#at least the revenge issue just destroyed Sebastian's body not his character

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

Marauders #22

I absolutely hated this issue, so be warned that’s a lot of salt here, and my usual whining, so skip this post if you’re not in the mood for that.  Also spoilers below.

First impression - what absolute, self-indulgent horseshit.  I hesitate to use “fanfic” in a derogatory way, but a lot of Marauders has read as being very “fanfic” in terms of self-indulgence, and greatly favoring certain characters while denigrating others.  I actually don’t think that’s a bad thing in fanfic.  It can be annoying to read if that’s not what you’re looking for (or it can be wonderful, if it IS what you’re looking for), but ultimately, fanfic is all about self-indulgence.  It’s about writing what you want to see in a story, and if Duggan’s Marauders was someone’s actual fanfic, I wouldn’t have anything bad to say about it.  I might dislike the characterization, and probably wouldn’t read it, but it ultimately wouldn’t matter because it’s fanfic.  Frankly, I’m just as bad about constantly centering everything around Pyro (and finding ways to work him into stories where he doesn’t even belong), because I’m writing just for myself, so I can be self-indulgent.  But I’d expect much better from a professional writer.  I’d expect much better from someone being paid to write a team book.  I’d expect a god-damn balanced book that actually pays attention to the whole cast and gives a thoughtful interpretation to ALL the characters, even the villains, rather than a book dedicated to shining a spotlight on two already well-established characters, and treating them like queens who step all over the rest of the cast. 

So, we ignore almost everything set up at the Gala, including the attack on Christian and the Marauder (the ship) being set ablaze.  Why aren’t the characters handling that, Duggan?  Is that really being saved for another month?  We don’t even know if Christian is dead or not, you can’t even spare a panel for Iceman reacting to this?  Instead, we tell a flashback story that eventually reveals that Lourdes Chantel is still alive, and Emma helped her fake her own death to escape from an abusive Sebastian.

What exactly is the point of this story, in terms of the overall Marauders arc?  Will Lourdes show up later to play a role?  Is this meant to further push Sebastian along some kind of path to redemption (recognizing that he drove Lourdes away with his actions).  Because so far, Duggan doesn’t seem the slightest bit interested in rehabilitating Sebastian.  This seems like yet another story establishing Emma GOOD, Sebastian BAD, the same message that’s been getting pounded into the readers’ heads for 22 issues.  Like, we KNOW, Duggan.  We know that you think the sun shines out of Emma’s ass, you’ve already well-established that you think she’s a brilliant, wonderful, compassionate, badass queen, through 22 issues of centering the entire series around her, at the expense of EVERY other fucking character in the book (even sometimes Kate, the other obvious favorite).  It’s gotten beyond tiresome at this point.  Like, I feel like even people who love Emma and hate Sebastian are getting bored by now, because it’s not even good storytelling to have a strawman villain who is no real threat just getting repeatedly knocked down.

So, Duggan has taken both Sebastian and Emma, and further removed any kind of complexity or nuance from them.  Sebastian can’t have a kind or tender side, he can’t ever be shown in a positive light.  His relationship was Lourdes was previously part of his tragic origins, pushing him to be a worse person than he’d been in a past, but no, lets retcon him to be a controlling abuser, whom Lourdes is desperate to escape.  Because it makes Sebastian look bad and Emma look good.  Honestly, it would have been more interesting and powerful to have Lourdes come back from the dead, and be disgusted by the person Sebastian has become.  That would actually have an impact.

And by the way, why did Lourdes need Emma’s help in establishing her new identity?  She was already part of the Hellfire Club, she’s the one who brought Sebastian in, she’s rich as fuck.  Lourdes should be well capable of getting away from Sebastian on her own.  She might need Emma’s help for faking her own death, but the rest of it?  Emma should just do a little hacking to access Lourdes’ personal fortune and transfer it into a new account, and then she’s good to go.  But no, Lourdes has to be treated like a little lost lamb, a helpless battered woman for Emma to rescue.  And Emma’s deal with the Kingpin further exonerates Emma for her past crimes, because obviously, she’s just working off the debt she incurred helping poor, innocent Lourdes!  It can’t be that Emma did bad things in the past because she was ambitious, cruel, vain, and power-hungry, she has to be a woke queen who was always there to help other women.

I think Duggan thinks he’s being feminist with all this, with the “women help each other,” message, and either ignoring or villifying all the male characters.  But he’s not.  It’s not feminist to take a very complex, interesting, powerful woman like Emma Frost and completely remove all responsibility and agency for her past crimes by turning her into an abuse victim and repeatedly retconning her to be better than she actually was.  (To be fair, Duggan is just continuing a trend already started by other writers).  Emma is ambitious, power-hungry, cruel, callous, self-absorbed, vain and snobby.  But she is also brave, intelligent, compassionate, kind, protective, heroic, and self-sacrificing.  All of those things are part of Emma.  She is a teacher who loved her students, and the love for those students is part of what sent Emma on her long, difficult path towards redemption.  Yes, she’s a badass queen, but she is also a flawed individual, who has worked to overcome those flaws and become a better person.  And constantly re-writing the past to make her an “always good” abuse victim who only ever committed crimes because the big bad men forced her into it cheapens that redemption.

Speaking of cheap redemption -     

The Wilhelmina subplot: Wow, Duggan really will prioritize ANY character over Bishop, Iceman and Pyro, won’t he?  I know this is me throwing a tantrum, because “Wah, Duggan is writing someone other than my favorites!” but after 22 issues I feel justified in this whining.  Iceman, Bishop and Pyro are supposed to be regular cast members, and so far Duggan has given more serious development and emotional scenes to Callisto, Forge, Dolores (the human contact at the X-Desk), Masque, Jumbo Carnation, Magneto, the Cuckoos, and now Wilhelmina.  I don’t mind the development for many of those characters, I like Callisto and Forge and Jumbo (although I’m a little annoyed at the Magneto stuff, since he’s already front and center in the Krakoa era, and about to star in a mini-series, does he really need more time in the spotlight?).  But honestly?  Fuck Wilhelmina.  I was never that interested in the Hellfire brats, and I’m not the slightest bit interested in watching the retcon redemption of a character that murders animals for fun.  Why does she get a spotlight story while the three dudes on the team STILL haven’t gotten anything more than vague background hints of character arcs.  I mean, compare the very emotional flashback and Wilhelmina’s breakdown to the half-assed, mostly taking place off- panel “redemption” that Duggan has given Pyro.  Just a single line of “maybe this crew is bringing out the best in me,” with no lead-up, no further reflection, no hints about Pyro changing his ideas before then.  Why did you even put Iceman, Bishop and Pyro on the team if you’re not going to use them, Duggan?  Because you’ve made it quite clear that you’d rather write ANY character other than them.  I can’t even look forward to Tempo and Banshee joining the cast next issue, even though I like them (and I really want to see more development of Tempo), because I know they will be yet more characters that get pushed into the foreground, while Iceman, Bishop and Pyro remain the underdeveloped background clown trio.    

Also, it seems kind of offensive to have a cruel, murderous female character, and then say that her cruelty is entirely due to sexual abuse?  What kind of message does that send to sexual abuse victims?  That it will turn you into a monster?  Why do female villains keep getting sexual abuse as part of their backstory?  Why can’t they just be bad?  Or have something else going on?  So the Cuckoos flip a switch in Wilhelmina and she’s magically “fixed,” or at least on her way to better?  Again, I think Duggan thinks he’s being feminist with this, but he’s not. 

At least Wllhelmina has been a recurring villain in this series, so I can kinda see how her potential redemption may move the plot along, but Duggan is still introducing new plot threads, while leaving so many others dangling.  What about Christian?  What about Shinobi and Fenris?  Will Bobby and Christian ever even speak to each other again?  Will the supposed main cast members of Iceman, Bishop and Pyro ever, EVER get a proper character arc?

Or will we get an entire issue of Emma, Kate and the Cuckoos giving Wilhelmina a redemptive make-over, because girl power, amiright?

#not tagging on purpose #not trying to gum up the tags with my extreme salt #but seriously this was my least favorite issue so far #at least the revenge issue just destroyed Sebastian's body not his character #really fuck this nonsense it was terrible

[croik]

Lots of TEW2 thoughts

So I finished The Evil Within 2 and I have a lot to say, but Seb can handle the short version.

To be honest the marketing had already put my expectations pretty low, so I can't say it was much worse than I already figured it would be? And I can see why the pro reviewers are scoring it as high or higher than they did the first one.  And I'm also willing to accept that my opinions of the first game are probably biasing me a little.  But despite a couple of cool ideas and segments, overall I didn't like the game and I think it was huge step backward creatively speaking.  I can't think of a more generic and safe route for the story to have taken than what they gave us.  Even without having ignored the two largest cliffhangers from the first game, they disregarded a few major plot points and rewrote entire character relationships?  So much of the acting was terrible, most of the new characters were 1 dimensional, and I wasn't a big fan of the changes in gameplay.  It felt like I spent half the game in crafting menus and the only improvements that were made to the weapons/combat options were things every other similar game has (especially using bottles like shivs from TLOU, sidequests across a limited worldmap with waypoints etc).  Having just recently replayed TEW1 I can't say that the controls were much smoother and there were still a lot of performance issues (and one major crash).

When I played the first game I finished in 19 hours with 112 deaths, and I rated it a B-.  I finished TEW2 in 13 hours (dunno how many deaths) and I'd give it a C+.  The plus is for Kidman.

And the rest of my thoughts are spoilers so under the cut!

So to get this out of the way, the fact that neither Joseph or Ruvik are properly addressed is bullshit.  And saying that "Joseph is alive we'll talk about it later" is not addressing it.  

From the opening cutscene there's a very clear sense from the writing that they didn't particularly care about continuing or addressing major plot points from the first game, with the way Sebastian reacts to Mobius.  For the first time in three years he has confirmation that Mobius exists, but prior to going into the machine he doesn't ask what happened to Joseph who has been missing the whole time, or to his wife, who he also knows was taken by Mobius. He doesn't spare a thought for Ruvik who has been on the loose all this time (but then again, neither did Mobius), and even when he sees a large specimen jar labeled with his daughter's name, his first thought isn't "that's just her brain in there." Because that's what it ought to be, given his experience with Mobius.

And then Seb is inside Union, and he can't stop talking about how much it's like Beacon while still acting like he's never been inside STEM. He calls out to civilians to make sure they're okay.  He gets upset when Stefano kills roomfuls of "people" even knowing that those are NOT people, they're STEM ghosts whose real human bodies have already been disconnected.  When he sees a vision of Myra in his own mind, giving him a pep talk, he knows (and WE know) that she is not the real Myra, she can't be, but he believes her anyway. He basically is talking himself into forgiveness and it works!  He spends the entire game just chattering away to himself, repeating plot information we just learned, making bland jokes, not one bit of his dialogue challenging or interesting.  It's like the writers heard people complain about how boring Seb was in the first game and thought the solution was just to have him talk a whole lot more about nothing. That's not giving him character, he's still the same tired hero cliché we've seen a million times.  That's just highlighting his faults by putting them on display more often.

And it's basically the tent pole around which all the game's story problems hinge.  With two notable exceptions, no one in the game makes any choices that take them outside the narrow box of their generic characterization.  Sebastian doesn't do anything throughout the game that no one else in his position wouldn't do.  He sets out to save his daughter, he does.  All the Mobius goons are mostly loyal up until they realize their own life is on the line, and then they righteously rebel. Theodore and Stefano are power-hungry maniacs, just like the Admin is a power-hungry maniac, no complex thought required.  In the first game, we had several different motivations at play, between Seb and Jo trying to escape, Kidman trying to save and then kill Leslie, Ruvik's revenge, Jimenez covering his own ass, Mobius and their whatevers.  When Joseph realized he was losing his mind and tried to kill himself, that was genuinely unexpected and added another layer to the narrative—now Seb doesn’t have to just worry about him going nuts, he has to worry about him hurting himself, too.  That plot line may have solved itself off screen in an unsatisfying way but at least it added a layer to the narrative.  In TEW2, EVERYONE is either trying to save Lily or control Lily, and there's virtually no changing of sides or shifting motives.  All the heroes accomplish what they set out to do from the start and even those that don't make it have their deaths telegraphed far in advance.

Everything is just so expected, every character boiled down to their most obvious character traits.  Seb takes the brunt of it but I'd argue Myra is the worst offender. The game comes out and says that there's nothing left of her personality except for her maternal instinct.  In the previous game we only got hints of Myra from Seb's journal and other items, but it was still enough that we got several aspects of her personality, not just "mom" but wife and detective and administrator.  And now that we finally get to meet her all of that is gone in favor of generic overprotective mother figure.  With her perfect bun and pearl earrings and mom sweater….  This game has more women in it than most so I can't complain too much about a female character being reduced to mother trope, but it is a disappointment that after so much speculation about Myra and her character and why she's in Mobius, that they went with the safest course and most one note characterization for her.  Especially since they contradicted canon once again to do it.

So let's talk about contradicting canon!

When I was writing Myra meta after the DLC I noted how the description of Myra as a mother changed from Seb's journal to the flashbacks Kidman sees. In TEW1 Seb notes that Myra took a three year leave of absence from the force in order to be a stay at home mom for Lily, before then hiring a nanny.  In the DLC, Seb notes that she stayed home for only a few months and wanted to get back to work as soon as possible.  He expressed some disappointment in her not being more motherly than that.  The DLC was also where we learned Myra was working for Mobius, and it seemed obvious that they were linking the two together in an ominous way.  But now in TEW2 we have Sebastian tell us again that Myra was an amazing and devoted mom.  If the DLC was made knowing a sequel was also coming, why add that detail of Seb commenting on Myra's lack of maternal instinct, when TEW2 is about nothing BUT?  It's a such a small, thoughtless contradiction, but the game is full of them.

Seb's relationship with Kidman is another one.  In Seb's original journal he describes Kid as a cold fish who he doesn't trust.  In the DLC Kid describes Seb as "seemingly drunk all the time." But then in Kidman's flashback we see Seb's determination to train her, and in TEW2 the pair of them talk about being friends and working together as a team.  So what is the truth??  Why is it so hard for the writers to keep straight how these characters feel about each other?  In the DLC Kidman had no idea that Seb was ever married or had a child, despite being recruited and trained by Myra.  In TEW2 we learn that Lily was intended to be the heart of STEM all along, and Myra recruited Kidman specifically to be part of her "fuck Mobius forever" plan.  So did Myra send Kidman into STEM the first time without warning her about the dangers, that she was expendable?  Or did Myra's intentions for Kidman only come into play after Beacon? Or did Myra really just hope that Kidman would get Leslie out, because then Mobius would use him instead of Lily? But that wouldn't allow her to go through with the plan of destroying Mobius.

And speaking of Mobius, what the hell is their problem??

They determine that STEM can only be core'd by a psychopath or a child (which ought to be the first clue that this is a bad idea).  This a requirement that's not touched on at all in the original game, since Ruvik was the core first, and after modifying STEM only someone compatible with him would have been able to take his place.  How Leslie would have fared as the core without Ruvik is left as a total mystery, because while his mental issues gave him a child-like demeanor, I'd argue that he's pretty much the opposite of an egomaniac, which is the defining requirement.  But in any case, Mobius kidnapped Lily originally because she was just so smart and special, things you can totally determine about a 5 year old /s. Timeline wise we're not sure when this was compared to the main story.  According to Seb's journal it was no more than a year or two before the beginning of the game, but in the DLC Kidman refers to those flashbacks as "way before I got here," and Seb and Jo are visibly much younger.  So at what point relative to Ruvik sabotaging the machine was Lily taken?  There are very few references to Ruvik in the game so we don't really know if Mobius determined STEM's supposed requirements before or after the first game.  

I feel like the only timeline that makes sense is that Ruvik completed STEM, Mobius decided they wanted to use Lily as the core, and when Ruvik found out as much, he sabotaged the machine so that it would only work for him. They then had to put Lily on ice for a while, so to speak, while they de-brained Ruvik and tried to go forward with just him, then moved on to Leslie.  And once the main STEM became totally useless, they went back to the original plan of using Lily.  But that raises the questions of 1) Where they really planning to put Lily into the STEM as its core during the timeframe where Ruvik was using it exclusively to torture people? And 2) Why would Mobius ever allow Myra to join them under those circumstances?

Because we now know that the timeline is that Lily was kidnapped, Myra investigated, found Mobius, and was allowed to join.  Which is out of this world, that Mobius is so powerful as to control a majority of the globe's politicians and media, while also being foolish enough to let a mother who is also a decorated police detective join their cult after having kidnapped her daughter.  Hoffman insists that Lily wasn't mistreated but they had her sealed up in a jar for YEARS. The notes say that a Core can't be missing for more than a few hours before things start to go loopy so once Union was up and running she was in there pretty much all the time.  Did they really think Myra would be okay with that? Especially when up until that point STEM was a torture device that killed anyone who connected to it??  Did they try to brainwash her and it just didn't remotely work?  How do you let a police detective with a grudge against you join the ranks of your world domination cult and expect her to stand by idly while you perform inhuman experiments on her young daughter??  And not only that, within a very short span of time they promoted her high enough that she was recruiting and training agents of her own!  

If Mobius is so cavalier about the kind of people they let in, why didn't Myra just recruit Sebastian once she was on the in?  She went through the trouble of telling Lily that her father was dead, let him stew as a drunken waste for 3 years, and not once just suggested bringing him in?  No one would have even noticed he was gone at that point.  And if that was too dangerous, why not slip him more advance warning of what was up?  She instructed Kidman to take Lily to Seb once they got her out, but didn't give him any kind of heads up even though he was a jobless wreck.  Mobius is lax enough that Theodore, Myra, and Kidman were all able to meet in public and discuss their plan, so why couldn't one of them at least drop him a note to be ready of some kind?

In any case, these are all relatively minor quibbles when compared to the entirely faulty conceit of the game's main plot: the Wireless STEM.

A note in TEW2 explains that the STEM needs to log a certain number of people and the data that represents their consciousness before it can achieve a wireless state.  This completely flies in the face of the previous game, because in that, the wireless feature was something that Jimenez simply installed himself based on Ruvik's original blue print.  It had nothing to do with Ruvik connecting enough people physically in order to achieve wifi.  He got MORE powerful the more people he connected, with references to his influence outside the machine, but all they had to do to go wireless was to turn the damn thing on.  It makes even less sense because in the TEW2 note, it says that they need at least 20,000 people to have been connected at one point in order to have enough data, and there's no possible way Ruvik had that many people in STEM.  I mean, I guess it's possible with help from Mobius, but damn.  Did they really go through that twice??

There's also the issue of The Core.  We don't know where in Union Lily was supposed to be that matters so much that her leaving that place sends the whole city haywire.  We don't know at what point she stopped being the Core and Myra took over, or how Myra was able to accomplish that when she's neither a child or psycho (and her selfless devotion to her daughter is the opposite of the "unfettered ego" Hoffman describes as being necessary).  We don't know why Hoffman was perfectly aware that the Core is a little girl named Lily, but O'Neal was baffled by the concept (even though Lily's name is literally printed ON the Core itself).  Some of this might be explained in notes but we don't really know how Stefano or Theodore were able to wield Lily's power just by having her be near them, or how they thought they could achieve wireless by fucking up Union beyond repair. After all, Mobius stopped importing people on the regular into STEM as soon as there was a problem, so why didn't Theodore wait to make his move until wireless was ready?  How did he expect to achieve it, just by the Admin putting in teams 5 people at a time until they reached threshold?

More importantly, why the fuck do all Mobius operatives have a kill switch in their head, INCLUDING the Admin himself?  The chips are explained as being a protection AGAINST the influence of STEM, so that the high ranking can continue to monitor the system. Obviously the Admin doesn't want his mind to be at the mercy of a child.  So how is it possible that a failsafe AGAINST STEM can so easily be manipulated into a murder signal by STEM itself?  That is the OPPOSITE of its intended purpose, how was Myra able to change the programming on chips inside of people's heads enough to achieve that without anyone noticing??  Why did Mobius link up their global transmitters before the STEM had been fully realized, and why wouldn't they shut those off in the case of an emergency, given what happened with Beacon?

Gosh there are just so many ways that this new game contradicts the original (though to be fair it also contradicted itself a great deal). There are a million examples I can think of, on top of things that simply don't make much logical sense, scenes and characters that add nothing.  Why did they imply in the first game that Tatiana was a Mobius agent only to completely discard that and make her Sebastian specific?  How does Mobius retain control of the entire world supposedly when every Mobius agent you meet is willing to abandon ship at the first sign of trouble?  Did Hoffman know that even if she helped you reach Theodore, Myra's killswitch would have killed her, too?  Did Sebastian ever think about that later?  Why don't you see Myra's body connected to the STEM tubs, why didn't Sebastian try to retrieve it?  Why did Myra make a big deal out of telling Sebastian to go get Lily at the end of the game, as if it's a last goodbye, only to limp up to the house herself and do the entire scene over again??  Why is she made out of plaster, what is the significance?  Why did Ruvik's notes at the end of the DLC about Kidman and the Admin having bits of his consciousness inside them not come to anything?  Why is Seb's hand bandaged as to suggest he has one too, except not really, he just got in a bar fight or something I guess?? If the Mu church is of a Scientology-like standing how does no one recognize the symbol when it's all over Beacon, and if it was created as a front and not the actual origins of Mobius, why is it given such significance in Ruvik's mind??  And where the fuck is Ruvik anyway???

Where is Joseph, and more importantly, why doesn't Sebastian care!?

So yeah you could say I have a lot of questions, and I intend to New Game + so I can get all the files I missed and hopefully piece something together from this mess.

But it's not all bad.  In the last part of the game, when Kidman becomes a total badass, that was AWESOME.  Unexpected that we would get to play as her and kick ass.  That was the most cinematic and interesting part of the game hands down.  I found Seb's family drama to be overly cheesy but at least pairing it with Kidman's assault and urgency helped a lot.  That was great stuff.

I also really liked Liam's little arc, such as it was.  He's pretty much the only character that goes through character development that wasn't broadcasted a million years ago. Seb coming to grips with his guilt and saving Lily was the most obvious and safe route for him to take.  Liam going from coward to pawn to sub-boss to repentant was really fun, and he looked fantastic as the hognose. The thought that he was going to motivate the plot through betrayal was a breath of fresh air after a slog of "find Lily find Lily find Lily."  His death was tragic without being overstated.  Good shit.

And of course, The Upgrade Chair <3  Sebastian's conversations with Tatiana were a lot more interesting than anything he had to say to the other characters, too.  While everyone else is just blah blahing exposition at you the whole game, Tatiana's conversations had some mystery, some level of unease that called back to the first game in a way the rest of TEW2 failed to do.  

Because THAT was what was so intriguing about TEW.  As irritating as it was at times to feel like you were entirely in the dark with no answers in sight, that at least gave the game a sense of momentum.  I felt driven to complete the game because everything was just so fucking weird and I was desperate to understand what was happening to the characters.  That didn't pay off in an entirely satisfying way, but at least it was interesting, at least it made you really think.  In TEW2 everything is spelled out for you and the only thinking that needs doing is "Did these people actually play their own game before writing the sequel?"  Because I'm honestly not sure.

It's obvious whoever's doing the comic did not, at least.

So yeah.  I'll be starting a new playthrough to get more things and take some notes, because if nothing else I'd like to determine SOME kind of workable timeline.  Why does the article about Sebastian's mental health describe Lily's death as "recent" but Kidman says that Lily was taken "long before joined them."  Was it recent, or long ago?  Do the writers even know???

Ficwise I don't know what I'll be up to yet.  I'm open to suggestion and I'll probably make a separate post about that later.  And if anyone wants to talk about the game, please lemme know, there's still a lot on my mind I didn't manage to get out here.

#The Evil Within #tew meta #tew discussion #tew2 #this fucking game #i have so many questions #and a lot of rage