth)

why 4:54 is the perfect speedrun - super mario bros. world record speedrun explained (bismuth)

donkey kong 64 any% tool-assisted speedrun explained (bismuth)

how gaming’s most iconic challenge was invented - the history of the sm64 a button challenge (bismuth)

crowdsourcing cpu power to go fast in paper mario: ttyd - recipes@home (malleo)

manipulating a 1 in 46,000 chance - when luck just isn’t enough (malleo)

finishing a race in mario kart wii by driving backwards for two weeks (malleo)

reverse-engineering item throws in paper mario: ttyd (malleo)

tas paper mario: the thousand-year door any% in 1:47:09.03 (malleo)

how we used a credits warp to beat ttyd in 25 minutes (malleo)

super mario bros: the human limit (summoningsalt)

mario kart wii: the ultra shortcut revolution (summoningsalt)

mario kart 64: the quest for world record perfection (summoningsalt)

4-2: the history of super mario bros.’ most infamous level (summoningsalt)

actually here’s just summoningsalt’s whole channel. my mike tyson’s punch out king. enjoy

the quiet sadness of super mario galaxy (jacob geller)

how speedrunners beat super mario odyssey without cappy (almost) (lowest percent)

how speedrunners get 25 shines before the game starts (lowest percent)

how to beat super mario odyssey with only 3 captures (smallant)

the history of super paper mario speedrunning [any% world record progression] (spm community)

the complex beauty of super mario sunshine (skyehoppers)

the freedom of super mario 64 (i am error)

every copy of super mario 64 is personalized: a deeper look (nescretro)

the worst fake speedrun on youtube (karl jobst)

super mario rpg: the lost legacy of the legend (the geek critique)

paper mario: the dark side of nostalgia (the geek critique)

speedrunners break paper mario by using ocarina of time! (abyssoft)

the original mario bros. (jan misali)

how many super mario games are there? (jan misali)

super mario bros. 3 - wrong warp (retro game mechanics explained)

super mario world - random number generation (retro game mechanics explained)

super mario world - level end glitches (retro game mechanics explained)

researching super mario bros. level design (ai and games)

the quest for sub one minute (super mario world) (storster)

the human limit of super mario world (storster)

#ciphertexts #fake tvtropes analysis #mario #video essays

[shachihata]

my favorite mario video essays on youtube (full commentary)

here’s a link to a no commentary version of this post. on this list i limited myself to one video per channel for the sake of variety, but on the other list i am MUCH more liberal with what i chose to put on there so if you’re looking for more mario-related content, there ya go :v

sm64 - watch for rolling rocks - 0.5x a presses (like ok yeah parallel universes ok yeah whatever haha funny take away the meme context of it and this is GENUINELY a classic of mario video essays. like even if you’ve never had ANY experience with mario glitches pannenkoek is SO fucking good at explaining it in an easily-comprehensible way. the editing is top-notch, the concept of these mario challenges themselves is fucking insane, this one LEGALLY has to be on the list. everybody say "thank you pannenkoek" right fucking now for his years of sm64 research and his contributions to the sm64 community.)

super paper mario - the greatest mario story ever told (the central thesis of this essay is, and i quote, “love is, without a doubt, the most central theme of super paper mario and one that embodies every aspect of its progression... although [the worlds] might seem different simply for the sake of level variety, they are all united under [this] single concept” which really is just the only fucking thesis that matters in the whole world. very very good analysis of the story of what i find to be a very very good game)

super mario 64 tool-assisted speedrun world record explained (GIVE THIS ONE A CHANCE. this video single-handedly introduced me to the fucked-up world of mario speedrunning bismuth is SO good at making essays that, even if they’re not necessarily Easily Digestible because of how many technical concepts are introduced in them, are REALLY fun to watch if you’re willing to engage with the material. videos like this remind me of why i am so fascinated with the work speedrunners do. it is so unbelievable how much genuine research and testing and time goes into making tases and totally just breaking a game like sm64 apart.)

crowdsourcing cpu power to go fast in paper mario: ttyd - recipes@home (i LOVE tasmalleo so much this guy is the math professor of the paper mario speedrunning community it is absolutely unbelievable how much work he’s done to just break this game wide open. to quote feralphilosopher from the comments: “this is the funniest use of crowdsourced cpu that i’ve ever heard.” to quote malleo himself: “there are more orders to cook recipes in than there are atoms in the entire observable universe. we need YOUR HELP to shave seconds off the ttyd 100% tas.” and that’s all you need to know.)

super mario bros: the human limit (summoningsalt summoningsalt my beloved. this one revolves around speedrunning super mario bros but introduces its technical concepts in a much more casual way than bismuth does that’s wayyy easier to understand. really it’s more about the history of super mario bros speedrunning rather than the specific technical details involved in the run, and summoningsalt creates a really sick narrative around its main runners that you simply cannot help but get invested in. if you like this style of video i HEAVILY recommend everything else’s he’s ever made. if i wasn’t restricting myself to just one video per channel i would’ve slapped basically all of his videos onto this list)

the quiet sadness of mario galaxy (literally almost cried watching this video essay. it’s a shorter one, but jacob geller packs SO much emotion into his analysis of how mario galaxy uses its setting to its maximum advantage in creating its rich atmosphere... like i lose my mind just thinking about it)

how speedrunners beat mario odyssey without cappy (almost) (pretty easy-to-understand, shows you a glimpse at wtf is going on in the mario speedrunning community without losing you in the technical details. it is SO much fun to watch runners pull off increasingly difficult and weird and fucked-up glitches in order to accomplish completely arbitrary challenges that they set for themselves. also did you know odyssey speedrunners play with both their hands and their feet. i wish i didn’t)

the history of super paper mario speedrunning [any% world record progression] (i love watching people talk about what they're passionate about and this is 2 hours of listening to people talk In Detail about what they're passionate about. i have to warn that it’s very very slow-paced, especially at the beginning, but you can tell that it’s because the commentators are really invested in the spm speedrunning community they helped to build and they don’t want to skip over any details while hyping up different runs and different discoveries, LOL.)

the complex beauty of super mario sunshine (i love deep thematic analysis for games and media that you don’t think have anything To Be Thematically Analyzed and this video is no exception. listening to this guy talk about what makes super mario sunshine so special to him is truly just. a heartwarming experience. plus he gives a really interesting explanation about what makes super mario sunshine such an engaging game for so many people, despite all of its technical flaws... just very very fun to listen to overall!)

every copy of super mario 64 is personalized: a deeper look (this one is so funny. like this is just the funniest video in the world i think. it basically takes the creepypasta/conspiracy theory that sm64 has its own personal lavender town effect and “documents” “evidence” that the theory is real like it takes itself VERY seriously even though the further you watch it just gets more and more off-the-rails unbelievable to the point where the contrast is just fucking hilarious to me. fair warning for unreality/uneasy ”horror” aspects because the video itself is narrated as if the whole “personalization” theory is true, lol)

super mario rpg: the lost legacy of the legend (i’ve gotta say that this one is MUCH easier to understand if you already have some prior knowledge of What Super Mario RPG Is, haha. at the same time though, it’s a really really cool deconstruction of the nostalgia people feel for the snes’s legacy and a neat analysis of smrpg as a lot of western kids’ first introduction to turn-based rpg-esque games. plus the humor in this is fucking fantastic. comparing microtransactions to the nintendo power tips hotline. “i WAS baby.” going out of my mind)

speedrunners break paper mario by using ocarina of time (some background: ace, or arbitrary code execution, is an exploit found in certain games that essentially lets you manipulate the game’s memory to, well... literally reprogram it from the inside out. this is possible in the original paper mario, as long as the legend of zelda: ocarina of time was plugged into the n64 before it! abyssoft does a GREAT job at covering the history of ace in paper mario in an approachable manner and the content of this video is just... it’s unbelievable that this is even POSSIBLE. absolutely fantastic. you will lose your mind)

the original mario bros. (i can’t spoil this one. i literally can’t spoil this one or i’ll ruin it if you haven’t already watched it. did you know that the first official mario bros game was released on the game & watch in 1983? you’ll know too much about it by the end of this video. “[donkey kong jr.] is clearly a being capable of logical reasoning, as established in donkey kong jr. math.” just trust me.)

#ciphertexts #fake tvtropes analysis #mario #video essays

[shachihata]

i liked the style of the sugar festival by paul park a lot his writing style was enjoyable to me personally because im a huge fucking fan of long and elaborate metaphors and strong descriptions and the sugar festival was so rife with both it created such a distinct atmosphere to the historical-narrative style of storytelling that i dont think ive ever seen done in a novel before. all of the dialogue felt very natural every character had their own register of speech and weird-guy-complexes that made them super compelling (even if they were, most of the time, Meant to be unlikeable). the way the world was set up was interesting too, it's cool how he essentially just dumped you into a highly-elaborate world with a unique political and religious climate and a deep deep history-turned-religious-propaganda that had clear ramifications on everyone's actions and thought processes that you literally just Do Not Know At All and expected you to muddy around in there in order to figure out what the hell was actually going on for yourself... it mirrors the actual plight of the antinomials in the story and really makes you Feel the misery and religious fervor of the strictly-stratified charn like you're an actual outsider to the city (which all of the main characters are in one way or another).

abu's arc and execution was very well done and definitely one of my favorite moments in the book. the violence of the ending to book one and the way his ritualistic execution set up the main conflicts of book two (the criticism of the very catholic idea of "taking your suffering" as a form of redemption and the movement of charity and thanakar away from their original social ranks) was very fun... the plot of the book is complex (like a political-historical narrative would be) but none of the characters do anything that feel super Out Of Character, even if they do act incredibly irrationally, following religious traditions that we would never understand in the real world. which really just speaks to how well park immerses you in the novel, i was very lost at the beginning but by the point of the climax i like. I understood it yknow. like i took all of the characters' actions to be natural even though there's such a clear dissonance between charn and the real world that simply cannot be reconciled.

which is one of the criticisms i have about it, park's universe is complex and multifaceted hut at the same time... strangely one-dimensional. it's like he can't decide between writing "objective historical narrative about a political system on an alien world ruled entirely by religion" and "character-driven novel zooming in on the lives of three highly-ranked members of society and seeing how their psychologies change in response to political turmoil and revolt." all the social groups in charn act like huge masses... he mentions moments of supposed dissonance but in reality they're all "painted" the same way. he also relies way too heavily on sexual imagery as the "driving point" of the religion that all of the characters follow when, really, i think it was for shock value to sort of set charn apart from the real world. there was some commentary made about the way sex sort of "possesses" the spirit and corrupts even the purest of religious origins or whatever but the constant constant constant description of phallic statues and imagery was grating at times. even if it was supposed to be a form of immersion, it didn't feel like a "backdrop" to the story itself. it was front and center the whole way through which... is kind of the point, i guess, since the religion is meant to have such a strong hold on the people? but there were so many other aspects To the religion (ideas about predestination, ranking, etc.) that just were brushed aside in favor of "sex description of statue with phallic imagery sexual pleasure of the prophet ankghdt" i wanted them to focus on yknow. the other parts of this mystical otherworldly political-religious cult for once even if sex was supposed to be what united their beliefs you feel.

also the way that the antinomials were presented in the book felt sort of fucking weird. the way the class system as a whole was presented felt really fucking weird tbh. like on one hand, it's meant to be a criticism of classism (you get to see how paradoxically dissonant the psychology of all of the upper-ranked starbridges are as they try to justify their own excesses), but that... ironically feeds into classism itself. park is trying to divorce the socioeconomic issues of the real world from the socioeconomic issues of charn but it's painfully obvious that he has this romanticized, western view of what the "lower class" is like and how the "lower class" lives irl that shaped the way he depicts the lower strata of his book... like fuck, i praise the abu character arc but to put it bluntly, abu is a highly-ranked prince who mingles with lower-class people and becomes worshiped as a virtual god for "daring" to extend mercy to the poor. On one hand yeah that's an allusion to jesus. On the other hand, like i mentioned before, park "paints over" these complex topics and opinions in broad strokes, only alluding briefly to potential dissension before returning to his focus on the psychologies of his main characters. and the whole concept of the antinomials being a LITERALLY DEHISTORICIZED PEOPLE (they are mentioned multiple multiple multiple times as having "no past or future" and it's canon that they don't conceptualize anything besides the present and have no way of communicating with each other beyond song) who are chased out of their lands by the priests of charn and forced into the lower strata of society or otherwise arrested/discriminated against... it feels like an Incredible caricature of native americans and indigenous peoples that's central to, once again, developing one of the upper-class main characters of the novel. idk! park Tries to criticize and mirror some very very complex irl issues in the politics and history of his world but ends up either making broad generalizations about a lot of them or coming off as ignorant, if somewhat well-meaning. the book itself was published in the late 1980s so obviously it shows its age in matters like this, but it was still definitely a bit off-putting at times.

would i recommend this book? honestly probably not, unless you love your complex fantasy religious political history books. i think it takes a lot of inspiration from the style and worldbuilding of dune, but dune just. does it better in every way possible LOL. park tried to distinguish it by having it focus a lot on sex and creating a hypothetical religion where the divine act of sex and procreation and predestination based on your family line is the centerpiece of every ritual and belief but it's so heavy-handed at times with its descriptions that it can get grating. at the same time i did really enjoy the deep-water immersion of the world, he does a really good job at making you feel the misery of charn down to your very Core. you are NOT going to be happy reading this but on god if the misery doesn't feel good to read about. the main characters are highly compelling, but the book waffles a lot between objective-subjective viewpoints about the role they played in the warfare and turmoil and doesn't always do the best job at reconciling these distinct perspectives... they bleed into each other in ways that don't always make sense, i think. it wasn't like i don't think it was worth the read (i was pretty immersed in all 600 fucking pages i mean), i would just be Highly hesitant to recommend it to anyone who like. isn't into fucked-up pretentious writing styles and who i don't know already likes this style of content. because like, i Do, and even then it grated on me at times with how heavy-handed and long-winded it could be.

#ciphertexts #fake tvtropes analysis #Complex feelings about this one tbh. this is so fucking long and i still tbh didnt even address everything i wanted to say #like abt the characters and plot and shit this is just a broad review but . i woke up at 0600 and im sick of typing on my phone

[shachihata]

fuck everything no more studying i need to watch the last act of arcane right now the visual imagery i swear to god just kept getting better and better. first act you were like "damn ok this shit kinda looks cool the animation style is so unique and all of the fighting feels so weighty wait these graphics are really nice" second act when they dropped the silco -> jesus imagery and jinx's baptism and the viktor #hexillionairemindset blood-and-sex scene and then directly juxtaposing the architecture and scene elements of piltover with zaun and viktor's Literally Underground Life With Singed and im sitting there watching it literally ready to chew my way thru a loadbearing wooden support beam like a starved termite

#ciphertexts #fuck all life i need more media to just directly appropriate christian religious iconography. its always morally correct #arcane #fake tvtropes analysis

[shachihata]

the fucking. ok wat ever make fun of the jayce sex scene juxtaposed with the viktor hextech scene all you want its funny haha viktor is kinda fruity as fuck "he's like a brother to me" haha whatever You people would never understand. It's about divine creation. It's the show equivocating sexual climax with bloodspill. It's both conception and death in a single scene babey it cements the death of jayce and viktor's old selves and their rebirth into new personas dedicated towards piltover's progress/personal transhumanism respectively. Literally viktor is struck with "divine inspiration" and gives metaphorical life to his mechanical creation ITS AN ALLUSION TO THE DIVINE CREATION OF LIFE... MAYBE EVEN THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION BUT I HAVENT THOUGHT IT THRU ALL THE WAY YET BECAUSE ITS 3 AM. ANYWAY

#ciphertexts #fake tvtropes analysis #sorry im fucking insane in the head arcane's cinnamon FUCKING cinematography SORRY #arcane

[shachihata]

clarke is a fantastic author and the novel adaptation of space odyssey is filled to the brim with gorgeous imagery and really fucking hard-hitting lines and captures the Energy of the movie more effectively than i thought it would... but ultimately imo space odyssey has Got to be a movie-viewing experience. b/c the novel has to rely a lot on Telling you what things are and Telling you how bowman feels while the movie forces you to interpret and imagine on your own what things are or how bowman feels (which better fits the very loose, naturally-open nature of the story in the first place... not to mention that allowing you to project your own emotions onto bowman lets him work better as a stand-in for the viewer, which i think he's supposed to be)... plus the hal sequence is really really fast and doesn't have the same Impact as the film i guess, probably because you don't get to actually Hear hal as he's getting taken apart which is Vital to him being ultimately a sympathetic character imo. the novel itself just naturally moves quickly despite all of its description b/c half of the original movie is dead ass nothing but long panning shots of space after all? which once again works in a Visual format for establishing the sheer enormity of space and the loneliness of bowman... and even though i think clarke's descriptions are very very good in trying to capture that same feeling and sense of scale, it doesn't compare with seeing and, once again, Interpreting kubrick's vision for yourself. Overall worth the read if you liked the original movie. Once again the ending sequence made me want to hurl myself into the ocean

#ciphertexts #fake tvtropes analysis

[shachihata]

on one hand im obsessed with them because i think it is so fun that flora and florin fundamentally want the same thing they just have entirely different ways of approaching that goal that makes their relationship fundamentally unsustainable because neither of them are willing to communicate or work together they think that its their way or the highway and they jump to drastic conclusions immediately rather than compromising at all its like. Shared Grevillea Traits. on the other hand im obsessed with them specifically because of that line in darchlight woods where flora is like “look, we don’t have time for random annoying trainers. so scram.” and florin is like “well, now i will give them some of our time” and also that line where florin is like “flora doesn’t have anything to do later today so if you want a battle --” and flora interrupts like “what the fuck? do you claim to know my whole schedule?” and florin is like “you and i both know you have nothing to do later today” and flora is like “W-Well. I Am A Very Busy Woman” LIKE. I CANNOT ELABORATE HOW. BUT SHARED GREVILLEA TRAITS

#ciphertexts #rejuvenation #fake tvtropes analysis #edit: IT'S LIKE YOU CAN TELL FLORIN IS JUST AS SARCASTIC AS FLORA HE'S JUST LIKE. NORMAL ABOUT IT #LIKE HE HAS A CUSTOMER SERVICE VOICE YOU KNOW. YOU KNOW YOU KNOW #edit 2: I GOT IT ITS LIKE. FLORIN IS PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE FLORA IS JUST AGGRESSIVE. YOU KNOW

[shachihata]

It’s like i don’t think flora and florin actually hate each other right. they have like the classique sibling rivalry going on their dialogue is so funny especially when you first meet them... Like they even have the classic Sibling Stare moment when they both meet erin for the first time and she’s going off about the most inane “i am not lost i will not ever be lost” shit. And like flora even acknowledges if you join bladestar she says something like “florin has a kind heart, but that’ll be his downfall” florin says if you go with him in the caves “flora wouldn’t leave me here alone... did something happen to her?” LIKE THEY TRUST EACH OTHER YOU KNOW THEY JUST HAVE LIKE. IT’S THIS FUNDAMENTAL IRRECONCILIABLE  DIFFERENCE IN THE WAY THEY THINK THEY CAN CHANGE THE WORLD FLORA THROUGH CRUELTY FLORIN THROUGH KINDNESS BOTH OF THEM THINK THAT THEY’RE DOING THE RIGHT THING AND IN THE END THAT’S WHAT ENDS UP DESTROYING THEIR RELATIONSHIP. im having a stress headache thinking about the florin death sequence

#ciphertexts #rejuvenation #fake tvtropes analysis #ive been so fucking busy with school i literally just come on here to post like an insane person about florin then i leave again. Bye

[shachihata]

me rambling about rejuv’s storytelling structure under the cut i didn’t edit this post so if i’m unclear well. That’s what you get

ok so basically as i do my *checks watch* third replay of rejuv, i’ve basically been putting together what i’ve been calling like... a “lore walkthrough” of it? essentially, i’m writing synopses of each of the “story beats” of rejuv in correlation with the “gameplay beats” of rejuv, as laid out by jra’s 100% walkthrough. which seems kind of nebulous, but i mean something like this...

where i’ve put the “story beat” next to, in parentheses, the one or more gameplay sections that they correspond to. and the way i’ve split up the story beats is, i’ll admit, pretty subjective. i’ve been sort of basing it off of the natural “flow” of events, with each chapter having some sort of exposition and then a main conflict/climax. for example, chapter 4 looks like this:

“goldenleaf town” sets up the exposition for the chapter conflict, while “wispy tower” is the main climax that provides some sort of resolution to this conflict. simple!

most chapters, i’ve noticed, are around 2 story beats long, with each story beat taking place in a different area from the last. chapter 4 is divided into the goldenleaf town exposition and the wispy tower conflict/climax; chapter 8 is divided into the magma stone exposition and the valor mountain conflict/climax; chapter 9 is divided into the past aevium exposition and the west gearen sewers conflict/climax. longer chapters sometimes break this flow by introducing what i call a “falling action” beat. an example of this would be chapter 5: from the pre-blacksteeple exposition of the disappearance of akuwa town, the blacksteeple castle conflict where you confront neved and madame x, and the terajuma island falling action where you’re introduced to the next main “hub area” of rejuv. i’m on chapter 12 right now, and the only chapter that’s been shorter than two “story beats” is chapter 3, one of the shortest chapters in the game gameplay-wise, anyway. the exposition and climax both take place inside of chrysalis mansion, and occur in such short sequence with basically no falling action to speak of; story-wise, there’s nowhere that feels “right” to split it up, if that makes sense.

now, i’ve noticed that what i consider to be the “weaker” chapters of rejuv actually are the chapters that have three story beats -- these chapters, as you might imagine, are the longer ones that tend to drag on in terms of their conflicts and resolutions. chapter 5 “naturally” ended with the ending of blacksteeple, but you have to sit through a sequence at terajuma island that imo breaks the mood of the chapter by introducing you to... a tropical jungle where everyone’s complaining about the heat, literal minutes after the INCREDIBLY intense sequence where melia reveals that she’s still alive, you’re introduced to who madame x even is, and madame x kills nancy. the conflict has come to its natural close, and yet you’re immediately thrown even MORE problems that DON’T have a natural conclusion with the end of the chapter. instead, they get “dragged on,” meaning that to end your gameplay session with the end of the chapter leaves you feeling “unsatisfied” with the few answers you’ve received: saki is missing and nowhere to be found, alex and sam reveal that angie is the next big bad guy of the terajuma arc, nim is getting weirdly sick and weak, a cutscene with ren shows him joining team xen... and so on.

obviously, in any story, there has to be an overarching plot and conflict that does span multiple chapters. like, i’m not saying that all the problems in a chapter need to be resolved in that chapter. i’m saying that the “weaker” chapters introduce multiple smaller conflicts that simply aren’t on the level of the main plot that don’t get addressed to any satisfying degree, which weakens the overall impact of the chapter’s conflict and makes it feel longer than necessary. if that makes sense!

it’s this tendency to “drag on” that makes rejuv’s storyline much weaker after act 1 (the ending at valor mountain), imo. chapter 8 was an incredibly strong chapter, definitely one of my favorite in all of rejuv -- magma stone exposition plus a powerful ending at valor mountain where a lot of subplots are either resolved or, at the very least, addressed in a way where the player’s reassured that they haven’t been forgotten about (just off the top of my head... crescent’s connection to the player, jenner’s love for melia, nim’s psychic powers and inhuman nature, zetta’s problems and disorders, team xen’s weird immortality-at-a-cost, etc etc etc). it’s a natural ending to the main conflict of act 1: Team Xen Has Problems And Wants Melia Soooooooo So Bad. you win! ...at a major cost. it provides satisfying resolutions to the problems that’ve been presented in the first half of the game, while still setting up the stakes of the next act (angie, team xen at large, Crescent’s Connection To The Player). you’ve got a pretty clear idea of What To Do Now and What The Plot Is Going To Address Next, but the main threat still on the table is Madame X And Co.

...and then act 2 comes in and starts muddying stuff up. the reason why act 1 works so well is because even though there are so many minor problems being introduced, the major problem is still hanging over your head at any given moment. melia dead? it’s team xen. keta’s dead? it’s team xen. aelita’s being tortured? it’s team xen. amber’s being kidnapped? You Guessed It, It’s Team Xen. there’s no ambiguity about what the overarching plot is, as opposed to the myriad of “overarching arc-spanning problems” that are introduced in each chapter in act 2. once again, off the top of my head: your role as the “interceptor,” the role of bladestar, kieran and clear, the puppetmaster, nim/lorna, angie, vitus/indriad, the stone incident... and team xen’s previously-monolithic strength is undermined by madame x’s role in the doomed future, as she becomes a semi-ally even though there was very little prior character development for her besides “evil lady who killed your mom and warned maria in the prologue and has some sort of goal that you’re unwittingly ruining.” their importance in act 1 is diminished by all of the new problems suddenly being thrown at you in act 2 that have arc-wide importance, even though you, as a first-time player, have no idea why so many problems seem to be having arc-wide importance.

expanding off of what i was talking about earlier with chapter 5: the problems “drag on”! a TON of problems are introduced with VERY little resolution in each chapter, and the previously-rigid story beats start falling apart, making the story less satisfying to play through even though you know there will be a resolution at some point in the future. take my (very very tentative) outline for chapter 11 so far:

i wasn’t... very sure how to split this one apart, tbh, because every beat has so many problems and so little resolution, everything ends up blurring together. the first beat, “grand dream city”: the missing rune. bladestar. valarie not recognizing you guys. alice and allen and karen and their connection to the theolias. cassandra’s connection to team xen. madelis’s new job. the second beat, “stone incident”: venam being turned into stone. isha and the hospital of hope. nightmare city. who the fuck is the puppetmaster. nightmare zetta. aelita’s problems and issues disorders. being the “interceptor.” the xenpurgis. the last beat, “rose theatre”: what happened to aelita. souta’s connection to the eldest. your crew being signed up for the festival of dreams tournament.

...how many of these are resolved by the end of chapter 11? uhhhhhhhhhhhh. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. yeah. compare this to how much “tighter” chapter 4 felt! the first beat, “goldenleaf town”: geara coming to intercept you in goldenleaf. ren’s connection to goldenleaf. narcissa’s problems with goldenleaf. mosely’s conflict with goldenleaf. the wispy tower incident. the second beat, “wispy tower”: mosely comes back to help you! you realize that the wispy tower is somehow connected to team xen/houses information important to team xen, and beat geara’s ass in the process! you beat narcissa in a gym battle, and goldenleaf changes their ways! ren tells you that he has problems with goldenleaf because it was his father’s last wish that he “save” goldenleaf! it sets up future conflict (ren’s dissatisfaction with the outcome, what sirius and co. were studying in wispy tower, geara meeting up with jenner/zetta/nim in the altered dimension), but there’s a clear main conflict that gets resolved and ties back to the main enemy, team xen. it’s clear-cut, it’s strongly written, it’s done.

yes, act 2 expands the scope and heightens the stakes of rejuv a lot, which is why so many problems Are Introduced At All -- but the main conflict gets very heavily muddied with all of the minor problems that are thrown at you with every single conversation, it feels. i’m only on chapter 12 but from what i remember, this “dragging on” problem happens a lot throughout act 2 (although there are some sections i think are very strongly written, don’t get me wrong). that’s why chapter 15 is so good, in comparison: it provides so much fucking resolution. it’s a “return to form,” in a sense -- conflict is set up and resolved in that chapter, while questions from previous chapters are brought back and answered (to... some “vague” degree of “clarity”). this is very much opposed to a lot of the chapters in act 2 imo, where a bunch of problems are set up with no resolution in that chapter at all. idk. my memory of them is kinda fuzzy and i gotta just keep chugging through the game, it’s interesting just to break down how all this stuff works in a meta storytelling sense ig :T

#ciphertexts #rejuvenation #fake tvtropes analysis #ahhhh fake tvtropes analysis tag i've missed you. #anyway. if you actually read all this wow. i don't feel like a single one of these paragraphs makes sense to anyone but me. #if youve got thoughts id love to hear em though. i love critical analysis and being a hater

[shachihata]

maybe instead of obsessing over homoerotic subtext in a 2004 shitty gore movie i should just like watch brokeback mountain instead so i can obsess over homoerotic real text in a 2005 cowboy romance drama or like watch actual gay people in actual gay movies or whatever. Or i can keep thinking about the fact that the first time lawrence and adam physically touch in the film is after lawrence has tried to kill adam after adam killed an innocent man to save lawrence's life despite this betrayal after lawrence had to grab adam's hand to stop him from losing his fucking mind and promise that he will come back and adam metaphorically dies and crumples over his victim's body the minute lawrence lets go <3

#ciphertexts #saw #LIKE WHAT WAS WRONGGGG WITH THEM WHAT. WAS WRONG WITH THEM #FAKE TVTROPES ANALYSIS #I FUCKING GUESS #wait i kinda have to be up at 7 tomorrow. ok i will sleep and then proceed to have no thoughts about saw again once ive been normalized <3

[shachihata]

something something photographs and video cameras cannot lie but the stories that they tell are only a reflection of the photographer's own perspective, with the person behind the camera ultimately having the most power behind the way shots are framed and people are arranged and "reality" is shown... something about how lawrence was laughing about the fact that he was always the person behind the camera, taking pictures of his family, a representation of how he metaphorically always held financial/social/familial control over his wife and his daughter, until even that control is taken from him by the replacement of that picture and he finally fucking snaps... something about how zep could only ever see snapshots of lawrence and adam thru the video feed that he controls until the final scene of the film, where he dies upon re-entering the reality that lawrence and adam have been facing this entire time... something about how jigsaw participates in and shapes his traps in order to twist his own vision so that he can only see and judge people at the lowest point of their suffering, rather than judging them as people with whole, unique lives that he will never get to see or experience... something about how adam should've FUCKING lived because he broke this cycle of blindness-behind-a-position-of-power. even though his photographed "truths" of lawrence cheating initially shaped adam's perspective on him adam was able to let it go and even REFUSE TO TAKE REVENGE ON LAWRENCE BY LETTING HIM DIE because he realized who lawrence really was as lawrence literally chopped off his leg and tried to kill adam for a chance to see his family again. adam should've FUCKING lived he not only won the game he broke the goddamn thematic-narrative cycle that every other character fell prey to im actually heated about this

#ciphertexts #saw #fake tvtropes analysis #this fucking close to writing an essay about saw's use of cameras and videos and photography as representations of the 'truth' #im so mad actually the more i think abt it it wouldve been thematically fitting in every way possible for adam to live AND YET #instead of writing a cathartic tragedy they made it grimdark everyone dies and/or becomes evil <3 the cycle simply does not end <3 #FUCK. im malding so hard right now. AND adam was gay this is homophobia.

[shachihata]

No but that last scene was so fucking homoerotic and for fucking what. ok hi bestie let's spend six hours locked in a room together knowing that your death is the key to my survival and my family's survival knowing that your life has been nothing but a series of temporary obsessions whose latest star has been me, the "truth" (which is ironically a lie) captured within the photographs that you have so painstakingly developed, a "truth" which has been shrouded by the imaginary stories that you've painstakingly developed around me <3 ok bestie even though i know you could ruin my life even though i shot you with the intent to kill i watched you choose not to watch your revenge play out i watched you kill an innocent man under the same rules as us in order to defend me <3 ok now bestie i'm going to tell you "i promise i'll bring someone back for you" "i would never lie to you" and the minute i let go of your hand and break that promise we both metaphorically die as i crawl away into the darkness and you are left to rot in it <3

#ciphertexts #saw #Like what the fuck was wrong with them. #fake tvtropes analysis

[shachihata]

woke up this morning thinking about how literally like a month ago i was calling jouno based for killing fukuchi BUT LITERALLY OK LIKE. YES THIS COULD HAVE POTENTIALLY BEEN DONE WELL!! jouno’s main character traits (as have been shown before chapter 93) were 1. vaguely sadistic 2. puts up a charismatic mask to hide his sadism 3. superiority complex. this is why i was malding that Apparently jouno DOES see “the value in helping society” in ch 93 because There Was No Buildup To This Character Change Whatsoever. it doesn’t make sense that jouno, who VERY CLEARLY doesn’t value the lives of others (see: hunting down the ada, the Entire Scene where he bashed kunikida’s savior-mentality idealism, the Entire scene with the restaurant owner, the Entire Scene With Aya Literally Two Chapters Previously), would suddenly decide “ok no i can’t join the doa because people in society are important actually“ without some sort of MAJOR EVENT TO JUSTIFY THIS PERSPECTIVE SHIFT.

yes, jouno is admittedly one of the characters that i think would make the most sense to kill fukuchi -- he’s close to fukuchi, he’s never clearly committed himself or his loyalty to the hunting dogs (didn’t he literally say at one point that he’s only in the hunting dogs because he wants to hurt others w/ legal justification), and it would’ve been pretty narratively satisfying to see fukuchi betrayed and finally defeated because he once again underestimated the will of others (which has happened time and time again with the sskk fight, tachihara, you know). but the justification for it HAS to be ic and jouno’s sudden change of heart in this chapter, frankly, Was Not. i think it MIGHT’VE worked if jouno pulled something like “oh if you destroy the world... what will i do in my free time now that i can’t go murder torture kill other people smfhhhhh” *stabs fukuchi* which then transitions into a genuine appreciation of the value of saving others when he’s congratulated by tecchou, aya, and the other characters in bsd... some sort of dramatic realization scene to bring his arc to a temporary conclusion where he returns to talk to kunikida about idealism and human life and all that. Anyway

#ciphertexts #fake tvtropes analysis #MY FINAL OPINION IS STILL THAT FUKUCHI SHOULD'VE DIED IN THE SSKK FIGHT BUT OKKKKK.... OK OK OK OK #< i say the former b/c it would've been SO FUCKING NARRATIVELY SATISFYING #fukuchi betrays fukuzawa becomes kamui is defeated by fukuzawa's protegees... they have hope and faith in each other while #fukuchi has lost his hope and faith in the world and war and society as a whole.... #sskk triumphs we get the akuatsu conversation where atsushi asks akutagawa why he's bothering to help dazai's plan comes to fruition... #THEN stoker can be introduced NOT AS A HEAD ON A STICK but as a LEGITIMATE CHARACTER OF HIS OWN #fyodor says some shit like 'you have defeated fukuchi but he was never the doa's final form' #DOA ARC CLOSES STOKER ARC BEGINS SSKK HAVE A STRONGER BOND HUNTING DOGS SEEK REDEMPTION ELSEWHERE #AUGHUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHH *i start throwing things around the room*