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comedicreliefonlyworkswhenfunny · 3 years

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I am against the "Americanization" of fandoms.

What this applies to

Holding non American characters (and sometimes even fans) to an American moral standard. This includes

Refusing to take into account that, first things first, America is NOT the target audience, so certain tropes that would or would not pass in the west are different in Japan.

Like seriously, quite a few of the jokes are just not going to pass or hit, because they require background information that is not universal.

Assuming all American experience is standard. (This could mean watering down just how much pressure is placed on Japanese youth irl by saying that sort of thing is universal (while it is, to a degree, Japanese suicide rates are pretty fucking high because of how fast paced and work heavy some of their loads tend to be), and it's really annoying and rude when someone is trying to speak out about how heavy and harsh the standards are placed on them to succeed just for some American whose mom occasionally yells at them to do their homework dropping by to say "it's like that everywhere")

Demonizing (or wubbifying) a character using American morals, including and up to harassing fans over their interpretations or gatekeeping whether or not a character "should" get development (while you shouldn't do that fucking period, it's rude and annoying- this is specifically for the people who use American standards without acknowledging the cultural gap between them and, you know, the fucking target audience) ((Like seriously, saying "It's different in Japan" is not the end all be all excusing someone's actions, but sometimes the author didn't immediately think that maybe (insert vaguely universal thing) was that bad or that heavy of a topic before they put it into their media. If you don't want to see things like that? Pick a different series and stop harassing the fans))

Getting mad at or making fun of Japan's attempts to satirize their own culture. (A good example is Ace Attorney! To most of us, it's just a funny laugh can you imagine if courts were actually like that- guess what? Japan's are! (Not that America's are actually that much better, they just look good on paper))

Making America/American issues the center of your fan spaces

(Usually without sharing or bringing light to the issues that other countries are going through)

Your

Experiences

Are

Not

Univseral!

Seriously, very few things across America, even, are universal. Texas things the hundreds are nothing while Minnesota's like "oh it's only thirty degrees below zero"- so for fucks sake, stop assuming that all other countries work in ways similar to America.

It's good and important to share Ameican issues with your American followers, but guess what? America isn't the only country out there, and it's certainly not the only one going through bullshit. Don't pull shit like "why's no one reblogging this?" or "why should I care about what's happening in (X country)?"

Don't assume everyone lives in America.

Stop assuming everyone lives in America.

America is not and has never been the target audience for anime, and it's certainly not the only country outside of Japan that enjoys it.

Like I said above, sometimes Japan attempts to satirize its own culture. We can't tell what is and isn't meant as satire, because it's not our culture.

Social media activism can be tiring and maybe you don't have the energy to focus on things that are out of your control, but, if someone tells you about the shit they're going through, don't bring American politics up.

For the neurodivergent crowd out there thinking, "But why?" it's because a lot of social media, especially, is very heavily Americanized- sometimes to the point where people assume that everyone is American. Not to mention, it's disheartening. I'm sorry to say, but you're not actually relating to the conversation, you're often diverting the focus away from the topic at hand. Even if you mean well, America is heavily pedestaled and talked about frequently, and people from other countries are tired of America taking precedent over their own issues.

Don't divert non-American issues into American ones. Seriously. It's not your place. Please just support the original issue or move on.

Racist Bullshit

This especially goes for islanders and South Asian characters, as well as poc characters (because, yes, Japan DOES have black people)

Making "funny" racist headcanons. Not fucking cool.

Changing the canon interpretation of an explicit character of color in order to fit racist stereotypes.

Whitewashing or color draining characters. Different artistic skill sets can be hard, yes, but are you seriously going to look at someone and say "I don't feel like accurately portraying you or people that look like you, because it's difficult for me." If someone tries to correct you on your cultural depiction of a character and/or their life style, don't be an ass. (If possible, it would be nice for those that do the corrections to be polite as well, but it does get really frustrating).

Seriously, no offense guys, but, if you want to persue art, you're going to need to learn to depict different body types, skin colors, and/or ethnic features.

On that note, purposefully, willingly, or consistently inaccurately portraying people or characters of color (especially if someone in the fandom has "called you out" or specifically told you that what you're doing comes across as racist and you continue to do it). If you need help or suck at looking things up, there are references for you! Ask your followers if they have tutorials on poc (issue that you're having), whether it be bodily portrayal, facial proportions, or coloring and shading. Art is so much more fun when you can depict a wider variety, and guess what? Before you drew the same skinny, basic, white character over and over, you couldn't even draw that!

Attempting or claiming to DEPECT CULTURAL ACCURACY within a work or meta, while being completely fucking wrong. ESPECIALLY and specifically if someone calls you out, and you refuse to fix, correct, or change anything.

*little side note that the discussion revolving art is a very multilayered conversation, and it has quite a few technical potholes, which I'll bring up again farther into this post.

Fucking history

Stop demonizing or for absolute fucks sake wubbifying Japanese history because UwU Japan ♡0♡ or bringing up shit like "you know they sided with Nazis, right?" It's good to recognize poor past decisions, but literally it's not your country keep your nose out of it. And? A lot of decisions made by countries were not made by their general peoples. Even those that were, often involved heavy propaganda that made them think what they were doing was right.

Seriously, it's not your country, not your history. Unless you have some sort of higher education (but honestly even then a lot of those contain heavy bias), just don't butt in.

^^^ this also goes to all countries that are NOT Japan (specifically when people from non American countries talk about their history while in fandoms and someone wants to Amerisplain to them why "well, actually-"). When we said, "question your sources," we didn't mean "question the people who know better than you, while blindly accepting the (more than likely biased) education you were given in the past."

What this does NOT include:

Fanfiction

FANfiction

FanFICTION

FANFICTION.

Seriously, fanfiction is literally UNPAID WORK from RANDOM FANS- a lot of which who are or have started as kids. ((No, I'm not trying to excuse racist depictions of people just because they're free, please see above where I talk about learning to grow a skill and how it's possible tone bad and get good, on top of the fact that some inaccuracies are not just willful ignorance))

"Looking it up" doesn't work

"Looking it up" almost never works

Please, for fucks sake, you know that most all online search engines are heavily biased, right? Not to mention, not everything is universal across the entirety of Japan. You want to look up how the school system works in Hokkaido? Well it's different from the ones in Osaka!

Most fanfiction is meant to be an idealized version of the world. Homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, and racism are very prevalent and heavy topics that some fan authors would prefer to avoid. (Keep in mind, this is also used by some people in those minorities often because thinking about how relevant those kinds of things are is to them every day).

A lot of shit that happens in writing is purely because it's an ideal setting. I've seen a few arguments recently about how fan authors portray Japanese schools wrong- listen, I can't tell you how many random school systems I have pulled from my ass purely because (I need them to interact at these points, in these ways). Sometimes the only compliment I can think of is 'I like your shirt' or sometimes I need character A to realize that character B likes the same thing as they do, so I might ignore the fact that most all Japanese schools require uniforms, so that I can put my character in a shirt that will get someone else's attention.

Sometimes it's difficult to find information on different types of systems, and sometimes when you DO know those things, they directly rule out a plot point that needs to happen (like back on the topic of schools (from what I've seen/heard/read- which guess what? Despite being from multiple sources, might still be inaccurate!) Japanese schools don't have mandatory elective classes (outside of like gym and most of them usually learn English or another language- I've seen stuff about art classes? But the information across the board varies.), but, if I need my character to walk in and see someone completely in their element, I'm probably not going to try and gun for accuracy or make up a million and two reasons as to why this (non elective) person would possibly need something from (elective teacher) after school of all things.)

Some experiences ARE universal- or at least overlap American and Japanese norms! Like friends going to fast food places after school doesn't /sound Japanese/ or whatever, but it's not like a horrible inaccuracy to say that your characters ate at McDonald's because they were hungry. Especially when you consider that the Japanese idolization of American "culture" is also a thing.

Also I saw someone complaining about how, in December, a lot of (usually westerners) write Christmas fics! Well, not only are quite a few of those often gift fics, with it being the season if giving and all, but Japanese people do celebrate Christmas! Not as "the birth of Christ," but rather as a popularized holiday about gift giving (also pst: America isn't the only place that celebrates Christmas)

But, on that note, sometimes things like Holidays are "willfully ignorant" of what actually happens (I've made this point several times, but (also this does by no means excuse actual racism)), because, again: plot convenience! Hey what IF they celebrated Halloween by Trick or Treating? What if Easter was a thing and they got to watch their kids or younger siblings crawl around on the ground looking for tiny plastic eggs?

Fanfiction authors can put in hours of work for one or two thousand words- let alone ten thousand words, fifty thousand words, a hundred thousand words. And all of these are free. There is absolutely no (legal) way to make money off of their fanworks, but they spent hours, days, weeks, months- sometimes even years- writing. It is so unnecessary to EXPECT or REQUIRE them to spend even more hours looking up shit that, no offense, almost no one is going to notice. No one is going go care that all of my combini prices are accurate or that I wrote a fic with a Japanese map of a train station that I had to backwards search three times to find an English version that I could read.

Not everyone has the attention span or ability to spend hours of research before writing a single word. Neurodivergent people are literally a thing yall. Instead of producing the perfectly pretty accurate version of Japan that people want to happen, what ACTUALLY happens is that the writer reads and reads and reads and either never finds the information they need or they lose the motivation to write.

^^^ (This does NOT apply to indigenous or native peoples, like Pacific Islanders or tribes that exist in real life. Please make sure that you portray tribal minorities accurately. If you can't find the information you need (assuming that the content of the series is not specifically about a tribe), please just make one up (and for fucks sake, recognize that a lot of what you've been taught about tribal practices, such as shit like human sacrifices or godly worship, is actually just propaganda.)

Not to mention, it often puts a wall in front of readers who would then need to pull up their OWN information (that may or may not be biased) just in order to interact with the fic ((okay, this one has a little bit of arguability when it comes to things like measurements and currency, because Americans don't know what a meter is and no one else knows what a foot is- either way, one of yall is going to have to look up measurements if they want to get a better understanding of the fic)). However, a lot of Americans who do write using 'feet, Fahrenheit, dollars,' also write for their American followers or friends (which really could go both ways).

On a less easily arguable side, most fic readers aren't going to open up a new tab just to search everything that the author has written (re the whole deep topics, not everyone wants to read about those sorts of things, either). Not only are you making it more difficult on the writer, but you're also making it more difficult for the reader who's now wondering why you decided to add in Grandma's Katsudon recipe, and whether or not the details you have added are accurate.

Some series, themselves, ignore Japanese norms! Piercings, hair dye, and incorrectly wearing ones uniform are frowns upon in Japanese schools- sometimes up to inflicting punishment on those students because of it. However, some anime characters still have naturally or dyed blond hair some of them still have piercings or wear their uniforms wrong. Some series aren't set specifically in Japan, but rather in a vague based-off-real-life Japan that's just slightly different (like Haikyuu and all of its different prefectures). Sometimes they're based on real places, but real places that have gone through major changes (like the Hero Academia series with its quirks and shit).

Fandom is not a full time job. Please stop treating it like it is one. Most people in fandoms have to engage in other things like school or work that most definitely take precident over frantically Googling the cultural implications of dying your hair pink in Japan.

Art is also meant to be a creative freedom and is almost always a hobby, so there are a few cracks that tend to spark debate. Like I said, it is still a hobby, something that's meant to be fun (on this note!)

If trying new things and expanding your portfolio is genuinely making you upset, it's okay to take a break from it. You're not going to get it right on the first try and please, please to everyone out there critiquing artists' works, please take this into account before you post things.

I'm sorry to say, but, while it gets frustrating to see the same things done wrong over and over again, some people are genuinely trying. If it matters enough for you to point out, please offer solutions or resources that would possibly help the artist do better (honestly this could be said about a lot of online activism). I get that they should "want" to do better (and maybe they don't and your annoyance towards them is completely justified- again, as I said, if this becomes a repeated offense and they don't listen to or care about the people trying to help them, yeah you can be a bitch if it helps you feel better- just please don't assume that everyone is willfully ignorant of how hurtful/upsetting/annoying a certain way of portraying things is), but also WANTING to do better and ACTUALLY doing better are two different things.

Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing was inaccurate. Maybe they didn't have the right tutorials. Maybe they tried to look it up, but that failed them. Either way, to some- especially neurodivergent artists- just being told that their work is bad or racist or awful isn't going to make them want to search for better resources in order to be more accurate, it's just going to make them give up.

Also! In fic and in writing, no one is going to get it right on the first try. Especially at the stage where we creators ARE merely in fan spaces is a great time to "fuck around and find out", before we bring our willfully or accidentally racist shit into monetized media. Absolutely hold your fan creators to higher standards, but literally fan work has so little actual impact on popular media (and this goes for just about every debate about fan spaces), and constructive criticism as well as routine practice can mean worlds for representation in future media. NOT allowing for mistakes in micro spaces like fandoms is how you get genuinely harmful or just... bad... portrayals of minorities in popularized media that DOES have an impact on the greater public. OR you get a bunch of creators who are too afraid to walk out of their own little bubbles, because what if they get it wrong and everyone turns against them. It's better to just "stick with what they know" (hobbies are something that you are meant to get better at, even if that is a slow road- for all of my writers and artists out there, it does take time, but you will get it. To everyone else, please do speak up about things that are wrong, but don't make it all about what's wrong and please don't be rude. It's frustrating on both ends, so, if you can, please try not to escalate the situation more.)

Anyways, I'm tired of everyone holding fictional characters to American Puritanical standards, but I'm also tired of seeing every "stop Americanizing fandom" somehow loop into fanfiction and how all authors who don't make their fics as accurate as possible are actually just racist and perpetuating or enabling America's take over of the world or some shit.

Fan interpretation of published media is different than fan creation of mon monetized media. Americans dominating or monopolizing spaces meant for all fans (especially in a fandom that was never meant for them to begin with) is annoying and can be harmful sometimes. Americans writing out their own personal experience using random fictional characters (more often than not) isn't.

#just google it #better represent real life #if you tell a fic reader to ngl you're being pretty ableist and don't really have a good idea of how search engines work #also when people DO try to make culturally accurate fics often times at least one or two people will pop in and say 'actually that's wrong'#not to mention sometimes they might not even be right to begin with...#and okay once or twice it is what it is #but seriously if this keeps happening over and over most people are just going to stop writing or caring #fanfiction #fanfiction is literally free #fanfiction is free labor #adding layers upon layers of research and knowledge needed- on top of how difficult it can be to portray human emotion #it's not going to it's just going to make once starry eyed writers loss their ability to enjoy their work #and guess what #some ACTUALLY racist (or homophobic or transphobic or misogynistic) writer is going to swoop in not giving two fucks #and they're going to go on and get their work published because they don't care about accuracy

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oldbay-on-apples · 3 years

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Dystopian Larry Fic Rec

Inspired by some of the lovely people and fic recers on here, I’ve decided to start making my own fic recs. If you’d like, you can request recs in my inbox and I’ll see what I can do <3!

Please read the ratings and tags to these fics (because some of them are dark or have dark themes) and enjoy!

You Try To Be Everything (I Need) by lululawrence - @lululawrence (NR, 36k)

Wars, and rumours of wars, were nothing new for the world in the twenty-fourth century. The fighting had evolved over the years, and rarely did it involve traditional weapons. A group most widely known as the Southern Powers gained strength amongst portions of the western European continent and spread quickly. There was a fight the Southern Powers didn’t expect coming from the north of England, though. Resistance came in the form of an organised underground; a group comprised of people with the Touch that did the best they could to enforce a line that would not be crossed. Slowly, that line was moved from the Channel to boundaries further and further north. It seemed only a matter of time before the Southern Powers took over everywhere. Until that time, people did the best they could to live their lives in some semblance of normality. For Louis Tomlinson, that sense of normality was about to change when his best friend, Harry Styles, goes missing. Louis embarks on the journey of a lifetime where he uses his newly developed abilities to search for his friend, even when it takes him to places he never thought he would see while surmounting trials he never could have imagined. -

I loved the way the magic and technology in this fic intersected in such a unique way and the way the world was built was extraordinary!

red hands by reveries_passions - @dystopianharry (T, 132k)

I’ve never told anyone,” Harry murmurs, voice so soft no one else would be able to hear, if it wasn’t just the two of them. “But you’ve told someone,” Louis says firmly. “And that’s not gonna fucking happen around here. You don’t speak a word of it, or someone’s going to kill you, and we can’t let that happen.” * a dystopian au in which harry, an ex-soldier who’s escaped from his government run camp, accidentally stumbles across the biggest rebel movement in the country, and louis, one of the rebellion’s mysterious leaders who appears to hate him, seems to simultaneously have an obsession with keeping him alive. or: harry is wanted for treason, niall hasn’t changed in four years, liam is always smiling, and louis is angry. like, really angry.

- The plot of this is just *chef’s kiss* in so many ways! I love the way the characters interact with each other and I’m weak for Niall and Harry’s friendship in this.

Love After the End of the World by writing_practice - @mercurial-madhouse (E 158k)

“Wait. Just so I’m clear in me fucking noggin,” Niall says. “An international worldwide takeover is well under way and the only thing standing between having hot showers and a second end of the world is us five fuckers?” ----- Society shattered when all electricity suddenly cut off across the globe, plunging the world into darkness. Now, Prometheus Industries is the sole remaining supply of power, a saving grace to those who survived Lights Out. As fugitives in no-man’s land struggling to break into Prometheus HQ, death lurks around every corner for Louis and Zayn. Things get complicated when a routine recon falls apart and Louis collides with Harry and his mates Niall and Liam, survivors with their own agenda. When staying alive is already a constant battle, the deadliest weakness is to be in love. For Harry and Louis, finding each other sits on top of the endless list of What Else Could Go Wrong.

This just came out in the most recent Big Bang (that’s still on going so you should definitely check that out) and this fic is so amazing! I think it does a great job of just really immersing you in the world the characters exist in. Love After the End of the World is also a Soulmate AU and I love the way those parts come together. It also has an amazing prologue called PROMETHEUS RISING (M 5k) that I enjoyed immensely set in the same world!

at last, at last by suspendrs - @suspendrs (NR 41k) Locked

“Come with us,” Tommo says, stopping at the other end of the gymnasium, near the doors. “Don’t let them make you suffer any longer. Come with us, and be human.”

Before Harry has even finished thinking it through, he’s on his feet, gaining the attention of every single person in the gymnasium. What has he got to lose, anyway?

Or, Harry is born into a cult in a post-apocalyptic world, and Louis is the leader of the rebel group tasked with the mission of shutting them down. Together, they make a rather effective team.

This fic does a great job of making you feel like you’re experiencing with the characters, like I could practically smell what the characters were smelling! The world it’s set in is so cool and the entire fic feels so well thought out and everything is so consistent!

my love will never leave you by we_are_the_same @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed (T 10k)

In a world where memories are used as currency, Louis will do anything it takes for Harry to get better.

I loved the idea behind this. Like the entire world is so brilliantly done! And it was all based on ONE word (because of the wordplay challenge). Even though it’s set in a different world everything feels so grounded and realistic and I really really like that about it.

a prayer for which no words exist by Eliane (M 34k) Locked

"Louis is a few seconds away from blowing up a rather important section of the New York subway when he sees Harry for the first time."

In this fic the characters motivations are so clear (to the reader) and I love how it goes from Louis accidentally sort of, kind of, kidnapping Harry to them becoming friends then more. I also love how no matter where they are the fic has a real sense of place. This is part 1 of landscapes of war. The entire series is really good!

Who Painted the Moon Black by throughthedark (E 95k) Locked

“People died,” Harry whispers so quietly Louis strains to hear. “People died, and I killed some of them. How does life just go on after something like that?”

Louis shakes his head. “I don't know. It just does.”

Hunger Games AU where Louis Tomlinson is district six's victor from the 69th Hunger Games and Harry Styles is district seven's victor from the 72nd Hunger Games.

This fic is a hunger games AU that both people who have and haven't read/watched the Hunger Games can enjoy. I like how it explores the world of the Hunger Games in a way that isn’t explored in the Hunger Games canon. It’s really intense (like the E is for the darker themes and violence) and I enjoy it a lot. There is a happy ending (as the author assures in the tags) and I really enjoy all the struggles that the characters go through.

Nobody Marks You by graceling_in_a_suit @graceling-in-a-suit (T 33k)

“The plan is: we’re gonna put on a play. Now, I see some doubtful faces–” Louis looked around and found zero doubtful faces. Liam looked intrigued, Zayn looked bored, and Harry looked scarily blank. “But this is what’s happening. We’re gonna do some fucking acting, we’re gonna perform our hearts out, and we’re not going to think about anything else. The past, the future; none of it. All we’re going to think about is... “ Niall trailed off, eyeing the bookshelf to his left. He closed his eyes and reached a hand out towards it, running his fingers over the covers before pulling a book out at random. “William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.”

AU: Five assholes stuck in a bunker put on a play.

This is one of my absolute favorite fics. I just love the way the characters interact and they way the story is told. It’s nonlinear so you jump around in time and it shows the way the character's relationships change throughout. I’m a sucker for Much Ado About Nothing and though you don’t need to read it to fully appreciate the fic I think the use of the play throughout is genius.

@1dfanfictionbookcovers has a really cool cover for the fic as well HERE

With a whimper by kitundercover @kitundercover (M 132k)

Dystopian AU. Louis has been alone for too long to remember how not to be, and Harry has too much to worry about to deal with a scrawny, wild, stranger.

---

The man grips his arm tightly. “You’re not going to say anything.” It’s not a question.

Louis shakes his head, his body twitching.

“Fine.” Large green eyes survey him before letting go. “It’s cold. Take this. Wear it.”

Louis can’t help another flinch as the man’s long scarf is wrapped around his tender neck, it’s still warm. He touches the soft material. “Thank you.”

The man bears his teeth. “Don’t thank me. Don’t ever thank me.”

The thing this fic does really does is showing emotional reactions. Louis’ inner monologue is so well done and I really like the plot of the story.

these bountiful silences by tommoandbambi (T 123k)

they live in a world where they can only say four words per day. harry meets some people that don't want to live that way.

I really, really, really, like this plot and the story! The world that the characters exist in is so interesting and I just love the way in which it is a dystopia.

#my fic recs #Dystopian Larry fic rec #Larry Fic Recs #Dystopian Fic Recs #fic recs

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highfaelucien · 3 years

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I completely agree with how you feel towards azriel. Thinking about azriel’s character now vs how I used to view him during acomaf times is just... sad and so so so much more complex. Part of me still wants to love him for the character that was presented to us in acomaf and other small good moments, like his friendship with nesta. And then the other part of me is disgusted, disappointed, and honestly kind of terrified of who he may become if sjm allows him to continue acting predatorily/toxic. The whole mor/az situation really fucked me up. As someone who is also a lesbian and an abuse survivor, it broke my heart to watch the situation unfold in acowar. It still hurts seeing many readers (and sometimes even sjm) take az’s side and paint mor as some sort of liar/two faced character that is playing everyone. I kept thinking that things would be fixed in future books, but instead az has grown worse and mor was, once again, sidelined and written out as a character. And honestly... as much as I love the idea of gwyn x azriel ... I think his books would need a lot more focus on his own recovery/growth and not center on a romantic relationship. If anything, I hope it’s written as friends to lovers so az has a better way of interacting and forming relationships with women. Because right now... well, that shit is borderline predatory and isn’t coming across well. And I really really do not want that for him. Basically, azriel deserves a better arc than what has been written for him. I miss him :( he used to be a character that made me feel safe and now :/ idk anymore

I'm going to quote parts of this/chop it up and reply to them a chunk at a time. because there's a lot going on here and I want to try and reply to as much as I can because I resonate with.....all of it. Please forgive me for the length of this.

I completely agree with how you feel towards azriel. Thinking about azriel’s character now vs how I used to view him during acomaf times is just... sad and so so so much more complex.

He feels like a different character? There was always an anger simmering under the calm surface, we knew that. But it was an anger born of love, deep down, and the desire to protect his family, and his court, at the expense of himself. Az was always the first to volunteer himself for dangerous missions, to spare the others.

Now that anger is directed at his family, and at the world, for not giving him what he feels he 'deserves'. That has NEVER been Azriel. Azriel's deepest issues and insecurities have always stemmed from the feeling of being unworthy, and undeserving of anything.

She's just made him into......Every other dude in this series tbh. Snarling, and possessive, and wanting to fuck anything in a skirt that moves.

Azriel was actually somewhat of an original, complex character initially. It's unusual that we see trauma affect men in the way it did Az. Usually it makes them angry, and vengeful, and eager to prove they are the alpha etc. Seeing them withdraw, and think less of themselves/that they're unworthy is something not explored often enough. But bye bye nuance hello #Drama.

Part of me still wants to love him for the character that was presented to us in acomaf and other small good moments, like his friendship with nesta.

I feel this. I found a lot of comfort in Az's character. Particularly the way he reacted with Mor. I was a big fan of their relationship, and I wrote a few 'missing scenes' style fics in the gap between ACOMAF and ACOWAR. One of them was where Az went to her when she had pushed everyone else away, including Cassian, and comforted and calmed her.

I hate that Maas took that away from Mor. I hate that Az no longer does that for her. I hate that Az was the one to betray her along with Rhys and bring her abuser into her safe space behind her back. I hate that he is no longer a symbol of calm, stable, dependable comfort and support for Mor, but is instead a threat. I HATE it.

Every now and then Az has lovely, gentle moments - his friendship with Nesta is a good example, and something I hoped we'd see. But also quieter times with Rhys, and their similarities being explored. And I adored the flying lessons with Feyre in ACOWAR, and the training he did with Cassian and the others in ACOFS.

But then she goes and twists him and does something else that just makes me want to fucking scream. Like the High Lord scene where he 'frightened' Mor. And his entire POV chapter which is frankly fucking gross.

And then the other part of me is disgusted, disappointed, and honestly kind of terrified of who he may become if sjm allows him to continue acting predatorily/toxic.

I agree.

I don't know how she can write a series that explores the effects of emotional abuse so well with Feyre and Tamlin...And then write what she did with Az?

The possession to a traumatised, still impressionable and desperate young woman, who likely finds the same comfort and safety in him that Mor did. Before that got shot to fucking pieces.

He sounds like a whiny toddler 'Cassian has a mate, and Rhys has a mate, where is mine!?!?!?!?' I DESERVE Elain, because I'm your brother and you guys have her sisters and what the FUCK. Who let that shit get published holy mother of god.

It's just...It's so unhealthy? Like, not even talking ship wars here (which I'm aware are rampant, and which I'm trying my best to stay away from). But that just.

How can that ever be a healthy foundation for a relationship? A man who thinks that he deserves, not only to be in a relationship with her, but to be bonded to her. Not because of HER, not because of who she is, or how she makes him feel. No. Purely because her sisters are mated to his brothers?

The whole thing made me feel so uncomfortable. It's predatory and toxic, just as you said. It's not right, it's not fair. Forget alliances and Lucien, even if none of that was a factor, that sort of thinking is still not right. And it's completely unfair to Elain.

But it also just. It didn't read like Azriel. The first part, where he struggles to sleep, and pushes himself until he passes out, and the insight that his shadows are basically hovering beside him screaming SELF CARE YOU DUMB BITCH at all times was very pleasing.

And the part where he goes to Clotho and leaves an anonymous gift for Gwyn. No fanfair. No audience. No pressure on either of them to react/perform. That felt like Az, too.

But everything in the middle. Everything with Elain, was just...Gross and out of character. And this is not because I dislike E/riel as a ship. I could get on board with it, tbh, if it wasn't written the way it was.

But it's not about ships, for me. It's just. Everything felt out of character. The predatory way he was with her. The fact he lies awake and gets himself off to fantasies of her. How apparently quickly he was aroused by putting a necklace on her. Idk, maybe it's my ace ignorance, but that doesn't sound normal/healthy to me.

Nor does him having to leave a room because he can scent her mating bond with Lucien. Or not being able to control himself to sit and eat dinner with her?

This is the same dude who has, apparently, been in love with Mor for 500 solid years, and who never did a damned thing about it. Who always kept himself in check. Even while she's had other lovers. But he can't control himself through one dinner with Elain?

It just. It doesn't feel like him. It feels like...Honestly not even Cassian. It feels like Tamlin on horny, predatory steroids. And that's not something I ever wanted to see from Azriel's POVs.

She could have explored a darker side to him without making it sexual? And misogynistic. And having him treating Elain as little more than a fucking object that he feels entitled to because 'everyone else got one, where's mine?'. What the FUCK???

The more I write it the more angry I get.

Because SJM has consistently put Az in the position of saving women when they were in danger? He was the one who found Mor near death at Autumn. He was the one who rescued Gwyn from her attackers during the war. He was the one to retrieve Elain when she was taken.

She always puts him in this position and, for better or worse, presents him as a safety figure for these women. The first person who they saw come for them, and fight for them, and protect them.

And on the inside she makes him this vile, predatory monster who just thinks constantly about fucking them? Who isn't actually safe at all?? It's sad. And it's infuriating. Because this isn't about ships anymore. This is about female survivors who have an apparent safe person who's presented as almost as dangerous as the people who attacked them in the first place. And that makes me feel so sick and sad that we've gotten here.

It still hurts seeing many readers (and sometimes even sjm) take az’s side and paint mor as some sort of liar/two faced character that is playing everyone. I kept thinking that things would be fixed in future books, but instead az has grown worse and mor was, once again, sidelined and written out as a character.

This is yet another vile thing SJM has done to queer readers with this whole fiasco. Because it puts me in a position where I want to call out her shitty writing, and what she's done to Mor - sidelining her as soon as she became queer. Undermining her power and her strength. Undermining her role as the survivor to look up to. Saying her power is truth but then making her seem like a liar. Which is all shitty, shitty, shitting writing.

But I'm also a queer person. And I will always always ALWAYS want to defend a queer person's right to remain closeted. Regardless of their reasons for doing so. But in this case it's a concern for their safety/a fear of how those around them will react. And I will NEVER condemn that. I will never say Az is suffering more than Mor for her being closeted. I will never call Mor a liar/a manipulator/two-faced when all she's doing is trying to survive.

I WILL condemn SJM for making this a scenario. For putting homophobia in her world purely to cause pain for queer characters, and drama for her straight ones. And for sidelining Mor as soon as she can't write graphic scenes with her fucking men because now she's a lesbian so we best get her off the page so the guys can get their cocks out some more.

And honestly... as much as I love the idea of gwyn x azriel ... I think his books would need a lot more focus on his own recovery/growth and not center on a romantic relationship. If anything, I hope it’s written as friends to lovers so az has a better way of interacting and forming relationships with women. Because right now... well, that shit is borderline predatory and isn’t coming across well. And I really really do not want that for him.

This is going to sound sarcastic but I actually mean it fully and completely genuinely: 95% of the drama inducing problems in this series could be fixed with some fucking therapy.

But I agree with you. I think it's high time Azriel worked on his own issues. Even if they've apparently made a complete 180 from what they were in ACOMAF.

I...Like the concept of Gwyn/Azriel, but I'm not sold on the ship. Not with the way Maas has been writing Azriel lately. That kind of man shouldn't be with any woman right now. But especially not a rape survivor who sees him as one of the first men she's been able to trust in a long time.

Basically, azriel deserves a better arc than what has been written for him. I miss him :( he used to be a character that made me feel safe and now :/ idk anymore

"he used to be a character that made me feel safe" - This shit hit me like a tonne of bricks because this is EXACTLY how I feel about Az, too. You just managed to say it in a few words instead of 12 pages of rambling, like I do.

And I think this was intention. Azriel was presented as a very dependable character. He rescued Mor, and was respectful enough to keep his distance, despite his feelings, for 500 fucking years. Because he didn't think she was ready/interested.

He had a very calm, and calming air about him. Always in control of himself. Without the expected bursts of aggression and temper we'd seen from...Every other male character in this series. He was stable, and solid, and that was comforting. An anchor. And someone who would quietly, and without fuss, seek out Mor/others when they needed someone to talk to or comfort him.

That was a very soothing, reassuring presence in the book, I felt. And now she's made him seem...volatile, and unstable. With this dangerous anger that he can't control, that he uses not to protect, but to intimidate, and to fuel his entitlement and desires.

it's just sad. It's sad that she's taken this away from Mor, but also from other survivors who found comfort and safety in Az. Because I'm sure we weren't alone in that regard.

I miss him. And I mourn the character he was, and feel anger for the character he should have been. but instead he's become yet another possessive, entitled, snarling cardboard cutout dude like...everyone else.

And I ache for the Az/Mor dynamic that we had in ACOMAF. Even without it becoming romantic, there was no reason for that to be destroyed/ruined.

She could have written it that Az is the only one who knows about her sexuality, and that he pretends he's still in love with her as a shield/buffer, so no one looks too closely/to protect her and make her feel comfortable.

Instead she turned it into a soap opera style drama. And wrote it almost as though her sexuality was her cheating on him? Denying him what he deserved. And now she's just...just pussyfooting around it. And apparently he's just. Just moved on. Without them having any kind of conversation or closure at all. He just wanks off to the thought of Elain instead of Mor, now, problem solved /s

I miss what they were. I miss what he was to Mor. I miss when she had that support system, and that safety net. I miss when he protected her. And looked out for her. And understood her in a way that no one else, not even Rhys, did.

Mor deserved that. Azriel deserved that. WE deserved that. And she nuked it for some fucking twisted drama that punishes a lesbian because a man is thirsting after her. it's a fucking disgrace. I'm so fucking done with SJM, y'all. So fucking done.

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gingermintpepper · 3 years

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After thinking it over for a bit, I've decided that I might as well do a proper underrated 3DS game rec list. I'm a bit of an ATLUS junkie and that's gonna be pretty disgustingly apparent in this list, but it's not my fault that they released hit after hit and all of them were duly ignored.

Due to tumblr's 10 image limit (and my struggle to keep motivated to do one thing for more than three hours) I'm definitely gonna have to break this up into parts and I'm fairly certain one of these lists is just gonna be MegaTen games lmao but I'd like to let people know about these excellent titles and see if I can't at least get people interested in them so they can get more traction.

So, without further ado:

Some 3DS Games that were criminally slept on (part 1)

Monster Hunter Stories

God, where do I begin with this game. Well, the basics: It's a JRPG spinoff title of the now widely successful and popular Monster Hunter series featuring a different take on interacting with the varied and intricate monsters populating the world: Riders.

Yep, instead of hunting the beasties, you play as a young rider who's completed their intiation ritual and can now bond with 'Monsties' as they've cutely labelled the usually ferocious monsters of the wilds. The great thing is that you still fight Monsters--tons of them in fact but this isn't a paid review and in my humble opinion, the most impressive thing about this game is the visual style. The landscapes, the armour, the way they redesigned and 3DS-ified the classically hyper realistic and monstrous beasts to not only be absolutely adorable but still capable of being intimidating when the time calls for it, the stellar animation of special moves and combination attacks--it's delicious, nutritious, stupendous, I can and will consume it like it's part of my recommended caloric intake.

It's very akin to Pokemon in the way its basic gameplay premise is set up, however, instead of catching--or even indeed befriending--the Monsties in the game, you rummage through their nests and steal their eggs, later hatching them and getting yourself a brand new lightly kidnapped monster pal!

Other general things about the game:

Pros:

The armour and weapon sets for both male and female characters slap along with the general character customisation options. They're incredibly diverse (though limited in body type) and you can switch around traits and features whenever you want from your house.

The POGS--these porkers are everywhere and they serve as tiny little achievements for exploring every odd and end of the world. Also they have little outfits. They're so cute. 🥺🥺

You can actually ride the Monsties. All of em. Or, at least the ones that you have available to be your buddies. They all have exploration skills and traits that not only make exploring much more interesting but encourage you to swap out your active Monstie and play around with your options a bit.

Y'all breeding Monsties is complicated and I live for just how intense and ridiculous you can get with optimal builds for these things.

The story is really competently put together! The characters, character designs and even the internal conflict with your starting trio of characters is really compelling along with the mystery of the blight that's infecting Monsters across the world. It's not anything worth awards but it's compelling and it makes you care about the characters if that's what you're in the market for.

Amazing sound design, expansive world, everything about the presentation of this game oozes that Monster Hunter charm even if the art is cutesier than usual. You'll never get bored of its stellar visual presentation!

Available for around twenty quid on the Google Play store, so if you want, you could actually get the full game on your smartphone or tablet. Note though that it would be a battery nuker.

Cons:

If you're on a regular 3DS, frame rate drops are a given. This game kinda pushes the visual capabilities of the 3DS to its absolute limit--a lot like Okamiden did back on the DS.

One save file :( It's pretty much for the same reason as above but still.

If you're playing as the girl, you can't get male armour and vice versa. Since there's only one save file, you'll never be able to have all of the armour sets in a single playthrough and that's criminal because both of the sets for the genders are absolutely breath-taking, thank you.

I 👏can't 👏make👏my👏 own 👏Palico👏

Multi-player for this game is pretty dead seeing as it's almost five years old by now and never got much press or traction. Usually this wouldn't be an issue - this game is 99% singleplayer and you don't really need to fuss about with multi-player to have fun, but if you want to collect all the Monsties, you'll need it since the only way to get Glavenus is through pvp achievements. :/

Final thoughts: Play it if you find yourself getting tired or disappointed with 3DS Pokemon games but still want something that feels as fantastical as Pokemon. It outshines the 3DS Pokemon games at every turn and I will never be over just how thoughtfully put together and fully realised these games are. Of course, if you've ever played Monster Hunter, then you know just how intensive these games are with the lore, biology, cultures and world of their Monsters but seeing that translated into JRPG format was just very sobering and it's a game that, to this day, continues to awe me with just how much love and attention went into it.

Last note: If you're still unsure about it, there's a demo available on the e-shop of the 3DS that allows you to play through the entire initial area of the game. Your data does carry through to the full release and to give you an idea of how much I've been able to squeeze out of it - my playtime for that demo is currently sitting at 22 hours. Make sure to get a hold of that Cyan-Kut-Ku!

7th Dragon III Code: VFD

The title may sound intimidating but the premise is not! A mysterious disease called Dragon Sickness spread by the Dragonsbane flowers that have cropped up all around the world. You and your team are recruited by the Nodens game company after you display extraordinary prowess in their hit virtual reality game 7th Encount. As you go through the adventure, you are tasked with finding out the truth behind the Dragon Sickness and asked to stop both it and the Dragons that are destroying the world.

This game is fun. It's another turn-based JRPG however, in this game you create all of your characters yourself from the myriad of classes available to you from the jump. Different classes of course have very different specialisations - Samurai focus on high powered cutting damage with their swords, Duelists are summoners who can influence the element of the battlefield as well as summon monsters from each element, Agents can hack into your enemies and inflict a barrage of nasty ailments, just to name a few - and you are given three teams of three characters each to experiment with different team comps and find the balance that works for you. There's also a wide variety of Dragons to hunt and kill in the game, which directly affects how infected your world is with the Dragon Sickness causing Dragonsbane. Along the way you will also come into contact with many interesting characters, concepts and confrontations that will make the task of saving the world all the more imperative.

Pros

1. The character creator and differing classes give way for tons of experimenting and playing around with your own unique approach to combat and carrying out your missions. Granted, 'character creation' is generous, it's little more than palatte swaps but the classes are really where VFD shines. Eight main classes may not sound like a lot, but the expaniveness of the character skills, their synergy with their fellow classes and the uniqueness of some of the classes in and of itself allows for so much flexibility and creativity in approaches to even tougher bosses. It also encourages the switching about of your party members to really finagle with the options available to you.

2. God this game is pretty. The locations, the character art, the creature design - all of it is gorgeous and this game capitalises on every bit of the 3DS's presentation limitations as it can.

3. You can romance anything and everyone - yes, you can even be gay/lesbian/poly in this game. In fact, one of the main characters - Julietta - is gnc and he's a constant source of joy as well one of my personal favourite characters, right behind Yuma.

4. Exploration is very very forgiving as the game has healing spots and teleport nodes all over the world to allow for quick, seamless travel between quest points without feeling like anything is too much of a hassle. There are also special enemies that allow for quick grinding as well as quick farming of money. In general, the game does a really good job of making sure that the grind is never unbearable or inconsiderate of your time.

Cons:

1. This is the fourth game in a series the West has never seen any other title for, and from the looks of it, will probably never see any other titles for. Because of that, there are some elements that may seem confusing or revelations in the plot that may seem to come out of nowhere.

2. While the visuals are great, the OST of this one is pretty short making for a lot of reused soundtracks that can get really annoying if you're like me and need your audio to be interesting or consistent so it doesn't distract you too much.

3. This one isn't really a con but it is divisive: This game gets pretty difficult at times. A few of the main dragon enemies including and especially the final boss can give you a serious run for your money in the annoy-o-meter in terms of the kind of absolute JRPG fuckery they can pull out of their magic bag of bullshit movesets and while I generally enjoy that kind of thing, I know it's not for everyone. Most regular combat shouldn't be too tricky once you have a team comp that works well together but you also need to pay attention since the same team that carries you to victory one time might be worth beans against another dragon.

Final thoughts: This is... a really good game. Interesting story, really interesting characters, pretty world and a battle system that really makes you sit down and think. There's also a demo for this available in the e-shop and while your data doesn't carry over - you do receive multiple perks for carrying over your demo data including some exclusive items that, while not game breaking, do help a ton in the early stages of the game.

This isn't a final list by any stretch of the word; I only have the energy to do these two right now, but the next games up for coverage are Ever Oasis and Stella Glow! If you're interested in my full plan of games I want to cover here then my current lineup includes: Theatrhythm: Curtain Call, Project Mirai: Deluxe, Culdecept Revolt, Alliance Alive, Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, Etrian Odyssey V, Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse.

Finally, if anyone has played any of the games I mention, cover or plan to cover PLEASE REACH OUT TO ME, I AM SO LONELY IN MY FORTRESS OF SAND. On a serious note, I'd love to hear what other people who've played these games think!

Thanks for reading,

-Ginger

PS: @feralpeacock Because a million years ago, on my first underrated games post, you asked that I remember you. :D

#ginger rambles #ginger talks about video games #monster hunter stories #monster hunter #code dragon iii vfd #video games #3ds #underrated games #These take so much energy to make holy shit #There are so many more amazing 3ds games I could talk about #But I legit just don't have the braincells for #Also I know Apocalypse probably has the biggest audience that played it out of all the games listed #But it's criminally underrated because it was different #So it's probably going to get it's own little review thing #Yeehaw

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meikuree · 3 years

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fic writer interview

tagged by @lightdescending -- tysm, this was really fun and i enjoy elaborating on things about writing/the writing process!

putting this under a read more because of my trademark verbosity (AGAIN)

name: meikuree

fandoms: actively writing for snk, tempted to write for the locked tomb

two-shot: oh i've not intentionally done these! twenty years of snow accidentally fits the bill, but only because it's on an indefinite hiatus

most popular multi-chapter: of aubades, my pieck-centric ficlet series, by some metrics

actual worst part of writing: when I get stuck in a loop of perfectionism and excessive self-scrutiny and rewrite… and rewrite… and rewrite again. my solution to this is to send it to a friend and ask for them to tell me just one (1) nice thing about it and put me out of my misery, or do freewriting where the point is to write whatever immediately pops into my head. usually then I’ll bump into an epiphany in the middle about how to Make It Work.

alternatively: fic writing is at times such a solitary, obsessively recursive activity and that’s one tension I dislike/have to negotiate with, because part of why I like art is to share it with people or at the very least engage in some kind of reciprocal conversation about it. community in art is very important to me in general, and I try to cultivate it in my online presence in small ways!

how you choose your titles: i'm a fan of grabbing titles from poems and songs/song lyrics (like you!) -- and drawing them from regina spektor songs in particular, bc she’s by some metrics my all-time favourite musician and i’m very familiar with her discography

do you outline: usually, yes. i don’t confine myself to it, but at minimum I outline pivotal moments and turning points. my process tends to start with a compelling scene or character interaction popping into my head and then goes on with me thinking about how i can use it as a vehicle for communicating a certain concept/philosophical idea/insight about XYZ characters' relationships somehow. that becomes the core idea/endpoint I want to reach by the end in a fic, so then i'll outline the main emotional or introspective beats i want to carry across in service of that

ideas I probably won’t get around to but wouldn’t it be nice: wow, um... /gestures vaguely at my unending list of wips/ that said, one idea i'm tickled by is an obnoxious, utterly random M-rated pieck/lady tybur fic involving painplay and knifeplay, the plot for which is literally just… lara tybur stabs pieck with a knife, but make it sexy somehow… with a dash of political intrigue and a complicated ambiguous relationship where two women use each other in a decidedly callous but also self-aware and self-indulgent way. the idea for this just came from me going "ah yes... the inherent homoeroticism of being stabbed by another woman..." and wondering about ~scenarios enabled by being a titan shifter, when you can regenerate your wounds and such! (partial inspiration also came, I will admit, from the locked tomb fandom and its lesbian body horror influences)

callouts @ me: sensory details are one of my biggest weak points. i've been ironing it out through concerted practice, but when i first started out writing fic i tended to be more comfortable dealing with metaphor, introspection, and mental states than... writing about actual, corporeal things happening in corporeal textspace. it can create the impression while reading, I suspect, that the characters are stuck a lot in their own heads. one of my earliest and favourite ao3 comments i've gotten said in passing that i used "very little dialogue and description" and i'm still tickled by... how true it is as an MO. it also amuses me because it seems to parallel the same issue i had with essays i wrote at university, i think (!) -- my professors would tell me, “you have a great grasp on the theory but you need to include more concrete examples." and i'd go "what? i was supposed to use examples?? ?__? isn’t the point self-evident from the theory?” for me, shifts in relationship dynamics and the negotiation of one's worldview underlying an event ARE the plot! -- and everything else tends to become subservient to that when i write

the other thing, which is somewhat related to the above, is just... self-confidence! i can be very insecure about my writing style, as my partner and poor friends I’ve whinged to can attest. mainly because i always fear that reading it feels like wading through a thick, unappealing swampy bog of someone's thoughts. but i think the solution is to just take a grounded, balanced view, like: there are some things i do well, and some things i do not-as-well in writing, and that's fine! that's normal! and in the moment i can be very hard on myself, and wring my hands thinking OH MY GOD THE UTTER CRINGE OF ME WRITING ANY OF THIS but i find that somehow, i always end up enjoying rereading what i write.

best writing traits: the most consistent comment i get, i think, is that my writing is beautiful and poetic (and one time: "this is one of the most poetic things i've ever read." which -- ?!?!). I’ve also been told that i characterise people well or with nuance, and write about them sensitively and with depth. i'm grateful, always, to hear these bc these things constitute the one niche i CAN do, imo!

spicy tangential opinion: hm… from what I’ve observed, many fandoms have a tendency to flatten character motives and complexities into easy, tidy and dare i say, sometimes bizarre, labels and categories. it’s not surprising it happens, but sometimes there’s space for people (a big, vague, nonspecific ‘people’) to go beyond simplistic assumptions about characters and one-dimensional portrayals (and to give writers who achieve it their due! I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen an incredibly well-written fic that was relatively undernoticed and gone, “why, fandom???”) sometimes you write to fix canon, and sometimes you write because it’s fanon that needs fixing instead.

tagging (no pressure): @ebbet @noxcounterspell @leksaa90 @minoan-ophidian @frumpkinspocketdimension @acerinky @rose-gardens @chocochipbiscuit @whiteasy @ochen @kallistoi anyone else who wants to join in!

#side note your answer about writing insecurity was so relatable #ask game #meikuree talks #writing

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i0990 · 3 years

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Piofiore no Banshou -ricordo- - Review

Since I finally got a Nintendo Switch I decided to try Piofiore no Banshou, what with 1926 recently released and all. I know the English ver (Fated Memories) came out earlier this year, but I played the Japanese one so I won’t be commenting on quality of translations and such.

What actually caught my eye for this game was the art, especially the number of different outfits and hairstyles Liliana had. I’m neutral about the mafia setting. Most of the reviews I read were positive, especially the ones for the eng ver, so I decided to give it a shot. Overall I had a decently fun time with it, but I wouldn’t say it’s one of my favourites.

Piofiore is real pretty to look at, but suffers from poor writing at parts. The personalities of the guys tend to flip-flop depending on the route. Liliana, while very cute, is not what you would consider a ‘strong heroine’. The plot wasn’t that interesting to me and the finale route was underwhelming. Still, the characters were for the most part entertaining enough that I didn’t consider this a waste of my time and it didn’t bore me.

If you love this game to bits you might want to stop reading here.

*spoilers after the cut*

Plot: The heroine, Liliana, is an orphan who grew up in the church. The city has 3 mafia gangs(Falzone, Visconti, Laoshu) each controlling a diff part of the city, as well as a neutral area. A mafia controlled Italian city in 1925 sounds liked a fun setting yeah? In each route she basically gets attacked and is rescued/taken in by one of the gangs and spends time helping them with their stuff. We learn that she’s the latest in a line of chosen maidens who supposedly act as the key to unlocking a holy relic, which is why various parties want to kill/protect/possess her for their own agenda.

The overall plot is to... actually idk because there is no overarching goal common to the routes except maybe to not die. Liliana herself doesn’t seem to have any of her own goals to achieve. Therein imo is where the story writing gets a bit bland. Dante’s route is where you learn more about Liliana being the chosen one since the Falzone family are the guardians of the relic, but in the end it was just sth like “If a Falzone and the holy maiden sleep together you can unlock relic” -.- Nth wrong with it being so cliche, but it also makes this rather irrelevant in the other routes. In the other routes Liliana being the chosen one just becomes an excuse for the game to pile all sorts of abuse on her.

Regarding Liliana... If you are the sort who really wants a strong heroine you’ll probably hate her. She puts up with a lot of nonsense and abuse, especially in Yang’s route. Admittedly at times it’s a matter of suck it up or die but she’s still rather lacking in personality. The producers designed her to cater to the self-insert player base so her backstory and character are left as vague as possible. Her being the holy maiden also comes with zero special powers so she literally is just a helpless damsel in distress. I personally wasn’t too bothered by it but just find it a waste given how they had such a potentially good setting to work with.

What mainly bothers me with the writing was how characters tend to change personality depending on the route, as well as them making pretty stupid decisions when they should know better. I think Orlok’s bad end is a well known example of this for Dante. Nicola’s goal in his route makes zero sense, and also poor Robert who suddenly goes yandere. Jozef is suddenly a good guy in a couple of the routes. Yang is pretty much the most consistent guy, except that he is consistently an arse. When the route with the guy who abuses the heroine the most is the most entertaining route, you know the writing is messed up.

The finale route was also pretty meaningless and felt a bit lazy since it branched off from Gilbert’s route when there was no real reason for it. I mean, if you want to have a secret love interest can you at least give the guy some decent development and his own route?

As for the plus points, I’d say the game is still pretty entertaining to play through. It’s mostly carried by the art and characters themselves rather than the plot. I also like the darker and more mature feel of the game since I’m not a huge fan of fluff games most of the time. There really is a lot more violence and sex in this game than you’d usually see, although sometimes it feels a bit forced just so they can have the shock factor. It’s not super long like HnK or super boring like the KBO fd so that’s good. It’s actually remarkable that despite the poor writing the game was still rather fun. Maybe that’s the true power of the holy maiden hmm.

Characters: Due to the writing being all over the place and the flip-flopping personalities I have no true favourite for this game. If I had to say I’d pick Dante, because he likes cats and for the most part he seems to care about Liliana even when it’s not his route. Gilbert is a close second because he just seems like a fun guy to hang out with and yay shopping. Orlok seems more like a younger brother. Yang, while very entertaining, has an absolutely rubbish personality. Nicola’s route ruined the character for me :/

I’d usually spend some time here talking about the heroine’s personality but she doesn’t really have one. Pretty standard nice, likes baking, will take a bullet for her guy kind of girl. But yeah, no goals of her own.

The sub characters in this game are so-so. My favourites are the Laoshu twins because of how they somehow make every scene they are in more interesting. Emilio is just there to conveniently make things better for the characters involved. But hey, everyone looks great!

System/Interface: It’s nice and suits the setting. Not much to complain about. I would have liked a ‘skip to next choice’ option for this game. The newspaper clipping style main menu is kinda cute. No trophies to collect since it’s on the Switch.

Art/Music: RiRi’s art saves the day. Even if the characters do stupid or mean stuff, at least they look good doing it. Tbh this is the first game RiRi has done so far where I really like the art. Also kudos for Liliana’s multiple hairstyle and clothing changes. I would have liked more CGs featuring the characters interacting with one another and not just Liliana. Overall the art was prob what I liked best about the game.

Music wasn’t too bad. I enjoyed it while playing but nothing that really impressed me enough to want to buy the soundtrack. I like the various faction themes and they do a decent job of conveying each gang’s mood. OP/ED didn’t stick in my head.

Overall. my main feelings about the game would be... mild disappointment? I was expecting a more action packed, dramatic game. I don’t regret it though because it was fun enough and there’s lots of eye candy. It’s mostly the wasted potential that annoys me. Sorry if this came across as more of a rant than a review. I know a lot of people love this game lol. If you’re interested in darker and edgier games this is still worth giving it a shot. I also have the FD so I’m hoping it will improve my opinion of the series. Will probably start on it after the new year ^^

#piofiore no banshou #piofiore #piofiore no banshou ricordo #otome game #Otomate #piofiore review

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alectology-archive · 3 years

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if you don't mind me asking: if you dislike sjm's books so much (well of course because her books are kinda bad lol) do you keep up with the news and books? As in I get that you have already read the previous books and didn't like them which is why you're an anti, but why continue reading her upcoming teasers/books? Like isn't that just supporting her and bringing attention to it by continuing to talk about it? It's a genuine question because I've been curious

For starters an sjm anti isn't a person who necessarily loathes her books. In fact most of us were some sort of fan of hers at some point and just... labelled ourselves antis when we realised that her books were super problematic because the fandom is a really horrible place where any and all criticism of her books are not tolerated - her fans also have a history of being super racist, queerphobic and ableist so it's not really a healthy place to be involved in.

I get what you mean about giving her attention and to put it shortly, it's a double-edged sword of sorts. Critiquing and talking about her books means we're bringing her more attention but the consequences of not critiquing her books are... far worse? I'm aware of the issues in her books now because I came across other people critiquing them. I'm more critical of what I read and write now because the antis fostered and supported important and healthy discussions about representation and issues with any media in general. A bunch of people who used to 'stan' her books are now aware of the issues with them because I in turn talked about them and are therefore more careful about the way they interact with them now and so on so forth equating to healthier fandom spaces because the racist/sexist/queerphobic/pro-imperilialistic nonsense in her books are called out. So I think the benefits of critiquing her books outweigh the cons.

At this point I also think authors like sjm/cc/rainbow rowell etc are super popular so I'm not quite sure we're really making people 'more' aware about them? Even if so, we emphasise how important it is to approach the books with a critical eye so I hardly think we're essentially marketing their books for them.

The attitude of don't interact with a media if it's imperfect is kind of pointless and basically stupid because there's literally no piece of media that isn't flawed (although the degree varies and again sjm/cc and co fall on the rather more extreme part of the spectrum) unless the creators are bigotted or super insensitive (see: jkr).

As for why I personally keep up with the news, it's because other antis or stans make me aware about it. Why do I care about her at all? Because her books are flawed and made me internalise some harmful ideas and I want people to know that. Because her books were among the first young adult books I read and they're therefore partially responsible for my love of reading and writing now so they carry some sentimental value. Because I'm still invested in her characters although she always does them dirty in the end. That said, I do still enjoy reading some of her Throne of Glass books. There was a time when I enjoyed reading her A/cotar series. And at this point, having read all her 14 published books, I'm very familiar with her writing style and her favourite tropes so reading one of her books is not really a very painful experience although I'll confess that the books she's published after a/cowar have been really hard to get through because they've just been so badly written and I hope I'll just stop picking them up someday (maybe sometime soon because I think I've fallen in love with enough talented writers these past few years that I think I'm ready to fully move on). That won't necessarily mean I'll stop talking about her books because she's still a bad writer who's consistently writing books that are straight, white and cis to the point where my teeth hurt but some of the characters in her books are really memorable (ahem Manon and Kaltain) and it would be a lie to say otherwise.

#asks #anon asks #anti sjm #.#text #personal #edit: so I just realised I typed this wholeass essay on my phone and. I'm sorry. I didn't realise how long it got.

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jcogginsawriter · 3 years

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Hand to Hand: Mark Waid’s Flash

I have been a fan of comic book characters for a long time. I started with the cartoons, and as I got older, I began doing deep dives into wikis, reading fanfiction, and participating in that shallowest of internet past times, the vs debate. I dabbled in writing fanfic for myself, but I spent far more time thinking about writing fanfic instead. I would come up with all these ideas about what I would take from the various different versions of the characters, and don’t get me started on the idea of Crossovers. The point is, I knew a lot of what happened in the comics, but I never read many comics. I didn’t know where my local comic shop was, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have had the money to spend on them. The comics that I did read were usually fan translations of manga. I did read a few comics, big name stories like Death of Superman or Crisis on Infinite Earths, but they were few and far between.

Recently, I’ve begun to change that. I now follow several comics as they come out, most notably the current X-line. This change sprang in part because I began reading a lot more comics criticism. In particular, I followed the blog of a certain Superman fan, and began to eagerly digest his various takes. I wanted to be able to ask him questions about new comics without looking like an idiot (This is how 90 percent of my interactions on comics twitter go, BTW) and that was a kick in the pants for me.

After getting into a steady habit, I decided to look into reading some of the classic runs I’d read so much about throughout life. To go from knowing them second hand, to knowing them first hand. After a bit of hemming and hawing, I’ve settled on Mark Waid’s legendary run of Flash Comics to start off with.

(Spoiler Warning for some 30 year old comics, by the way)

As of this writing, I have read up to the final issue of his story arc Dead Heat, wherein Wally does battle with the speed cultist Savitar. Before we get into things like plot and characters, I want to discuss the art, because no discussion of comic books is really complete without talking about the art. Unfortunately, the art in this run hasn’t done much for me, but that’s not really it’s fault. I read this comics in manner that they were not created to be read, digitally and zoomed in. These comics were drawn with physical issues in mind, and I don’t doubt that they’re good in that format. It also doesn’t help that I’ve read far more manga than I have American comics. American comics have never clicked with me the way manga does. Even now, I still find the layout of manga more legible than the layout of an American comic. That’s not a value judgment, it’s just my personal experience.

I do distinctly recall thinking that the art was better up to issue #79 (The conclusion to the Return of Barry Allen storyline), than it was after. I prefer the less exaggerated character designs, and lighter inks, though it could very well be a case of me having gotten used to the initial style and not liking the change. One thing that thing I can say about the art is that it helped me grasp how Wally’s costume differed from Barry’s. Before this, I was incapable of separating them in my mind, but seeing them side by side made it clear to me how different Wally’s Costume was colored and shaded.

Now, onto the writing of the run, we’ll start with the lead, Wally West. My previous touchstone for Wally was the Justice League series from the DCAU, which I watched a lot as a kid. The Wally in these comics comes off as more serious that his DCAU incarnation. Not too serious, he still cracks jokes, but he’s more on the ball. He takes his adventures as seriously as any hero would, rather than the more carefree attitude I recall his DCAU version having. This is not unsurprising, Wally here is the lead whereas there he was part of an ensemble cast, and here we get his internal monologue which gives us a much more thorough sense of his headspace. Not to mention, the DCAU version was voiced, so we know with no ambiguity what tone his dialogue’s in. In text, tone is more up to interpretation.

Perhaps the biggest thing that set Comic Wally apart from DCAU Wally is that the Wally in the comic was more consistently angry and frustrated. While his DCAU incarnation had hidden depths, I can’t recall a time when he got seriously angry. This Wally is frequently irritated, usually by things which are enitrely understandable. On occasion, his irritability causes him to be rougher with the bad guys than he could be, and that feels uncomfortable sometimes, though thus far he hasn’t gone too far.

Going into this, I knew that one of the issues that Wally had to overcome was his mental block about surpassing Barry, and to my surprise, it wasn’t as much of a through-line as I expected. I was expecting it to be a reoccurring issue that was solved by the Return of Barry Allen storyline, but in reality there are only one or two times something like it comes up, usually in the context of him not being able to do the vibrating through walls trick. In the Return of Barry Allen, it feels more like an issue introduced in that story than a long running plot line. Granted, it may only feel this way because I’m solely reading Mark Waid’s Flash. I didn’t read the issues prior to his take over, so that storyline could have been more apparent there for all I know.

Moving on, starting with Waid’s run had another knock on effect, that being that the character introductions aren’t introductions. I came into this expecting to see when Wally met Linda, when he met Jay Garrick, when Pied Piper redeemed himself, but all of that happened before Waid took over the book, so they’re already part of the cast from the start. Again, not a flaw of the work, it’s just a result of my personal experiences. Now, let’s take a look at some of these characters.

I’ve heard a lot about Linda and Wally’s romance, and so far it’s not bad. I wouldn’t rate it as one of the best of all time, but I haven’t gotten to most of the major moments yet, so that’s not a huge surprise. One thing that’s very apparent is the Lois Lane DNA in her character. Some of that is to be expected, which the love interest to your superhero is a reporter, but I see a lot of similarities in their personality as well. There’s a lot of the same fire in her. Fortunately, the fact that Wally’s identity is public lends a very different arc to their relationship than what you see with Lois and Clark, so Linda doesn’t come off as a Lois rip-off. Linda’s concerns that there’s no place for her in Wally’s wild superhero life is the kind of relationship hurdle that isn’t present in Lois and Clark’s Relationship.

Next, let’s take a look at the first Flash, Jay Garrick. Within this series, Jay is perfectly pleasant, and by no means unlikable, but he also comes across as...kind of superfluous? There are three elderly male speedsters in this comic, and of all of them Jay is by far the least defined and has the least role. Max Mercury is the Wally’s mentor in the ways of speed, the one with the most knowledge of the Speed Force. He’s basically what I expected Jay Garrick to be going into this. The third of the group is Johnny Quick, a speedster who is the father of another speedster, Jesse Quick. Jesse is also very skeptical of Max Mercury’s teachings, which veer from the scientific into the mystical.

Because Johnny takes the role of skeptic, Jay is left without a role in the narrative because being the nicest of Wally’s friend group. Veering over to Hollywood for a second, whenever a book gets adapted into a movie or TV Show, minor characters get lost in the transition. Either they get composited with other characters, or they get cut entirely. Game of Thrones is the most prominent example in recent memory. I bring this up because, if Waid’s Flash were to go through that process, it’s hard to argue that Jay wouldn’t get the ax. Despite being the most important of them in the context of the universe at large, Jay is the least important Speedster in this narrative. Of course, Jay’s importance in the context of the larger universe means that in this hypothetical adaptation, he probably be composited into either max or Johnny. More likely Max, since mentor is the logical position for the first Flash to take in the Third Flash’s narrative.

I mentioned Jess Quick there, so let’s talk about her. Thus far, her most prominent role in the narrative has been to call Wally out and be his critic, though she does have very good reasons to be angry. In the Terminal Velocity storyline, Wally believes he’ll die soon, and tells the Flash Family that Jesse will be his successor, but it turns out to be a lie in order to motivate Bart Allen to take things more seriously. Jesse has remained angry with Wally since then, though it hasn’t seriously impacted her hero work. That’s good, because her continued competence lends legitimacy to her anger within the narrative. She’s not being punished for being mad at Wally for mistreating her. Hopefully it stays that way going forward.

Now let’s take a look at the character Wally chose over Jesse, Bart Allen AKA Impulse. I’ll say up front that I’m not reading Bart’s solo series during this read through, as I didn’t want the hassle of going back and forth between books. As such, the only issues of it that I’ve looked at are the ones that tie into the Dead Heat arc. I feel it’s important for me to say this, because I’m basing my opinions of Bart primarily on his showings in Wally’s book, not his own. In Wally’s book, Bart’s character flaws are more on display.

Bart is a character deliberately designed to be obnoxious, and such characters are a hard tightrope to walk in fiction. Gotta be annyoing enough to get the point across, but not annoying enough to turn people off from the work. Bart in Wally’s book isn’t perfectly balanced, and tends toward the too much pile. Not to an egregious extent, but a little bit. I found myself echoing Wally’s frustration with Bart more than a few times. In Bart’s defense, Wally does share some of the blame here. He doesn’t do a very good job as a mentor, and handing those duties off to Max is probably for the best.

I find it interesting, that a character like Wally who is so defined by inheriting a legacy is a poor mentor, to both Bart and Jesse. He makes different mistakes with both of them, but he still fails both of them. I’m eager to see how that plays out in the future issues.

Now that we’ve discussed the supporting cast, let’s discuss some of the book’s villains. We’ll start with the one who is most infamous, Eobard Thawne. Thawne’s spends the majority of his time in this book thinking he’s Barry Allen, and if I’m being honest, he’s more effective under that guise that he is as Eobard. The scenes where what appears to be Barry Allen turns evil out of jealousy of his successor are powerful, more so than the more traditional villain Eobard displays after the reveal. Not that it would have been a good idea for it to actually be Barry, of course. Much as I prefer Wally to Barry, having Barry go full supervillain would have been very out of character. In any case, this run had a profound impact on Eobard’s character going forward, solidifying him as an agent of toxic fanboyism, making him a dark mirror of Wally West.

The next major villain of the run is the cult slash terrorist organization Kobra. That might bring thoughts of GI Joe to your mind, and you honestly aren’t far off. So far as this run goes, the biggest differences between DC’s Kobra and Hasbro’s is A) DC’s version prefer green over blue, and B) Hasbro’s version has more in the way of distinct characters. Kobra thus far is more of a plot device than anything else. They’re generic terrorists with little to make them distictive. Their storyline, Terminal Velocity, is more notable for it’s introduction of the Speed Force, Wally preparing for his upcoming ‘death’, and Linda going on a revenge quest after said ‘death’. All things that Kobra is incidental to, any villainous organization would have sufficed.

The final, as of my current point in the run, major villain is Savitar. Savitar was formerly a soviet test pilot who gained a connection to a the speedforce, gave himself the name of Hindu god, and started a speed worshipping cult. It says a lot about my mind that my immediate thoughts upon reading Savitar’s origin were. “Huh, an AU where Hal Jordan became a Speedster the same way would be neat.”. Savitar is in some ways an improvement on the Kobra Cult from Terminal Velocity. This time the Cult has a more direct connection to the Flash and his mythos. Dead Heat is by no means a retread of Terminal Velocity, but if you wanted to mesh them into one story, it wouldn’t be hard. And it’d improve on both, in some ways.

One of the things I like to do in my fanfic ideas is connect the other speedsters to Thawne’s theme of Toxic Fandom, and it wouldn’t be hard to do that with Savitar. His entire motivation is to deprive those he considers unworthy of their speed, and that can easily by played as a metaphor for gatekeeping.

Over all, while the run is far from perfect, I must say I’m enjoying these comics a good deal, and if you’re like me and have read a lot about comics without actually reading them, I don’t think you’d regret jumping into them.

#opinions #personal experience #dc comics #The Flash #wally west #mark waid

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coolgreatwebsite · 3 years

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Cool Games I Finished In 2020 (In No Real Order)

Oh, hey! Right! I have a website! I’m like a week late on writing this, but what’s a week on top of an entire year of not writing, right? 2020 was... well, we all know what 2020 was. For me personally, it was simultaneously the best and worst year of my life. The worst in both ways you can probably assume and ways you definitely can’t (neither of which I’ll be getting into), and the best in ways I absolutely never would have guessed. That uncertain job I mentioned last year got very suddenly much more certain, at a much bigger company, for a much larger amount of money. That allowed me to get my own place, making my weird living situation much less weird. Still haven’t gotten the majority of my belongings off of the east coast, but if the entire world wasn’t currently fucked up by a global pandemic I’d have sorted all that out too. What I’m saying is that, for the third year in a row, my life has been a complete whirlwind that has left me very little time to get comfortable with any aspect of it. But I did manage to play more video games than I did last year! Which is perfect, because it’s once again time for another one of these. Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2020.

Astro’s Playroom (PlayStation 5, 2020)

My one word description of Astro's Playroom is "delightful". It's just an absolute goddamn delight. A total surprise too! Included with every PlayStation 5, Astro's Playroom is, in my opinion, one of the best pack-in games of all time.

First off, it's an incredible tech demo for the PS5's new DualSense controller. It was easy to brush off Sony's talk about the controller's haptic feedback and triggers as some Nintendo-style HD Rumble bullshit, but it really is incredibly cool once you get your hands on it. The game is obviously more than a tech demo though, or else it wouldn't be on here. It also just so happens to be an extremely solid and fun platformer on top of that. Astro controls exceptionally well and the levels are all well-designed and fun, even the gimmick vehicle ones designed to show off different features of the controller. It also has an oddly compelling speedrun mode, made all the more compelling by the PS5 notifying you when your friends beat your times and the ability to load into it within two seconds from anywhere on the console. But the biggest thing for me and, call me a mark, because I am, is that the game is an honestly incredible love letter to PlayStation history.

For the first time ever, Sony has pulled off a nostalgia piece without it ending up as embarrassing garbage in the vein of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. There's a Nintendo-like joyful reverence for all things PlayStation oozing out of every single corner of this game. There are so many nods and references and gags for literally every PlayStation thing of note throughout the the last 25 years, and then on top of that there's a whole heap more for the things that AREN'T of note that only hyperdorks like me would get! A sly reference to the ill-fated boomerang controller? Yep. A goof on the fat PS3's Spider-Man font? You betcha. A trophy you can earn by repeatedly punching a Sony Interactive Entertainment sign until it breaks and reveals the Sony Computer Entertainment sign it was slapped on top of? Yeah buddy. It's deep cuts all the way down, even up until the final boss which had me grinning like a total dipshit the entire time. The game is endlessly, effortlessly charming.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the perfect game at the perfect time. That doesn't mean it's a perfect game, I actually have some issues with it, but it could not have released at a better time than when it did. It came out at the very very beginning of everyone going into lockdown due to the pandemic, and it was the biggest game in the world for a couple of months as a result. I played like 300 hours and that pales in comparison to the amount of time many others put into it.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the most different Animal Crossing game there's ever been, and I'm of two minds on it. Like, I loved the game, I played a ton of it, but it's lacking so much of the stuff that made me love Animal Crossing in the first place. The series has been slowly trending in this direction for a bit now, but it's not really a game that happens around you anymore. It's all about total player control. You select where everything goes, you customize every detail of everything to your liking, hell, you can even terraform the landmass to be exactly what you want. Your neighbors take a backseat in focus and end up as little more than decorations with limited dialogue and next to no quests associated with them. Series staples like Gyroids are missing in action. Facilities and services that have been around since Wild World aren't implemented. It's similar to past Animal Crossing games in a lot of ways, but on the whole it feels like a different thing.

But like I said, two minds. New Horizons strays from what I truly want from an Animal Crossing game, but I can't deny that the game as it is is a hell of a lot of fun. There's SO much you can do and SO many options, it's super addictive. Plus it implemented my long-requested feature of letting you effortlessly send mail to friends online! Too bad the actual online play is as cumbersome as ever.

In conclusion, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a land of contrasts. I'm kidding. It's good, but definitely missing something in a way where I can understand some people being disappointed in it. I had a ton of fun though, and I'm probably going to get back into it later in 2021.

Trials of Mana (Nintendo Switch, 2019)

Late in 2019, with the physical release of Collection of Mana for the Switch, I decided I was going to play through each game on it for the first time and finally find out what this whole Mana thing was about. I went into Final Fantasy Adventure (the first game in the Mana series, because every RPG had to be Final Fantasy back then) with zero expectations and found a totally serviceable little Zelda-like with light RPG elements. I enjoyed my time with it. I went into Secret of Mana with the expectation of it being a beloved classic and found the worst game I beat that year, hands down. That game fucking sucks. I get why it made an impression on people at the time, but it's just so so SO awful to play. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed. Honestly, I would have been disappointed even if I hadn't heard it was one of "the best games" for so long. It would have been a disappointing follow-up to Final Fantasy Adventure, a game that in and of itself isn't anything incredible. Secret of Mana is just that rotten.

I braced myself for more disappointment when (after a much needed vacation from the series) I started up Trials of Mana. This game had a reputation too, as a long-lost classic that never made it stateside. One of the best games on the Super Nintendo, criminally never released for western audiences! Like Secret of Mana before it, I'd heard nothing but effusive praise. Unlike Secret of Mana, however, I was very pleased to find out that Trials of Mana mostly lives up to the hype. From a gameplay standpoint, Trials is an improvement on Secret in almost every single way. It's not perfect. The menus are still kinda clunky, animations for things like magic and items are still frequently disruptive. But the main thing is it actually plays like a sensible video game designed by humans with brains. Attacking is responsive! Hitboxes aren't complete nonsense! You don't constantly get stunlocked to death! There are more answers to combat than casting the same spell for five straight minutes to kill your enemies before they get a chance to move! It's great!

On top of being an enjoyable video game to actually play, the presentation is top notch. Secret of Mana could be a pretty game with decent music in some spots, but Trials is consistently gorgeous and the soundtrack is across the board great instead of randomly having songs that sound like clown vomit. And while Trials of Mana doesn't have the deepest story in the world, it manages to avoid being completely paper-thin like Secret. The story actually kind of has a reason for being a bit straightforward, and the reason is that it has a really cool system where you pick your three playable characters from a pool of six. Each character has their own goals and storyline, some of which line up with other potential party members, some of which don't, and you'll even run into the characters you didn't choose as NPCs along the way. This and the relatively brisk pace of the game make it highly replayable.

I'm really glad that Trials of Mana made it over here in an official capacity, even if it was like 25 years late. It's as good as I expected Secret of Mana to be and singlehandedly saved my interest in seeing any more of the series. I'm aware the quality of what came after is very spotty, but I'll get to the rest eventually!

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PlayStation 4, 2020)

They (almost) did it. They (basically) pulled it off. They remade (a chunk of) Final Fantasy VII and (for the most part) didn't fuck it up. Ok, funny parentheticals aside, Final Fantasy VII Remake is astoundingly good coming off of over two decades of just absolutely dreadful post-FF7 sequels, side games, and movies.

Final Fantasy VII has been historically misremembered as this kind of miserable, angsty, brooding thing, both by fans and by the company that made it. FF7-branded media after FF7 itself is a minefield of changed personalities, embarrassing original characters, and monumentally lame stories. Final Fantasy VII Remake is the first post-FF7 anything that actually remembers the characters, setting, and plot of Final Fantasy VII and what made them memorable and special to people in the first place. Which isn't to say it's a slavish recreation! There's a ton of changes and additions, and I actually like almost all of them! Except for some really big stuff I'll touch on in a bit!

The combat in Final Fantasy VII Remake is great. I was super skeptical about it when the game was first announced, but they actually managed to make the blend of real-time action and turn-based RPG menuing fun and engaging. The characters all play super differently from each other too, which is a huge and welcome difference from the original game. The Materia system fits like a glove in this revamped combat system as well. The remixed music is good as hell, and the visuals are beautiful (outside of a couple of very specific spots that I'm kinda of surprised they haven't fixed in a patch yet). It's a well-executed package all around.

But alas, as always, there are negatives. For starters, this is only part one of the overall Final Fantasy VII Remake project. It goes up to the party leaving Midgar which, as you may or may not recall, is the first six hours of the original game. They compensated for this by fleshing the hell out of the Midgar section the game, ballooning the overall playtime to total of about 30-ish hours. The game feeling padded is a common complaint but for what it's worth, I didn't really feel it until the unnecessarily long final dungeon, There's also the previously mentioned and funny parenthetical'd changes and additions I don't like.

This is big time spoilers for this game so if you don't want that jump ahead to the next game on the list. The Whispers suck ass. Final Fantasy VII Remake should have been brave enough to be different without having to constantly derail everything in the most ham-fisted and intrusive way possible. You can have Jessie twist her ankle without making a spooky plot ghost trip her. I don't want to fight the physical manifestation of the game everyone thought they were getting as an end boss. If you're not doing a straight remake, that's fine, but have the fucking guts to stand by your artistic decisions without feeling the need to invent the lamest deus ex machina I've ever fucking seen. The last couple of hours of this game are 100% about the Whispers and are awful for it. It's a true testament to the strength of the rest of Final Fantasy VII Remake that this aspect didn't completely sour me on it. I can only hope that they stay dead and gone for good in the games yet to come and the remake can be different while standing on its own two feet.

I truly cannot wait for the next entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake project. I'm excited for Final Fantasy VII in a way I haven't been since the late 90s. I have a bit of trepidation that they could royally screw it up. I mean, they already got kinda close, as I said in my last paragraph. But they got so much right in this entry that, for the first time in decades, I'm willing to believe in Square Enix when it comes to Final Fantasy VII.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PlayStation 4, 2020)

My one word description of 13 Sentinels is "fucking crazy". I realize that's two words, but shut up. A bizarre hybrid of visual novel, adventure game, and strategy RPG, 13 Sentinels not only makes that work, but makes it work incredibly well.

The story is fucking bonkers. It's told entirely non-linearly and is purposefully dense and confusing, but it does an amazing job of hooking you with a cast of likable characters and some impressively well-paced twists, made all the more impressive by the fact that you can tackle the story in basically whatever order you want. I'll say it again for those in the back, the story is Fucking Bonkers. Wherever you think it's going, it's not going. Where it is going is PLACES. Seriously, if you want a wild goddamn ride, this is the game for you. The presentation is also stunning. It's a drop dead gorgeous game with a really nice soundtrack. Easily Vanillaware's best looking game, which is saying something seeing as looking good is Vanillaware's whole deal.

If I had to levy one criticism against the game, it's that the strategy RPG portion is just kind of ok. It's enjoyable enough, it doesn't get in the way and there's not too much of it, but once it starts introducing armored versions of previous enemy types it's kind of done doing anything different. It is really good at getting people to out themselves as having no idea what tower defense is as a genre though!

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Nintendo Switch, 2018)

I haven't really historically been a "Musou Guy". Not to say I've actively disliked them, they're just not something I've seeked out very often or played very much of. Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition kinda turned me into a "Musou Guy" a little bit? It's good, surprisingly-less-mindless-than-you'd-think fun.

I actually super don't care about the Zelda branding. I think all the fanservice stuff is meh at best. What I do care about is that there's a ton of character variety and a metric shitload of content. There's so many different characters and weapons for those characters that all play differently from one another and SOOOOOO many levels to play. Like the story mode is, again, kinda meh, the real meat of the game is the Adventure mode and there's a ton of it. It's 8 different world maps, each based off a different Zelda game, with each square of the map containing a little mini-scenario with unique objectives and rewards. There has to be at least 1000 scenarios between all the maps. There's so much. And that's not even getting into some of the other side stuff like the challenge modes and the fairy raising. It's a crazy amount of game in this game.

And again, it's not as mindless as it'd seem. It's not really a game ABOUT destroying 5000 guys, it's an area control and resource management game where the 5000 guys are one of those resources. Knowing who to send where and when to fight who is way more important than pressing the XXX YYY XXX YYY on the more than one million troops.

I'd say that if you're even cursorily potentially maybe interested in a musou game, this is the one to try. And if you like it, it could literally be your forever game. A sequel came out recently too, and I'm looking forward to trying that out soon.

Phantasy Star Online 2 (Xbox One, 2020)

Phantasy Star Online 2 finally came stateside in the year 2020, eight years after its initial Japanese release and initial American cancellation. It's no Phantasy Star Online 1, but it is a really fun game in its own right provided you can find the willpower to break through its clunkiness and eight years of confusing poorly tutorialized free-to-play MMO cruft.

The main thing going for PSO2, and this is a major improvement from PSO1, is that the act of engaging in its combat is fun. The combat is just feels really really good. There's a bunch of different weapon types and classes, and once you find the ones that really click with you you're in for a good time, whether you're izuna dropping dudes with wire claws or literally doing air juggles and rainstorm from Devil May Cry with the dual machine guns.

The other stuff around that combat is weird. I generally like it, but it's weird. The story mode is one of the most bizarrely presented things I've ever seen. It apparently used to be something you'd seek out in the levels themselves, but presently it's just a list of scenes you pick from a menu and watch with next to no context until it makes you fight a boss sometimes. There's some weird moments in there that MIGHT have been cool if it were presented in literally any other way?

The systems and presentation are also way more... I dunno, pinball? Pachislot? In very stark contrast to how chill original Phantasy Star Online was, everything in PSO2 is designed in a way to maximize that flashy light bing bing wahoo you got ~*~RARE DROP CHANCE UP~*~ feeling. Which isn't to say I don't like flashy light bing bing wahoo, but it's a weird different thing.

Was it worth the wait? Yeah, sure! For me! This is another one that I played like 300 hours of! I haven't even seen half of it, I fell off right before Episode 4 released because it coincided with my move! I'm gonna go back and see all that shit! PSO2's fun! A different flavor of fun than the original, sure, but fun all the same. Another one that I'm glad finally made it over here.

Riichi Mahjong (A Table, 1924)

Holy shit I fucking did it I finally learned how to play Mahjong and it rules.

It started when I picked up Clubhouse Games for the Switch. I saw that it had Riichi Mahjong and something in my brain snapped. For whatever reason, I decided that this was the time I was going to rip the band-aid off and figure this shit out. It wasn't too dissimilar to the first time I decided to try eggs, but that's a different and much stupider story for a different time. I did the tutorial in Clubhouse Games, looked up some more basics and advice because the tutorial wasn't super amazing, and I kept playing while being aided by the game's nice helper features like the button that pulls up recommended hands. I kept playing and... sorta got it. I learned the basic rules, but none of the strategy. And then I stopped playing for a few months.

In that few months, for whatever reason, a decent amount of people I know had their brains snap the same way? Like a more-than-two amount of people I'm either friends with or following online also decided to learn Mahjong. I decided to get back on the horse and downloaded Mahjong Soul and I don't know whether it was perseverance or the power of anime babes, but this time I got it. I still refer to a sheet with all the hands and whether they work open or closed, and I'm by no means a master player, but I actually honest to god understand what I'm doing and it's an incredible feeling.

Mahjong has such a huge amount of what I like to call "Get That Ass" energy. It is the energy you feel when you get someone's ass. In Mahjong you are either constantly getting someone's ass or getting your ass gotten. Someone puts down the wrong tile and you fucking GET THEIR ASS DUDE! They're got!! They're a fucking idiot that put down the wrong thing and now you have their points!!! Or you draw what you need yourself and you're a brain genius all according to plan and everyone gives you points because you're so wise!!!! It's great!!!!!

Mahjong has long been one of those games where I'd say "I'll learn this someday" and never reeeeally actually try to learn, and I'm so glad I finally took the effort to because it's good as hell. And, truth be told, it wasn't THAT hard to learn? Like you can get to the point where I was where I didn't know the strategy fairly easily in my opinion, and once you do that It's just a matter of continuing to play to understand the rest. I highly recommended that you also go out and learn it if you similarly revel in getting that ass, it's so satisfying once you do.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PlayStation 4, 2020)

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio took a big gamble with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After seven games (more if you take spinoffs and remakes into consideration) they decided to focus on a new main character and, even more unexpectedly, they decided to change things up by turning the series into a turn-based JRPG. Their gamble paid off in spades. This is easily in my top 3 favorite Yakuza games.

The JRPG gameplay is surprisingly solid. There's definite room for improvement, but they nailed a bunch of it right out of the gate. Some mechanics are a little janky and I wish the job system was more fleshed out or just worked more like Final Fantasy V's, but they nailed one of the most important things and made the battles brisk and fun. It's a great foundation, especially for a team that's never attempted anything like this, and it's way more fun than the combat's been in any of the previous Dragon Engine games. I can't wait to see them iterate on it.

Everything else is top fuckin' notch. The music is great, the side content is fully fleshed out in a way it hasn't been since before they switched to the Dragon Engine, and I love the characters and story so much. Yakuza has a new main character in Ichiban Kasuga, and he's my son and I love him. Kiryu was great, and I love him too, but he was a bit of a passive protagonist. Stuff happened around him and he mostly just stoically reacted to it. Ichi is a much more active lead and it's great. He's a big lovable dope, and his tendency to keep an upbeat attitude and eagerness to leap into action is such a breath of fresh air. And it's not only Ichiban, since this is an RPG you have a whole party of characters and they're all great! Having them with you at all times bantering with each other and reacting to things is another great change of narrative pace, too.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon just straight up rules. As someone who has historically not been too much of a fan of the Dragon Engine games, it's simultaneously a refreshing new take on the series and a fantastic return to form. I can't wait for what comes next. Wherever Ichiban goes, I go.

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

After 23 years of Japanese PS1 exclusivity, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure finally got an English release this year for Nintendo Switch. I'm glad it did, because Moon isn't just the very definition of A Sebmal Game. It's the Sebmal Game missing link. In addition to being just a great video game, it helped me make a mental throughline for a bunch of games I love and a large part of my taste in video games.

To keep a long story short (seriously, I have a much much longer version of this saved in my drafts that I'll maybe finish someday), Moon turned out to be not the JRPG I assumed it was, given the title and basic story pitch, but a secret prequel to a game I love named Chulip. Moon's developer, Love-de-Lic, was formed by a handful of ex-Squaresoft employees, many of which worked on an extremely formative game I love named Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Love-de-Lic broke up in the year 2000 and its staff went on to form a bunch of different studios that ended up making a BUNCH of different games I love like Chibi-Robo, Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Dandy Dungeon, and the aforementioned Chulip. These games, when you make the connection and line them up, all have a very distinct weirdness in common that makes perfect sense once you've realized many of the same people worked on them. Figuring this all out felt like snapping a piece of my brain back in place, and it was really crazy to come to understand exactly how much this studio that formed and disbanded decades before I'd even heard of them had impacted my tastes and, hell, my life.

So what is Moon, for those who don't innately understand what I mean by "a secret prequel to Chulip"? Moon is an adventure game where you explore a world with a day/night cycle, learn about that world's inhabitants, and eventually solve their problems. Think of it kind of like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, but if the sidequests were the entirety of the focus with no Groundhog Day time reset mechanic and none of the Zelda stuff like combat and dungeons. You play as a young boy who, after a late night JRPG binge session, is sucked into the world of the game he was just playing. Everything is off from the way it was portrayed while the boy was playing the game, though. The hero he had previously controlled is actually a silent menace, raiding peoples' houses for treasure and slaughtering every innocent animal that crosses his path in an endless quest for EXP. The townspeople seem more concerned with problems in their day-to-day lives than the supposed world threatening crisis outlined in the game's intro. It's up to you as the boy to investigate this world's mysteries, help the townsfolk, mend the damage the hero has done, and eventually restore love to a loveless world.

Speaking of love, I fucking loved Moon. I loved the story, I loved the characters, I loved the music, I loved the way it looks (even though the Switch port is a little crusty in that basic emulator-y kinda way), I loved how constantly bizarre and surprising and funny it was. Like I said earlier, it's the very definition of a game made for me. It was essentially the progenitor of a long line of games made for me, and of games potentially made for me but I don't know yet because I haven't played them due to not understanding Japanese (UFO: A Day in the Life translation next please? Anyone from Onion Games reading this??). For as similar as Moon and Chulip are in their systems and pacing, I think I might actually like Moon better despite it coming earlier? It's not as full force maximum impact absurd as Chulip is, but it is a lot more playable and less obtuse once you get a grip on the time limit mechanic. You don't need a full strategy guide included in the instruction manual for Moon, and you don't need to exchange business cards with every single character to get information vital to finishing the game either.

I truly cannot recommend Moon enough if your taste in games ventures anywhere off the beaten path. Maybe this is a little conceited of me, but I assume if you're reading this article, let alone this far down into it, you relate to my video game opinions at least a little bit? You should play Moon. Everyone reading this sentence should play Moon. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is my game of the year for the year 2020.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Death Stranding (PlayStation 4, 2019): Death Stranding, much like Metal Gear Solid V, was a game I enjoyed for the gameplay and not much else. The story, characters, and writing were a huge disappointment for me, but man if I didn't enjoy lugging those boxes around and setting up my hellish cross-continental goon summer camp lookin' zipline network. Mr. Driller Drill Land (Nintendo Switch, 2020): I am a known Mr. Driller Enjoyer, and I enjoyed this Mr. Driller. Originally released for the Gamecube, Mr. Driller Drill Land is another long-time Japanese exclusive that finally came stateside this year and it's packed with new and novel twists on the Mr. Driller format. It looks super sharp, the music's great (also the credits music is the most impossibly out of place and extra as hell shit in the world and it's hilarious), and it's just a good ass time. The main campaign is pretty damn short, but if you're a post-game content kinda guy it has that and it's all super hard. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (PlayStation 4, 2020): They finally made another good new Tony Hawk game, and all it took was perfectly remaking two of the best old Tony Hawk games! Plays exactly like you remember it with the added benefit of the best mechanics from up to THUG1, looks great, packed full of content, even has most of the music alongside some mostly crappy new stuff. It's the full package as is, but I do hope they end up adding THPS3 to it eventually. Mad Rat Dead (Nintendo Switch, 2020): Mad Rat Dead was a pleasant surprise that I only picked up because I saw a couple of people on my Twitter timeline constantly talking about it. A fun and inventive platformer where all your actions need to be on beat with the music. The gameplay feels great (aside from some not so great performance issues on Switch), the soundtrack is fun, and it's got a real good style to it. Demon's Souls (PlayStation 5, 2020): I love Demon's Souls and this is Demon's Souls. It plays exactly the same with some minor quality of life changes. I don't agree with many of the artistic changes, but there's no denying it looks incredible on a technical level. If you want to play Demon's Souls again or for the first time, this is a perfectly valid and fun way to do so. Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party!!!! (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Groove Coaster is one of my favorite rhythm games, and they finally made an acceptable at-home version with Wai Wai Party. It's not a perfect replication of the arcade game control-wise, I have some issues with the song choices, and the pricing is frankly fucking ridiculous if you're not a Groove Coaster maniac like I am, but the same ultra satisfying gameplay is all there. You can even play it vertically in handheld mode! Flip Griiiiiiiip!

And we're done! Phew! Honestly didn't realize I played that many good games until I typed all this out. Thanks as always for reading this far. I'm gonna try and get back to regularly posting Breviews this year at the very least. Honestly don't know if I'll get anything else up on here, but we'll see. Here's to hoping 2021 is a little bit less of a nightmare!

#article #Year Wrapup

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natsubeatsrock · 4 years

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Guide to Avoiding Fairy Tail Criticism

Fairy Tail is far from a perfect series. I'm not here to argue otherwise. I've made plenty of critiques about Fairy Tail over the years and I've been a strong proponent of people being allowed to say things they don't like about the series.

Though, as I watch the fallout of Hbomberguy's video on RWBY and how its fans are dealing with it, it's hard not to think about the stupid things people have said negatively about Fairy Tail. This series has its fair share of stupid, bad faith complaints repeated by critics over and over. While I've talked about some of these in the past, I think it's worth talking compiling a list of things that people who hate Fairy Tail say that I can't take seriously.

"Fairy Fail."

Let's just get this one out of the way. It's not clever in any way. I can't believe this has become as popular an insult as it has. I've seen so many people jokingly refer to this series with this name. No one who unironically uses this is genuinely interested in engaging the series on fair terms at all.

More than that, it's not even true. Despite any issues regarding the series, Fairy Tail is still a fairly popular series with fans, especially outside of Japan. It's one of Kodansha's most successful IPs of the 2000s. The fact that people put it on the same level as Shonen Jump's Big 3 is impressive. If this is what a failing series looks like, I can't imagine what success would look like for Mashima.

"Mashima didn't plan anything."

This is one I've fallen victim to in the past. To be fair, Mashima hasn't been the best at explaining this to his fans. For critics, it's easy to see that Mashima says he comes up with plot points as he goes. Of course, the reason this is a critique is that this is as far as many go.

As Mashima explains it, it's not that Mashima didn't have any plans for future events for the series and how future events would go. While he didn't start the series with many concrete plans aside from the basics, he has had plans for how the series would go. But rather than being fixed plans, Fairy Tail's decisions have been more fluid paths Mashima chooses to go down as the series continues.

This isn't a bad way to write a story. As a story progresses, you may realize that certain ideas may be less possible than others or things you've planned at the start make less sense than you originally thought. Again, the critique could be that Mashima's style of writing is responsible for some of the series' weaker moments. However, it's wrong to say that Mashima shot from the hip every week, as some people have described his writing. Luckily, Fairy Tail is the only series Mashima has written this way. Both Rave Master and Edens Zero have been planned more from the beginning.

"It's like One Piece, but worse."

I've seen it thrown around that Fairy Tail looks like One Piece. If that's all there was to it, I don't think this would be on this list. Despite what people tell you, Mashima was never an assistant for Eichiro Oda. Mashima got into the landscape without being anyone's assistant. That's easy to dismiss.

However, I've seen people argue that Fairy Tail is a poor attempt at trying to copy One Piece's formula. Ignore for a moment that Edens Zero is closer to following that model and even it isn't a copy. Or that every series this side of Dragon Ball has been accused of being similar to it and people have been doing the same with series after Naruto.

The focus of Fairy Tail isn't similar to that of One Piece. There is no grand treasure or giant goal that the series revolves itself around finding. A lot of the main conflicts to Fairy Tail present themselves less as threats to the individual goals of characters or but to the guild's existence.

"There is no point to Fairy Tail."

I've talked about this one in the past. One thing you'll see people say regarding Fairy Tail is that there wasn't a goal the series was getting to. People will often make the poor comparison to Bleach in this regard, despite Bleach's focus being Ichigo's growth towards being able to protect the people that care about him.

This is a point that even fans of the series miss. I've recently been describing Fairy Tail as a series told through the lens of its main characters about the guild. The focus isn't on how the Fairy Tail guild grows towards being the best, especially since they start at the top. We're meant to watch the characters in the guild as they interact with the world around them and the other guild members.

If that sounds like a weird way to run a series, it's not. Durarara has a similar setup but splits the focus from one core group of characters to several groups and individual characters split up across its main city. Its plot focuses on how each different group connects with each other in ways they don't know and we can't expect as viewers. I wish people would engage Fairy Tail criticism on this level because there are ways to criticize in its implementation of this. However, people see that there's no "I'm gonna be Hokage" or "I'm going to find the One Piece" plotline and think that the series has no point to it.

"Natsu/Lucy is a bad protagonist."

This is related to the last point. The series is less about how Natsu or Lucy achieve their specific goals and more about the guild after they meet each other and start working together. If the series were about those things, we'd get more time focusing on Natsu's search for Igneel or Lucy's growth in the guild. Once you understand what the series is about, the focus the series takes makes sense.

However, I want to spend some time explaining the functions that either character. Again. While the series is, for the most part, told through Lucy's perspective, Natsu is the main driving force of the series. The comparison I've been making for years now is the Sherlock Holmes stories. If Natsu is Sherlock Holmes, Lucy is Dr. Watson. Mashima's referred to both as the main character and the argument could be made that this focus expands to other main members of the Strongest Team.

"Juvia had no arc."

Yet another one I've been responsible for sharing. I've had a weird arc over the past few years of writing about Fairy Tail going from tacit defense to reluctant attacks to my current stance of nuanced critique. However, I've never been a huge fan of how Juvia's been written, despite liking Juvia herself. It's been thrown around that Juvia didn't have a real character or arc, especially outside of Gray.

Juvia's arc involves coming to experience love better. She goes from learning to love other people as friends to engaging with romantic love. She even gets the opportunity to share that love with others. While the focus of that arc becomes centered around Gray, it's not as if Juvia becomes less loving of others or that her arc focusing on Gray makes no sense considering he started her on the path of becoming more loving.

As much as I should sympathize with this argument, it's become a lot more annoying to see this kind of argument levied towards female characters. You're not seeing people argue that Jellal's change is too focused on Erza. I'm not even saying this as someone who loves how this has been played out in the series. It's just annoying to see at all.

"Watch Craftsdwarf's videos on Fairy Tail!"

I've talked about a few of the issues I have with the series already, but I keep seeing this brought up. I'll give credit where it's due. Craftsdwarf's "Overly Long Analytical Tirade on Fairy Tail" does make good points about the series. And considering it's broken up into different parts, it's more digestible than that rant about RWBY. I'm a big fan of the kind of media analysis videos and I've often linked some of my favorite videos in my posts here.

However, Craftsdwarf's videos aren't perfect. The videos come at the series from a hilariously uncharitable point of view, resulting in repeating many of the points I've already mentioned in this post. Their analysis of both Fairy Tail and Rave Master is often shallow and ill-formed. It might be helpful to watch the series to see a negative perspective about Fairy Tail. However, I worry that the points made in that series will be the foundation of future criticism of this series.

“Fairy Tail is the worst (popular) battle action shonen.”

It’s funny seeing this one levied towards plenty of series that aren’t Fairy Tail. People say this about Dragon Ball. People say this about the Big 3. People say this about other hits in Weekly Shonen Magazine like Seven Deadly Sins and Fire Force. People say this about the current popular stuff from WSJ like MHA and Black Clover. Fairy Tail is far from the first or last series to get this complaint.

Even ignoring how hilariously hard this is to quantify as objective fact as opposed to personal preference, I’ve noticed that most of the people making this claim don’t do the work to understand why things they don’t like happened. To be honest, I don’t know too many fans who are willing to do the same. A lot of fans have the infuriating mindset of “it’s bad, but I still like it”.

Despite whatever anyone tells you, Fairy Tail has internal logic outside of “nakama power”. Characters face genuine loss and win for logical reasons. Even if it’s not as consistent as fans would like it to be, I don’t think the anime/manga fandom is worse for this series being as popular and beloved as it is.

Let me know if I forgot any or if you’ve heard another one.

#fairy tail #to be clear #i haven't seen hbomberguy's video #not because i don't watch long form criticism #he's not doing it in good faith

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argentdandelion · 4 years

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I Don't Need You to Love Me: A Steven Universe Review

Note: the following review makes umbrella statements about target demographics. Readers should remember that a show can have aimed demographics and significant periphery demographics.

When Steven Universe (pre-movie) ended, I found myself disappointed. That was it? I thought. This was supposed to be ‘the good part’ I had been waiting to see. How could this happen? I felt more than just disappointment. At the end, watching this show had felt like a waste, and it seemed the show that ended wasn’t the same show I had chosen to watch back in Season 1. It was no longer the show of a boy creatively defeating a giant centipede monster, or the body horror, of turning into multiple cats, or of seeing one’s future selves dissolve into sand after a mystical artifact breaks, but a show where people cry and sing and resolve problems nonviolently.

But, looking back...it never wanted to be a show I would love.

Kids’ programming networks appeal to different audiences by shows’ tones and themes. For example, Disney Channel is aimed more at girls, Disney XD is aimed more at boys. While Cartoon Network historically aimed at children in general, by the time of Steven Universe’s first episode, its primary audience was boys. Indeed, shows like Tower Prep, Young Justice, and Green Lantern: The Animated Series had been canceled before because they appealed too much to girls for the executive’s liking, regardless of their overall popularity.

Early on the run of Steven Universe, Cartoon Network tried to appeal to young boys through lighthearted (even goofy) action-adventure shows or outright comedy shows. And the advertisements for Steven Universe fit: it emphasized the crystal gems’ status as the super-cool, strong protectors of humanity, and the oddity of its wacky half-human member, Steven. It emphasized goofiness and absurdity, like Steven’s own pants walking around. It was certainly more like contemporary Adventure Time than the more tough and “serious” Young Justice or Green Lantern: The Animated Series.

Steven Universe played well to network executives’ intended demographic (more or less) for the first two seasons. It had plenty of action, adventure, and violence, and (though not strictly a “young boys demographic thing”) consistent smatterings of “lore” across episodes. However, it also flipped the typical, male-dominant boys’ show composition through three-fourths of its main characters being female. Furthermore, its one boy was a “tomgirl”: a sensitive, compassionate boy prone to crying, who wore pink and had healing/defensive powers, rather than offensive ones.

Apparently, Steven Universe was designed to appeal to both girls and boys. According to an article on LA Weekly, Rebbeca Sugar, the creator of Steven Universe, said: “I want to make a universal show and that, by default, makes it a more quote-unquote boys' show because those are the more universal shows,[...]the boys' show side is the side where I think the gap could be bridged.”

As Steven Universe became super-popular, though, it had more room to “stray” from its action-adventure-boys’-cartoon bounds. Though it was clearly never aimed exclusively at young boys, as time went on trends collided in such a way it would appeal even more to audiences outside young boys.

Given the show’s approach to conflict resolution, its songs, its abundant character interaction (and style—see all the crying), “straying” was likely what it intended to do all along.

Firstly, the goofiness of Season 1 subsided, or, at least, advertisements stopped emphasizing that. The types and frequencies of plots in Season 1 and Season 2, whether a monster-of-the-week episode with “Townie” (human residents of Beach City) and “Gem” subplots or a “track and catch Peridot/deal with the Cluster” plot, helped provide dependable action sequences, or even violence. Later episodes’ kinds and proportions of the plots made it focus more on townies, even for whole episodes. It got more episodes which had little if anything supernatural happening, and became more character-focused or relationship-focused than plot or action-focused (though it still had those).

In short, it got more mundane, or more like a slice-of-life/slice-of-life-comedy show. Interestingly, the factors which made it less of an action-adventure cartoon coincided with fans’ decisions on which episodes are “filler”: almost all the “townie” episodes are deemed “filler”. Even early in Season 1, there were mundane moments; half an episode could be pretty mundane. There was an emphasis on characters’ relationships with others, and complex emotions, and soft moments. While not an outright pacifist from the start (see: electrocuting Centipeetle in episode 1) he was always a compassionate peacemaker. And, even early on, there was crying and singing (see: “Let Me Drive My Van Into Your Heart”, second episode of season 1). Steven’s perspective is well-summarized with his claim “Giant robots shouldn’t fight” (Season 2, episode 23) which is hilariously ironic, given that’s the point of giant robot shows.

Later on, the ratio of mundane-to-magical moments got skewed towards the mundane, to the point whole episodes could be mundane. (e.g., Drop Beat Dad of Season 3, with no “Gem stuff” at all, without significant Gem involvement) Instead of character dynamics being a sub-plot or sub-theme of most episodes, it’s now a primary theme of many episodes. It’s hard to imagine almost an entire episode (episode 23 of a two-parter, Season 5) about Ruby and Sapphire getting married, with a long song about it, airing in Seasons 1-2.

Though I am female, I prefer plot-focused, violent, action-adventure cartoons—“boys’ cartoons”, generally. I thus ended up disappointed at Steven Universe’s different approach and likely shift in intended audience. Episode upon episode left me hoping for better ones next time.To be fair, this wasn’t entirely the fault of tonal or audience shifts, but also pacing issues (relative to my tastes, anyway) and all the hype of “Steven Bombs” (Steven Universe episode premieres, five nights in a row), broken up by long hiatuses.

Not everything will be to my taste, and variety is important in kids’ shows. The show’s approach to conflict resolution is both original and valuable in real life: after all, not everything can be solved by violence, dominance and punishment.

In the end of the series (before its epilogue miniseries), Steven sang:

I don't need you to respect me, I respect me I don't need you to love me, I love me

And I can say....as disappointed as I was, this show doesn’t need me to love it.

#Steven Universe #Review #Analysis #Retrospective #Series Review

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mindthump · 3 years

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Language supermodel: How GPT-3 is quietly ushering in the A.I. revolution https://ift.tt/3mAgOO1

OpenAI

OpenAI’s GPT-2 text-generating algorithm was once considered too dangerous to release. Then it got released — and the world kept on turning.

In retrospect, the comparatively small GPT-2 language model (a puny 1.5 billion parameters) looks paltry next to its sequel, GPT-3, which boasts a massive 175 billion parameters, was trained on 45 TB of text data, and cost a reported $12 million (at least) to build.

“Our perspective, and our take back then, was to have a staged release, which was like, initially, you release the smaller model and you wait and see what happens,” Sandhini Agarwal, an A.I. policy researcher for OpenAI told Digital Trends. “If things look good, then you release the next size of model. The reason we took that approach is because this is, honestly, [not just uncharted waters for us, but it’s also] uncharted waters for the entire world.”

Jump forward to the present day, nine months after GPT-3’s release last summer, and it’s powering upward of 300 applications while generating a massive 4.5 billion words per day. Seeded with only the first few sentences of a document, it’s able to generate seemingly endless more text in the same style — even including fictitious quotes.

Is it going to destroy the world? Based on past history, almost certainly not. But it is making some game-changing applications of A.I. possible, all while posing some very profound questions along the way.

What is it good for? Absolutely everything

Recently, Francis Jervis, the founder of a startup called Augrented, used GPT-3 to help people struggling with their rent to write letters negotiating rent discounts. “I’d describe the use case here as ‘style transfer,'” Jervis told Digital Trends. “[It takes in] bullet points, which don’t even have to be in perfect English, and [outputs] two to three sentences in formal language.”

Powered by this ultra-powerful language model, Jervis’s tool allows renters to describe their situation and the reason they need a discounted settlement. “Just enter a couple of words about why you lost income, and in a few seconds you’ll get a suggested persuasive, formal paragraph to add to your letter,” the company claims.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. When Aditya Joshi, a machine learning scientist and former Amazon Web Services engineer, first came across GPT-3, he was so blown away by what he saw that he set up a website, www.gpt3examples.com, to keep track of the best ones.

“Shortly after OpenAI announced their API, developers started tweeting impressive demos of applications built using GPT-3,” he told Digital Trends. “They were astonishingly good. I built [my website] to make it easy for the community to find these examples and discover creative ways of using GPT-3 to solve problems in their own domain.”

Fully interactive synthetic personas with GPT-3 and https://t.co/ZPdnEqR0Hn ????

They know who they are, where they worked, who their boss is, and so much more. This is not your father's bot… pic.twitter.com/kt4AtgYHZL

— Tyler Lastovich (@tylerlastovich) August 18, 2020

Joshi points to several demos that really made an impact on him. One, a layout generator, renders a functional layout by generating JavaScript code from a simple text description. Want a button that says “subscribe” in the shape of a watermelon? Fancy some banner text with a series of buttons the colors of the rainbow? Just explain them in basic text, and Sharif Shameem’s layout generator will write the code for you. Another, a GPT-3 based search engine created by Paras Chopra, can turn any written query into an answer and a URL link for providing more information. Another, the inverse of Francis Jervis’ by Michael Tefula, translates legal documents into plain English. Yet another, by Raphaël Millière, writes philosophical essays. And one other, by Gwern Branwen, can generate creative fiction.

“I did not expect a single language model to perform so well on such a diverse range of tasks, from language translation and generation to text summarization and entity extraction,” Joshi said. “In one of my own experiments, I used GPT-3 to predict chemical combustion reactions, and it did so surprisingly well.”

More where that came from

The transformative uses of GPT-3 don’t end there, either. Computer scientist Tyler Lastovich has used GPT-3 to create fake people, including backstory, who can then be interacted with via text. Meanwhile, Andrew Mayne has shown that GPT-3 can be used to turn movie titles into emojis. Nick Walton, chief technology officer of Latitude, the studio behind GPT-generated text adventure game AI Dungeon recently did the same to see if it could turn longer strings of text description into emoji. And Copy.ai, a startup that builds copywriting tools with GPT-3, is tapping the model for all it’s worth, with a monthly recurring revenue of $67,000 as of March — and a recent $2.9 million funding round.

“Definitely, there was surprise and a lot of awe in terms of the creativity people have used GPT-3 for,” Sandhini Agarwal, an A.I. policy researcher for OpenAI told Digital Trends. “So many use cases are just so creative, and in domains that even I had not foreseen, it would have much knowledge about. That’s interesting to see. But that being said, GPT-3 — and this whole direction of research that OpenAI pursued — was very much with the hope that this would give us an A.I. model that was more general-purpose. The whole point of a general-purpose A.I. model is [that it would be] one model that could like do all these different A.I. tasks.”

Many of the projects highlight one of the big value-adds of GPT-3: The lack of training it requires. Machine learning has been transformative in all sorts of ways over the past couple of decades. But machine learning requires a large number of training examples to be able to output correct answers. GPT-3, on the other hand, has a “few shot ability” that allows it to be taught to do something with only a small handful of examples.

Plausible bull***t

GPT-3 is highly impressive. But it poses challenges too. Some of these relate to cost: For high-volume services like chatbots, which could benefit from GPT-3’s magic, the tool might be too pricey to use. (A single message could cost 6 cents which, while not exactly bank-breaking, certainly adds up.)

Others relate to its widespread availability, meaning that it’s likely going to be tough to build a startup exclusively around since fierce competition will likely drive down margins.

Christina Morillo/Pexels

Another is the lack of memory; its context window runs a little under 2,000 words at a time before, like Guy Pierce’s character in the movie Memento, its memory is reset. “This significantly limits the length of text it can generate, roughly to a short paragraph per request,” Lastovich said. “Practically speaking, this means that it is unable to generate long documents while still remembering what happened at the beginning.”

Perhaps the most notable challenge, however, also relates to its biggest strength: Its confabulation abilities. Confabulation is a term frequently used by doctors to describe the way in which some people with memory issues are able to fabricate information that appears initially convincing, but which doesn’t necessarily stand up to scrutiny upon closer inspection. GPT-3’s ability to confabulate is, depending upon the context, a strength and a weakness. For creative projects, it can be great, allowing it to riff on themes without concern for anything as mundane as truth. For other projects, it can be trickier.

Francis Jervis of Augrented refers to GPT-3’s ability to “generate plausible bullshit.” Nick Walton of AI Dungeon said: “GPT-3 is very good at writing creative text that seems like it could have been written by a human … One of its weaknesses, though, is that it can often write like it’s very confident — even if it has no idea what the answer to a question is.”

Back in the Chinese Room

In this regard, GPT-3 returns us to the familiar ground of John Searle’s Chinese Room. In 1980, Searle, a philosopher, published one of the best-known A.I. thought experiments, focused on the topic of “understanding.” The Chinese Room asks us to imagine a person locked in a room with a mass of writing in a language that they do not understand. All they recognize are abstract symbols. The room also contains a set of rules that show how one set of symbols corresponds with another. Given a series of questions to answer, the room’s occupant must match question symbols with answer symbols. After repeating this task many times, they become adept at performing it — even though they have no clue what either set of symbols means, merely that one corresponds to the other.

GPT-3 is a world away from the kinds of linguistic A.I. that existed at the time Searle was writing. However, the question of understanding is as thorny as ever.

“This is a very controversial domain of questioning, as I’m sure you’re aware, because there’s so many differing opinions on whether, in general, language models … would ever have [true] understanding,” said OpenAI’s Sandhini Agarwal. “If you ask me about GPT-3 right now, it performs very well sometimes, but not very well at other times. There is this randomness in a way about how meaningful the output might seem to you. Sometimes you might be wowed by the output, and sometimes the output will just be nonsensical. Given that, right now in my opinion … GPT-3 doesn’t appear to have understanding.”

An added twist on the Chinese Room experiment today is that GPT-3 is not programmed at every step by a small team of researchers. It’s a massive model that’s been trained on an enormous dataset consisting of, well, the internet. This means that it can pick up inferences and biases that might be encoded into text found online. You’ve heard the expression that you’re an average of the five people you surround yourself with? Well, GPT-3 was trained on almost unfathomable amounts of text data from multiple sources, including books, Wikipedia, and other articles. From this, it learns to predict the next word in any sequence by scouring its training data to see word combinations used before. This can have unintended consequences.

Feeding the stochastic parrots

This challenge with large language models was first highlighted in a groundbreaking paper on the subject of so-called stochastic parrots. A stochastic parrot — a term coined by the authors, who included among their ranks the former co-lead of Google’s ethical A.I. team, Timnit Gebru — refers to a large language model that “haphazardly [stitches] together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning.”

“Having been trained on a big portion of the internet, it’s important to acknowledge that it will carry some of its biases,” Albert Gozzi, another GPT-3 user, told Digital Trends. “I know the OpenAI team is working hard on mitigating this in a few different ways, but I’d expect this to be an issue for [some] time to come.”

OpenAI’s countermeasures to defend against bias include a toxicity filter, which filters out certain language or topics. OpenAI is also working on ways to integrate human feedback in order to be able to specify which areas not to stray into. In addition, the team controls access to the tool so that certain negative uses of the tool will not be granted access.

“One of the reasons perhaps you haven’t seen like too many of these malicious users is because we do have an intensive review process internally,” Agarwal said. “The way we work is that every time you want to use GPT-3 in a product that would actually be deployed, you have to go through a process where a team — like, a team of humans — actually reviews how you want to use it. … Then, based on making sure that it is not something malicious, you will be granted access.”

Some of this is challenging, however — not least because bias isn’t always a clear-cut case of using certain words. Jervis notes that, at times, his GPT-3 rent messages can “tend towards stereotypical gender [or] class assumptions.” Left unattended, it might assume the subject’s gender identity on a rent letter, based on their family role or job. This may not be the most grievous example of A.I. bias, but it highlights what happens when large amounts of data are ingested and then probabilistically reassembled in a language model.

“Bias and the potential for explicit returns absolutely exist and require effort from developers to avoid,” Tyler Lastovich said. “OpenAI does flag potentially toxic results, but ultimately it does add a liability customers have to think hard about before putting the model into production. A specifically difficult edge case to develop around is the model’s propensity to lie — as it has no concept of true or false information.”

Language models and the future of A.I.

Nine months after its debut, GPT-3 is certainly living up to its billing as a game changer. What once was purely potential has shown itself to be potential realized. The number of intriguing use cases for GPT-3 highlights how a text-generating A.I. is a whole lot more versatile than that description might suggest.

Not that it’s the new kid on the block these days. Earlier this year, GPT-3 was overtaken as the biggest language model. Google Brain debuted a new language model with some 1.6 trillion parameters, making it nine times the size of OpenAI’s offering. Nor is this likely to be the end of the road for language models. These are extremely powerful tools — with the potential to be transformative to society, potentially for better and for worse.

Challenges certainly exist with these technologies, and they’re ones that companies like OpenAI, independent researchers, and others, must continue to address. But taken as a whole, it’s hard to argue that language models are not turning to be one of the most interesting and important frontiers of artificial intelligence research.

Who would’ve thought text generators could be so profoundly important? Welcome to the future of artificial intelligence.

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avoutput · 4 years

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Final Fantasy VII Legacy || Nomura, Complex?

This is the 3rd out of 3 articles. Find the second here.

It’s time to get down to mythril tacks. At this point, I have talked about what this game meant to me when it was released and how it’s newest installment fared as a game. Finally, it’s time to talk about the impact the Remake has on what has unexpectedly become a robust and diverse universe. What does this mean for us at large, the players? This is a no-holds-barred SPOILER frenzy about anything and everything in the Squaresoft/Square-Enix pantheon. This means not just the games in the orbit of Final Fantasy VII, but the entire catalog at Square-Enix. To be honest, this is just the introduction, I don’t know if I even have an intent of going so far beyond the purview of the Remake, but in the spirit of the Final Fantasy gatekeeper, Tetsuya Nomura, I refuse to limit myself.

It’s been almost exactly a month since I started writing this article. It took so long to come back to this because I kept finding more and more content related to Final Fantasy 7 that I either forgot about or didn’t even know existed. On my own shelf sits Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, and Crisis Core. I decided to watch Advent Children immediately after beating Remake. As a movie fan and amateur critic, the film is littered with terrible film decisions and was clearly the work of people who spend much of their time penning and creating video game stories. It’s a series of cutscenes without a controller attached and at a certain point, you realize Advent Children was never meant for film fans, but for fans of the game. Specifically for fans desiring an epilogue and more directly fans of Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth. The story is almost unintelligible because there is tons of connective tissue left to be assumed by the viewer. It is at once too far removed from FF7 in both linear real time and in-game universe time to be recognizable, and simultaneously inexplicable in what has transpired and why. It takes a crack at explaining it from moment to moment, but largely, it looks like they were looking for excuses to push the characters to act. I am not trying to review the film but rather my intent is to create a modus opendai for the gatekeeper, Mr. Nomura. The more I learned about the world of FF7 that was being created over the years, the more it seemed to lean on the stylings of this one man. In a way, Nomura launched Squaresoft and himself into a whole new stratosphere of fame and broke all expectations. In my first article, I mentioned that for a certain generation of fans, it was the perfect storm, but I would later find out the cause of the storm was Nomura breaking open lightning in a bottle, releasing his brand of design on the world with a multi-million dollar international company backing him.

If I may, let me take a parallel series by the same creator infested by the meta of his own other original creations, namely Kingdom Hearts. In its inception, it looks like two producers at Square were trying to make a 3-D adventure platformer game with characters as popular as Mario, but only the biggest brand on earth, Disney, could possibly beat the king of platformers. Nomura was… walking by and pushed himself into the conversation, and they decided if they could do it, they would let him direct. (Read more here) Yada yada yada, Kingdom Hearts was created. While I can’t seem to find (and didn’t look too hard to find) proof, I can only imagine that with KH having a tenuous new relationship with big-corp Disney, they focused more on a simple game that was straightforward. KH is very much a disney product with a little bit of artificial Nomura sweetener. With its unbridled success, Nomura was unleashed. Kingdom Hearts 2 would go on to be, in my opinion, one of the most unintelligible video game stories ever inscribed to plastic discs. But the power of Nomura’s story-telling is that we all understand it differently. He creates bedrocks, little story islands of unshakable facts that are connected via a salty sea of undefinable liquid moments. Cast out to sea, rudderless and deprived, you try to bring to your mouth this brine only to be dehydrated faster than if you had just sailed the sea and died in the sun between fact islands or lived long enough to tell the tale. And that metaphor is my tribute to Nomura. Long, winding, hard to remember, and just clear enough that you think you got it, but you still have problems with its construction.

It has now been over two months since I have last visited this article. What is keeping me from continuing? The incomplete nature of my knowledge of Final Fantasy VII lore. Unlike the Kingdom Hearts sea, VII is like a series of interconnected caves, and the more you unearth the more you learn. And therein lies the problem. The Nomura-verse is composed of both his methods and his circumstances. His methods, we have discussed, but his circumstance is game development. Unlike movies or books, games obviously have an interactive capability, but they also have a variable development cycle. Some titles come out quickly, others span decades. They also consist of different teams, story writers, directors, and a myriad of producers. This in turn can make it much harder to make a solid universe, especially when new additions start off in a place where a continuous story was never meant to exist. Nomura is at once hindered and strengthened by his circumstances. He can’t tell a better story because the development cycle of his vision is variable, and success is based on sales and popularity. Without success, he can’t create a new addition, and often in games, the end is meant to tie the whole thing up. Were there to be a sequel, a whole new story is thought up and tacked on wherever it fits. Gamers are pretty forgiving of this concept. Still, at the same time, Nomura probably wouldn’t make a concise story because it's not his style. For comparison, see the Dark Souls series. A game that both has deep lore and an involving story, but at the same time, the game doesn’t require you to know a single point to continue moving forward. This is almost the antithesis of Nomura’s style. In Souls, they let the player decide to explore its story caves, but doesn’t confront them with it to continue advancing. This is a strength of video games. A strength that Nomura keeps using to his disadvantage.

Yet, Final Fantasy VII still excelled to unparalleled heights. It engages you in the same way all of the previous games in the series have, but with a slight departure on the strict fantasy theme, instead a merger with steampunk or semi-future. The series was changed forever, and so was gaming. Instead of doing the Dragon Quest method, expanding on the same universe design with different stories, Final Fantasy was emboldened to try completely random approaches with vector entries like VIII and X. For longtime fans, or fans of their original design, Every future title, MMO or Single Player, would go on to be successful, but not fully realized in their original context. Even the return to form in IX was much more playful than any of the original six entries. Gaming franchises have since become playgrounds for developers. Once they are accepted by fans, developers are emboldened and experiment with what would normally be a new IP, but instead use the financial shield of the famous namesake to move forward with new ideas. And in the case of Final Fantasy, when this concept of change works, it means that every numbered game becomes a wildcard. It’s a double edged sword for a gaming franchise that dates back to the 8-bit era. It has fans over 40 years old by this point and they may be willing to buy anything new. But this isn’t new to you and it isn’t a revelation for me. Final Fantasy VII Remake causes me to reckon with these demons I had buried years ago. It rips off a scab I thought had healed. I had given up on the past, a past where I was excited for a singular story, contained in a single universe, in a single title. I had given up on the glory years of Final Fantasy, but the Remake took me back and said, what if we told you everything you remember about the original was true, and everything we added after that was also true, even though you probably didn’t play it or even know it existed. Even if you do your very best, you probably won’t be able to track the story or interconnected characters if you aren’t in the know. It’s like joining a group of long time friends that are constantly referencing inside jokes, all of them just winking at each other, nudging you in the ribs and asking, “Do ya get it?” Truly, the Remake series thus far makes me feel lost at sea when what I wanted to feel like was coming home.

This retrospective has left me feeling broken. Based on the end of the FFVIIR, I sought out to reconcile all of the loose ends to all the connected media. However, spending time with the prequel Crisis Core for over around 40 hours, I realized this was a crapshoot. None of it mattered. It didn’t enrich the characters, it only made the story longer. It just added wibbly-wobbly, timey-whimey “facts” to an otherwise complete(ish) origin point. The FFVII universe can’t handle the weight that is put on it. It’s a faulty bridge over a treacherous pass. On the other hand, that same bridge for some is a point of excitement. You tread the boards, one by one, testing your weight, hoping to get to the other side intact. And I think that is why we keep trying these games and why they keep getting made. We don’t want the fun to end, despite the fact that it has nothing left for us to be excited by. It’s a closed loop that we keep looking for something new in. By the end of the Remake, we are somewhere between ⅓ or ½ way across the faulty bridge, dangling between where we have been and where it is taking us. At this point, I am too mentally exhausted from trying to make sense of it all. Yet I am incapable of not enjoying it, the mental somersaults one does to understand the interconnected mess that is Final Fantasy VII. It’s too dear to me. I got on the bridge for so many reasons, but the biggest one is to be on the other side with all of the other fans who dared to play and dared to complete the game. To be in the know, to wink across the room. I want to be in that hyper-critical utopia where we all have one thing in common: We played Final Fantasy VII in 1997. And we all have something to say about it.

#Article #Final Fantasy VII #Final Fantasy 7 #Final Fantasy VII Remake #Final Fantasy 7 Remake #Tetsuya Nomura #Yoshitaka Amano #Cloud #Tifa #Aerith #Nostalgia #Gaming #Kingdom Hearts #Squaresoft #Enix

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Why Oblivion is Still the Best Elder Scrolls Game

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With their acquisition of ZeniMax Studios finally complete, Microsoft is poised to challenge Sony’s recent reign of exclusivity dominance by potentially making the next generation of Bethesda releases exclusive to Game Pass platforms. For the moment, though, the biggest benefit of this acquisition is undoubtedly the ability to access a good portion of Bethesda’s library of classic games via Game Pass.

While most of the Bethesda games recently added to Game Pass are worth playing for one reason or another, few are more intriguing than The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Sandwiched between the releases of the revolutionary Morrowind and the eternally re-released Skyrim, Oblivion is sometimes thought of as the middle child in the modern history of one of gaming’s most beloved RPG series. Nearly 15 years after its release, though, it’s remarkably easier than ever to appreciate the many ways that Oblivion represents the very best of the Elder Scrolls franchise.

Don’t believe me? Use its recent addition to the Game Pass library as an excuse to play Oblivion again (or perhaps for the first time), and you’ll find these reasons (and more) why it remains arguably the best Elder Scrolls adventure so far.

Oblivion Has (By Far) the Best Elder Scrolls Quests and Stories

Let’s start with one thing that few Elder Scrolls fans will argue against. When it comes to quests and stories, Oblivion is a far better game than Morrowind or Skyrim.

I’ve talked about this more extensively in my look at the best Elder Scrolls quests ever, but I remain truly amazed at how much thought and creativity went into even the most “average” quest in Oblivion. That baseline level of quality is really the key point here. While many of Oblivion’s biggest quests (such as the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild assignments) are obviously memorable, even the little quests along the way that you may have forgotten about offer something special that helps them stand out.

I don’t know why the Elder Scrolls quest design and writing teams were at the top of their game at this time, but I doubt even The Elder Scrolls 6 can top the work they did here.

Oblivion Found a Nice Middle Ground Between Accessibility and Depth

For quite some time, the line on Oblivion has been that it’s the “middle” game between Morrowind and Skyrim. While that’s obviously true of its release date, that idea speaks more to the suggestion that Oblivion represents Bethesda’s struggles to balance the more hardcore RPG ideas of a game like Morrowind and the accessibility improvements featured in Skyrim.

Some say that means Oblivion doesn’t truly excel at either pursuit, but I don’t see it like that. In Oblivion, you get a taste of Morrowind’s incredible RPG philosophies and mechanics without having to deal with that game’s most annoying aspects. At the same time, Oblivion manages to be much more playable than its predecessor while still feeling deeper overall than its successor from a role-playing perspective.

Oblivion doesn’t necessarily combine the best of Skyrim and Morrowind, but it finds a nice middle-ground between those styles that’s easy to appreciate to this day.

Shivering Isles is Still the Best DLC Expansion Bethesda Has Ever Made

Granted, I can’t (and would never try to) defend most of Oblivion’s DLC. There’s a reason that “Horse Armor” is still used as the gold standard for exploitative and uninspired video game microtransactions.

However, it’s easier to forgive Oblivion‘s DLC stumbles when you realize they all eventually led to the Shivering Isles expansion. That was the expansion that finally dared to answer the question “What if The Elder Scrolls just got weird with it?” By transporting players to a land ruled by Sheogorath (the often hilarious Daedric Prince of Madness), Shivering Isles dropped most of the stuffier fantasy elements of the franchise in favor of allowing the talented Oblivion design team and writers to breathe life into their wildest ideas.

The golden age of single-player DLC expansions was highlighted by the idea of letting studios break free and truly experiment with new and strange creations that would otherwise not likely see the light of day. Shivering Isles is perhaps the greatest example of that era.

Oblivion’s Atmosphere is Consistent and Helps Tell a Story

I will freely admit that the province of Cyrodiil isn’t always the most interesting place. There are certainly times when it comes across as “Capital City, Fantasyland.”

Yet, there’s a consistency to Oblivion’s atmosphere that I remain fascinated with years after its release. While Morrowind’s alien-like worlds are hard to beat from a pure design perspective and Skyrim’s tundras offer a welcome deviation from the most common fantasy tropes, there’s something about the way that everything flows in Oblivion that I’d argue Bethesda has never quite replicated.

Individual regions of Oblivion’s map manage to remain distinct while also feeling like the logical progression of the area you just arrived from and the area you’re going to. There’s also something to be said for how Oblivion sells the idea of people battling to protect their land from invasion and corruption by presenting a fantasy world that you might actually want to live in.

Get Past Their Voice Acting, and Oblivion Might Have the Best NPCs in any Elder Scrolls Game

I’d like to argue that Oblivion’s “bad” voice acting and awkward NPC designs actually give the game a personality you don’t find in refined titles, but I understand that some rough edges are hard to ignore.

Instead, let’s focus on the ways that Oblivion’s NPCs are advanced even by modern design standards. Nearly every NPC in Oblivion has a personality of their own, something unique to say to you, and will legitimately go about a daily schedule that even changes from day to day due to their ability to make dynamic decisions rather than simply follow a tightly scripted path.

At a time when developers are sometimes more interested in putting more characters on-screen rather than crafting richer NPCs (looking at you Cyberpunk 2077), there’s something undeniably refreshing about a game that emphasizes offering more unique interactions rather than simply relying on the quantity of NPCs.

Oblivion Let You Build Wild (and Broken) Characters

The “highlight” of Oblivion‘s character-building system in the minds of many fans will undoubtedly be the time they discovered it’s possible to make a truly invisible character who can pretty much do whatever they want. That kind of mechanical exploitation is certainly one of the most noteworthy examples of how Oblivion let you run wild with the characters you created.

Yet, when I think back on my hours with Oblivion, the kinds of broken characters I appreciate most are the ones who didn’t make it far. While Oblivion’s enemy scaling system has been (often rightfully) criticized for its shortcomings, there’s something to be said for how the game’s attempts at offering a consistent challenge level meant that your design decisions were tested more often throughout the game.

It wasn’t a perfect system, but when compared to a game like Skyrim, or even titles like Destiny, where building a viable character is really about reaching higher levels and reaping the rewards, I miss, at the very least, Oblivion’s attempts to challenge me to master the character I built and the times it would actively punish my worst decisions.

Oblivion is Less About Combat and More About Adventure

In terms of pure combat, Skyrim is really in a class of its own when compared to the other Elder Scrolls games. Its improved controls, cinematic qualities, and smoother animations are more than enough to make it the favorite among Elder Scrolls fans looking for the best action.

I certainly recognize that some of Oblivion’s combat system problems are the result of bad decisions and outdated technology, but years later, I really appreciate how the game was never really about the action; it was about the adventure. Much like how Fellowship of the Ring utilized action sequences as the response to danger that our heroes otherwise tried to avoid, combat in Oblivion is just one of those things that you’ll come across as you explore but isn’t necessarily meant to be the grand set piece or the big draw.

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While Oblivion’s main questline betrays this philosophy somewhat during its most action-heavy (and often worst) moments, there’s still a sense that the game is more about exploration, storytelling, and the little discoveries you make along the way rather than a desire to get you to the next big sequence or other chances to simply fuel a power fantasy.

The post Why Oblivion is Still the Best Elder Scrolls Game appeared first on Den of Geek.

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