#man I love chibi sinnoh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

givrali · 2 years

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hi gamers im pretty much finished with my playthrough of pokemon shining pearl, i have about 80 hours on there right now so heres my review!

i dont normally post game reviews but since many of you know me as that sinnoh loving guy i figured reviewing a game i wanted for such a long time, a remake of one of my fav generation's pokemon games would make sense, and its easier to post that kind of thing on tumblr so here it goes. also this whole review is spoiler-free.

summary - i really like this game and i recommend it to anyone who loves diamond and pearl or has interest in playing them for the first time! they fix a lot of issues with the originals however there are many missed opportunities thatll talk about under the cut. this game is a good return to form of the adventure that many of us older fans felt when we first played these games as kids. i do not want this to seem like a huge blow to these games but they are not without flaws either.

graphics:

I know the chibi art style was a huge miss by many fans when it was first shown off, but ive always found it cute and fitting of the game. in its final form, the graphics of bdsp are very charming and cute and the natural scenes and backgrounds are better than theyve ever been in a mainline title. this game really does feel like how we would have imagined it as kids! the top-down style works best for this type of game and its very polished. if you still arent sold on the style, i promise that if you just get into the game and start playing it for a bit itll convince you. also this game lacks screen tearing that the originals had (yay!) and the overworld is a lot nicer to look at color-wise.

music:

I have to say i was kind of worried about what they'd do with the music, because it is probably my favourite out of the whole series, but its actually breathtaking and many tracks are a million times better than they were before. they really emphasized the jazzy-ness of this game's music which i really appreciate haha. they even added some new tracks for the post-game area and also the DS sounds key item which is so so great.

new additions:

bdsp greatly expands on the underground feature by letting you catch pokemon down there! this is a feature i never knew we needed but now that we have it oh man i could never go back. its so fun hunting for pokemon down there and digging for statues. i do kinda wish there was more multiplayer stuff you could do down there, cos rn all you can do really is dig together, but honestly thats fine by me since i didnt even get to do That in the originals.

this game also changes how contests work compared to the original dppt. i do kind of miss being able to dress up your pokemon but i do have to wonder how that would even work in a 3d game. anyway i do like the new "rhythm game" approach to pokemon super contests. they are a lot faster to do than they were before so you can do more of them in less time. sometimes the old one felt like rng cos you had to perform moves to a judge and just kinda hope no one else picked the same judge as you. i havent done a whole lot of the new contests just yet but as of now it seems like a welcome change.

bdsp also introduce walking pokemon in the overworld in almost every area, when before you could only walk with a select few in amity square. i think walking pokemon is always a welcome addition but its a bit strange to me how it was done in bdsp. its a huge upgrade from sword and shield (dlc) though i have to say. it really kinda sucks in those games because your pokemon will run to catch up with you and constantly bump into you. they dont do that as often in bdsp but there are times where if you have a slower pokemon they will just never walk with you and are always teleporting about. i think hgss really mastered the walking pokemon because they were always at the same rhythm as you were, and it just seems very half-baked into every other game they've tried to add it into since. (except let's go....it's actually pretty good in let's go.)

also, its worth mentioning that the sinnoh games are no longer extremely slow. youve all seen the meme with blissey and close combat right? yeah that doesnt happen anymore, neither does saving a lot of data (rip), and you surf faster than a snail now.

but the biggest and best feature that bdsp added was the hidden moves app in the poketch. basically, you no longer need to teach a pokemon an hm move (a field move that cannot be forgotten under normal circumstances) you can just open your watch with the R button and use a hidden move from there. its extremely handy and id recommend these games over the originals just for this feature alone. dppt have the most hms required at once time out of the entire series and not having to worry about them anymore is a HUGE plus. you can also access your pc boxes out in the overworld too instead of having to go to a pokemon center, which is awesome.

missed opportunities:

ok, now as we get into some more negative parts I have to say, yes I am aware that this game was never supposed to be a platinum remake. its a faithful remake of diamond and pearl, it is exactly what it says on the tin. (i have to say this phrasing has bugged me since the start, though, it feels like an oxymoron. of course a remake is going to be faithful?) and you know, they did add some platinum dex mons into the game via the underground feature i mentioned earlier. but my issue is, why did they only add some of them and not all? why pick and choose which pokemon we can access when the entirety of the platinum dex IS IN the game? we already know about the rotom in the old chateau and the gift eevee from bebe so why not let us access those? they seem to be walled off for absolutely no reason. and there are still so many of gen 4's added evolutions that you just cannot access within the main story, such as gliscor that you have to wait til postgame for. there is no point to these restrictions so why have them? it was literally not like that in platinum, so why go back to it? and i also like some of the changes to the gym order and designs inside the gyms they did in platinum. but plat is my fav pokemon game of all time so of course i am biased in that regard.

i also have to say that not using platinum teams for trainers like flint and volkner was a missed opportunity too. i like that gym leaders added new moves and abilities onto their team members to keep the battles fresh, but why did we have to go back to these stinky teams when we did it right in platinum? it just seems like two steps forward, one step back to me.

and this is a pet peeve to me but....where is looker???? he hasn't been in gen 8 at all???? he was introduced in gen 4 so....why not bring him back now? and where is the battle frontier gamefreak i want answers.

as for the story, ORAS is one of my fav pokemon games and i love how they freshened up the hoenn region in that remake, and i would have loved for something similar in BDSP. they ended up not doing that and we still have a good game on our hands here with bdsp, but i do think it could have been even better. i think remakes should set out with the goal to transcend the originals and create a definitive version of that generation's game. i think bdsp fell a little bit flat in that regard. we still have legends arceus coming out in about a month though. I do think that this is going to be the game that transcends and im really excited for it! but i think bdsp could have been more too.

also, why did they go back to single use tms? who is responsible for this??? i need a word.

another peeve of mine is that they did not add any pokemon past gen 4. as a kid i desperately wanted to bring my gen 5 favs into sinnoh, so that was a huge blow. again, they should have done it like oras. i dont think anyone would have minded if most of the later-gen mons were post-game anyway. and im not going to mention megas much but i like them and they would have fit so well here ok bye

glitches and crunch:

if youve been following these games since launch you know that they come with their fair share of glitches. of course, most pokemon games do. they are known for it, really. and most of them, even in bdsp, dont really come into play during your actual playthough, you have to actually go out and initiate them, and many of them are being patched right now. however, this game was also released unfinished, with a day 1 patch being required to download in order to get all of the cutscenes, music, and more. now personally i dont agree with that practice...i grew up in the sticks with the worlds slowest wifi, and i was also the type of kid who wanted to play their new games on the ride home. if your game needs an internet connection to download half of your game, that's just annoying. i know that's just the way nowadays...other consoles do it all the time, when you buy a ps4 game on the disc you have to wait for it to download too. in the age of internet its easier to patch games. back when the gba games had a glitch in them (look up ruby and sapphire berry glitch) you had to send your game back or go to a special kiosk to fix it. now you can just leave your switch on at night to download the updates. so while i definitely disagree with this decision, i can see why they did it. i really hope that doesnt become a mainstay for pokemon games going forward. its a real hassle, and encourages the harsh deadlines that nintendo and gamefreak have in place to continue.

challenge level/difficulty:

this game has a....weird level curve in it. it uses the gen 7.5/gen 8 experience share, which means that every pokemon in your party gets experience after you defeat or catch a pokemon. you are not able to turn this off, but you can put pokemon into your pc boxes to stop this effect. anyway, the original games did not have this, and were not designed around it. Around the 3rd gym or so i really felt the effect of it. my team was really getting up there in levels, and it doesnt help that the 3rd and 4th gyms are the same levels, either. so yeah it was getting clear that i was overleveled and the gym leaders and boss fights started to get kinda easy. ok, you might say, of course they were, its a kids game and a game and one that ive played before. not everyone is going to have that experience. however, the pokemon in the underground scale to your badge level, meaning they are typically around your level or higher when you go down there after a gym battle. meaning. you are going to get your ass handed to you down there. but then...not by any of the trainers in the story? probably not until the elite four, who each have ev-trained pokemon (this means they have really beefed up stats that compliment what moves theyre gonna use) with competitive battling move-sets and items. and then the champion, who has a completely cracked competitive team with items on all 6 pokemon. now many of us were thinking that they would dumb down the champion battle, but they beefed it up so so much. as an adult player of the series i really do like this level of challenge. even if youre just doing a vanilla playthrough its bound to be a little difficult. i mean it took me 3 tries! and then if youre a kid playing this game....well its never been easier to grind in a pokemon game than in gen 8. so...i dont know what to say about this i just think the difficulty in this game is kind of lopsided at times.

should you play?

as a new player: yes! these games are more accessible than the og diamond and pearl, which go up WAY past the $60 msrp if you want a legit copy. and with the additions in quality of life i think they are definitely worth it. also, they have online play which the old ones dont anymore. you can emulate, sure, i won't stop you, but if you do emulate either dppt or bdsp you wont have the multiplayer aspect either way. multiplayer adds a lot of mileage to a pokemon game.

as a veteran player: yes! these games miss a lot of content from platinum and are basically the same story, i won't deny that. but they are full of nostalgia for if you love gen 4 and have felt like newer games have been missing the mark. and if you didnt like gen 4, a lot of its issues are solved here like the hm one. this is a good opportunity to give it another chance.

#luce review #pokemon bdsp

11 notes · View notes

miraculouscontent · 3 years

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(non-ml asks)

Anonymous said:

So the Pokémon anniversary a couple of weeks back showed two very different takes in the future of Pokémon. What are your thoughts on the Sinnoh remakes and Legends Arceus?

I really hate the Sinnoh remakes. It’s not that I hate the chibi style (I mean, Pokemon started that way), but like--remake the game but just make it “the 2D game but 3D”???? Why? And it feels disrespectful because every other remake has used the style of the other games they were in (so FRLG looked like RSE, HGSS looked like DPPt, ORAS looked like XY, and most of the time, the remakes looked outright better than the style they were based on). It’s a shame because I really wanted to see an improvement from Sword and Shield, which didn’t engage/interest me and... I don’t know if this will make total sense, but instead of an upgrade from Sun & Moon, it feels like an upgrade of XY? Like, XY’s problems but with better proportions.

I’m cautiously optimistic for Legends Arceus, if only because, “YES, AN ACTUALLY SINGLE GAME INSTEAD OF THE DUAL STUFF THEY KEEP PULLING” (which was absolutely unacceptable when they got to console stuff). I actually didn’t notice the framedrop issues because I’m used to running games on a laptop that clearly isn’t made for them, so I’m sort of immune to it. I haven’t decided if I’ll get it for sure but the premise intrigues me and I really like Arceus.

Anonymous said:

How is Moroha the Marinette of Inuyasha?

- needlessly tormented by the narrative

- things that other people do to her don’t get addressed

- people closest to her are usually awful

- awesomely overpowered yet narrative will constantly have her screw up and put her down/make her feel worthless

- gets sidelined/ignored in favor of other characters

Anonymous said:

In one of your Askplosions(don't remember which one, sorry), you said that you can't stand the Tomboy Lesbian stereotype, which, to be honest, I kind of agree with. But what about Tomboy Bisexual? I guess it's not as bad if a female character's tomboyishness/girlishness isn't used as a clue as to her sexuality(like "you know she's a lesbian because she's BUTCH!!!"), but there aren't really stereotypes associated with being bi that are based in masculinity or femininity(due to bi erasure sadly.).

kfdngjdfgd I like how you had to had that bis don’t easily get stereotypes as much due to bi erasure because you’re absolutely right.

“Tombis” are fine, I have no problem with them. Any stereotype to avoid then are just the general bi stereotypes.

Anonymous said:

I was just reading TV Tropes' page for "Gratuitous Princess" and holy shit the sexism on display here is really nauseating. It's exactly like "Improbably Female Cast"(there are too many female characters here and it's uncalled for, despite it being okay for characters to predominantly be men), in that it's basically insulting any story that has anything to do with princesses at all by saying it "isn't needed". TV Tropes has always had a way of including underhanded sexism when talking about female-dominated/aimed works or tropes having to do with female characters or anything designed to appeal to female audiences; the more feminine, the more ridiculed it is by TV Tropes, despite claiming to believe otherwise.

Similar to how I complained about their "Improbably Female Cast" trope, Gratuitous Princess claims that stories with "more princesses than is plausible for the setting" are this trope because any abundance of princesses is somehow bad or doesn't make sense, even if it would make sense for there to be that many princesses/all the characters to be princesses.

For example, they claim that an entire school of princesses is implausible and "gratuitous", but if the school is intentionally meant to be a "royal" school for girls to learn to be princesses(whether or not they were actually born into royalty), then it's not actually gratuitous and makes sense within the setting! If the story follows a monarchy, it makes sense to have lots of princesses, especially if it's aimed at young girls.

If the main characters are a group of normal girls who wish they were princesses and the story follows "fantastical" versions of their imaginary princess selves, then that also makes sense, especially if the story has "every girl can be a princess" as their moral or something. There's nothing wrong with stories like that, but TV Tropes claims they're unnecessary because anything involving princesses(stuff little girls like) are automatically shoehorned in.

Just look at the examples, which are all written in an unnecessarily derogatory way, with statements such as "for some reason, she's called a princess", or "the rulers should be queens, and yet they're princesses"(when it COULD just be a principality; do your research, TV Tropes), or "how this has anything to do with princessing is never explained", as if the mere fact that she's a princess is something bad or worthy of scorn.

They even claim Sailor Moon is this trope when Naoko Takeuchi simply wanted the story to revolve around a group of girls who just so happened to be reincarnated princesses who ruled over their respective planet. It's supposed to be a girl power wish fulfillment fantasy that appeals teenage girls by showing all the girly things they like as implements of power!

And yet TV Tropes disses it for just that, because anything that's made to appeal to girls can't ever make sense. Now, if they were complaining about how, in aggregate, shows about princesses or in which every female character is a princess can reinforce the notion that the only way for a female character to be noteworthy in any way is if she's a princess, then that would be different, but that's not what's happening. They're dissing princess stories just for existing. No matter what, TV Tropes always finds something bad to say about female-driven storylines.

Always. Just look at their page for "Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls", "Pony Tale", and "Frills of Justice". There's always a mean-spirited undertone, as if they hate the very idea of these stories and narrative devices existing just because they're designed to appeal to little girls. I'm not saying you're never allowed to critique those stories the way you would any other, it's just the WAY TV Tropes does it. They're not critiquing, they're sarcastically mocking. They're going about it all wrong! And it's especially obvious when they never do it to boys' shows, even though those shows often do have messages that can actually be harmful and even ignore or objectify women. But I guess the latter is why they don't care. Boys will be boys, am I right?

Oh joy, internalized/intentional misogyny!

Ugh, I’ve been lucky enough to stay away from those articles on TV Tropes. I hate it when opinions clearly start seeping into the article.

For example, “Kiss Your Hand” (I think that’s the name) sums up the whole “hand kissing” thing and goes into detail about how nowadays it’s considered more uncomfortable/creepy, which isn’t necessarily an opinion but just detailing how the times have changed.

AND JUST LET US FEMALES HAVE GIRL SHOWS WITHOUT MAKING BACKHANDED COMMENTS.

It’s the same thing with stuff like “chick flicks,” y’know? Maybe it’s just been having to hang out with my father and hearing him make dumb blond jokes and talks about how chick flicks are boring/bad but UGH, I’m sick of it.

Anonymous said:

Hi, so I was thinking about what you said about how there aren't words for guys who act either masculine or feminine, and I agree, it's totally unfair, but technically feminine boys are called janegirls(or femboys, I don't know if that's specifically an LGBTQ+ term or not, so excuse me if it is, but I've heard it used this way before), or tomgirls(even though last time I checked, the term "tomgirl" referred to either a girly tomboy or a tomboyish girly girl, but I digress).

As for masculine guys, I'm not so sure there's a term for it, I guess since deviation from masculinity is less acceptable for men than deviation from femininity is for women(because, you know, femininity=lesser. ;(), although there IS the term "macho"...but that tends to be used in a derogatory sense nowadays. I've also heard "boys' boy", "manly man", etc. TV Tropes has a trope called "Sensitive Guy and Manly Man" as the male counterpart to Tomboy and Girly Girl. So I guess there are terms.

I also just wanted to add that the term "tomboy" technically was originally a male phrase to describe a young boy who was boisterous, loud, mischievous, and out-of-control; in other words, a misbehaved, trouble kid. I don't know how or when it got attributed to girls, I think there was the term tomgirl at one point(though now it's just used for an in-between type of girl), but even that is barely used anymore. Not sure where or when the term "girly girl" came about, though, sorry to say. ;(

Yeah, that’s true. I’ve honestly never heard the term “janegirls” before, but I’d prefer if a “““masculine”““ girl was just called “tomgirl” instead. It feels less like “girl acting like a boy” and--yeah, calling a girl one thing or another just makes it look like they’re “““different”““ from “““normal girls”““ and I just roll my eyes.

Anonymous said:

Hi, I know the post you're talking about(in your fourth non-ml Askplosion) about a boy who related more to female characters! It was on BoredPanda and it was by Damian Alexander(it can also be found on his official Tumblr), and it was called "Guy Illustrates How Boys Develop Sexism From Seemingly Small Interactions With Adults" and it was all about how he loved female characters like Matilda, Alice, Mulan, Dorothy, Anne of Green Gables, and The Powerpuff Girls, and was routinely made fun of and discouraged from liking them, even from the teacher, who assigned everybody a paper(I mean not really they were probably in pre/elementary school but whatevs) about a fictional character they looked up to, but wouldn't let Damian write about Matilda, even though she let girls write about Spiderman, Harry Potter, and Peter Pan. And he basically talked about how this kind of societal attitude conditions boys to see girls as inferior and not worthy of being looked up to. It's really interesting.

Thank you! Now people can maybe go read it~

Anonymous said:

So you talked about how shows for women are considered lame and overdramatic, while shows for men are allowed to sexualize women and still be seen as good because they're MANLY, and it just reminded me of how TV Tropes has a page called "So You Want To Write A Shonen Series" and one of their points was literally that since teenage boys are horny, they'll relate to a male lead that pervs on girls and peeps on them dressing, but that you shouldn't have the girl be aware or actually hit the boy, because that has Unfortunate Implications. What were those Unfortunate Implications according to TV Tropes, you ask? Double Standard Abuse: Female-on-Male. Wow. So basically they're saying it's perfectly okay for a boy to sexually harass a girl and show absolutely no respect for her privacy because it's what "all" teenage boys want to see/do, but the second a girl actually defends her agency it's a bad thing, and they have the NERVE to say it's sexist against BOYS on top of that. Ugh. I just...

S...sexist against boys...

I can’t--I just--

Also, cue the girl punching/hitting and then the girl is immediately considering “aggressive” for defending herself from being perved on, and even if people say that the girl didn’t deserve to be perved on, they’ll be like, “bUT SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO GO tHaT fAr.”

Anonymous said:

I just realized something: the term "uncanny valley" literally comes from the Japanese words "bukimi no tani", meaning we LITERALLY wouldn't have the English term without the Japanese one. So, yeah, tropers can shut the fuck up now about tropes having Japanese names because "no one will know what it means!". -_-

These people DO know that words in the English language are compromised/inspired by a bunch of other languages, right???

eggchjf said:

someone probably pointed this out but ALSO not only does Marinette have Homura's VA, but Alya is voiced by Mami's VA (Carrie Keranen)

why did you have to ruin everything for me

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh

Anonymous said:

Hi, I'm the Madoka salt anon. And I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry for bombarding you with all those asks. I didn't mean to be a "monster", I guess I just got carried away because, let's face it: there aren't a lot of people who dislike this show. Almost everyone glorifies this show as feminist empowerment while dismissing other Magical Girl shows as lesser than or somehow less feminist despite being written by women for women. These people won't give female authors the time of day and so when a man shows up suddenly they jump on the Magical Girl Fan bandwagon and praise it for doing what the genre has already done.

And when you do hear a different opinion, that person gets told off, insulted, blocked, downvoted, whatever because how dare you hate this show written by men for men rather than the stuff written by women for women? I once saw someone on Quora ask why Madoka was so popular when all it did was use the cliche "time loops" concept in so many other plots, and the response was literally "You didn’t know what you were looking at, so mistook your opinion for relevant commentary."

Let that sink in. If you don't agree with people who like Madoka Magica, it's because you're simply too dumb to understand how deep and complex it is, and your opinion doesn't matter. I've also heard the similar "You have no idea what you just watched" or "You're not smart enough to understand it" or "It's too complicated for you" nonsense and I hate it. Because most of what Madoka does isn't even that twisted or hard to understand; it's relatively simple when you look at it. The show just makes it dark. Monsters stealing energy from teenage girls? Sailor Moon did that and did it better(and didn't just go after teenage girls/women, so it wasn't based off sexism and "teenage girls are hysterical"). Hardships of being a magical girl? Girls uniting against evil? Female friendships/romance? So many other Magical Girl shows did that, too.

Come to think of it, Madoka Magica didn't even have the girls fight back against the system because only Madoka found a way out and purified the girls souls? Girl realizes she's been going about being a hero the wrong way and is confronted with her own selfishness? Look at Utena, which mastered this much more skillfully. Magical girl gets in a love triangle with another girl, vies for the affection of a fragile white-haired boy, and loses? Princess Tutu, except that the other girl was also a Magical Girl, they became friends and actually rebelled against the system together, and Ahiru(aka Princess Tutu) didn't fall into the pit of despair because girls should be punished for their sexualities and compete against each other for men and if a guy doesn't like you, you're worthless.

Even the whole "these girls are liches" thing wasn't very complex and well-handled as a lot of people like to think: the gems are called Soul Gems because your soul is in a gem. Wow. So clever. And they're Grief Seeds because they're seeds released from grievous witches. Also(not) clever. Even the fact that the acronyms are reversed(SG, GS) because Magical Girls turn into witches just made me go "yawn, I get it".

The whole show is just very lazily done and designed and tries too hard to be scary and deep and complex and "not like those other Magical Girl shows" while also trying too hard to make the girls super cute but also super badass so that we both are led to think it's a traditional Magical Girl show AND feel bad when these girls die because whoops they weren't so strong and badass after all!

Not to mention the whole "Magical Girls become witches just like how girls become women" thing really pisses me off because it shits on the whole coming-of-age aspect of Magical Girl as well(strong girls embracing their agency as they prepare to enter womanhood) by instead demonizing the very concept so that "becoming a woman" is a bad, vile, horrible thing(because being a woman makes you "more powerful", so the more powerful a woman is, the more mentally unstable she is) and then topping it off by having Madoka save the girls from becoming witches, aka women, making sure they never achieve a more mature state and maintain a level of childlike naivete.

It has so many misogynistic themes and concepts(girls are emotional, girls are weak-willed, girls are impressionable, girls shouldn't be selfish, girls shouldn't try to be heroes, girls should be pit against each other especially over a guy, girls shouldn't achieve power or become women, and more, and more, and more), that are stated matter-of-factly within the story and always proven right by the narrative, and yet people gobble it up and anytime somebody points it out, they are met with utter hostility.

Some people even defend it by saying those things are true! People only like Madoka because it's written by a man and depicts women suffering, in a genre written by women and meant to empower girls, which they don't like. And also because anything a man writes is automatically deeper and more valid than anything a woman writes.

So that's why when I found out that you didn't like Madoka either I was more than happy to discuss it with you, but I realize now that I was going overboard. I was just so happy that there was someone who agreed with me and actually understood what I was trying to say and found it problematic, and the fact that you say you're not that well-versed in Magical Girl proves my point even more because you don't even have to watch much Magical Girl to know that this is fucked up.

If you want me to stop sending Madoka salt asks, then fine. I'll stop. I didn't mean to bother you with these asks, I just wanted to see your point of view on Madoka Magica when everybody else is singing its praises left and right and never stopping once to actually think about it(while also claiming that people who don't like it are the ones "not thinking".). Hearing someone who's actually critical of this nonsense show is refreshing.

Firstly thank you for the ask! It’s honestly not your fault, I’ve just been struggling a bit lately with ask overloads.

That doesn’t necessarily mean I want you to stop, but I’d rather discuss it over Tumblr DMs so things are more balanced. Walls of text can be a little overwhelming for me (that’s why sometimes I try to balance my own walls of text with screenshots).

Anonymous said:

I've been thinking of how much I hate the misogyny in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, so I decided that instead of just salting about it(even though I still do from time to time because they're legitimate critiques and boy is it fun), I'm going to start talking about what I would do to improve it. Now doing this may mean it won't be the "dark" anime many people have wanted it to be, but I've been thinking of it for a while and it's my personal opinion, so let's get to it:

First, I would still have the Incubators, though they would probably have a different name because the name "Incubator" is pretty skeevy and part of a lot of the misogyny in the show. They would still recruit magical girls(who are called "Puellae Magi" in-universe, at least in the English dub and possibly some other dubs as well), only they do it for a different reason: Incubators go after teenage girls who are leading rough, difficult lives, and the magical girl contracts help them to improve their lives and give them a reason to live. They still make wishes, but the wishes don't screw them over because of their secret "selfishness".

However, if a potential magical girl is unclear or unsure of what she truly wishes for, this may lead things to go haywire. Basically, the whole magical girl thing is more heartwarming and the Incubators truly want to help the ladies in need, not just leech off of them. There's also no Soul Gems, or at least, their souls aren't actually in the Gems. They're called such because the Gems are powered by their Souls, and rather than the girls losing consciousness and "dying" when their Gems are too far apart from them, they simply lose their ability to perform magic and their magic becomes weaker. They still have stronger bodies though, much stronger than average humans, because becoming a magical girl gives them super strength/speed/stamina and all that, just WITHOUT making them liches.

Their Gems are non-interchangeable, so you can only use your own, not another girl's. As for the witches, they still exist, but witches weren't the intention of the Incubators; they're due to a botched experiment and it's up to magical girls to not only fight and defeat them, but return them to their original selves, thus showing that hope always does triumph over despair. I would also have the magical girls fight not only witches, but ordinary criminals as well, because having them fight only witches gets a little boring and predictable.

And finally, while there would still be only teenage girls who are chosen to become magical girls, it wouldn't be because they're "the most emotional" or some Hysterical Woman shit like that. It would be something more empowering, like, maybe only teenage girls are chosen because they're the most capable of magic and are simply more powerful magically than everyone else. They would still have their powers as adult women, but you have to be a teenage girl(well, one with a difficult/horrible life) to be recruited in the first place, if that makes sense.

And maybe older magical girls(well, women) would be able to mentor and assist younger ones(which is very much in-line with the coming of age themes present in magical girl, women supporting and uplifting younger girls as they advance into womanhood). This would make the claim that women such as Anne Frank, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, and Queen Himiko were magical girls less...iffy, but I still wouldn't make it so that ALL influential women were magical girls, nor that humanity would be in caves without the Incubators. There'd also be transformation/detrasformation phrases of course.

In short, the magical girl system exists more so as a form of wish fulfillment, both in and out of universe, since it's for teenage girls with rough lives who are "empowered" by becoming magical girls and getting to live out a fantasy of fighting crime while looking pretty, as an exchange for getting a wish fulfilled that will help them improve their lives. Only teenage girls have this ability because they're the strongest magic users, not because of "female hysteria". In other words, the magical girl system exists to support and benefit the girls, rather than exploit them.

Now, since I mainly went over the magical girl system itself, I'll talk about the characters. Kyoko still loves to eat, is still relatively selfish, and still has discord with Sayaka, but they overcome it and become friends MUCH sooner and in a much more natural way. Mami and Kyoko's relationship will actually be stated in-universe, not just in some side material. Sayaka still has a crush on her male friend, but confesses to him before Hitomi does. At this point, he either says yes and they hit it off but eventually don't work out and decide they'd be better as friends, or he says no and she's sad but perfectly fine with that, and encourages Hitomi to go after Kyousuke. Hitomi may do it if Kyousuke turns down Sayaka, or she may feel bad about going after him after her best friend just got turned down, especially if she's worried about getting turned down herself, since Sayaka has known him far longer so she has even less of a chance, right? If Hitomi does confess, Kyousuke WILL say yes, but because his arm was healed due to Sayaka's wish, he's more concerned about playing the violin than spending time with his alleged girlfriend and they eventually fall out. This is keeping in line with Gen's claim that Kyousuke isn't a good match for either of the two girls. Though they may get together in the future.

As for Sayaka...well, she gets with Kyoko and it's actually made CANONICAL in-universe. I don't know about Madoka and Homura though, if she's less possessive of Madoka than she was in canon then perhaps she has a shot. Either way, I would really love if the ships were actually canon and not just queerbaiting. Regardless, Sayaka and Hitomi stay friends. Also, on a meta level, I would really love it if there were more female writers on Madoka Magica, and that the show was targeted towards a female viewing audience, which would mean toning down the fanservice(if not removing it entirely), as well as the troublesome aspects, as I've talked about earlier. And no "torturing young innocent girls and restricting their agency" since that's not what the magical girl genre is about and it never has been. This probably means more episodes though. Anyway, there's probably more stuff I'm forgetting, but to sum it up, this is how I would fix Madoka Magica. What do you think?

I think it’s a really good idea!!! Refreshing~ You know I’m all about fix-its.

Plus, all I heard was “Madoka Magica without being edgy” and I’m like, “yes please, I’m here for it.”

Anonymous said:

About Improbably Female Cast, it has come to my attention that Madoka Magica has been removed from the list. Someone in the discussion section of the trope removed it saying that since it's a magical GIRL show, it having a majority female cast isn't "improbable". The Touhou example is still there, though, because there's apparently something wrong with stories that have less men than women or have next to no men in them. Because a prominent male character is a requirement to tell a good story.

They also removed Strawberry Panic! because it takes place in an all girls' school, and Y: The Last Man, because it takes place in a futuristic world where almost all the men died. But still, the fact that those examples were there at all speaks volumes about the double standard there at TV Tropes. Even if the story has a realistic and plausible reason for the setting to be mostly female, as the examples above are, TV Tropes still considered them improbable. It's as if TV Tropes doesn't just dislike/question stories about a mostly female cast when it doesn't "have" to be, they dislike/question majority female casts in GENERAL! And the closest they have to a Spear Counterpart is Cast Full of Pretty Boys, which is a totally different trope: a cast in which most of the characters are "bishounen" aka pretty boys, because it appeals to a female demographic.

So it's "justified" but female casts aren't. And the playing with section reeks of "Stay in The Kitchen" sexism, with statements can be okay or even exist is if it's a harem or exists to titillate men who crave girl-on-girl interaction(and in fact, the main page lists this as their FIRST reason such a cast would exist, appealing to little girls and/or queer women is secondary/tertiary in their eyes), and the situations they propose in which the trope could be played with almost all involve the few boys attempting to hook up with as many women as possible or manipulating the women to fall in love with them, with the so-called justification that "the viewers just like their lesbians". And almost all their quotes(same on the Playing With page) are about people whining and complaining that the cast has too many girls in it. The Image Links section even has a link to a picture of two boys griping and bleating about the lack of boys in whatever show they're watching("They don't appeal to our demographic!" "Why are there no boys in our story?"), which TV Tropes has the nerve to call a "witty observation".

But what pisses me off even more is the fact that a predominantly female cast even NEEDS a justification in the first place. They only pulled specific examples of shows that supposedly dictated that the cast MUST be mainly female: Magical Girl shows, all-girls school settings, stories in which the entirety of men were killed off...only in extreme circumstances can you "resort" to using female characters but if the situation was reversed, the male equivalent wouldn't be considered improbable to BEGIN WITH. And this is despite the fact that the discussion page is FULL of people saying the trope should be renamed because of sexism, detailing many things I'm detailing right now, to the point where it's even gone off TV Tropes and is right here on Tumblr itself(one troper called it "PC whining", just ugh)! I just wish TV Tropes would realize the inherent sexism in calling such a cast improbable, since it makes it look like they're unhappy with the representation. Then again, they might be.

I’VE NOTICED THAT TOO, YEAH.

show: *has predominately female cast*

people: oKaY I guess that makes sense bUT ONlY BECAUSE--

And because misogyny isn’t as widely discouraged as... example, people would be absolutely crucified for complaining about a show having “too many POCs”... it means that those comments usually get ignored.

Anonymous said:

The Improbably Female Cast talk, especially the part about men complaining when stories have mostly female characters/seeing spaces that are 1/3 female as "majority female", reminded me of how I saw a study somewhere talking about the differences between how men and women dream, and it was saying that men's dreams tend to have more men than women in them, while women's dreams tend to have an equal amount of members from both sexes. Yikes. Even in their sleep men want women out of the picture.

And just in case you're curious, I found the study itself! It's called "Gender Similarities and Differences in Dreams", though if you look up "differences in how men and women dream" it should be the second thing under the link that also includes a snippet of the article. To quote the study itself: "there is a gender difference in how often men and women include male and female characters in their dreams: men dream twice as often about other men as they do about women(67% vs. 33%), and women dream equally about both sexes (48% men, 52% women). This is the largest difference between American men and women." Ouch. Granted, it's specifically talking about Americans, but I don't even want to imagine how even more skewed it probably is in men's favors for men in other countries(not gonna name drop any ACTUAL countries obviously.)! Internalized misogyny runs deep, to the point where men can't even conceive of women having a more significant role than them in anything, even in dreams.

And it runs deeper than that, too. I saw a post on Micechat called "The Smurfette Principle" by JMora. You probably already know what that is, but just in case you don't(or anyone else reading this doesn't), it's a trope describing the tendency for works to have a disproportionate amount of male characters with only one female in the group, if not the whole cast(named after Smurfette, the only female Smurf). The entire article is really well written and it discusses the gender disparity in fiction quite nicely, but what I'd really like to call your attention to is near the end, where they talked about how this effects kids, especially boys.

Movies that make most of their characters male while shoehorning females in female-specific roles are treating maleness as the default while femaleness is a special case, and this leads to films about men being seen as "unisex" while films about women are seen as "for girls" only. As a result, this leads to little girls being willing to watch movies about boys AND girls, while little boys watch movies only about other boys.

This also extends to the stories they write. Girls write stories with male and female protagonists equally, while boys almost exclusively write stories with male protagonists. Girls' stories tend to have a mixture of boys and girls, whereas boys' stories have all boys in them. It relates to what I was saying earlier about how men's dreams have mostly male characters while women's dreams are equal: how our society conditions boys to think that girls just aren't important and don't matter much. To quote the article, "Girls already know they can be the main pirates; it's the boys who aren't getting the message". Thankfully my little(male) cousin likes shows about girls and shows about boys just as much: he likes Pirates of the Caribbean, and he also likes Enchanted. But the majority of boys still dismiss shows for girls as "girly" as if girly is a bad thing but boyish isn't, and when they don't it's weird.

The best part is that this led someone else to realize their own mistakes regarding overrepresentation of men vs underrepresentation of women. A guy named Mouse Macabre realized that the comic he was working on had 8 main characters, 6 male, 2 female, and had to go back and work so that there was an equal amount. All he had to do was make two of his male characters female, and there you have it! Four male main characters, 4 female! Then why is it so hard for the majority of men these days?

Ugh, I don’t know. Like, as soon as people hear “we’re adding more characters for equality/to give women more attention,” it suddenly becomes “““forced.”““

Alright then I guess we’ll just have a bunch of white male shows then because adding diversity is forced and uNnaTuRaL.

We had POCs and more female characters and suddenly certain white males feel ignored and disenfranchised. :|

Poor things, not like there are ten millions other things they could be watching instead.

Also, inevitable response to the dream thing: men agreeing to dream more about woman... but they’re sexualized.

#other: non ml talk #other: ask and answer

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