#idk how to put it just that to me its not like this big bombastic romance a lot of it is very quiet

[amatres]

anyway my thoughts on fenris's romance now that i've played it without the haze of completionism from when i was a teen is that it feels overall rather peaceful. like yes there's angst and the three year gap, but a lot of the flirting felt very intimate and the fact they do have the three years to think on their feelings gives it a more slow burn feeling to it? also fenris always caressing hawke's face was very cute

#ama mumbles #dragon age 2 #idk how to put it just that to me its not like this big bombastic romance a lot of it is very quiet #of course i played a blue hawke which probably effected that but lol #i guess its bc his arc is based on healing? so his romance also contributes to that #listen i am a lesbian so male lis are always a bit more difficult for me to like immediately connect with. but i liked it it was sweet #i wish i could have heard more of the companions opinions on the li choice tho #i should have just ran around with all the companions with fenris to hear them gossip like teenagers

[not-poignant]

pia I just finished the ice plague how are you so good at writing satisfying endings???????????????

I'm so glad you enjoyed the ending! :D :D

Re: Satisfying endings, I don't really know. But I know for myself, I just think:

As someone who loves fandom and fandom fix-its, I like to write the kind of endings where someone doesn't think at the end 'shit I have to fix this in fanfiction.' I mean I don't mind if people do that, but I mostly want people to feel happy or very very hopeful. I guess I like to write 'fanfiction style' happy endings, which are more transparently happy, and more.../thinks/ I guess overt? There's been some exceptions which I'd say are more hopeful (like Stuck on the Puzzle), but I think I still write more obviously happy endings than many actually published fantasy stories etc. of similar length.

I write long happy endings. It's either a few increasingly happy chapters in a row (Into Shadows We Fall, Falling Falling Stars) or one really long chapter (The Ice Plague). No skimping on the happiness! I strongly feel that if I put people through that much pain and angst and whump, why should I skimp on the fluff and cheese and happiness? So I really try not to do that.

I try and leave the characters in psychologically healthier places than where we found them, which I think (ideally) gives most readers the sense that even when problems come up in the future, characters will be able to solve what's happening far more healthily than they did in the past. Which I think feels more satisfying than if a couple is arguing right up to the last chapter and we have no real belief that they can healthily get through any situation at all. Romance stories that do this feel really weird to me. I've read romances where like, a couple is toxic, toxic, toxic and then in the last chapter they get married and I'm like oh no babes, you're getting a divorce in five seconds dsalkfjsa - so even though my characters often still have Stuff (TM) to deal with, ideally, readers feel like these characters have got more support, and learned more communication tools to deal with their issues. :)

And I think that's how I manage it!

I love the word satisfying, that's really what I'm going for. And it makes me so so happy that this came across in The Ice Plague, especially because chapter 39 is absolutely horrendous in what it does to all of the characters. I think that's the biggest risk I've ever taken right at the end of a story - to put some of the worst things in right at the end. Normally I have a slower wind-down, because I'd prefer an anticlimatic denouement that feels gentle and satisfying, than something like huge and bombastic where you doubt everyone's doing okay after that trauma lol.

But I think it worked with The Ice Plague because I could skip so much time in the epilogue and because I could make that such a long chapter that people could really settle into it like they might a novella.

Tbh it goes against some of the writing techniques I was taught in university to write this way. To like, never give readers exactly what they want (and I definitely can't give everyone what they want), and to kind of...always be subtle or hint at things or give glimpses into happiness or whatever. This idea that happiness is sparse and angst is huge but not overwrought etc. idk... I don't really vibe with a lot of that kind of literature. Learning that I could write like...'literature' made me realise that personally I prefer enjoying fanfiction and tropes and big emotions, and that I enjoy writing them too.

So while my writing isn't very 'university level' - I like to think it's a bit more emotionally satisfying, even if it doesn't make you think or philosophise as much, lol. <3333

#asks and answers #pia on writing #fae tales verse #fae tales #the ice plague #dodgy advice #i do love some literature #like Anne Marie-MacDonald #and Arundhati Roy #but they're books that never really leave you emotionally satisfied #it's like they set up big bombs inside you and leave you to deal with the carnage that remains #they might offer some bandaids right at the end #but it's never enough to deal with the overall devastation of what you just read #i guess i just never really want people to feel like they have to keep #emotionally working really hard after they've finished the story #i don't need more emotional labour than what anyone gives me throughout the serial #i'm not looking to leave you feeling anguished and confused or uncertain about all of humankind at the end #i'm okay if you just finish the chapter and smile and feel hopeful #or miss the characters and already want to reread or something sdalkfjasd #i don't think there's anything wrong with authors who want more labour from their readers #i am just not that person - because i'm not really that kind of reader either

[ninthwav]

like i already kind of thought that sympho metal had its heyday in like... the 00s and at most the early 10s and bands like epica which are still making good albums are kind of a fluke. if for example nightwish is the paradigmatic symphonic metal band, and you -- unlike me, and i'm right but let's do this thought experiment anyway-- think their last 'great' album was imaginaerum, then that's sort of your cutoff for good eras. there were a couple of bands that took their cue from that album and got more experimental, and a couple of bands have been interesting in the intervening years (but eg leaves' eyes, sirenia, that's largely because they keep kicking out vocalists and having to refit your sound to a new voice tends to be more galvanizing for your sound than just resting on your paltry laurels), but it's not really going anywhere new or interesting. hell, this is ostensibly my genre, and i keep tuning out because there really just aren't bangers anymore. but every time i tune back in it's like-- so either they went a level of heavy they found unsustainable (this is what diabulus in musica does in 2016 i think), or they went super Epic Soundtrack Music. it's hard to get jazzed about it anymore, really-- like i'm looking forward to the next epica but that's because epica is always solid (sometimes to their own detriment but the alchemy project has really got me excited for what they're doing next!!); but bands that i've always found rewarding kind of aren't anymore, and the ones that are continuing to do interesting stuff are doing interesting stuff that i don't particularly like. dianne's upcoming album i'm pretty hyped for; and tarja's exploring new avenues which i think are really fruitful for her, but notably these are less symphonic and haven't really felt very metal for some time. and nightwish's studio albums kind of blow now, and have for a while-- they've always been better on the live albums, but i genuinely wouldn't have given anything past dpp the time of day were it not for the live albums. xandria's new album blew, sirenia's was fine but like... not great. i sometimes put it on just to forget how xandria sounds now. new kamelot is stupid-- great features, but they've always had great features. it was just that it wasn't their crowning feature until recently.

i think it was also better when 'symphonic metal and adjacent' had more gothic metal in it than it does now. symphonic metal and adjacent is largely, like, the whole venn diagram of symphonic and female-fronted metal, which is one of the reasons why people who typically don't listen to very brutal-with-a-v metal are into arch enemy as well; but this hasn't really led to more generic or sub-generic variance among the big names of sympho. idk! i will be the first to cop to having bad taste but i think my taste has gotten a bit better in the intervening years so big bombast doesn't really cut it for me anymore. grim!

[bigskydreaming]

Like a huge part of the reason its always annoyed me so much when fic writers have later Robins make fun of Dick’s circus origins, costumes, etc, is because its like there’s this deliberate attempt to distance later Robins and the entire concept of Robin from the circus because its idk, so cheesy or lame or whatever, but its like....you can’t! LOL. 

Even if you disregard Dick naming himself Robin specifically because it was his mom’s nickname for him because ‘oh it was a retcon’ (so was Jason’s entire origin as a street kid since originally he was a circus kid too, just friendly reminder FYI, perhaps you don’t hate retcons you just hate when retcons make it harder for you to act like Dick Grayson isn’t intrinsically tied to the Robin mantle and always will be? Hmm?) - but like, even if you disregard that there’s STILL no way to divorce the entire concept of Robin from its circus origins because the original costume was CLEARLY inspired by acrobat troupes and was deliberately intended to play into where this particular kid came from! 

Robin and the circus go hand in hand, and when you try and act like the circus is so laughable or irrelevant to all things Robin, you’re just coming across as petulant, honestly, like.....

Hmmm, how to put this. I’m just gonna say its INTERESTING to me how much my post about ‘ugh so many comic writers these days seem ashamed of comic books being like...comic books’ like, that post blew up fairly big and got reblogged by a lot of corners of Batfandom hopping on it to say ugh we hate how many writers act ashamed of comics being goofy and silly.....while meanwhile I personally think a lot of those same fans fall into the camp of wanting Robin to be just seen as bad-ass and distanced from the more goofy, tropey origins stemmed from when Dick was Robin.

*Shrugs* idk idk I’m not trying to insinuate anything here I’m just trying to blatantly say some people don’t put their money where their mouth is on certain topics and there’s a weird focus on trying to like, REMOVE Robin from the brightly colored, weird and bombastic circus themed concept it debuted as, perhaps because people don’t actually think it can be all of those things AND bad-ass, because it clashes with their idea of what it means to be like, hardcore and competent and a skilled fighter or capable of gritty determination and blah blah blah. 

Like its believed you have to have a certain aesthetic to be taken seriously, when personally, I’d argue one of the more impressive parts of Dick Grayson being Robin was how well he managed to MAKE people take him seriously DESPITE not catering to their idea of what a competent, skilled or dangerous aesthetic ‘must’ look like.

[non-sequitura]

Non-sequitura Disney in-depth analysis (after making a tier list)

Warning: SUPER longform. If you don’t know a movie well, you should skip the summary. I tried to be light on spoilers, but they’re there.

I went chronologically from favorite to least favorite. So S tier is, in order from fave to least fave, The Incredibles, WALL-E, then Zootopia.

S tier (Something I consider high quality AND a movie I greatly enjoy. I would love more Disney movies be like this.)

The Incredibles - one of my favorite movies of all time, possibly THE favorite. Rockin social commentary, epic action scenes, memorable characters, not a minute of screentime wasted, great take on the Fantastic Four, hilarious parts for both adults and children, an interesting villain, etc. 

WALL-E - I love how social commentary was done here. Also skies above, what a beautiful love story. Really blazed a trail in non-verbal storytelling (especially given it was an animated kids film!) Robot animations are particularly delightful. 

Zootopia - another social message delivered excellently and entertainingly. I love Judy and her persistence, I love the expressiveness of the faces and the epic city setting. I love Judy and Nick's banter. This movie deserves to be remembered longer than it has been so far. Admittedly, not one of my fave villains, which makes it my least favorite of the Ss. 

A tier (either super high quality or something I greatly enjoy and deem of at least reasonably good quality)

Mulan - this movie did everything right. Truly feminist protagonist, an icon for strong Asian women, fairly culturally accurate (tho Mushu confuses me), GORGEOUS and iconic music. Lets a relatively natural romance develop. I frickin love the action scenes, I love the emporer. Sadly, this movie just didn't lodge its way in my heart as well as Pixar did. Pixar just has some magic, yo. 

Cinderella - my gosh what an underrated protagonist. Her family straight-up abuses her and she never loses sight of her goals for a better life. Iconic visuals helped bring Disney out of bankruptcy. A gorgeous alto singing voice. 

Wreck-it Ralph - alright alright ppl don’t crucify me for this. I honestly can’t think of much wrong with this movie. Vanellope and Ralph’s vitriolic best buds relationship is adorable, her forgiveness of him is heartwarming and (relatively) deserved, rockin’ Owl City song, epic visuals that mix together bc of all the different games. ALSO ONE OF THE BEST DISNEY VILLAINS NO CAP. One of the only twist villains I like. And we stan the romantic pairing. 

Tangled - I’ve talked about this a lot, but Rapunzel deserved the whole world after what she’s gone through. That being said, Gothel is not some shallow monster she needs to escape from, but an intelligent, well-defined monster with backstory. I could totally see this story happening if the world of Tangled existed. Epic love story, hilarious dialogue. Music is… good but much of it is less memorable to me. Visuals are good but not quite at the level/creativity of many other disney films. 

The Lion King - they really put Hamlet in Africa and pulled it off lol. But in all seriousness, no one took the premise of this film seriously at the time and it became sooo iconic. I love Scar and his eventual downfall, I love how Simba grows emotionally, I love the sad moments that don’t overpower the overall feeling of light goofiness. And music so memorable it was one of the first Disney musicals. 

Coco - not a super unique story premise. But an incredible culture to explore with such creativity and sensitivity. I love the themes of death not being the worst and music being so central to the story. Twist/twist villain was memorable and not expected. And yeah, it did make me cry, so props there. 

Ratatouille - the most recently watched of these films for me. This movie is soooo unique! Back when Pixar was truly super out there with their concepts. Super Parisian visuals and soundtrack. It somehow starts goofy (THE OLD LADY TRIES TO KILL REMY WITH A SHOTGUN WHILE WEARING A GAS MASK) but really drives home the message that you can truly do what you want regardless of who you are. Colette can get it. And the monologue by Ego at the end is one of my favorites in film. 

Frozen - Anna is one of my favorite Disney protagonists. She’s so resilient and loyal. Elsa ain’t bad either but she experiences… less character development. The film is a tad too pleased with its own self-awareness for my taste, but there’s no denying how iconic the music and visuals were. 

Inside Out - Alright, this movie hits home for me bc I tried to run away after moving. A super thoughtful, heartfelt depiction of (potentially depression? imo) with great moments of humor. Riley’s inner world is so creative and lovely. Also realistic depictions of Minnesota/California culture. 

Tarzan - Jane! is! smart! and! adorable! Her scientific curiosity makes her very endearing. it’s so cute to see her and Tarzan learn from each other. Also Tarzan’s “found mother” is epic. Solid score. Solid film all around. To quote Lily Orchard, “This film is what Pocahontas tried to be.” 

B tier (one of my favorites but has a few significant flaws that bring it down (or not quite as memorable to me, but consider good quality))

Peter Pan - Haven’t seen it in a hot sec, but I remember being super charmed by this as a kid. Just going out, having incredible adventures, and returning to a warm home at the end of the day. Tinker Bell is hilarious and beautifully drawn. Gets major negative points for the depiction of Native Americans tho. 

Big Hero 6 - I was super charmed by the protagonist, his family/friends, and the setting. The plot/villain’s motivations are a bit of a mess, though. 

Princess and the Frog - This movie has so much flavor to it! The visuals/music are lovely and unique. Tiana is incredible but it’s kinda annoying how EVERYONE keeps trying to shoehorn her into romance. The thing is, her goals are entirely reasonable. Focus on her restaurant, then look to settle down. But they’re like “nooo you’re ignoring the important things in life” smh. Also, epic villain, woohoo! The movie dragged significantly for me when they were in the bayou. Charlotte is delightful. 

Winnie the Pooh - don’t remember it super well, but I think it was charming and occasionally dark, which is an addictive concoction. 

The Little Mermaid - MAN ppl roast Ariel way more than she deserves. Visually, it was… fine. idk. This movie is good. I don’t have much else to say about it. 

Snow White - the one that started it all. Visually, super impressive. Musically, lovely. I find the romance a bit… off. Well, more than a bit. What is it with Disney and kissing sleeping people? 

Alice in Wonderland - a nerdy acid trip. Right up my alley! I also like films where ppl go on incredible adventures and return to the status quo, but THEY changed bc of it. Epic. SUUUUPER creative visual interpretation of Carroll’s book. Brave - gosh I loooove films where a parent and child learn to understand each other. Never got why ppl hated this movie so much. The Scottish flavor is present and fun. Merida made one mistake and made it up. The arrow scene is iconic. 

Cars - a fun ride! (hahaha puns.) We love seeing Paul Newman as a car. 

B-minus tier? (same as B, but problematic, or weaker story-wise.)

Hunchback - man… settings-wise, this film might be my favorite. I also love Esmeralda and Quasimodo as characters and as a duo (though the sexualized depiction of Romani ppl is not epic.) I also don’t find the discrimination against Esmeralda/Quasimodo jarring bc it matches the time period. Frollo is super interesting as a villain. The gargoyles are… def not necessary. Basically, this film doesn’t know what it’s doing with tone. 

Sleeping Beauty - Aurora was my favorite when I was younger because I thought she was the prettiest, and that still defines how i feel about this, basically. Visually lovely - everything is kind of elongated and gothic. Maleficent is spiteful and epic. I have no issue with the fluffier parts of the movie, like the music or the fairies. RIP for lack of consent being a plot point, though. 

Hercules - Megara is incredible. one of the only Disney “princesses” who acts like an adult and has cynicism as a major part of her personality. I love her and Herc’s progression where she learns to trust him (yes, he is genuinely that sincere, it’s not a front.) Muses are unique, whoever came up with them was high on something and I’m living for it. I just think the plot itself was somewhat unrealistic/ weirdly-paced. There are some memorable songs, some less-than-memorable songs. Art style is cool but I’m personally not a fan. EXTREMELY inaccurate depictions of the original Greek gods. 

C tier (entertaining, but I don't consider it a great movie)

Bolt - I watched this like 11 years ago. It was fun! A cool concept about those put on a pedestal learning their worth even without celebrity boosting them up. Animation was… fine I think. not super memorable to me. 

Frozen 2 - They really took any scrap of character development Elsa had in the first movie, threw it in the garbage and set it on fire. Anna deserved so much better. Songs are bombastic and impressive, have the occasional interesting lyric, but are really weirdly placed and none are quite as iconic as the first movie’s (except Aurora, she does great work here. Also the song Anna sings after she thinks Elsa died.) 

Not a big fan of the vaguely homeopathic theme. Not a big fan of Olaf’s WEIRD character development. Not a big fan of the suuuuuper awkward dialogue and the animations that imply not only that Kristoff is into his reindeer but that Elsa and Anna are into each other (if you’re questioning if they did that, yes, they did, I can find screenshots of some really weird expressions/moments. THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO PANDER TO YOUR WEIRD FANS, DISNEY.) 

The voice actors did great work, the animators did great work (look at the details on their clothes! Look at how Elsa’s posture changes to be more confident! look at how they're animated while they're singing!) Some weird costume/makeup choices that make Elsa look like an aging starlet, but she also has some gorgeous moments so eh. It’s a wash for me. 

They really did not know what to do with Kristoff this movie, huh. The only thing that happened to him was singing a cheesy 90s ballad and marrying Anna, both of which were admittedly epic. Also, the trolls got 0 appearances despite being literally psychic. Probably could have helped with a lot. I'm not a huge fan of lore/worldbuilding, and thee was a lot of it here. Overall neutral on it. 

Also a big theme in this movie I don’t love - **** TANGIBLE CONSEQUENCES TO OUR ACTIONS!!! The danger is Elsa’s death, the elements, colonialism, and Arendelle literally being destroyed. None of those end up playing out, so I was left at the end going “this film had literally no stakes.” 

Monsters U - same as above - entertaining at the time! Not super memorable. The ppl we were supposed to dislike kept switching. Doesn’t really match the canon of Monsters Inc (I thought they were supposed to have known each other since childhood so why did they meet in college?) 

Cars 3 - so apparently, everyone HATED this movie! Fun! I never watched Cars 2 (yes watched Cars 1 if you haven’t been paying attention to this list), but I didn’t think this movie was bad at all. Well-acted, some fun chase scenes, the scene where Lightning fails at driving in the simulation is genuinely hilarious, and some interesting perspectives on teachers getting the spotlight for their skills for once. 

Incredibles 2 - I liked this film at first, but then it was… just okay in retrospect. I love me some good family dynamics. The plot here makes not a lot of sense. THEY BUILT UP THE UNDERMINER FOR NOTHING AND THEN FORGOT ABOUT HIM. I was surprised by the villain swap, but it happened so last minute I never really understood their motivations even after they explained them. Tried to tackle waaaay too many messages. 

D tier (I didn't enjoy these or consider them mediocre)

Finding Dory - Maybe I should have put this higher? Like C tier at least. Ah well. Wasn’t a huge fan of the body/physical comedy (not my thing), but it was entertaining and awww finding family is heartwarming. 

Finding Nemo - I remember nothing about this movie. 

E tier (this film has significant problems)

Beauty and the Beast - *sigh*… I want to love this movie. The score is gorgeous. Visually, they could have made it more distinctly Rococo-era France but didn’t (why?) The voice actors did good work and I think Paige O’Hara is SUPER underrated here. 

The Beast is emotionally manipulative with an awful temper that (for MOST of the movie. He doesn’t change.) That’s the main reason this is in E tier. This movie shaped so many generations of people thinking they can change the behavior of someone who treats them badly through the power of love. But you can’t. She learns to “love” the beast under coercion. It’s not Stockholm syndrome - it’s a trashy romance novel. Big fan of Gaston as a villain. He’s an archetype ppl can recognize and it’s so satisfying to hate him.

F tier (I think this film actively harms the industry and would rather it not have been made. Both the one in E tier could be considered harmful to the industry, but I think they had significant enough artistic accomplishments to scrape above that. I'm also generally a fan of "lack of censorship bc it's better to teach what not to do.")

Pocahontas - this movie took real historical events and romanticized them AND sexualized one of the only Native princesses they’ve had. Boo. Nothing wrong with animation!Pocahontas as a character, it’s just people put her in a story that doesn’t represent history well at all (and these historical events, unlike those in say, 14th-century Germany, had super relevant effects on people alive today.) And they portrayed the Native Americans and colonial settlers as equally in the wrong. (though I like Governor Radcliffe as a potential villain and love the line “see how I glitter.” I can’t NOT laugh when I hear it.) Lovely music, though. Nice animation, but the colors are weirdly… muted? 

Bad Garbage (I don't wish this film had never been made, but I wish I never had to see it.)

Planes - this movie was ridiculous. I remember not much about it except that I kinda hated it and that it was super cheesy with tension one could see right through that immediately resolved itself via one twist or another. 

Haven’t seen tier: Recess, A Bug’s Life, A Goofy Movie, DuckTakes Movie, Lilo and Stitch, Pinocchio (actually i have seen this but I remember nothing about it), The Nightmare before Christmas, Toy Stories 1, 2, and 3, Up, 101 Dalmatians, The Great Mouse Detective, Cars 2, Moana, The Good Dinosaur, Pete’s Dragon, Fantasia, Peter Pan Return to Neverland, Fantasia 2000, The Black Cauldron (read the book, though!), Bambi (or I did and remember nothing about it), The Rescuersm, The Rescuers Down Under, Planes Fire and Rescue, Bambi 2, The Fox & the Found, Oliver and Company, Atlantis, Treasure Planet (I want to, though), Piglet’s Big Movie, The Jungle Book, the Emporer’s New Groove, The Jungle Book 2, Chicken Little, Brother Bear, The Three Caballeros, Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, Dumbo, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Aladdin (seen parts but never the whole thing), Strange Magic, The Sword in the Stone, James and the Giant Peach, Frankenweenie, Lady and the Tramp, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Doug’s 1st Movie, Monsters Inc. (want to, though), Meet the Robinsons, Dinosaur, The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Tigger Movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, that pooh movie at the end without the title on it

-11/21/20

#blog #non-sequitura-blog #11/21/20 #november #2020 #longform #analysis #disney

[adamrevi3ws]

Jedi: Fallen Order

When I finished playing DOOM, I told myself that the next game I would play wouldn’t be one that pissed me off. Unfortunately, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order did not live up to those expectations.

While the source of my frustration with DOOM was mainly growing pains with its intense gameplay and action, Fallen Order mainly drew ire from me due to its unfinished and unpolished nature. Its publisher, EA, is in the same club as Ubisoft, Bethesda, and apparently now CD Projekt Red, often releasing games as broken glitchy messes when they first come out to meet quick deadlines. I’ve seen and heard how unplayable this game was at launch, and while it isn’t as bad as it was then, it still has enough subtle mistakes to ruin my gameplay experience. The main source of this and my frustration, in general, was the extremely finicky and unresponsive controls, particularly found in its two main selling points: platforming (and plot but I’ll talk about that later) directly lifted, if not plagiarized from the Uncharted games, and Dark Souls-esque combat gameplay. Nothing really lines up or “clicks” when it really needs to. Regarding the platforming, it feels like it takes a miracle to properly grab onto something and takes a thousand tries for a jump to work. When the double jump gets introduced, it really only works when the game, in its divine ignorance, feels the whim to let it work. A lot of reviewers complained about the difficult and unwieldy ice slide sequences in the game, and while I had my fair share of annoyance on a very specific ice slide, I think it’s just a symptom of a much larger problem. The combat shares this similar “the game only works when it wants to” problem. You don’t always dodge or block right when you want it to, but I think its biggest problem is healing. Instead of pressing a button and having part of your health restored, pressing said button instead “calls” your robot companion, which needs to do a special little animation and THEN you get healed, which takes a long 15 seconds. Not only does this waste a good amount of time in a game where time is absurdly precious in its hardcore combat, but every other time I tried calling the damn robot it straight up ignored me. I don’t know if this is a glitch, or it needs a cooldown period, or you can’t heal while being hit by an enemy, but it made the fights a lot more unnecessarily grating than they already are. Speaking of straight up screw you moments from the game, whenever I hit the “target” button in close combat with multiple enemies, it’d always target the farthest away enemy, for no reason. All of this is a shame because these main gameplay components are actually quite fun when they aren’t broken? A lot of the level design allows for really fast and exhilarating platforming that is absurdly fun when it syncs up, but that’s only, like half of the time. The combat can be enjoyable too, allowing for some great lightsaber duel boss fights, which can feel pretty cinematic when the combat actually works.

Outside of gameplay, the game’s unfinished nature shows itself a lot in its cutscenes. Its graphics just straight up dip and fail to fully render for 90% of these moments, often also feeling extremely choppy and cutting off a bit too soon. There was even one time an enemy was supposed to show up in a cutscene to initiate a boss fight but they just weren’t there and it was quite confusing because it felt like the main character was speaking to an empty wall. Around the middle of the game, both cutscenes and gameplay sequences would just freeze, and this is probably the first game I’ve played in a while to straight up crash on my PS4. If the developers took an extra, idk six months to actually fix this game a bit more I’d rate it a lot higher than I am now. I was actually warned about the game’s poor performance before playing, with a friend mentioning its horrible load times, but I didn’t know it’d be this bad. As my unopened copy of the infamous Cyberpunk 2077 waits on my mantlepiece for the developers to actually make it a playable game months after its release, I fear it may have the same fate as Fallen Order, still being quite a bit buggy and annoying over a year after its messy launch.

With its buggy and incohesive gameplay in mind, Jedi: Fallen Order’s strongest element is its plot. To my surprise, this is much less of a Star Wars game and more a game that just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. Taking place between episodes 3 and 4, I kind of expected it to be an epic quest detailing the rise of the rebel alliance, but instead, I got a more generic treasure hunt storyline heavily reminiscent of the Uncharted series. Although this sounds quite disappointing, the game’s plot still soars in its great character arcs and setpieces interspersed the vague framework of its less-than-original overall plot. Combine these great individual moments with an absolutely bombastic ending and it almost makes trudging through the glitchy gameplay worth it. This is elevated by some great voice acting performances, particularly from Cameron Monaghan, who gives a movie star performance to the main character, even in a lot of moments where he doesn’t have much to work with. The setting is also a high point. Disney’s milking of Star Wars has led to a variety of media set between episodes 3 and 4, this game feels particularly special because it is more focused on the aftermath of Episode 3 rather than the buildup to Episode 4, which I think the rest of the media in this era is focused on. It’s clear that there are so many parts of the game that the studio put a lot of love in, ranging from the plot, to the memorable soundtrack (Mongolian throat singing, anyone?), to even the hilarious enemy dialogue, I just wish they put this amount of effort to make the game fully playable.

The one elephant in the room regarding this game that I haven’t mentioned so far is the game’s worlds/levels themselves. They aren’t annoyingly unpolished like the gameplay but aren’t really a labor of love either. Instead what we get is an admittedly gorgeous maze of areas within a few planets, constantly getting more twisty and confusing as you go on. It may visually resemble an open world, but it is very much a series of paths that make you go “hmmmm, should I go back to that other branching path to see if there are any healing upgrades or character customization options I can collect?” There’s nothing wrong about this MetroidVania style format, but frankly it’s not my type. A lot of the areas look visually similar so it’s quite easy to get lost, and despite each planet’s map being absurdly big, there’s no way to actually fast travel between areas, just between planets. Finally, the incentive to go back and explore isn’t particularly convincing, where the healing upgrades are a bit too well concealed and the character customization options are like, absurdly mid. This is the one time I actually wished an EA game had its own in-game currency so I could buy something cooler than “the same damn poncho you’re wearing except a slightly less boring color combination.” Come on, man! The one good thing I’ll say about the overall game world is that the in-game map highlights which paths you haven’t explored yet, making it much easier to get on track. While the game’s maze-like level style isn’t necessarily my thing, I think if the developers tried to make it a bit more interesting a lot of people would get a kick out of it.

Jedi: Fallen Order is a game that finally made me understand my college professors that went a bit too hard on my grammar mistakes when grading papers. The central content and ideas this game presents have a lot of potential, but they’re heavily weighed down by an infinite number of fixable mistakes. I give this game a 6.7 out of 10 stars.

#jedi: fallen order #jedi fallen order #cal kestis #star wars

[negrek]

For the ask meme: 3, 6 (feel free to list multiples) and 7

More late ask replies! (For this old meme.)

1. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

That one's actually really tough, because a lot of them I've actually written, they just can't go in the story itself for one reason or another! For example, I've written a couple of scenes of what Nate gets up to after he splits up with the protagonist in Chapter 38, buuuuuut since this is a single-POV story, for some value of single POV, I can't include them. I've written a number of backstory bits, some published, some unpublished. I've written my various AU's, i.e. scenes I think would be loads of fun but which actually make no sense in the story as written.

As far as scenes that might actually go in the story, I do regret not having more scenes of Nate just getting to hang out with his pokémon during the League arc. Part of that's the fact that he was going to hang out with his pokémon away from the protagonist wherever possible, and part of it was that there's just so much going on in that arc already, it's bloated as it is, and so fun but not strictly necessary character scenes were naturally trimmed or not written at all. I'd also love to have more scenes of Nate's team interacting with the protagonist's team. I realized earlier today that there's a scene of that (which I quite like) in the next two chapters, and that's... the only one? There's only one time in the entire story where they talk?? How is that even possible???

So, nothing particularly plot-consequential, just generally more of characters that I enjoy bouncing off each other, angsting, being cute, whatever. Which I guess doesn't really qualify under the "can't be arsed to write all the set-up/context" requirement. I guess the only thing I can't be assed to write specifically because it would be too much effort is... any of the sequels? There are some bits there that I think are pretty *chef's kiss*, and I've already written a lot of them, but yeah, if I wanted those in actual fic form I'd need to write, like, all the scenes that go in between? Where you actually get from one chef's-kiss scene to another? Ugh. There is NO WAY I'm writing like three additional monster-sized stories to get some of my favorite follow-up out, I have other things I want to move onto instead.

Although I've been reading 20020 lately, and yeah, okay, if I had all of eternity, there is no way the universe would escape the entire Salvage series, lol.

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

Iiiiit's definitely Nate, if you couldn't guess. :P It's just very easy to get under his skin; he *reacts* a lot more than most of my other characters. Toss him into a scene for instant conflict, or have him on his own just to watch him work himself up and expode. All good fun.

In general it's the more bombastic characters... I think Steelix would be my second pick. I really enjoy characters who misunderstand the heck out of what is going on around them but are very confidently constructing a narrative that explains it nonetheless. The protagonist is also good for this! Both the ability and tendency to be very confidently wrong are things I enjoy writing in a character, heh.

There's also pretty much always a Rats-like character in my longer stories... they're just kind of my default personality. If I'm just sitting down and writing whatever, someone like her is probably going to emerge. I like these kinds of characters, they're fun, and they're also extremely easy/relaxing to write, since they're just what comes naturally, so to speak.

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

Ahahaha, funny you should ask that... *sweats loudly*

Probably the biggest one, prose-wise, is that I rely a great deal on verbs! On the flip side, I usually describe characters' looks very sparsely if at all. There tends to be more description of the physical environment, but not a great deal. Pen made a great point in that I like my compound descriptors, like "bruise-dark" or "lava-smoothed." One particular bad habit that I have to stamp out all the time in editing is sticking "half-" on the front of something, like half-turn, half-smile, etc. If it's like they kinda did a thing but also kinda not and I don't know how to say what I mean, that's what I reach for--pretty lazy! I want to try and save it for situations where I really like the effect rather than kind of gave up and stuck it in.

I also do a fair amount of personification, or maybe it's synechdoche, where you'll have somebody "twitch an annoyed ear" or "waved a dismissive hand" or what have you. Obviously the body part itself isn't annoyed or dismissive or whatever and the action is the external signifier of whatever emotion, but yeah, I do that a fair amount.

I also love battles and action sequences in general. Even in one-shots, there's almost always at least a little fight involved. Part of this, too, is probably my tendency towards very stubborn characters. If neither of them are going to bend in their convictions, well, then they're going to have to fight it out, right, if only with words? On the flip side, this can make character development very difficult for me. I have a lot of trouble getting my characters to change their minds! In fact, I generally need to hit them in the face for tens of thousands of words before they start to go, "Okay MAYBE I was slightly wrong about that one thing, a little tiny bit. Perhaps." I am not very good at dramatic revelations or character shifts, and they tend to land poorly for me in other media. ("What, X is really going to open up to Y about that? Already? And Y is going to reflect on their past behavior and resolve to do better? Sounds fake.") Definitely an area where my own personality puts some constraints on my ability to handle characters.

Rather abrupt plot swerves are another big one. They never seem very abrupt to me, of course, since I know where things are going the whole time, but ~dramatic events~ do seem to come in and turn the plot on its head a lot. It turns out we were totally wrong about whatever, so now we need to go do completely different thing instead! Oh no we screwed that up real badly, help we need to flee the consequences now, etc. In general this tends to be how I structure story arcs, I think... Things change very, very slowly for a while, then abruptly everything happens all at once, and things can shoot off in a completely different direction before slamming to a halt again.

Annnnd finally, people are always eating in my stories. All the danged time. Maybe I enjoyed Redwall too much as a kid, idk.

Generally speaking, people seem to agree with me on these.

#meme #writing #fanfic #ask #salvage extras #chibipika

[worlds-shortest-astronaut]

Ateez - Inception Thoughts

First of all, this is the first proper love song that Ateez have released. They’ve sung about love before but this is the first song that really seems to centre around romantic love and the emotions they experience because of it. 

Second of all, Inception feels like quite a big departure from their usual sound. It DEFINITELY is a good way to shift into a new era. It’s also sounds more mature and less bombastic. It’s intimate. It’s also really, really intense. 

I’m in love - YeosANG lines

also starting the song off with the killing part? BRAVE

I really like how sparse the instrumentation is at the start - it’s VERY DREAMY (text painting? Umu from @reacttothek will have to answer that one)

UGH i LOVE the pulsing low string/piano/hybrid synth during Yeosang/Yunho’s parts. 

From Seonghwa up until Wooyoung, all of the melodic material is carried by vocals. There’s no melodic synth, just percussion. Then the synth comes back in with Wooyoung’s part. 

Back. Ing. Vo. Cals. Backing VOCALS - Ateez always use them so effectively

The “oo-oo-oo”s

There’s a higher harmony over San and Wooyoung’s part which helps thicken the texture without taking away that dreamy aspect

Okay i LOVE the percussion in this first part of the verse - it’s regular but the way they stress the different parts of the beat make it feel like it’s staggering a bit

Hongjoong’s rap

 we get different backing bocals - some classic Ateez “eyyyy-ooohhhs”

The pre-chorus build to the chorus is pretty standard. It kind of feels like it starts in half-time and then accelerates but I’m not sure. Yunho’s chest voice/lower vocals are really awesome to here, though. And WOOYOUNG OOF Usually tho, Ateez pre-choruses are elevated so this was a bit different.

JONGHO it is so GOOD to see him sing/dance again!

It is a typical Ateez chorus in that there’s a bit pre-chorus build-up...but the chorus doesn’t feel massive/big like you think it would. It’s like how in Say My Name all that energy from the pre-chorus doesn’t resolve in something faster. Instead, the chorus is really heavy and it actually pulls back. The 1st part of the Inception chorus feels like that too.

Nice light higher harmony over Jongho and Yunho

There’s one kind of snare-like percussion synth which stays really echo-y. I like it cos it keeps the dreamy sensation - like your world is kind of fragmenting

Okay okay okay the SECOND (2nd) part of the Inception chorus - the part which actually murdered 83% of this fandom (i had to listen to this like 5 times).

Segonhwa’s “every day and every nigh i’m gonna chase you” - oh my GOD first of all. That shit sexc. That’s all folks.

Jks. The way he switches from chest voice to falsetto feels so PURPOSEFUL? which makes it even more attractive because it implies a kind of very tight control. 

Wooyoung’s ‘I in love’ layers over Seonghwa’s line and I’m obSEssED with it - it’s a totally different part from Seonghwa’s line, though both melodies move in a downwards direction. I think the overlap again reflects this whole idea of being in a dream. Things overlap and start and end at different times in a dream. It’s really just one sensation after another LIKE THIS SONG AHHHHH

Have I said backing vocals already? Yes I have. Will I say it again? Yes I will. The way they play with the lo-o-o-ve holy SHIT it GUIDES you through the song. It feels like it’s pulling you. 

Weirdly enough there isn’t a very prominent bass synth/part in this section. Makes it seem more FLOATYYYY

Mingi and Hongjoong’s shouted line? we love rap line. It’s such a nice contrast to the moving vocals.

OH MY GOD THE POST-CHORUS DANCE BREAK I GOT WHIPLASH

first of all, who puts a dance break (it’s like a Solid Length as well) after the first verse/chorus? Literally only Ateez. Who is doing it like them/their production team? It did remind me a bit of the post-chorus in VeriVery’s Thunder which was also AWESOME

Again, it kind of feels like half-time, or their emphasising beats 1 and 3 rather than 1,2,3,4

Also again, it’s super sparse and kind of stays in the higher ranges. i LOVE the way the synth bounces around

Yeosang’s lines (we stan - also his dance solo? I see you contemporary dance lessons)

Okay we’re DEFS in half-time here at LEAST

also we LOVE verses with DIFFERENT MELODIC MATERIAL give me more PLEASE

Mingi please step on me - i love that his rap is slower and deeper than Hongjoong’s

HNNNNNGGG different percussion from the second pre-chorus into the chorus that’s hot

Also San getting a chorus part hits different. I feel like San usually does a lot of verse/bridge work OR the response part in a call/response chorus. Having him get the main part of a chorus was SO COOL pop off with your gorgeous vocals my man

Jongho’s ad-libs I hear you and thank you

Wooyoung please do not sing ‘i’m in love’ like that it hurts my feelings

Okay bridge

the bridge bugged me at first because there’s no change in energy. like it stays at the same energy as the chorus when usually it drops off a little

but also the BRIDGE POPS OFF WITH NEW MELODIC MATERIAL UGH WE LOVE TO HEAR IT

its kind of a long bridge and i feel like there’s 3 parts to it

there’s the first vocal part with Seongwha and Yunho really using their chest voices (as;glaksjd;lgkj i love them so much). there’s also a nice new synth melody which kind of bursts on to the scene

There’s San and Wooyoung - i LOVE their part. They kind of break the 4th wall by addressing the audience. Rhythmically it’s also kind of fast. San’s falsetto is hot. 

RAP LINE YESSSS give me some ANGST. Of course we have Jongho belting that last line. 

as;aldkgja;lskdgjha;slgja;slkgdj a the INSTRUMENTATION CUTS OUT EXCEPT FOR THE DRUM which BURST into the last chorus oh my GOD this is so attractive and i don’t even know why. 

AHHHH THE JONGHO/SEONGHWA HIGH NOTE - lads i was NOT prepared. the HARMONY. I’m pretty sure it’s a chest/head mix. whatever it is it’s hot. the ANGST. the HEARTACHE. GODDAMN

Jongho just riffing thru the whole last chorus we stan

Jongho’s “i’m in love” and the little riff he adds is actually ART

I love that it ends with a rap line shouting ‘hey’ idk why. it’s like a nice flourish

Music video: gorgeous. The water scene and then the way they added fire to the ceiling? GeNIUS. Not a huge fan of school uniform styling but we’ll let it slide co everything else was stunning. 

#ateez #inception #fever #kpop #hongjoong #seonghwa #yunho #yeosang #san #mingi #wooyoung #jongho

[anansislibrary]

All of my thoughts on RWBY: taken from one of my videos here

If you haven’t watched RWBY yet... I honestly don’t know what to tell you. The show is genuinely one of my favorite anime of all time. It’s got an amazing cast of interesting characters, great writing, an amazing world to get immersed in. Every character you meet sticks with you, many of the fights are fast paced and memorable, and being a lore buff like me pays off in this world.

But RWBY isn’t... perfect, and having finished the newest season and rewatched the show from the beginning... I have some issues.

Don’t get me wrong, the new season had some excellent parts. The fight between Blake and Adam was literally perfect, and side note, idk why fans are saying Adam got nerfed for this fight or made weaker, when some of his only notable feats happen during this fight. The man lands hits like mortal kombat combos.

Anyway, I don’t want to just crap on the show so before I go into what I didn’t like, I’ll get into what I did. But before then, I’ll have to give you a brief rundown of the show. But before THEN I gotta give my obligatory plug

So make sure you like and subscribe if you enjoy this video and want to see more like it, and consider donating to my Ko-fi if you’re able to to help support my channel and help me make better content.

Without further ado

Here’s RWBY

Quick basic spoiler full rundown of the show.

Rwby takes place in a world callled remnant, with a shattered moon. Why is the moon shattered you ask? Satan threw a temper tantrum

Anyway

There’s monsters

Schools for people to fight monsters

Except no Because the main character’s school gets blown up by this BITCH NAMED CINDER, SCREW YOU CINDER.

Prompting Ruby and her Gucci gang to go on an adventure.

Got it? Good.

So here’s everything I love about the series.

I really like the character designs. Every single character has an excellent design and I could really do a video on how character design helps develop character and tell a story just using this show. Every person in the show has an interesting and cool design that helps you to remember and understand them.

An easy example is Weiss. She dresses like an actual princess, her color scheme and weapons are all very elegant looking and it hints at her high class status without even having to spell it out for you.

Plus I love how characters names are based off of fairy tales or mythology. For example, Sun, Sage, and the ironically named Neptune. The motif of fairy tales is fun too, for example Ruby being Little Red Riding hood, Ozpin and Glenda Goodwich being wizard of oz references, ironwood being the tin man and Leo being the lion, Qrow and scarecrows and all of that. Weiss and Winter both have names very directly based on snow.

Every name in this show was very clearly thought out, and even abilities too.

Sun can make clones of himself just like in the myth, Blake has issues with running from her problems, so she can make clones, yang has anger issues and can go super saiyan, almost everyone’s power has something to do with their personality.

Salem is such a fun villain. I wish she could do more because she’s really sinister and scary. She’s such a fun villain to watch but she doesn’t do shit.

I also love the fight scenes, I love how bombastic and fast paced they are, and it’s really cool how every character has their own unique style of movement and fighting that vary between them. The fights in this show are quick and stick in your mind, and there’s an emphasis put often on how much a character can move in a short amount of time.

Cinder as much as I hate her is also a great villain, and that’s why I hate her.

Roman Torchwick is also a GREAT villain and The way he dies is satisfying as hell, and seeing Neo again made me scream.

The worldbuilding is my favorite aspect of the show. Now I’m weird and I like info dumps and that’s why I enjoy those World Of Remnant videos that expand on the worldbuilding so as not to bog down story with info dumps. The world is really fun to learn about, how humanity has evolved in terms of technology is fun to speculate on, for example since Grimm attacks are common and destructive, towns outside of major cities are less technologically advance because they often don’t have time to explore that and have to move from town to town quickly in an emergency.

The Grimm are excellent monsters with varying abilities that make them scary. I love the Apathy from the most recent season, and how it doesn’t just attack you like a Beowulf, Ursa, or Nevermore, but it drains away your will to fight back at all.

This show also has my favorite trope of all time MIXED TIMELINES

YOU GOT TRADITIONAL CHINESE CLOTHING AND DRESS AND ASIAN ARCHITECTURE ON TOP OF CELL PHONES TOWERS AND ALL OF THAT

this trope is so fun because it really makes a world feel unique.

The world of Naruto has all kinds of modern stuff, but until Boruto it was mixed with older tech and tradition, really selling how this is not our world.

Another thing I love: every weapon is a gun. That is SO fun.

Now as good as the show is, it does have problems. That’s inevitable though, all shows, movies, and books have problems, nothing is perfect.

Except Avatar. Avatar is flawless.

Me pointing out the issues I have with this show is by no means to say it’s bad, just to point them out.

I truly do have love for this series and I still cry about Phyrra and her death.

I love you baby.

But that being said, pointing out the issues a show has can be important for both understanding the pitfalls to avoid in our own writing, and helping creators fix issues later on.

A lot of hard work goes into making this show and I would just be an asshole if I did nothing but shit on the show.

No matter how many issues it has, I can tell the people making it love what they’re doing, and that always shines through a series no matter how many issues it has, just like a show or movie can do everything conventionally right and still be a soulless shit show.

Looking at you call of duty black ops 3.

So here’s the issues

Fight scenes

I love the fight scenes. I’ve said that, they really can be so fun to view and I find myself coming back to them a lot.

But I have issues.

Lemme just say first that I don’t like complaining against animation. Animators go through enough crap already and it feels mean to criticize them at times, but this needs to be said.

One, I hate how people throw punches in this show.

They swing so wide it’s annoying.

Okay listen. If you swing at someone with a punch this wide, and they know how to fight, it will not land. They will block or dodge. I know this because as my subscribers know, I am a martial artist. I know jujitsu and boxing, and I took taeqwondo.

This is a bad punch.

My theory is that they do it to emphasize the impact of a bit, but that’s not necessary. There are other ways to do that.

You could say “they’re animators they don’t know how fighting works.”

But Naruto exists and those animators get martial arts stuff down PAT.

Hell, avatar the last airbender depends on its animators being able to animate fights with consistent accuracy, and those characters use styles most people have never heard of like Baguazhang.

And I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is. It’s hard to really get behind fight scenes at times when the characters can’t throw a simple punch right.

And again it’s not like it’s impossible for animation to animate a fight.

There’s a scene during a fight in Naruto where Obito Uchiha kicks Kakashi, and Kakashi uses his foot to redirect the kick and pull obito off balance.

This is a real move, that people do, and it’s done accurately, but RWBY seems to struggle with accuracy in their fights. Which is fine when a character’s weapon looks like this, but not in hand to hand.

This issue comes up in sword fights too. The way Weiss fights annoys me because her sword is a rapier, and the most important characteristic of a rapier is that often times they don’t have blades, they have points, and when they do have blades, they aren’t meant for slashing. Rapiers were made to exploit the gaps in someone’s armor by stabbing them, and thus it is a thrusting sword, not a slashing one. A sword like a Katana or Khopesh would be good for slashing. Roman gladius can kind of do both, but not as good as either one.

The point is that if they’re gonna give Wiess a rapier, they need to stop animating her slashing with it. Especially when her rapier doesn’t appear to have a sharp edge.

My next complaint is wasted characters.

It’s very frustrating when RWBY takes times to show us a character, but then never uses them.

I didn’t even know sun had a full team sometimes because you never see them.

And furthermore it’s annoying when a fight scene will just stop so that a character can do a cool thing.

Oh no this robot is so hard to beat, how will we beat this dangerous and powerful robot

Oh wait, this character can solo it because the plot needs to pause so she can be cool then promptly never be seen again.

It is so frustrating and it makes it hard to actually know when a character is in danger.

It takes 20 hits to kill a Grimm in one scene, then like two in another.

And the reason for that is because the plot is being pushed aside for the sake of spectacle.

A character’s abilities will be made inconsistent for a chance to make them seem cool.

Like this scene where Tyrion is fighting qrow, he uses his tail to block bullets.

But why?

He has his Aura up, the bullets wouldn’t hurt him anyway! Then when he gets shot later after he looses his aura his tail comes off.

If he was fast enough to use his tail to block bullets he wasn’t even paying attention to, why can’t he do it now!

There is no internal consistency.

Like why are Grimm so strong if they don’t have auras? That’s not explained because they Grimm rarely serve the plot, they spectacle. Adam putting 20 kombo hits into yang to beat her makes sense. He has to wear down her aura to actually hurt her.

But 20 hits to kill a grim that then gets solo’d by a character later on?

No.

Then there’s hazel.

He annoys me.

His villainous motivation is that his sister joined a school for trained soldiers, then died because it was dangerous and now he hates Ozpin.

Dude what?

Like I get why he’s mad, but she knew the risk and someone had to sign off on her getting in for her to be able to go to beacon at all. A child can’t just register for a school especially one where it’s a known risk you could die.

Also another thing I hate is how characters will overreact to stuff in annoying ways.

This is mostly in the most recent season.

Spoiler alert here

But everyone finds out the history of Ozpin and Salem’s relationship from Djinn

And then they just all hate and distrust Ozpin.

Here’s my reaction to finding out about ozpins relationship

It’s just... not that big a deal.

Okay so he was pipping the villain at one point

Nigga so was dumbldore!

It’s just annoying how Ozpin didn’t really do anything but he still was treated like he was just a bad person when he wasn’t.

That whole plot point feels empty, and I found myself more annoyed with the characters for being mad at him and wasting time, than mad at Ozpin for wanting to get laid.

My next complaint on this nitpick fest is

Shit what was I gonna say again?

Oh yea, that annoying ass military lady and her whole reason for not letting the heroes into atlas.

That was so annoying and pointless. She really had no reason not to let them through, and her getting into a giant mecha to fight them pulled me so far away from the story because it was just too ridiculous.

The mecha is for fighting Kaiju grim but it’s taken down by like five kids and their drunk grandpa.

Which like... fine but I hate it.

I hate that whole sequence.

It didn’t have to happen like that, it was another fight purely for spectacle.

It made me mad.

Plus I really really hate mecha anime and mecha fights in general.

God I hate them.

I skipped almost every mecha fight in Voltron because I hate them.

Look the point is that rwby is definitely a good show and I love almost every part of it, but these issues really pull me away from the story at times and you can really sense how much of the story is less about progression and more about increasing drama like the Ozpin thing, or looking cool.

Please watch rwby it really is worth your time, just be aware of the issues it has.

#rwby #ruby rose #yang xiao long #rwby season 7 #rwby spoilers

[baconpal]

talkin bout fire force

shit boys it’s been too long time for another unprompted juvenile rant about manga, click keep reading if you’re insane and keep scrolling if you aren’t 

So Fire Force anime starts in just about a week and I decided to just read it all instead of waiting for any anime. It took a while to read all of it and now I just kind of have a lot to say about the manga, the anime, and the author. So here we go. 

I actually have a lot of good things to talk about, but I’ll get the bad shit out of the way first:

THE WRITING

idk his name it doesn’t really matter since he’s made like 2 things he’s just the soul eater guy; his art style has always been charming and the action scenes keep improving but his actual narrative writing is real bad. I’ll talk about the characters themselves since I actually think FF’s characters are a ridiculous improvement from soul eater, and the setting/aesthetic are on point as well but the plot is just as bad if not worse than whatever soul eater was.

The story is riddled with what should obviously be throwaway characters that keep being brought back and doing something evil and unexpected because it’s a shounen manga and if you aren’t being betrayed then the plot isn’t moving forward, or someone introduced as an obviously villainous character just kind of agrees to be friends in a couple chapters. This is used as a constant cycle of introducing both a set of “evil” and “good” characters, then one of the old “good” sets of characters does something evil and the newest “evil” guys turn out to be good. It’s not interesting or shocking to have a character you can’t even remember come back and act like they’re important, especially if it’s repeated over and over.

FF pretends to have some kind of politic overtones where religions and businesses and such act as their own entities and betray each other and prey on the civilians, but you see absolutely none of the impact anybody’s actions have on the world despite ridiculous things constantly happening and world shaking truths being brought to light over and over, nothing happens. Villains will also  have ridiculous unbeatable abilities but then just be ignored, such as making zombie apocalypses or controlling minds and such. This is also likely a concession of being a shounen manga, where you can’t expect readers to read every single chapter, and usually on a week to week basis, so every chapter needs to have its own big shit happening, even if there’s no plans to follow through on anything. 

The worst part about the writing is how much stuff that the reader didn’t know about and has no idea what it is is passed of as some shocking twist when it’s introduced. This mostly happens with powers and with new factions. There’s a ridiculous amount of times where a new group steps in as the bad guy like mentioned earlier. But for the powers, there’s so many things layered on top of an actually acceptable power system that just seem to cause a DBZ type of escalation of power without the fight scenes actually becoming that much crazier at all. On top of the simple 2nd/3rd generation fire fighter powers, the main character is meant to utilize the adolla burst, the adolla link, the preacher’s divine protection, the okay hand emoji that makes you go fast, the breath of life, and superfire fighting. None of that means anything to anyone and are just used as “MC needs to be better at something but only temporarily” over and over. It’s similar to Maka and Soul’s deals with the devil in soul eater except much more common and with absolutely no downsides.

Also not the fault of the writer himself but there is not ANY good translation of this manga out there holy shit. There’s so many incredibly obvious puns and connections and choices of words to be made that are just entirely ignored, the typesetting is always awful, and no name for moves, characters, or even the title are ever agreed upon. It took until the official release titled “Fire Force” before people stopped trying to call the manga “Burning Firefighter Squad of Fire”.

THE ANIME

Just a bit more bad to say before I go into all the shit about this manga i actually like. The anime looks awful. A lot of anime does right now, very little of note has been coming out or seems to be coming in the future, which is usually the case but its not getting better and that sucks! 

But specifically the fire force anime, following up after soul eater, has absolutely none of the visual charm translated from the manga to anime, the voice casting is absolutely abysmal, and there’s nothing to give me hope in it, not enough to even give it an episode most likely. People might try to defend David productions because woah man I love jojo!!! but they’re pretty fucking bad at animating anything. The choice of color is gross and the visual effects are bland, which is a bad place to start for a show that will contain tons of fire and other bombastic effects. Big shame.

OKAY ONTO THAT GOOD SHIT

CHARACTER DESIGN

The visual designs in soul eater were cool if a bit janky, and the actual concepts for characters were far from astounding, usually being able to fully describe characters in single words and not having much development outside of combat abilities. But Fire Force has some of the most tight characters I’ve seen in a while, they’re all simple and focused with strong thematic elements.

Ya’ll know me, hopefully. I really appreciate simple designs and simple characters. Complicated does not equal deep, and simple does not equal shallow. The characters in fire force will usually embody a concept, or a concept and its exact opposite, and be never waver from their design. I’ll talk about em for specific characters when I get to em but even lots of minor characters are very well focused and I appreciate it.

SHINRA

The main character, and while his grocery list of special abilities and “chosen one” kinda shit is annoying, he starts of as a very strong introspective of the weight of your actions vs the impression you give of in the eyes of society. The easiest way to describe it is through the very obvious identity struggle he goes through of wanting to be known as a “Hero” but instead being “The Devil”. All Shinra ever does is selflessly save peoples lives and put himself at extreme risk, he tells everyone and their grandma that they can call on him when they need a hero, and yet his visuals consist of a dark haired punk who constantly smiles a sharp toothy smile, his ability that he uses to fly in and do kamen rider kicks with spews fire from his feet in the shape of pointy wings, and this fire puts a heavy shadow over his face, giving him a monsterous siloutte. It’s not at all subtle that he just looks as evil and menacing as possible, and so his reputation is constantly negative no matter how kind he is. It’s not explored all that deeply but it is still a strong contrast.

ARTHUR

What a fucking idiot. What an absolute buffoon. This stupid fuck functions as a very simple gag character by being nearly too dumb to function and living in a made up reality as a fantasy knight, but is also able to exist as one of the strongest characters in combat. His ridiculous power is handled in a much more engaging way than Shinra’s. As instead of layering multiple chosen one abilities on him, he becomes weaker or stronger depending on his suspension of disbelief. The more in character as a powerful knight he becomes, the stronger he is. It’s a clean way to make a funny delusional characters struggle actually mean something to the people around them, instead of being left to his own devices or constantly told to fuck off. And while I said the plot isn’t very good, the smaller character beats can be very powerful. For example, It was already pretty easy to just accept Arthur as he was, but his family situation is explored late into the manga, and it’s shown that he began to live in fantasy to escape from his families arguments and poor living conditions. His parents take advantage of his disconnect and abandon their home with him in it, leaving all their responsibilities to him with a note saying he’s now the king and has inherited their castle. This pushes him to an even more absurd degree of fantasy in order to just live out his life knowing he was unloved and unwanted. It very understated how you can make a character that’s mostly used for jokes still be very easy to connect to and empathize. 

TAMAKI 

This one is likely to be the hottest take made from me here today, but this is the most interesting character in this series for a variety of reasons. 

Visuals out of the way, the fire fighter outfits everyone wears already look cool as shit and big puffy coats just get me goin, this girl absolutely rocks it on top of having twintails and a cute face. That’s not objective in anyway this is just a character designed to bait specifically me and its fucking working, okay? The writing is the actually interesting part.

So something that’s usually not even worth talking about is fan service. Show of a girls titties cus its what dudes in their teens want to see, its free (You)s for shounen manga, and soul eater was full of it. It was pretty bad in soul eater and could come at jarring and unneeded times for characters that didn’t seem to exist for any sexual reasons. It was a very poor way to include fan service. 

Fire Force also begins in a similar spot, the 3 main girls that are around in the beginning chapters are occasionally seen changing or in a bath or covered in water or whatever, with one particularly bad spread of them with the classic no nipple no vagina bodies all standing together in a shower. Its awkward and stiff and even as a fan of anime tiddie it just wasn’t worth having. 

But then that wildman just does it. He creates one single character to put literally every single ounce of horny energy in to. A character who exists to fall over and get her tits pushed into someones face, but pushed to a cartoonish extreme. It sounds silly to try to pass off fanservice as funny, but it is. It’s so ridiculously intended and impossible and always varied that its actually fun to see her do something stupid and for something to happen. Sometimes its just her ass landing on a dudes face (god i wish that were me) or her body being exposed and drawn in pretty high detail. Sometimes instead they get an entire dude stuck in her shirt after just tripping in a way that is not not being sexual to the reader at all since you see absolutely no skin. She’s simply destined to be put into lewd situations in universe, not in regards to the manga itself. For an example, here she is just standing completely still, and suddenly becoming naked, drawn in a distant, goofy way: 

It’s stupid. It’s definitely still fan service, but it’s just ridiculous. And that’s way more interesting than having every girl in your series randomly get naked at some point. Despite being insane it still works on boys, as Tamaki is the most popular girl in the series by far, ranked as the second most popular character consistently. 

Tamaki also leads to the single best chapter of the manga where a horribly designed throw-away assassin who was beaten by her returns for revenge, but just ends up as a short, self contained, well paced comedic story of love. 

And guess what, she’s still interesting outside of being funny and having fan service. Her cartoonish luck is essentially treated as her actual power, and her fire cat abilities aren’t explored too deeply during most of the series, but this is done for a greater purpose of essentially spitting in the face of high stakes. Tamaki easily witnesses the most deaths in the series, and most of them are cruel and unusual. She witnesses children being killed by a man who inspired her, she sees people she just met be beheaded in some gruesome shots that aren’t anywhere else in the series, and she gets involved in all sorts of life threatening situations. She still just falls over and gets naked. She’ll have fairly serious fights where she tries her hardest or the people around her are completely serious, and without bringing any direct attention to it she still ends up showing skin. There’s a point where every single character is at risk of dying at once to a trap set by the enemy, and Tamaki quietly laments over how she’ll be the only one to survive. She is completely aware of her ridiculous luck and her complete immunity to stakes, which is honestly just great.

Even beyond that, Tamaki is slowly being built up as more and more of an actual character, she has a short backstory section where her own hard work and effort is basically ignored by everyone around her, as if her success in life is only a result of her good luck, which is a feeling that hits very close to home to me (fuck you if you’ve ever discredited someones hard work because they’re “””””talented””””). And in the most recent couple of chapters, shes made an active effort to train alongside Shinra and Arthur, who both value the improvements they can make to themselves through hard work. No other characters in the cast make conscious efforts to improve from their status in the way Tamaki does. She moves up from a joke character to now trying to stand along side the main character as a useful and though out character. It’s a genuinely wonderful character to have been developed and the best thing I’ve gotten from this author.

VISUALS AND COMPOSITION

Okay enough about the characters, the last little thing I wanna touch on is just some of the absolutely bonkers kinds of compositions in this manga. One of the villains has an ability that is explained incredibly poorly. Pretty sure it’s just a time slowing ability that has nothing to do with fire but whatever. The pages where he uses the ability have this absolutely sick warped look to them that plays with the panels in a way that couldn’t be depicted in any other medium. Just look at this shit.

Every panel has a different background and yet still describes a single cut in time. It might not really mean anything, but that’s fucking sick dude.

Another pretty interesting one is this one kid named Nataku, who has an ability forced onto him by a maniac with a motif of stars for eyes, who dies immediately after. This event is shown to have absolutely traumatized him not because its directly said, but because this dead character appears constantly in panels with this kid, sometimes taking up the entire background to yell at him, or being an almost impossible to see spec lingering behind him. Nataku is also drawn in this strange sketchy style where he seems to be melting, and sometimes melds into shapes that resemble this dead character, such Nataku’s mouth becoming the fucking eyeball of the dead guy, star pupil and everything. It’s just such a specific and horrific way to depict that kind of identity trauma and it really stuck out to me.

I’LL SHUT UP NOW

And ye that’s about it. It was a lot of rambling and there are still lots of little things i like about the manga, good designs and cool fights and stuff but i just wanted to talk about the things that were really noteworthy to me. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve spent 4 hours just typing about stuff but if you actually read any of this, on this dead website of all places, you’re cool. Hope you found something interesting too.

#Fire Force #juvenile rant

[vinylexams]

A very special fireside interview with XUXA SANTAMARIA

Check Insta for our thoughts on this landmark album from Oakland duo XUXA SANTAMARIA. Stay right where you are to read a really fun interview I scored with the band this week. They’ve just released Chancletas D’Oro on Ratskin Records out of Oakland and Michael blessed me with my very own copy. It was so good I knew I needed to tell you all about it and I wanted to pick their brains a little bit, too. Without further ado, please enjoy:

//INTERVIEW

You’re still breaking into indie world at large, but you’ve already got a huge following back in California and your home-base in Oakland. What has it been like to be featured in major outlets like The Fader?

SC: We are a funny project; we ebb and flow from being total hermits to having periods of relatively high visibility (relative to aforementioned hermit state). I wouldn’t say we have a huuuge following in CA but I do think that the ‘fandom’ we’ve developed here is really genuine because we don’t play shows out of an obligation to remain visible but instead do so because we feel super passionate about the work and the audience and I think people respond to that energy. I for one, and perhaps this is because of my background in performance, have a hard time performing the same stuff over and over without change which accounts for us being selective with our playing live. That’s also why videos are such an important part of what we’re about. The piece in The Fader was important to the launch of this album because it established some of the themes and, to an extent, the aesthetics of this album in a way that can be experienced outside of a live setting. None of this is to say we don’t like playing live, in fact we love it, we just like to make our sets pleasurable to ourselves and to our audience by constantly reworking it. We strike a weird balance for sure but we’ve made peace with it. If we ever ‘make it’ (lol) it’ll be on these terms.

Chancletas D'Oro is a pretty incredible record and while it reminds me of a few bands here or there, it’s got a really fresh and unique style that merges dance with all sorts of flavors. How would you describe your music to someone who is curious to listen?

MGK: Haha, we generally struggle to describe our music in a short, neat way (not because we make some kind of impossible-to-categorize music, but just because it’s the synthesis of a ton of different influences and it’s hard for US to perceive clearly). But with that caveat in mind - IDK, bilingual art-punk influenced dance/electronic music?

SC: Thank you for saying so, we’re pretty into it :) Like Matt says, we struggle to pin it down which I think is in part to what he says – our particular taste being all over the place, from Drexciya to The Kinks to Hector Lavoe- but I think this slipperiness has a relationship to our concept making and world building. As creative people we make and intake culture like sharks, always moving, never staying in one place too long. Maybe it’s because we’re both so severely ADHD (a boon in this instance tbh) that we don’t sit still in terms of what we consume and I think naturally that results in an output that is similarly traveling. Point is, the instance a set of words - ‘electronic’, ‘dance’, ‘punk’- feel right for the music is the same instance they are not sufficient. I propose something like: the sound of a rainforest on the edge of a city, breathy but bombastic, music made by machines to dance to, pleasurably, while also feeling some of the sensual pathos of late capitalism as seen from the bottom of the hill.

The internet tells me you’ve been making music as Xuxa Santamaria for a decade now. What has the evolution and development of your songwriting been like over those ten years?

MGK: Well, when we first started out as a band we were so new to making electronic music (Sofia’s background was in the art world and mine was in more guitar-based ‘indie rock’ I guess - lots of smoking weed and making 4 track tapes haha), so we legit forgot to put bass parts on like half the songs on our first album LOL. We’ve learned a lot since then! But in seriousness, we’ve definitely gotten better at bouncing ideas back and forth, at putting in a ton of different parts and then pulling stuff back, and the process is really dynamic and entertaining for both of us.

SC: This project started out somewhat unusually: I was in graduate school and beginning what would become a performance practice. I had hit a creative roadblock working with photography - the medium I was in school to develop- and after reading Frank Kogan’s Real Punks Don’t Wear Black felt this urge to make music as a document of experience following Kogan’s excellent essay on how punk and disco served as spatial receptacles for a wealth of experiences not present in the mainstream of the time. I extrapolated from this notion the idea that popular dance genres like Salsa, early Hip Hop, and Latin Freestyle among many others, had served a similar purpose for protagonists of a myriad Caribbean diasporas. These genres in turn served as sonic spaces to record, even if indirectly, the lived experiences of the coming and going from one’s native island to the mainland US wherein new colonial identities are placed upon you. From this I decided to create an alter ego (ChuCha Santamaria, where our band name originally stems from) to narrate a fantastical version of the history of Puerto Rico post 1492 via dance music. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing but I look back on that album (ChuCha Santamaria y Usted - on vinyl from Young Cubs Records) fondly. It’s rough and strange and we’ve come so far from that sound but it’s a key part of our trajectory. Though my songwriting has evolved to move beyond the subjective scope of this first album - I want to be more inclusive of other marginalized spaces- , it was key that we cut our teeth making it. We are proud to be in the grand tradition of making an album with limited resources and no experience :P

We’re a big community of vinyl enthusiasts and record collectors so first and foremost, thanks for making this available on vinyl. What does the vinyl medium mean to you as individuals and/or as a band?

MGK: I think for us, it’s the combination of the following: A. The experience of listening in a more considered way, a side at a time. B. Tons of real estate for graphics and design and details. C. The sound, duh!

SC: In addition to Matt’s list, I would just say that I approach making an album that will exist in record form as though we were honing a talisman. Its objecthood is very important. It contains a lot of possibility and energy meant to zap you the moment you see it/ hold it. I imagine the encounter with it as having a sequence: first, the graphics - given ample space unlike any other musical medium/substrate- begin to tell a story, vaguely at first. Then, the experience of the music being segmented into Side A and Side B dictate a use of time that is impervious to - at the risk of sounding like an oldie - our contemporary habit of hitting ‘shuffle’ or ‘skip’. Sequencing is thus super important to us (this album has very distinct dynamics at play between sides a/b ). We rarely work outside of a concept so while I take no issue with the current mode of music dissemination, that of prioritizing singles, it doesn’t really work for how we write music.

MGK: We definitely both remain in love with the ‘album as art object/cohesive work’ ideal, so I would say definitely - we care a lot about track sequencing, always think in terms of “Side A/Side B” (each one should be a distinct experience), and details like album art/inserts/LP labels etc matter a lot to us.

What records or albums were most important to you growing up? Which ones do you feel influenced your music the most?

SC: I know they’re canceled cus of that one guy but I listened to Ace of Base’s The Sign a lot as a kid and I think that sorta stuff has a way of sticking with you. I always point to the slippery role language plays in them being a Swedish band singing in English being consumed by a not-yet-English speaking Sofía in Puerto Rico in the mid 90s. Other influences from childhood include Garbage, Spice Girls, Brandy + Monica’s The Boy is Mine, Aaliyah, Gloria Trevi, Olga Tañon etc etc. In terms of who influences me now, that’s a moving target but I’d say for this album I thought a lot about the sound and style of Kate Bush, Technotronic, Black Box, Steely Dan, ‘Ray of Light’-era Madonna plus a million things I’m forgetting.

MGK: Idk, probably a mix of 70-80s art rock/punk/postpunk (Stooges, Roxy Music, John Cale, Eno, Kate Bush, Talking Heads, Wire, Buzzcocks, etc etc), disco/post-disco R&B and dance music (Prince, George Clinton, Chic, Kid Creole), 90s pop + R&B + hip hop (Missy & Timbaland, Outkast/Dungeon Family production-wise are obviously awe-inspiring, So So Def comps, Jock Jams comps, Garbage & Hole & Massive Attack & so on), and unloved pop trash of all eras and styles.

Do you have any “white whale” records that you’ve yet to find?

MGK: Ha - the truth is that we’re both much more of a “what weird shit that we’ve never heard of can we find in the bargain bin” type of record buyer than “I have a custom list of $50 plus records on my discogs account that I lust over”.

SC: Not really, I’m wary of collectorship. That sort of ownership might have an appeal in the hunt, once you have it do you really use it, enjoy it? Funnily, I have a massive collection of salsa records that has entries a lot of music nerds would cry over (though they’re far from good condition, the spines were destroyed by my Abuela’s cat, Misita lol, but some are first pressings in small runs). For me its value however, comes from its link to family, as documents from another time and as an amazing capsule of some of the best music out of the Caribbean. I’m glad I am their guardian (a lot of this stuff is hard to find elsewhere, even digitally) but I live with those records, they’re not hidden away in archival sleeves, in fact, I use some of that music in my other work. Other than that, the records I covet are either those of friends or copies of albums that hold significance but which are likely readily available, Kate Bush’s The Dreaming or Love’s Forever Changes, or The Byrds Sweetheart of The Rodeo as random examples

Finally, is there a piece of interesting band trivia you’ve never shared in another interview?

SC: haha, not really? Maybe that we just had a baby together?

//

Congrats on your new baby, and also for this wonderful new album. It was a pleasure chatting with you and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for you and your music!

#xuxasantamaria #interview #oakland #music #electronic #electronicmusic #ratskin #ratskinrecords

[obstinaterixatrix]

(Yusuke may be fond of the arts, but Ryuji has a buried fondness for musicals and show tunes. He probably has a playlist for it hidden amongst his normal music.)

I was in the middle of listening to Hamilton when I thought of this. Mainly because I can’t think of Hamilton AU for this. (Kinda don’t want one, only because I don’t want any cheating ;_;) Now I’m imagining Ann knowing about Ryuji’s secret and they’ve gone to see some on occasion.

Wait I don’t think the musicals I’m thinking of would work for them in Japan. Specially since Ryuji doesnt known English. Dang. (Should we just ignore that part?)

I haven’t watched/listened to much of Hamilton, only the song with the immigrants line bc of my bias and The Room Where It Happens because I like how it sounds. Japan’s theater scene is a mystery for me except Takarazuka because. Well. Anyway, I know there was an absolutely wild production of The Little Mermaid a few years back, and there’s translations of the Really Big Musicals like Wicked and Phantom of the Opera. Musicals are pretty dang expensive tho, idk what tickets are like in Japan but I know one of my pals had to tearfully pass up a Takarazuka performance because $$$. It was the one about Lincoln.

Anyway I think the only way they’d be able to watch musicals is if they watched official recordings or if Futaba dug up some bootleg. Japan seems a lot better about recording their live shows. Even though… their stage adaptations for like video games and anime seem to focus on appealing more to a preexisting fanbase than making it accessible to newcomers, which in my opinion, can take its toll on writing, but I’d have to watch more before I could really have a solid opinion. In general though the perception of live shows seem to have a different nuance I don’t really know about.

For some reason, I really associate Yusuke with Rodgers & Hammerstine stuff. To a lesser degree, he gives somewhat of a Sondheim vibe. Ahahaha actually I have the Japanese Tour version of The Fantasticks, which kind of vaguely mirrors his development from idealism to pessimism to something more down to earth. I don’t think he’d be an avid fan of the classics, but I think he’d enjoy them casually & know a lot of trivia (especially about costuming & set design).

Ryuji I’d put as enjoying really dynamic shows, but I don’t know ones that’d fit the bill. The same kind of stuff as the movies he likes, really, except I feel like the kind of comedies don’t translate well to stage so it’s more.. action! Revenge! The strong bond between two men! There has to be one heart-wrenching scene with a near death experience. Or a death experience. Crying from everyone. But it also can’t be, like… I mean look mainstream media, even when it falls into a more niche genre like musicals, unless you got a writer you trust there’s always gonna be socialized bullshit and victim blaming type stuff so there can’t be too much of that or Ryuji’d spend the entire show like !!! I CANT BELIEVE THEYRE FORGIVING HIM FOR RUINING THEIR LIVES!!!! BULLSHIT!!!! And he’d get everyone kicked out. Man, I wish I knew what original Japanese musical productions were like.

I lost my train of thought. In summary, I guess Ryuji would like musicals that fit into his genre preference rather than have musicals as a genre preference? He probably likes brassy & bombastic soundtracks.

#ask #p5lb #orlbs #anonymous #talking abt musicals