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catrose13 · 2 years

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Chapter 4 A Very Particular Set of Skills... "Learning things whether you want to or not" is my favourite of this chapters "Brought to You By" The chapter art also continues to be awesome

Mokuba is very unimpressed with Pegasus' hostage keeping skills

"in his Barbarous rage" yikes, he was feral enough without Barbarous rage

What's an evil lair without a bottomless pit?

..."Testicular-trauma based revenge" yikes, Mokuba possibly you should avoid the guards

He thanks the Blue-Eyes-White-Dragon topiary bush, aw

Lol Pegasus you underestimated Mokuba

...Joey...are you...breaking the Fourth Wall? Are you allowed to do that?

Poor Yugi, clowns can be very disturbing. Téa's ready to throw down, no clowns gonna touch her friends

Honestly I don't think the foxes need training to steal from people

Heh using facts you learnt an hour ago to make your point, nice one Joey

Ah Joeys Mom returns once more to prove how bad a parent she is

"Lost" can have so many connotations

...Joey this is the second time you've touched upon the Fourth Wall is there something you'd like to tell us?

So many ocean facts. I am definitely learning

Wow dolphins are assholes

Yugi...how many crimes are you going to encourage during this tournament?

Poor naive Yami "Oh I thought this would be because of the Shadow Game, glad we're only messing with his money" "No we're definitely gonna fuck him up" paraphrased

Mako knows so many "mad reliable people"

The casual shade thrown at the British museum

Pegasus, the joke wasn't funny to begin with

...I thought ketamine was a vet thing, can it be prescribed to humans?...Google says it can good to know

Kemo you really should have listened to your Grandma

Pegasus you're still talking in Capital Letters and it's less Ominous than you think and a lot more... concerning

...Cornered Rabid Mongoose, I can see why the Parasite would want to avoid that outcome

Bakura is really not a fan of this or any of the Parasites adventures, and yet he finds ways to make the most of it.

Joey...again with the Fourth Wall

Secrets age like melons because aged milk can still be cheese. Yami just spilling truths into the world

Poor Yami, so confused, "Where are all these people coming from? And why do they hate you?"

"Spiritual Appendectomy With A Chainsaw" Welp that's one way to explain what they did to Kaiba

Ohp Joeys measuring the shoulder height, he's noticing the differences!!

...Tristan I think it's a bit late to be shielding Mokuba's innocence

Sweet mercy Téa is beating the crud outta those guys

Yikes, No Kemo the Kids are Not Alright

Oh Yami is now well ready to mess Pegasus up, ya done fucked up

"Pegasus’ idea of Benevolence is probably several war crimes in a cartoon trench coat" Welp you're not wrong Marik

Hodgekiss I do not think he meant you when complimenting his work force

The Russians are not Twins Marik, they are really not Twins

Oof Hodgekiss

Yugi really is the more feral of the two of them isn't he?

Duels as a Ritual, is actually really interesting, especially in the context of Ancient Egypt and dispute solutions

...The Hippo

He makes sure to strictly obey the Rules of the Ritual to avoid Hippos

Dammit Joey stop poking the Fourth Wall...I think I'm going to start counting

Oh no you hit Yugi's Berserk Button

"Speak not to me of this 'Febreeze'" Brilliant, just wonderful

Oh no Grandpa this is what happens when you endear yourself to the Gods

Grandpa...you are denying the existence of Gods to the face of a God...

...The Hippos again... Why does this God want to continue being able to fight Hippos?

"Beloved" Gramps... Is there something you need to tell us?

Yugi is definitely not a fan of the Abomination...Boys speaking in Capitals...

Lol cold as burning anger and Yugi still has time to throw shade on Yami

Joey and the others are unaware of Mokuba's recent Finger biting adventures

Tristan. Tristan Did you just give Mokuba what I think you just gave Mokuba? Tristan the last thing this feral child needs is a gun. You better not have just given him a gun. Tristan!

Intense Battle Focus....Cheerful phone call... Poor Yami bugs freak me out too

Noot-Noot

Joey has a spare tea pot just incase they use the first one to destroy a Ghostly Abomination?

Heh Anti-Ghost-Teapot-Grenade

Pegasus should really know better than to screw around with the rules of a shadow game

No Croquet they did not give you shrooms, Yami is invoking Great Powers

Hello Anubis...Goodbye Goons

Kaiba could possibly stand to expand on his decorating scheme

"tortured into submission" is that what we're calling Pegasus' love of terrible cartoons?

"Divine Guidance"? What God is guiding you Seto?

He's channelling Salmon...an interesting choice

How expensive are these plushies? And why is it so big?

Yeah pants are probably a good idea right about now

#fanfiction #rereading #review-ish #tpofatgif #The Power of Friendship (And This Gun I Found!)#gallusrostromegalus #spoilers #YuGiOh #ygo #Chapter Four

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bingusoclock · 1 year

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completed OG res4~

7/10 experience

REVIEW!!

For what the game lacks in overall visual appeal, it makes up for it in droves of tension. Ngl, I was jumpscared more times than I'd like to admit in this game. Though not necessarily scary, it did keep you on your toes. It certainly upholds the promise of a survival horror title. (Though the horror isn't present as much as I would like)

The animation for the 'zombies' is well done, considering the era. The body horror, though not terribly intricate, does enough to disturb. Saddler's boss fight looked really cool -- but it failed to deliever with any challenge. That being said, most bosses were interesting visually and packed somewhat of a wollop. My personal favorite being the obligatory, giant, mutated aquatic creature -- the salamander boss fight.

The puzzles weren't terribly complex, though they sit at the standard for resident evil. Fetch quests for an animal mural? Check. Light puzzle? Check. Pushing things onto a pressure plate? Check. The puzzles were a nice break from the core gameplay, but I wish there were more and that they had more challenge to them. One can only hope the remake approves on this matter drastically!

And now, for the elephant in the room: Ashley. The notorious companion of Leon, the president's daughter is a teenage girl who tags along with the agent, trying to get back home.

This game is most famous for her inclusion -- being that her presence can be very, very annoying at times. Honestly, I came into this game thinking it'd be much worse, but her presence was palatable. The two voice lines she cycles through gets old quick, but I actually enjoyed another stressor added to the mix. Juggling her miniscule amount of health and an oncoming horde of not-zombies was frustratingly fun! Though I will absolutely admit that I broke into a grin whenever she was hauled off by spanish Palpatine and the short king himself, Salazar.

Ashley's solo section was an amazing change of pace from the core game. Unable to fight back, the play must creep through the shadows to avoid enemies who would otherwise be target practice if we played as Leon.

Speaking of the American Agent, it's nice to see a familiar face after so long. The one-liner, backflipping, leather-wearing Leon S.Kennedy makes a debut in his own title, without Claire. I must say, his presence certinaly dulls the peril, given his cheesy nature and action movie sauve. Personally, I find Leon as a protagonist to be very fun!

The game overall seems to be lighter than those before it, intentional or not. Between the occcasional joke and very heavy-handed action sequences, the dreary atmosphere cultivated by the enviroment is softened significantly. It's a precursor to the action hell that comes to follow this title in Resident Evil 5 and 6. Though it rarely borders on truly absurd (I'm looking at you, Chris Redfield punching a fucking boulder) it does lean into the cheesy action movies flavor that plagued the early 2000's.

TLDR;

The og Res4 is fun, through and through. With some periods of actual tension and body horror, the game is palatable for those who aren't gung-ho for horror games. As a precident for the darkest era in Resident Evil, it serves as a brief glimpse into the sheer potential of the series. The very potential that isn't realized until RE 7 and 8.

Very much looking forward to the remake!

#Original resident evil 4 #Resident evil 4 (2005)#Resident evil 4 #Game review #review-ish #most of it is my little brain being excitation about fixations

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coralcrow-and-co · 2 years

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My latest obsession

JPEGMAFIA. He does everything. He writes, he sings, he raps, he produces and mixes and masters and plays instruments. The full package. He is my main inspiration for what I do at the moment; not that that's been much lately.

My favourite album of his is his "punk-rock opera", 'All My Heroes are Cornballs'. The album, whilst not a concept album, holds consistent themes in the lyrics, production and sound. Marketed around the predicted disappointment that would ensue with its release - it is one of his most highly regarded albums by his fanbase aside from his most recent work.

Whilst PEGGY's lyrically abrasive 'Communist Slow Jams' and sonically abrasive 'Black Ben Carson' and 'Veteran', 'AMHC' seems to perfectly blend many of the aspects of these albums that I love. The album, to me, feels perfectly paced - with highlights throughout and not just in the opening. Delivery is consistently creative and energetic, with the occasional thought provoking lyric popping up - whether it be a pun or a sentiment.

I love this album.

#experimental hip hop #JPEGMAFIA #music #review-ish #gushing about album

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literary-illuminati · 4 months

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Book Review 68 - Babel by R. F. Kuang

Overview

I came to Babel with extremely little knowledge about the actual contents of the book but a deep sense of all the vibes swirling around its reception – that it was robbed of a Hugo nomination (if the author didn’t outright refuse it), that it’s probably the single buzziest and most Important sf/f release of 2022, that it was stridently political, and plenty more besides. I also went in having mostly enjoyed The Poppy War series and being absolutely enamoured by the elevator pitch of an alternate history Industrial Revolution where translation is literally magic. And, well-

It is wrong to say I hated this book, but only because keeping track of my complaints and starting organize this review in my head was entertaining enough to keep me invested in the reading experience.

The story is set in an alternate 1830s, where the rise of the British Empire relies upon the dominance of its translators, as it is the mixture of translation and silverworking, the inscription of match-pairs in different languages on bars of worked silver and the leveraging of the ambiguity and loss of meaning between them that fuels the world’s magic. The protagonist is pluckted from his childhood home in Canton after his family dies in a cholera outbreak and whisked away to the estate of Professor Lowell, an Oxford translator he quickly realized is his unacknowledged father. He’s made to choose an English name (Robin Swift) and raised and tutored as a future translator in service to the Empire.

The meat of the story is focused on Robin’s education in Oxford, his relationship with the rest of his cohort, and his growing radicalization and entanglement with the revolutionary Hermes Society. Things come to a head when in his fourth year the cohort is sent back to Canton to, well, help provoke the first Opium War, though none of them aware of that. The final act follows the fallout of that, by which I mean it lives up to the full title of “Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution”.

To be clear, this was technically a very accomplished book. The writing never dragged and the prose was, if not exactly lyrical, always clear and often evocative. Despite the breadth of space and time the story covers, I never had any complaints about the pacing – and honestly, the ending was, dramatically speaking, one of the more natural and well-executed ones I’ve read recently. It’s very well-constructed.

All that being said – allow me to apologize for how the rest of this is mostly just going to be a litany of complaints. But the book clearly believes itself to be an important and meaningful work of political art, which means I don’t feel particularly bad about holding it to high standards.

Narrative Voice

To start with, just, dear god the tone. This is a book with absolutely zero faith in its audience’s ability to reach their own conclusions, or even follow the symbolism and implication it lays down. Every important point is stated outright, repeated, and all but bolded and underlined. In this book set in 1830s England there are footnotes fact-checking the imperialists talking heads to, I guess, make sure we don’t accidentally become convinced by their apologia for the slave trade? Everything is just relentlessly didactic, in a way that ended up feeling rather insulting even when I agreed with the points Kuang was making.

More than that, and this is perhaps a more subjective complaint but – for an ostensible period piece, the narrative voice and perspective just felt intensely modern? This was theoretically an omniscient third person book, with the narrative voice being pretty distinct from any of the actual characters – with the result that the implicit narrator was instead the sort of person of spends six hours a day getting into arguments on twitter and for this effort calls themselves a progressive activist. The identities of all the characters – as delivered by the objective narration – were all very neat and legible from the perspective of someone at a 2022 HR department listing how diverse their team was, which was somewhere between a tragic lost opportunity to show how messy and historical racial/ethnic/national identities are and outright anachronistic, depending. (This was honestly one of the bigger disappointments, coming from Kuang’s earlier work. Say what you will of The Poppy War series, the narration is with Rin all the way down, and it trusts the reader enough not to blink.) More than that it was just distracting – the narration ended up feeling like an annoying obstacle between me and the story, and not in any fun postmodern way either.

Characters

Speaking of the cast – they simply do not sound or feel like they actually grew up in the 19th century. Now, some modernization of speech patterns and vocabulary and moral commensense is just the price of doing business with mass market period pieces, granted, but still – no 19th century Anglo-Indian revolutionary is going use the phrase ‘Narco-military state’ (if for no other reason than we’re something like a century early for ‘narco-state’ to be coined as a term at all). An even beyond feeling out of time most of the characters feel kind of thinly sketched?

Or no, it’s not that the characters are thinly sketched so much as their relationships are. We’re repeatedly, insistently told that these four students are fast friends and closer than family and would happily die for each other, but we’re very rarely actually shown it. This is partly just a causality of trying to skim over a four-year university education in the middle third of one book, I think, but still – the good times and happy moments are almost always sort of skimmed over, summarized in the course of a paragraph or two that usually talk in terms of memories and consequences more than the relationships themselves. The points of friction and the arguments, meanwhile, are usually played out entirely on the page, or at least described in much more detail. In the end you kind of have to just take it as read that any of these people actually love each other, given that at least two of them seem to be feuding at any given point for the entire time they know each other.

Letty deserves some special attention. She’s the only white member of Robin’s cohort at Babel and she honestly feels like less of acharacter and more a collection of tropes about white women in progressive spaces? Even more than the rest, it’s hard to believe the rest of the class views her as beloved ride-or-die found family when essentially every time she’s on screen it’s so she can do a microagression or a white fragility or something. Also, just – you know how relatively common it is to see just, blatantly misogynistic memes repackaged as anti-racist because it specifies ‘white women’? There’s a line in this that almost literally says ‘Letty wasn’t doing anything to disprove the stereotype of woman as uselessly emotional and hysteric’.

Also, she’s the one who ends up betraying the other three and trying to turn them in when they turn revolutionary. Which is probably inevitable given the book’s politics, but as it happened felt like less of the shocking betrayal that it was supposed to be and more just, checking off a box for a dramatic reverse. Of course she turned on them, none of them ever really seemed to even like each other.

As a Period Piece

So, the book is set in the 1830s, in the midst of the industrial revolution and its social fallout, and the leadup to the First Opium War (which is, through the magic of, well, magic ,but also mercantilist economics, make into a synecdoche for British global dominion more broadly). On the one hand, the setting is impeccably researched, recent and relevant historical events are referenced whenever they would come up, and the footnotes are full to bursting with quotes and explanations of texts or cultural ephemera that’s brought up in the narration.

On the other, the setting doesn’t feel authentic in the slightest, the portrayal of the British Empire is bizarrely inconsistent, and all that richly researched historical grounding ends up feeling less like a living world and more like a particularly well-down set for a Doctor Who episode.

The story is incredibly focused around Oxford as a city and a university. There’s a whole author’s note about the research and slight changes made into its geography and I absolutely believe its portrayal as a physical location and the laws about how women were treated and how the different colleges were organized and all that is exactly as accurate as Kuang wanted them to be. The issue is really the people. With the exception of a few cartoonish villains who barely get more than a couple pages apiece, no one feels, sounds like, or acts like they actually belong in the 19th century. The racism the protagonists struggle with all feels much more 21st century than Victorian, and the frame of mind everyone inhabits still comes across more as ‘unusually blatantly racist Englishman’ than 19th century scholars and polymaths.

This is especially blatant as far as religion goes. It’s occasionally mentioned, sure enough, but to the extent anyone actually believes in Christianity it’s of a very modern and disenchanted sort – this is a society that sends out missionaries as a conscious tool of colonial expansion, not because of anything as silly or absurd as actually wanting to spread their gospel. Also like, it’s Oxford, in the nineteenth century. For all the racism the protagonists have to deal with, they should be getting so much more shit from ‘well-meaning’ locals and students trying to save their (one Muslim, one atheist, one probably Christian but black and protective of Haitian Vodou on a cultural level which would be more than enough) souls.

Or, and this is more minor, it is a central conceit of the whole finale that if a few (like, two) determined revolutionaries can infiltrate Babel they’ll be able to take the entire place hostage with barely any trouble. This is because the students and professors there are, basically, whimpy bookworms who’ll faint at the sight of blood and have no stomach for the sort of violence their work actually supports and drives. Which – look, I really don’t want to defend the ruling class of Victorian Britain here, but I’m not sure physical cowardice is really one of their failings, as a group? I mean, there’s an entire system of institutionalized child abuse in the boarding schools they went to to get them used to taking and dealing out violence and abuse. Basically every upper-class sport is thinly disguised military drill or ritual combat (okay, or rowing). Half of them would graduate to immediately running off and invading places for the glory of the queen. I’m not sure two sleep-deprived nerds with knives would actually have been able to cow the crowd here, is what I’m saying. (This would stick out less if the text wasn’t so dripping with contempt for them on precisely these grounds.)

Much less minor are our heroic revolutionaries themselves. And okay, this is more a matter of taste than anything but like – the Hermes Society is an illegal conspiracy of renegade current and former Babel scholars dedicated to using their knowledge of magic and access to university resources to oppose and undermine the British Empire in general and the work of the school in particular. Think Metternich’s worse nightmare, but in Oxford instead of Paris and focused on colonial liberation (continental Europe barely exists for the purposes of the book, Britain is Empire.) So! A secret society of professional revolutionaries in the heydey of just that, with a name that just has to be Hermetic symbolism, who concern themselves with both high politics and metaphysics.

They are just so very, very boring. This is the age of the Conspiracy of the Equals, the Carbonari, the Seasons! The literal Illumanti are still within living memory! Where’s the pageantry, the ritual, the grandiosity? The elaborate initiation rituals and oaths of undying loyalty? They’re so pragmatic, so humble, so (and I know I keep coming back to this) modern. It’s just such an utter wasted opportunity. Even beyond the level of aesthetics, these are revolutionaries with remarkably little positive ideology – the oppose colonialism and racism for reasons they take as self-evident and so don’t feel the need to theorize about it (and talk about them with the vocabulary of a modern activist, because of course they do), but they’re pretty much consciously agnostic as to what world should look like instead. They vaguely end up supporting a sort of petty-bourgeois socialism (in the Marxist sense), but the alliance with Luddites is essentially political convenience – they really don’t seem to have any vision of the future at all, either in England or the various places they claim as homelands.

On Empire and Industrialization

The story is set during the early nineteenth century, so of course the Industrial Revolution is a pretty core part of the background. The Silver Industrial Revolution, technically, since the Babellers translation magic is in this world a key and load-bearing part of it. Despite the addition of miracle-working enhancers and supports to its fundamental technology, the industrial revolution plays out pretty identically to history – right down to the same cities becoming hubs of industry, despite steam engines using enchanted silver instead of coal and thus, presumably, the entire economic and logistical system that brought this particular cities to prominence being totally unrecognizable. This is not a book that’s in any way actually about tracing how something would change history – which isn’t a complaint, to be clear, that’s a perfectly valid creative choice.

It does, however, make it rather galling that the single actually significant difference to history is that the introduction of magic turns the industrial revolution into a Legend of Zelda boss with a giant glowing weak point you can hit to destroy the whole enterprise.

On a narrative level, I get it – it simplifies things and allows for a far happier and more dramatic ending if destroying Babel is not just a symbolic act but also literally sends London Bridge falling down and scuttles the entire royal navy and every mill and factory in Britain. It’s just that I think that by doing so it trades away any chance for actually making interesting commentary on anti-colonial and -capitalist resistance. A world where a single act of spectacular terrorism really can destroy a modern empire is frankly so detached from our world that it ceases to be able to really materially comment upon it.

Like, the principle reason to not take the Luddites as your role models is not that they were morally vicious but that they were doomed – capitalism’s ability to repair damage to infrastructure and fixed goods is legitimately very impressive! Trying to force an entire ruling class not to adopt a technology that makes whoever commits to it tremendous amounts of money (thus, power) is a herculean task even when you have a state apparatus and standing army – adding an ‘off’ button to the lot of it just trades all sense of relevance for a satisfyingly cathartic ending.

(This is leaving untouched how the book just takes it as a given that the industrial revolution was a strictly immiserating force that did nothing but redistribute money from artisans to capitalists. Which certainly tracks as something people at the time would have thought but given how resolutely modern all the other politics in the work are rings really weirdly.)

All of which is only my second biggest issue with how the book presents its successful resistance movement. It all pales in comparison to making the Empire a squeamish paper tiger.

Like, the book hates colonialism in general and the British Empire in particular, the narrative and footnotes are filled with little asides about various atrocities and injustices and just ways it was racist or complicit in some particular atrocity. But more than that it is contemptuous of it, it views the empire as (as the cliche goes) a perpetually rotting edifice that just needs one good kick; that it persists only through the myth of its own invincibility, and has no stomach for violent resistance from within. Which is absolutely absurd, and the book does seem to know it on occasion when it off-handedly mentions e.g. the Peterloo Massacre – but a character whose supposed to be the grizzled cynical pragmatic revolutionary still spouts off about how slave rebellions succeed because their masters aren’t willing to massacre their own property. Which is just so spectacularly wrong on every axis its actually almost offensive.

More importantly, the entire final act of the story relies upon the fact that the British Empire would allow a handful of foreign students seize control of a vital piece of infrastructure for weeks on end and do nothing but try to wait them out as the national physically falls apart around them. Like, c’mon, there would be siege artillery set up and taking shots by the end of week two. As with the Oxford students, the Victorian elite had all manner of flaws – take your pick, really – but squeamishness wasn’t really one of them.

On Magic

So the magical system underlying the whole story is – you know how Machinaries of Empire makes imperial ideology and metaphysics literally magical, giving expert technicians the ability to create superweapons and destroy worlds provided that the Hexarchate’s subjects observe the imperial calendar of rites and celebrate its triumphs/participate in rituals glorying in the torture of its ‘heretics’? It’s not exactly a subtle metaphor, but it works.

Babel does something similar, except the foundational atrocity fueling the engine of empire on a metaphysical level is, like, cultural appropriation. As an organizing metaphor, I find this less compelling.

Leaving that aside, the story makes translation literally capable of miracle-working – which of necessity requires making ‘languages’ distinct natural categories with observable metaphysical boundaries. It then sets the story in the 19th century – the era of newborn nation states and education systems and national literatures, where the concept of the national-linguistic community was the obsession of the entire European intelligentsia. Now this is not a book concerned with how the presence of magic would actually have changed history, in the slightest, but like – given how fascinated it is by translation and linguistics you’d think the whole ‘a language is a dialect with a navy’ cliché would at least get a light mention (but then the book doesn’t really treat language as any more inherent or natural than it does any other modern identity category, I suppose.)

As an Allegory

Okay, so having now spent an embarrassing number of words establishing to my own satisfaction that the book really doesn’t work at all as a period piece, let us consider; what if it wasn’t trying to be?

A great many things about the book just fit much better if you take it as a commentary on the modern university with Victorian window-dressing. Certainly the driving resentment of Oxford as an institution that sustains itself and grows rich off the exploitation of international students it considers second-class seems far more apt applied to contemporary elite western schools than 19th century ones. Likewise the racism the heroes face all seems like the kind you’d expect in a modern English town rather than a Victorian one. I’m not well-versed enough on the economics of the city to know for sure, but I would wager that the gleeful characterization of Oxford as a city that literally starts falling to ruin without the university to support it was also less accurate in the 1830s than it is today.

Read like this, everything coheres much better – but the most striking thing becomes the incredible vanity of the book. This is a morality tale where the natural revolutionary vanguard with the power to bring global hegemony to its knees through nothing but witholding their labour are..students at elite western universities (not, I must say, a class I’d consider in dire need of having their egos boosted). The emotions underlying everything make much more sense, but the plot itself becomes positively myopic.

Beyond that – if this is a story about international students at elite universities, it does a terrible job of actually portraying them. Or, properly, it only shows a certain type; just about every foreign-born student or professor we meet is some level of revolutionary, deeply opposed in principle to the empire they work within. No one is actually convinced by the carrot of a life as an exploited but exceedingly comfortable and well-compensated technician in the imperial core, and there’s not really acknowledgement at all of just how much of the apparatus of international institutions and governments in the global south – including positions with quite a bit of real power – end up being staffed by exactly that demographic who just sincerely agree with the various ideological projects employing them. Kuang makes it far too easy on herself by making just about every person of colour in the books one of the good guys, and totally undersells how convincing hegemonic ideology can be, basically.

The Necessity of Violence

This is a pet peeve and it’s a very minor thing that I really wouldn’t bring it up if that wasn’t literally part of the title. But it is, so – it’s a plot point that’s given a decent amount of attention that Griffin (Robin’s secret older brother, grizzled professional revolutionary, his introduction to anti-colonialism) is blamed for murdering one of his classmates who had the bad luck to be studying while he was sneaking in to steal some silver – a student that was quite well-loved by the faculty and her very successful classmates, who have never forgiven him. Later on, it’s revealed that this is an utter rewriting of history, and she’d been a double agent pretending to let herself be recruited into the Hermes Society who’d been luring Griffin into an ambush when he killed her and escaped.

This is – well, the most predictable not-even-a-twist imaginable, for one, but also – just rank cowardice. You titled the book ‘the necessity of violence’, the least you can do is actually own it and show that violent resistance means people (with faces, and names, not just abstractions only ever talked about in general terms) who are essentially personally innocent are going to end up collateral damage, and people are going to hold grudges about it. Have some courage in your convictions!

Translation

Okay, all of that said, this isn’t a book that’s wholly bad, or anything. In particular, you can really tell how much of a passion Kuang has for the art and science of translation. The depth of knowledge and eagerness to share just about overflows from the page whenever the book finds an excuse to talk about it at length, and it’s really very endearing. The philosophizing about translation was also as a rule much more interesting and nuanced then whenever the book tried to opine about high politics or revolutionary tactics.

Anyways, I really can’t recommend the book in any real way, but it did stick in my head for long enough that I’ve now written 4,000 words about it. So at the very least it’s the interesting sort of bad book, y’know?

#book review #babel #r. f. kuang #sff #lesbian space atrocities #-ish #hatermode

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highabovethecloudssomewhere · 2 months

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I just read “Loveless” by Alice Oseman as someone who’s aroace and I am. Struggling.

I was expecting to love the book and I’m so, so happy to see aromanticism/asexuality in the public eye, but as far as the story/characters went I was really struggling. Maybe I’m too old for it but I found it… very lackluster. The characters felt deeply one-dimensional and I did not like the protagonist at all.

If any of you have read this book and really enjoyed the characters, I would love to hear more about it. Maybe I’m just missing something. But also if any of you have recommendations for LGBTQA+ media with engaging characters and an engaging story I would love some recommendations.

I also just watched Nimona for the first time and I absolutely adored it. Would absolutely recommend it to anyone.

#cloud rambles #book review #ish? I’ve been reading more lately #I really really really wanted to love this book #and I know a lot of people found it incredibly relatable #and there were a lot of times that I found it relatable too and the relatability of it isn’t really what I’m criticizing #I just didn’t like the characters #outside of being very very happy to see aromanticism and asexuality in the public eye acknowledged as a real identity #I don’t have anything positive to say about this book #and I really really really wish I did #negative review #I have no idea how to tag this #my thoughts line up well with the one-star goodreads reviews written by asexuals/aromanticists

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bl3ssed-cursxd · 7 months

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episode 317 of unORDINARY continued rants

LMAO THE WAY ARLO FLINCHED

arlo: me

john: my friend

only difference is i SCREAM 😀👍🏻

HOLD UP

the way john immediately went "om r u ok???" cuz um arlo??saying ouch??if arlo thinks smt is painful then we done for 🤡

also poor arlo looks EXHAUSTED LOOK AT THE CIRCLES UNDER HIS EYES

BYE JOHN IS SUCH A MOOD

"O u almost died? welcome to the club 🤠"

- said every unordinary character ever tbh

Is it just me or i have a feeling john has said this before 🏃‍♀️

ANYWAYS THATS THAT AND WE GOT SOME JOHN AND ARLO CRUMBS THIS EPISODE SO YAY wish it was longer this ep felt short but appreciation for the author either way 💅🏻

#unordinary #episode review #ish #unordinary john #unordinary arlo #YEET #lol

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hanlar · 6 months

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[31/12/23]

I watched Five Nights At Freddy's today and it was really good. It is about Mike Schmidt who takes the security guard night shift at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza so he can provide for his little sister Abby.

I thought that the cinematography and the sound design was great, and the opening (credits) song was a banger, loved it :)

I liked that they went with a more psychological (horror) direction, with Mike Schmidt's childhood trauma, rather than just a bunch of jumpscares (which there should have been more of lol)

My only setbacks were the underutilizing of the security cameras from the games and some of the supporting characters should have been more fleshed out, but I like that Mike and Abby's relationship was at the forefront

The film was overall pretty loyal to the lore of the games, it had some liberties, but those didn't take me out of the film (except maybe one lol)

I thought the actors did a really great job and I thought that the YouTube cameos didn't overstay their welcome :)

Bonus Mike looking very babygirl:

#FNAF #FNAF Movie #Five Nights At Freddy's #Mike Schmidt #Michael Afton #Abby Schmidt #Freddy Fazbear #Bonnie the Bunny #Chica the Chicken #Foxy the Fox #Film Review #ish #hanlar maunders lol #Pictures #I like that Josh got to be Katniss lol

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sleepynegress · 7 months

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CASTEVANIA: NOCTURNE....EARLY SCREENING REVIEW

For those who missed it,

Netflix briefly posted the first 3 episodes of CASTLEVANIA: NOCTURNE on youtube. They are gone now, but here are my thoughts...

SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED

I loved all the changes to the backstory of Annette, specifically injecting Orishas into the background of her conjuring abilities. Also, including the Haitian Revolution, 1 of only 2 depictions I've ever seen in pop culture media was a great addition.

Vampires being involved in enslavement actually being a solid signifier of the awfulness of who they are this time, instead of all the handwaved vampire confederates, we've seen in the past (Twilight's Jasper, Vampire Diaries' two male leads, and True Blood's "Beel" I'm looking at you), is another improvement here.

The character designs are gorgeous and I have never seen so many "anime-style" characters of color so well-drawn, w/ cultural signifiers and details; hairstyles, symbols, and so on, included so well. Olrox, for example, I noticed has Native colors (aka the medicine wheel) embellished in the wings of his serpent-form. Annette's conjuring used actual symbols from Yoruba/Vodun spiritual practices...(which, depending on who you are might be something you'd squint at and were specific enough to know what energies she was summoning!). I am most invested in her relationship with Edouard right now, despite him giving this:

Loved the detail of him having synesthesia and the angsty twist there in the end, which adds some intrigue and moral conflict to their mission.

Annette really loves Edouard, but there were like one or two exchanged glances with Ritcher so, hmmm (also yea! for a Black woman having that two-men angst trope, this time!). Richter has the OG whip...and I'm just imagining Alucard finding that thing behind some corner in his castle back in the day randomly, and returning it to the Belmont fam on his land/village (fic-writers?). His opening angst scene... -Forgive me, because I have compassion for the fact of his boyhood at that time, but I wish his mom's vulnerability wasn't catalyzed by a really basic childish mistake (that I'd assume his mom would have prepped him on?!) on his part. Better fight choreo-, would have been her seeming to *need* his intervention at that moment, IMO. The development of the cast is very flashback-based. There isn't near enough banter between them to have a feel for the core group chemistry yet, for me, right now. And the action scenes aren't as detailed as the OG Castlevania. I have my issues with Warren Ellis in other ways, but I'm missing his touch here.

Still, there's enough meat for me to continue to check this out, but lower your expectations going in.

The flavor is different from the OG Castlevania.

It's giving B- for me for now, with maybe an upgrade to a solid B just because of Drolta's hoof-boots. EDIT: Rewatched and it's now a solid B to OG Castlevania's solid A.

They had better renew with that cliffhanger.

#castlevania: nocturne #not liking it as much as the OG...yet #but there's room to get better #review #lite-ish spoilers #castlevania #castlevania nocturne #gotta add I loved that Annette isn't depicted as too much of an SBW #she actually got to depict some vulnerability #crying rightly at a couple of big hurts there

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brutish-impulse · 1 year

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Linux gaming experiment

In the last two weeks, I decided to stop bitching about Windows 11 and see what Linux gaming has been up to. The last time I tried it was about 10 years ago and it seemed pretty hit-and-miss.

I've been trying it again on my new used MSI Bravo 15 laptop (CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H; GPU: Radeon RX 5500M). The Linux OS I installed is Ubuntu 22.10.

I'm very impressed! Almost everything I tried just worked! It's also become much more user-friendly. You don't really need to mess around with Wine (the Windows compatibility tool on Linux) yourself anymore.

I'm probably still staying on Windows 10 on my desktop gaming PC, but it's nice to know there's an alternative.

More details under the cut.

Steam

I found Steam super easy. Some games already have a native Linux port. To install a Windows game, you first have to click the gear icon, go to Properties and then Compatibility. There you can select a Proton version to run the game with. (Proton is Valve's Windows compatibility tool, based on Wine.) The default is Proton Experimental which, despite the name, mostly just worked for the games I tried.

Lutris

Lutris is basically a universal game front-end that runs games for you with Wine or with an emulator. With Windows games, it installs the game for you and applies some tweaks as needed. You just need to select your game and give it the installer.exe for it. If it can be legally downloaded, Lutris can also just do that for you.

Games I tried

Guilty Gear Strive (Steam) Just works! Also no performance problems, even on the usual problem stages like L'oro Di Ilyria or Ajatar Hunting Ground. That's of course hardware-dependent, but it doesn't seem like Proton has a massive performance cost. I should note that there was a weird graphical glitch on the character select screen with Proton Experimental. It looked normal with Proton 7.0-5.

I have not tried it online because if I play on the wifi here, I'm gonna get blocked by the entire player base. Same for all other fighting games. I might try it For Science when I get home.

Guilty Gear XX Λ Core (Steam) Doesn't play the intro which is a shame because I really like the music. That's literally my only complaint.

Magic Arena (Lutris) Just worked, using the "modern" installer in Lutris. I got graphical glitches with the self-updating one.

Magic: The Gathering Online (Lutris) The only game that didn't work. It's unreasonably slow at the best of times, but this time, every game action just took forever to process. I lost by timeout playing a red aggro deck! Some people on reddit report problems like that on Windows too, so I don't know if Wine is to blame here.

Civilization 4 I installed the version from GOG using only Wine, just to see if I could still manage it myself. I needed to apply some tweaks suggested on WineHQ, but then it was fine.

I very briefly tried out some other Windows games on Steam without running into any problems: Planet Zoo, DNF Duel, Melty Blood, Resident Evil. I also tested some games with native Linux ports (Crusader Kings 2, Them's Fightin' Herds, Fantasy Strike) which all worked fine. Well, it would've been sad if they didn't, right?

#linux #linux gaming #steam #video games #computer stuff #review-ish

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catrose13 · 2 years

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Chapter Five Phone Tag, The Chapter Art makes me hungry and I think my favourite of this chapters "Brought To You By" is Two people having two completely different conversations at the same time.

Hungry Hungry Hippo... This is a great way to start off the chapter

Oh my goodness Grandpa did you also traumatise this poor "professional graverobber"?

Oh no poor Mai, it's not special effects

Mai I am in Awe, you stared into the eyes of Anubis and threw a rock. Wow.

Lol "Romeo with the .22"

Yugi... instead of choosing a safer school, he chose to get body armour... I guess that's part of what makes a Main Character

Mai is so talented, not only is she a Competent Adult, she also knows first aid. Amazing

I love that his response to not "Being a Little Bitch" is that Grandpa would be proud

Mai's intuition is good, Yugi is involved with "actual cursed artifacts" and it does have to do with the thing she is pointedly not looking at

Ok I have admittedly been curious about "Don't-Lose-Yugi duty" but his history of kidnappings does explain that... Third graders with knives...Do you think they know Mokuba?

Aww Mai's having flutterings...Violent flutterings

Mai don't worry no matter how Dumpster Fire your life is I guarantee theirs are at least as bad

"Stone Cold Bitch Ass"

LORE!!!

Joeys sister sounds so Badass

...Tristan's Mom

"I'mma need you guys to be REAL COOL about something pretty fucked up" Yugi they've been cool with a ton of fucked up stuff basically since you became friends

Kemo continues to hate his job

Ah Ishizu sand is like that, the last place you want it to be will be where it'll end up

...Missing God Cards is not a good things

Seto....Did you just channel a Karen?

HUSBAND....Marik this they are not Twins

Solid burn on Pegasus not ranking high enough in his estimation to be considered an "Enemy"

Oh Hodgekiss, you dumbass, Odion despairs of you

Sergei loves his Boss and his Boss other Crazier Boss

Poor Odion, possibly the amount of caffeine he consumes doesn't help the migraine but having a brother like Marik is reason enough for one even without adding Hodgekiss

Well at least he's aware he makes bad first impressions

I feel like every time one of the Ishtar brothers starts thinking about competent people Hodgekiss is just there suddenly to remind them of his very incompetent self

It's like a Comedy of Errors

Everything is on Fire and Hodgekiss is still in the water

Manipulation is not how one makes friends Odion

Bakura truly has a great turn of phrase "world's most cursed frisbee"

"Perfectly Good Magical Artifact" I gotta agree with Bakura on this one (as with so many other things) that is an interesting way to pronounce "extremely cursed"

Ah the Importance of Names is once more touched upon

Bakura your ability to find the silver lining is very inspiring but also strangely worrying all things considered

Debugging Duck! I know that reference!

"YES! I understand nothing" Such excitement

...Wonka...labor dispute...there Oompa Loompas involved weren't there? I hate Oompa Loompas

I am understanding nothing of the business stuff he's talking about, but I am enjoying a block of chocolate now, so I feel like it evens out

Welp I understood very little of what Seto is planning but I get the end result and I think it sounds like a good time all around!

Lol yes the coma acted as a hard reset like with a computer

Bakura's gender has been assigned as witch by his schoolmates. Nice

Dude why do you just carry around alcohol and shot glasses?

So Ishizu drives like a maniac

She throws so much shade at her family's incestuous past

Aw she refers to Marik as "My Beautiful Idiot Baby Brother" with the caps and everything, she loves him but she despairs

Marik is a Chihuahua

Well at least she acknowledges that they all need therapy

Shadi don't just teleport onto the road!

THE CABBAGE GUY!!!

Diana Prince?!! Wonder Woman! Wooo

Ohmigosh!! The Eye Colours!!!! Right from the Start! You trickster!!

Oh nu now Shadi's talking in Capital Letters

Ah loopholes, passive aggressive actions!

Would Seto's "Data Hack" thing actually work in real life? Out of curiosity

So Jurassic Park is a movie but InGen is real, so did they take inspiration from the movies or get the movies made as a sort of test to see how people would react?

"Ned Flanders" Seto do you watch the Simpsons?

They had to fight Baboons with knives. Giving Baboons knives ranks right up there with giving Mokuba a gun

Ah Drama...He called in a WHAT?!

...Misha why are you invoking Primal Instincts in Seto?

Pegasus even the Russians think you're cuckoo

...Dude I would really not be screwing around with a guy who talks about Revoking your Eyeball Privileges

Ahh Anubis know Shadi, that explains some things about Pegasus' dislike of dogs

Now who the heck is his "retrieval specialist"? Is it who I think it is?

Wow Kemo have you just decided you don't care anymore? Did seeing Anubis get rid of all your Fucks? Is the field now barren?

Hah Vampire! Not a Chupacabra!

And Croquets still Stoned Outta his Mind

I'm getting the Poison for Kuzco vibes from this conversation

I love that Yami's the ghost but he's the one that's scared

Téa you have solidly terrified the poor ghost

"Don't fight her, we'll both die" Wow she scares them both then

Aww he's struck dumb in Awe of her

Hah! I was right Joey was measuring them last chapter!

"Al-Deez-Nuts" "You want me to LIE? To TÉA" wow, Yami I think your acclimatizing too well

"There Would be A Hippo. The Hippo Would be Bad." From what we've seen so far that's an understatement if there ever was one

Aw Yami's scared of Hippos. It's valid though, they're freaking terrifying

Their Rules are getting more and more interesting.

Poor Yami getting bullied about his spice tolerance

SUDDEN Bakura!

Oh no. That's not Bakura!!

#fanfiction #rereading #review-ish #tpofatgif #The Power of Friendship (And This Gun I Found!)#gallusrostromegalus #spoilers #YuGiOh #ygo #Chapter Five

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zoetiger-1106 · 2 months

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Went to the highs sees, saw kfp 4

It was okay. Could have used more Chameleon content. Zhen's VA could have tried more. The bunnies were a wast of time. The pacing towards the end is questionable.

Now spoilers under the cut (only Chameleon related)

So like. Nobody is talking about how the Chameleon is commanding crime lords oooooor?

Nobody is talking about how the only canon female villains all:

command crime lords

have a unique way of using chi*

have their faces somehow incorporated into their lair

are lowkey men haters

[insert shit i forgot]

*the Wu Vortex is chi based this is not up for dicussion

Anyways Chammy interacting with the Wus will happen idc what anyone says <3

#kung fu panda #kfp #the chameleon #kung fu panda 4 #review ish i guess???

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spiciestmarinara · 5 months

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I hope having a good modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes where he is very much autistic makes a lot of new fans/listeners feel represented and also makes Benedict Cumberbatch’s ass itch.

#Sherlock and Co podcast #this is my official review of the first 4-ish episodes #he also has ADHD and straight up lists everything else he has but you hear him not understanding social queues and stimming and it’s great

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saikolikes · 4 months

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I Played Persona 5 Tactica, Here Is What I Think About It

I have long awaited Tactica since the first announcement trailer (yes, the one that got "accidentally" published by Atlus). After playing through the main story + DLC I needed to sort my thoughts & have decided to subject every other person on the internet to it.

First of all a few disclaimers: Did someone ask me to write this? No Do I care? No Do I need to sort out my thoughts out loud? Yes :D There will be spoilers for the entire game + DLC so read this post knowing that! Lastly, this post is highly critical but it comes from a place of enjoyment of the game and love for the series. If that hadn't been the case, I would've never spent literal days collecting all these words in one place.

So.

Let's start by: have I enjoyed my experience? Yes, most of the time. Would I recommend the game to someone else? Now that is a good question. Let's start from the theory.

What does Tactica want to achieve?

According to this interview by Business Producer Nomura, Director Maeda, and Composer Konishi, P5T had -- extremely summarized -- three main goals:

Maintaining the Persona 5 allure and imagery despite having a different gameplay and visual style

Making a strategy rpg accessible even to non-fans of the genre and non-navigated trpg players

Capturing "the straightforward and highly passionate feelings of the high school students, along with a slightly precarious, fleeting danger inherent in their straightforwardness" (Maeda, quoting from the Persona Central article previously cited)

If we hold what it said into this interview as our sole criteria for judging the game, Persona 5 Tactica aces most of it. I will go into each section deeper as this post goes on, but this game was clearly made with passion by people who have very clear in their minds what Persona 5 means, sounds, and feels like.

There is only one problem: it's not as clear who this game was made for.

Who's Tactica targeted at?

At its core, despite being a game that most likely only the more passionate P5 fans will buy, especially so far from P5's original release and so close to both P3:RE and the (plausible?) announcement of P6, Tactica's main story is so clearly made with the intent of being enjoyed by every possible P5 fan that the hardcore fanbase would probably be the last segment of players I would suggest that should play this game. Right from the start, it supplies you with practical notes about who is who, what key places you need to know, and other recap information from the previous game -- a nice feature, and very helpful... but clearly targeted at people who haven't touched P5 since 2017, or at least haven't been participating in some form of fandom in the past 6 years.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing bad with wanting to appeal to every possible player -- Strikers, too, was purposefully designed to be enjoyed no matter your starting point for the series, the game, the anime, or the manga (or none of these things, actually). I find some form of contradiction, however, in the fact that not only the DLC, which acts as a prequel to Tactica's main story, technically has light spoilers for Royal, but also... of all the people I know -- irl, on the internet, among gaming creators -- who played P5 the majority of them still has only played P5. They haven't been interested in the slightest in all these spinoffs that have come out in the meantime, not even in Royal. (more about this on Reddit)

My point is: at this point in time, with the infamous cow-milking reputation Atlus has especially regarding P5, the people who have bought and are going to buy the spinoffs no matter what are the hardcore fans. But this game isn't made for them for the most part -- and that is something that can sour the whole experience.

I won't get into the debate about the canonicity of the P5 timeline, but Tactica seems to have a few ideas and well-confused about the whole thing. Because the DLC is Royal compliant, even touches upon "Kasumi"'s bond with her sister, and is technically set parallel to Sae's Palace. Which sort of makes sense since Royal and Tactica share their producer (Wada). But then there is no mention of Royal canon whatsoever in the main story (01.29.24 EDIT: I stand slightly corrected, as Maruki does get hinted at... but I also stand by the fact he's not mentioned in a way that truly matters, and my point about the Third Kingdom I talk about later on is still valid). Sure, much like Strikers, Tactica does not contradict Royal. But between not contradicting and actively enforcing there is a world of difference.

During the game, specific events of P5 are referenced, much more heavily than what happens in Strikers, with Shido and the political scandal being addressed more than once -- to the point where the December calling card is what prompted Toshiro out of his subservient attitude towards his father. Even Yaldabaoth is mentioned and compared to Salmael, the Big Baddie of Tactica, something that in Strikers was left much vaguer ("it's been x months since we fought a god"). And this does not happen for any of the Royal content. Despite the DLC, the Royal-compliant DLC, very clearly linking its story with the main one. Even more, the Third Kingdom and Salmael have an unmissable resemblance with the themes of the Third Semester and what Maruki was planning, parallels so apparent that you would expect someone to at least hint at what happened between January and February at some point.

Instead, there is silence. The themes are loudly there (and I don't know if it's just me, but the Hideout -VT- ost has interesting similarities to Ideal and the Real - End Version -) yet not once, not in the slightest does Maruki ever get mentioned or referenced or hinted at. (01.29.24 EDIT: as I added before, Maruki does get hinted during a conversation that takes place in the Thrid Kingdom... but it's no where near how deeply interwowen Tactica's story is with the ending of vanilla P5. This is what I meant in the following sentence where I say there is a disparity of treatment because there absolutely is.) It's clear to me, given the disparity of treatment, that Tactica's main story doesn't want to contradict Royal in the same way that Strikers didn't, but Persona 5 vanilla is clearly the game you're supposed to have played before starting this one. Which, of course, is also reinforced by Akechi and "Kasumi" being locked behind the DLC. And I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that, if you're a hardcore fan (= most likely to buy Tactica), this probably isn't what you would have wanted from this game.

What Tactica does best

Tactica is a good game for the most part. As I was saying in my introduction, 2 out of the 3 main goals for this game have been not only achieved but aced.

Gameplay-wise, the loop can become quite addicting, especially between the last portion of the First Kingdom and the first half of the Second Kingdom, where imho the story peaks. The development team has done a damn well good job in reducing the structure of a trpg to its core and mixing it with what makes Persona 5... Persona 5. Much like the base game, for example, getting the upper hand through chains of One Mores and All-Out Attacks is basically how you progress through maps. Each Thief has his own Persona + 1 equippable sub-Persona -- even Joker can only use Arsène -- but they made sure to translate each different element into a different mechanic. I adored that, exactly like it happens in the first game, despite the combat being turn-based the characters seem to dance on the battlefield, with each action flowing into the next one as the hype builds up and either Lyn's voice or catchy drums accompany you turn after turn. Don't expect something too complex, as the game is designed to be accessible even to non-strategy players -- and surely I was disappointed by having to play with only 3 characters at a time -- but the fun is there, and to an extent, you can build each character how you most like them through a minimal but very efficient skill tree.

The music is another thing Tactica does very well. By now (Strikers, Royal, and Tactica) it's clear that Konishi favors aggressive guitars over groovy basslines and I didn't mind it one bit, as this became kind of his personal signature. The first portion of the game especially is full of banger hits that get later reprised and remixed as you progress through the Kingdoms. Some of my favorites:

Maxim, like many tracks, has an excellent use of percussions that resemble war drums

Tension, with clear Life Will Change influences

Infiltrate, back at it with the Life Will Change vibes and an exceptional use of strings that resemble horse hooves running on the cobblestones of a medieval city

Master of the Castle, which plays during the Marie bossfight, is an excellent mixture of the Tension theme with the addition of a more aggressive guitar and... bells! Because she's about to get married!

Amusement Park of Trauma, a strong detachment from the general mood of the Second Kingdom that perfectly serves its purpose

Recollection, a melancholic theme that through its notes perfectly sets the mood for what the player is about to go through as soon as they set foot in the Third Kingdom, much like Gentle Madman before it

01.29.24 EDIT: as the beta version of Last Surprise was discovered, I was able to catch a bunch of notes between 0.18 and 0.30 that I am fairly sure are present, rearranged/with guitars only, inside one of Tactica's OSTs too. I just can't seem to find it so I will add the specific one as soon as I spot it lol

Along the new tracks, some very neat rearrangements like Beneath the Mask (which somehow they managed to make it sound even more lo-fi than it already was) and Disquiet make their apperance, as well as a version of Prison Labor.

Also, contrary to what happens in the hellscape of info dumping that is the first hours of Strikers, tutorials are actually paced wonderfully here, and you get to be introduced to each bit of gameplay with little steps, and nothing gets shoved down your throat leaving you with so many information you actually have no idea how to play.

Additionally, the story is quite captivating, especially if you pay attention to what can seem to be minor details. Right from the start, the sheer need to understand what the hell is going on is what drives you forward, and by the end of the First Kingdom and Marie's reveal as Toshiro's fiance, you start to understand that the scope of the entire thing is much more limited and personal -- which is something I appreciated a lot. Toshiro is a good character, his cowardice at the start isn't just a funny trait for the laugh, but a flaw that is deeply connected with his personal history and, much like with Zenkichi and Sophia, the team did a good job in tracing parallels with the other Phantom Thieves in order to quickly build empathy towards him -- with Haru and Futaba being the absolute best matches. The same thing happens with Erina, who shares the rebellious fire of the Phantom Thieves and leads the rebellion against Marie. What I loved about her is her goofiness, I was afraid she would be the nth Strong Female Character -- seeing as Kasumi was very much your Manic Pixie Dream Girl -- instead I found a lady with a sharp tongue and a strong heart, who's deeply loyal but doesn't hesitate to fool around. She's really valid, I admit I wouldn't have bet on her character to be like this but I'm happy they took this direction with her.

So... all is good, right? Why do I say that the game "is good... for the most part"?

Tactica's recycling problem

Fundamentally, and believe me it pains me very much to say this... Tactica doesn't have a lot to say, despite what its developers declared.

The game's themes, characters, morals, and climax are all heavily derivative of themes, characters, morals, and climaxes that have already been more than explored within the various iterations of P5. Past the final portion of the Third Kingdom, the repetitiveness of it all became seriously unbearable. No thing, big or small, gets spared: this is how you find yourself with Toshiro mathematically relating to all the Phantom Thieves, even when it feels forced; how you have the battle against Shadow Toshiro and then Eri that is 1:1 what we saw in Futaba's Palace with the fight against Wakaba; how you have the nth Deity Wished By Mankind that wants to rule over Free Will; how the "Fourth" Kingdom is nothing more than a recycling, reskinning, recoloring of what you already played through the previous Kingdoms -- mobs and bossfights included.

It really does a disservice to the game, the fact that so many of its final portions are stretched out to the point of exhaustion, I imagine only for the sake of justifying the cost of the game with more playtime, something that is deeply wrong, especially if we take into consideration that the game is actually sold at (less) than the current average market price (60€/$, compared to PS4/Switch games being 60-70 and next-gen games being 70-80). It kills the climax that Tactica so painfully had built up to that point, and it made me feel like completing the story was more of a chore I had to do in order to get to the final cutscene (which... is fine, I guess) than something I did with heartfelt conviction.

Moreover, the deeply derivative nature of this game causes more than some issues, character-wise. Because this is a game with the Phantom Thieves... but narratively speaking, they aren't the protagonists: Toshiro and Erina are. This leads to a weird situation where the group, who has by now 2 god killings under their belt, remains stagnant throughout the whole game, as they have nothing to learn or improve about them, and too often they become nothing more than the mask (ah-ah) of themselves, with characters acting just like their archetype -- Yusuke, the starving artist; Morgana, who gets angry when he's called a cat; Ryuji, the dumb guy who's the butt of the joke. Incredibly speaking, the one who feels less like herself is Makoto: in P5 she can be tough and confrontational, sure, but you have to provoke her, first -- she's usually kind and collected, with a sort of mom-friend attitude. Strikers played a bit more into her punk side, and Royal gave us her wonderful Showtimes with Haru and Ryuji... but in Tactica, she's straight-up aggressive and quick to violence, often excessively, often for no reason. I have no idea what happened with her honestly, the day of the wedding in the imaginary vignette she even accuses you, unprompted, of cheating on her. Are the writers Makoto haters?

Anyway. My point is, as much as Toshiro and Erina hit home and do their job as characters, and as much as it's heartwarming to have the whole gang together again... sometimes, especially near the end, it sure feels like everything is just an excuse to have more Phantom Thieves content. Which would not be bad! But it is the moment Royal gets ignored and all the progress and maturity they gained is erased.

Overall, I think Tactica has a great cast and great premises, but the final portion of the story has really been dragged for too long, and the amount of recycling between ideas, assets, plot points, and maps is... not great.

Tactica's mysterious mysteries

There is a whole lot that is never given clarification in this game, and well beyond the realm of plausible fan speculations.

So many things went unexplained or even unaddressed. The Metaverse should by all means be gone at this point -- yet it's still working, and the only comment you get on the matter is "I guess it can't be erased completely" which is fine seeing how it's so tied to the human subconscious but an element so important to the worldbuilding really is treated like Just A Thing That Is Said and never given more consideration. Additionally, it is said that Kingdoms aren't Palaces... but functionally speaking, we explore Toshiro's Palace. There are cognitive versions of his family and acquaintances, there are memories locked inside the maps, there is his Shadow... there is no formal reason for it not to be Toshiro's Palace! Except that they needed to market it like an Entirely Different Thing somehow! On this front, Strikers did a really better job in connecting to the canon worldbuilding of P5.

Another thing that goes entirely unaddressed is how exactly the Phantom Thieves have been summoned inside Toshiro's cognition. The game explains that Shido's calling card was what roused Toshiro from his complacency, and what generated Erina as the spark of his rebellion... but it's never explained how the Thieves got in, especially given that it's explicitly stated that they entered in a different manner than Toshiro, who was kidnapped by Salmael, Persona 4 style. All the weirdness of this new world, Personas not working as usual, the Velvet Room changing form... everything is addressed merely in passing, diverted back to Salmael's doing, or even straight up commented by Lavenza with "I have no explanations for this behavior."

Again, lastly, some things are brought up and never addressed again, like the fact Erina can plant the Flag of Freedom but the Flag itself, as a mechanic, only has relevance in the First Kingdom; or the fact that doors with a projectile on it are used to traverse Kingdoms and are what evoked the Phantom Thieves, but no one will ever explain to you what those are or why the Phantom Thieves don't traverse one back to return to the real world, instead they simply... *fades to white*

But what about the DLC?

The DLC is enjoyable but has, on a smaller scale, the exact same problems the rest of the game has.

Some bits of dialogue and character interactions sent me flying, like the way Joker can tease Akechi in a way he doesn't do with any other character or the fact that whether or not Akechi is a Phantom Thief is treated as a complicated matter, and you can trigger some interesting remarks about the whole situation going on outside of Tactica.

Aside from this, the DLC most than anything else suffers from being set in a pocket of time that needs to be wiped from memory, firstly because these three characters aren't exactly a trio yet and only had one interaction together before this moment yet they act like they're closer than that... and secondly because the whole Guernica situation is a parallel to Kasumi and Sumire's story. So it really hits the wrong way, and it even verges on horror if you have the hindsight, that Akechi, Joker and Violet have to save a girl that lost her sister and is being brainwashed to forget her... while Sumire is still "Kasumi."

I liked the setting and I liked the paint mechanic and I liked how frankly brutal and visceral some scenes are. That is exactly my jam! But I couldn't enjoy them to the fullest because I knew they would have amounted to nothing in the grand scheme of things. The memory wipe solution was in store, of course, I saw that coming, nonetheless I found it deeply unelegant, seeing as they didn't even try to offer an explanation as to why or how the trio had their memory erased.

Also, it makes no sense for Guernica to be active in the real world at that scale if only because there would be no reason for her to never be mentioned anywhere after, and I quote, "pulling a stunt like the ones from the Phantom Thieves."

On a final note, since I mentioned the base game's price... contrary to that, Tactica's DLC isn't worth the 20€/$ you pay it. Not only because it's very short (4-5 hours if you rush, 6-8 if you take some more time to maybe restart some maps or replay some dialogues and gush like I did) but because the experience is overall nothing memorable, and the additional maps aren't enough to cover that. I stand by the fact you shouldn't judge a game's price by its length, but length isn't Repaint Your Heart's sole problem, sadly.

My final thoughts

Overall, I enjoyed playing Tactica (save for the final part) and it gave me some really stellar content, like the fake wedding scenes, Ann's best characterization across the entire series, Erina as a character, and overall a new occasion to spend time with my favorite band of outlaws teens.

I'm glad I had more P5 content... but I still feel I could've gone by with no problems without Tactica. Which is a sad thing to say, but it's true. Because I loved Strikers and I would never want to live without having played that game. Tactica, well... despite me being hyped for it a ton, it made me come to the conclusion that I am done with P5 content, especially if it has to be like this. If I feel nostalgic, I'll just boot my PS5 and replay Royal for the second time. And for everything else, there is fandom.

Thank you for reading this far if you have. You can find me on Twitter, Ao3 and BlueSky!

#persona 5 #persona 5 royal #persona 5 tactica #p5 #p5r #p5t #spoilers #p5t spoilers #p5r spoilers #tactica spoilers #p5 meta #meta-ish at least?#not a review #not fully meta #but a secret third thing #aka my honest thoughts

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