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beevean · 10 months

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...so wanna rant about Netflix Isaac for a few minutes ? :P

My calm and collected reaction when I read this ask.

I was just debating on how to write about Isaac and N!Isaac (or Abraham, as I prefer to call him). Unlike Hector and N!Hector (Caesar), where I could prove that the latter could have been like the former if not for terrible writing… I simply do not like Abraham. At all. The more I think about him, the more resentful I feel, which I know it’s not fair because 99% of my resentment comes from people shitting on Isaac to prop the guy. I honestly simply wanted to explain why Isaac is deeper than people give him credit for, and leave Abraham aside, since, as we all know, the dude has nearly nothing in common with his canon counterpart.

… but if you ask so nicely :)

So alright. I will primarily talk about my man Isaac, because I love him and he deserves more love; by doing so, I’ll also explain why there was zero need to turn Abraham into Diet Hector :)

Since this first part mainly focuses on the prequels, as a counterpart to Season 2, it’s better to start with the biggest misconception about Isaac, and what almost certainly lead to Abraham becoming what he became: his personality.

To give a summary of Isaac as most fans know him, he’s extremely flamboyant, theatrical, cruel, consumed by hatred, but also intelligent, strong and determined. He doesn’t appear much, but he steals the scene every time he does. He acts in theory as the rival, much like his predecessors Hugh and Maxim, but he’s far more antagonistic than either of them: he’s not a friend to be saved, he’s an enemy to be punished for his crimes. However, much like the other rivals, he’s strictly connected to the protagonist, and the story treats him as a victim in its more important moments.

Kou Sasakura, who was a hired writer, kept herself fairly close to the game: you can tell not only from the accurate Innocent Devils she drew, but because, well, there’s not much difference between her Isaac and the game one. He’s already dressed in his magnificent CoD outfit, he’s pretty much a dick to everyone who isn’t Dracula, he talks about troops of people dying with glee and boasts about embracing the “laws of heresy”: clearly, he has never been particularly sane to begin with. He’s an entertaining asshole, as he should be. That’s not to say he’s completely flat, though: there’s still plenty to say about this version.

Instead it’s Ayami Kojima, who worked directly on the characters (and clearly preferred Isaac), who wrote a mini-arc to actually show what the Curse did to him. And therefore, he starts off quite unlike one would expect. These posts explain how, in Kojima’s interpretation, a non-Cursed Isaac is an honorable warrior who respects Hector even in battle, cares about a fair fight, is just as compassionate towards his Innocent Devils as Hector is, and is even sensitive to his Lord’s plight. He also uses an elegant sword, rather than his iconic and brutal Chauve-Souris. This paints him as an even more tragic character, and gives weight to Julia’s words when she says that “[her] brother is in the venomous grip of the Curse”.

… but of course who even read Prelude to Revenge :^) certainly not our man Ellis :^)

Abraham has none of this. At the start of the series, he’s not charming, nor he has hidden depths. What you see is what you get: a stonefaced, serious, no-nonsense, contemplative man who hates humankind and trusts Dracula without question and beyond reason, the latter being literally the one thing that connects him to the name Isaac. He self-flagellates, which I can only assume it’s meant to reference Isaac’s BDSM aesthetic – Abraham even changes reasons for doing so between Season 2 (a self-focusing discipline, implied to be a result of the abuse he went through) and 3 (a religious practice), before dropping it completely.

On his own, he’s… fine, I just think he’s pretty dull because he has no quirks or anything that makes him stand out, but he didn’t irritate me as Alucard did. I enjoyed his utter trust in Dracula, which makes him far less approachable compared to the manipulable Caesar: notably, poor Godbrand didn’t even finish airing his grievances to him before getting swiftly killed, and never mentioned again. This establishes Abraham as being strong, efficient, fanatical, and even concerned for his Master’s mental wellbeing – no point in telling him what happened, right?

As someone who is presented as being Isaac, he irritates me: he feels scrubbed down, neutered, because Ellis or whoever was responsible for the personality change clearly thought there was nothing salvageable about Isaac, and removed everything that made him iconic save for the simpness. Well, they were wrong.

Isaac doesn’t get a childhood flashback like Hector, but we see the day he found Dracula’s castle, which tells us already his priorities. His past doesn’t really matter: his devotion to his Lord does. His blind loyalty is his defining characteristic.

Look at this little baby, so happy to have finally found a place that can welcome him and his little sister <3 he has no idea what fate has in store for him <3

But yes, Isaac’s very young age in this scene tells us a lot without actually showing us what he went through. Whatever happened to him broke him far more than Hector’s own traumatic childhood: poor kid can’t be older than thirteen, and he’s already bragging that he has turned his back against God.

In CoD, Julia says that she escaped from the witch hunts in Western Europe. We don’t know if she meant in adulthood or childhood. If the latter, then Isaac was probably involved as well.

We also see that he still cares about Julia, and he wants her to come with him. Sadly we don’t know what happened to her afterwards – if we go by their canonical ages, she’d be a very young child here – but she’ll be important later. Presumably, Dracula didn’t want to take in such a young, inexperienced witch, while Isaac’s more cursed powers could already be honed.

The other half of his flashback chapter in the MF manga sets up other important factors:

Isaac is learning to Forge Devils, but he has trouble with stabilizing them: Isaac is talented, but just not enough, and it’s not a surprise that being “stable” is what gives him the most trouble (we can infer Hector never had an issue with that, as he’s more levelheaded than his companion);

The Succubus taunted Isaac that he’d be surpassed by a new boy: this establishes his inferiority complex, and while this never comes fully into play in the same way it does for other rivals, the implication is that he always saw Hector as an adversary, and it bred even more animosity in his easily corruptible heart;

isaac is the gayest man in wallachia seriously have you seen how he looks at hector

So this is Isaac. What about Abraham?

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Since Isaac’s childhood is far less defined, Abraham had to get his own unique tragic past. Admittedly, not much to point out here: he used to be the slave of a priest who abused him (because CHURCH BAD), but nonetheless Abraham fell in love with his master, and when he confessed, he got punished for it. After killing him, Abraham spent his life on the run, hunted by other people who wanted to kill him and worse, until Dracula personally rescued him. I like how this, much like the MF flashback, paints Abraham as someone who has the tendency to cling to his masters no matter what; and while I prefer the idea of Hector and Isaac knocking on Dracula’s door, I don’t mind the man himself actually helping Abraham. Indeed, Dracula treating him like an outright friend ensures that Abraham will be 100% devoted to him. (if only Dracula’s good relationship with Abraham didn’t come at the cost of the two of them shitting on Caesar…)

Speaking of Caesar! You can’t talk about Isaac without mentioning his crush relationship with Hector! And how it was turned in NFCV :)

Sadly, both mangas give us meager crumbs of what the two thought of each other before Hector’s betrayal, and they diverge quite a bit.

Not much to say about what very little is shown by the PtR manga: Isaac comes off as friendly… or as friendly as he can be:

That power... Perhaps you can become even scarier and crueler than me…

The two even have something resembling a heart-to-heart conversation: Isaac more or less attempts to calm down Hector when he’s in the middle of a morality crisis, although by downplaying his grievances. If the two were friends, they weren’t close ones, or maybe their different moralities were already driving a wedge between them.

The MF manga emphasizes the resentment Isaac felt for Hector, “from the moment [they] first met”:

When he has the confirmation that Hector is alive and has hidden himself on holy grounds, Isaac is ecstatic to face him, so much that he kills his own underlings to go against Dracula’s express order to bring Hector back to him. He is that determined to not only prove his strength to his Lord, but most importantly to kill the traitor with his own hands.

Of course, things may not be as clear-cut as he pretends to be :) He even tried to spare Hector, allegedly in the name of their Lord, but who knows :)

Yeah, who knows.

And CoD itself, while sadly barely touches on Hector and Isaac’s former relationship, gives us another little gem:

I know that Julia has some kind of divination powers, but this doesn't seem like the kind of information she could garner from them. He told her, didn't he?

I was, as you can imagine, immensely disappointed that Abraham and Caesar’s relationship is barely on the level of “coworkers reluctantly forced to share a building”. Abraham’s lack of respect for Caesar is not endearing at all: he treats him with condescension, he insults him behind his back (and to Dracula’s face, who seems to agree with him, and yet again I must ask why did he choose someone he thinks he’s a complete idiot as a General), but he still has time to make a joke about kissing him which at this point comes off as even inappropriate. Caesar, on his part, seems to ignore his existence until Carmilla reminds him of the fact. Not only this complete lack of chemistry is utterly boring, and doesn’t take advantage of the potential differences between the two characters, but it becomes a characterization issue later on.

This all culminates in the fateful moment when Hector and Isaac fight right outside the Castle, freedom and loyalty clashing! And its NFCV equivalent, which has Caesar being dragged against his will into Carmilla’s assault of the castle, and Abraham being yeeted away by Dracula. Yeah, the two don’t fight at all. Because why have a compelling relationship in this show when you can rely on snarky one-liners.

The exact events of the fight differ between the two versions, but they hardly matter in the long run. What matter is that the two fought to the death, Hector emerged superior, and Isaac discovered to his immense horror that, without him and Hector guarding the castle, Trevor Belmont and the others managed to slay Dracula.

Both versions are heartwrenching.

Not only the Curse that Dracula cast upon his death already reached his Generals, but Isaac had a full mental breakdown. You can tell he’s blaming himself for not protecting his Lord, and laments that he has to live without him – Lord Dracula was everything to him, and now that he has failed him to this degree, what else has he to live for?

Why, Hector himself. He can blame him. He was the one who ran away, he was the reason Dracula had to send Isaac in his pursuit. Sure, the Belmont is the one who physically dealt the killing blow, but maybe, if Hector remained loyal, the two could have defeated him together. Even in CoD, Isaac doesn’t direct his fury at Trevor (in fact, in the Japanese version, he even compliments him), because Isaac’s main concern isn’t not him: it’s his former friend who turned his back on him and their Lord.

And what can I even say about this masterpiece from PtR?

I won't let you say that your rebellion has nothing to do with this! Had you cut off my head as well, I would not have seen this… Hector!

Isaac crawled back in shame using his broken sword as a cane, fully expecting to be punished by Dracula for once again proving how inferior he was to Hector. He did not expect to come back to this.

Not only Hector deliberately left Isaac alive, which comes off as a humiliation (interesting contraposition to the MF version, where it’s Isaac who grants Hector mercy in the name of Dracula – they will both regret their decision)… these pages really convey just how much Hector’s defection has taken away from Isaac. In one fell swoop, he has lost his beloved Lord, the only place he could call home, the closest thing he had to a friend, and the work of his lifetime. Is it any wonder that even in this version, he seems to regret that he has to live? Is it any wonder that he’d be fueled for three years with pure hatred for Hector?

In short, Isaac has every single understandable reason in the world for wanting Hector dead.

What’s Abraham’s reason?

First of all, Abraham is, technically speaking, also partially responsible for the fall of Dracula’s castle. While Isaac lost everything through no fault of his own (yes, he killed his underlings in the MF manga and that’s fucked up, but that did not influence the chain of events at all), Abraham was also roped by Caesar into asking Dracula to move the castle under Carmilla’s request. His first reason for agreeing was even “it will stop her from making mischief”, which is a nice way to say “Iook I just want her to shut the fuck up”. Agreeable, surely, but I feel less sorry for him.

But that’s not the issue. The issue is that the Hector vs. Isaac fight simply did not happen, because Caesar did not flee on his own (because he was prevented from having agency), so Abraham was sent away by Dracula when the assault started, out of concern for his soul (or because Dracula wanted to die in peace), and Abraham only knew that Trevor, Sypha, Alucard and the Styrian forces were attacking, not that Caesar was involved.

Thematically, I like that Abraham chose to die for Dracula, but Dracula denied him the choice. He’s a tool, and he’s not even allowed to die on his own terms – much like Isaac, who was forced to live. But I’m still not satisfied.

So, Abraham gave zero shits about Caesar, knew that Carmilla was bad news from the start (but still agreed to her idea), didn’t actually see how the battle ended, actually saw Trevor and the others storm in with his own eyes, and didn’t know that Caesar “betrayed” Dracula.

Why in the fuck is he so pissed at Caesar? What weight does his revenge plan have?

This is what happens when you shoehorn a plot point you read on the wiki without understanding the context. Abraham by all means should either blame himself, or blame Carmilla exclusively. His animosity makes far less sense, and I don’t feel as sorry for him.

On top of this, his loss doesn’t feel as severe. Yes, he was separated from his Lord/friend and the castle, but he still had his immense power (even his Forging knife; he didn’t even have to, for example, find himself another weapon while living vulnerable in the meantime), and he actually has lived in the desert before, meaning he knows how to move and what to do. He also is not afraid of travelling among humans, while Isaac couldn’t let himself be seen even if he wanted to (he looks very visibly “wrong” for the average Middle Age person, and that’s not including the possibility that he was known in Wallachia). He did not lose his entire life: there is simply a big obstacle in his way.

Before I move on, two interesting scenes to compare are the different versions of the Hector vs. Isaac fight, mostly for what the latter says.

In the PtR manga, Isaac seems to be genuinely resentful of how humankind treated him:

Were we known in the human world, we would be chased away with stones… A place where we can exist… a place to cling to… Where was it?!

This is fairly in line with what you would expect from him: humans hated him, so he hates human in return, and this is why he’s outraged that Hector would even dare to turn his back to their Lord.

But the MF version has a slightly different flavor:

I pointed out different times that Isaac seems to put more focus on how humans did not respect Dracula enough than how they were cruel towards Hector and him. And indeed, Isaac rarely if ever expresses outright misanthropic views, in the same way Dracula does. This is a more interesting approach, in my opinion: Isaac genuinely doesn’t care about mankind, he’s not motivated by spite against them, he’s only motivated by the love and gratitude he feels for the first creature who showed him respect. And if said creature orders him to slaughter humans, oh well.

I have already talked extensively about Isaac’s “tool” mentality, so I won’t repeat myself. Long story short, Isaac nearly dehumanizing himself and refusing to have his own agency outside of Lord Dracula acts as a contrast to Hector, whose main goal is to gain agency over his own life.

Needless to say, Abraham gets this only halfway through. Yes, he also starts the series believing to be Dracula’s tool. Unlike Isaac, though, he spends two season unable to shut up about how much he despises mankind and considers them the root of all evil and believes that by exterminating mankind the world will be full of love. His dialogue gets incredibly repetitive in no time flat. Abraham is not endearing: he's pretentious.

So I suppose it’s time to jump to the three years between CV3 and CoD/Season 3.

In short, my man Isaac is not coping well with the divorce :’D

This post by @the-crow-binary is a great breakdown of Isaac’s mental state in the MF manga. The Curse has taken a hold of him already, and he’s ranting, obsessed, shaking in fear and rage: an absolute mess.

Still better than how we find him in PtR:

Mmh… So you can make that kind of face… I've gotten a lot better too... How many times has the moon waxed and waned, I wonder? That’s a nice expression… I'm happy. Good pain is proof of life. I won't grant you the peace of death so easily: live, spit blood, and then…

Lord Dracula is with us!

As I have pointed out, in this version, Isaac rotted the entire time completely alone in the ruins of his old home, easy prey for the Curse. He had nowhere else to go, and apparently he didn’t consider to find his sister again. Anyone would have gone mad, even without Dracula's help.

(side note, I love love love how this manga justifies Isaac's iconic outfit by showing that Hector ruined it first, and then Isaac let it fall off his body, no longer in the conditions to care:

Hector broke Isaac's outfit. Hector broke Isaac's mind and heart. It's so interesting how Hector truly is the villain in Isaac's story <3)

And speaking of broken heart! I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this small detail of Isaac writing Hector's name on the sole of his boot. Whether you interpret it as a hex or him expressing twisted romantic feelings, one thing's for certain: Hector is at the forefront of Isaac's thoughts. I cannot stress enough how personal Isaac's revenge is, much like Hector's own revenge quest will be.

This is how we feel the weight of his devious plan to get revenge on the man who took everything away from him, by taking his hard-earned happiness away as well.

So how’s Abraham doing?

This is the part of the show where he turns from secondary antagonist to full protagonist and darling of the narrative.

Season 3 is where Abraham supposedly starts his super compelling character arc, moving away from being Dracula’s tool and giving himself a new purpose. Allegedly, his ingrained misanthropy gets constantly challenged by actually experiencing human kindness, although sadly the lessons don’t quite stick. On paper, this sounds very intriguing, not unlike Hector learning what love is thanks to Rosaly (hint hint). However, I find the execution laughable at best, and irritating at worst.

This is what Abraham does in this season. He decides that he wants a big army, which means killing humans. He travels. He meets a kind shopkeeper that gifts him a mirror that tells him where to go next. He’s stopped by guards because he has an army of demons: Abraham is sad that they’re not as kind as the previous person and kills them. He travels. He boards a ship with an intriguing captain, who manages to tell him that committing human genocide would deprive the world of happiness. He’s stopped by guards because he has an army of demons: Abraham is sad that they’re not as kind as the previous person and kills them. He travels. He talks with a philosopher demon who tells him that CHURCH BAD. He meets a woman that tells him where to go next. He kills a bunch of people and kills a magician.

This is… not really an arc. Abraham allegedly takes one step forward, and then immediately one step back. He doesn’t get better nor worse. He just talks a lot in the meantime pretending to be deep.

Now, I do like the scenes with the shopkeeper and the captain, those two are well written; I also like Miranda as a look on what Abraham could become if he gets consumed by despair, ironically acting as the Isaac to Abraham’s Hector (hint hint). But this scene, one of the most popular ones for Abraham, pisses me off.

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Abraham wants to travel with a giant army of demons in tow. The guards insist that he must turn back because, well, giant army of demons. This is literally the second time in a row that this happens, hence the famous “is this the definition of insanity?” quote. Oh, but not because Abraham is stupid in expecting that humans would move out for him, but because poor thing, he really had hopes that humans could be good, but no, they keep hurting him! By doing their job! Oh no, they are slightly aggressive to the dark wizard who can control demons, how awful of them!

Sure, Abraham is correct in saying that he literally can’t turn back because he’s at the harbor, and yes the guards had no chance against Abraham, but the way this scene is framed, we’re supposed to feel sorry that poor little Abraham got confirmation that all humans are stupid and evil after all, and really, is it any wonder that he snapped and killed them all?

This is what Isaac would do. Slaughtering a bunch of humans because they were “fucking rude” to him? It’s just as cartoonishly evil as Abraham fans accuse Isaac of being. Except that in his case, it would be clear that he’s batshit insane, and not in the philosophical way Abraham pretends to be.

Abraham ends Season 3 in the same place where he started, and I have no idea how he managed to become this popular.

Most insultingly, Abraham isn’t allowed to lose. Abraham isn’t allowed to be set back. In the season where every character suffers, is traumatized, or loses something (Caesar and Alucard being by far the worst victims), Abraham ends the season happily killing brainwashed people to then kill a generic magician to get to a magic mirror that would lead him directly to his destination, along with the army of demons that he created by killing people, after a lady he happened to meet told him about the existence of said mirror.

People in NFCV can smell magic? Well, I can smell favoritism.

But okay, he’s still a bad guy, right? I’m not meant to sympathize with him, right? I’m just in for the ride because he’s “cool”, right?

Enter CoD/Season 4.

You, who gave up your powers and became the lowest of the low, nothing but mere scum.

Sadly, CoD has a severe dearth of Isaac appearances, after the iconic first cutscene. He is as I described him in the beginning: an utter bastard. However, I appreciate his overall plan that sets up the whole plot.

There is a lot of speculation and holes-filling to do here (I suspect he had Death’s help, at least when it came to the Infinite Corridor part of the plan, but we have no proof), but the point is, he has all the means to inflict a most terrible punishment on Hector, by taking advantage of the Curse that he’s spreading and that consumed him, and also by taking advantage of Hector himself. The two knew each other well: Isaac knew that Hector would be unstoppable in his quest for revenge, to the point that he felt confident enough to spell out his plan, which is to guide Hector so that he can regain his cursed powers (even drawing schemes to explain how to Forge, which is hilarious when you think about it). What would Hector do anyway, give up? That’s not like him. Isaac knows this. The only part he omits is that he needs those immense powers not just to make their fateful match worth it, but to break the seal that prevents the castle from resurrecting. A very clever spin on the classic “get stronger so that our fight will be worth it” plan.

(contrast this well-thought out plan with Abraham getting everything he wants on a silver platter.)

We also get a cute moment where he retreats at the sight of Julia, almost as if he was afraid of hurting her, implying that he can feel more than smugness and rage.

Sadly, the end of his story is not a happy one. By the time he faces Hector like he wanted, his former friend is absolutely livid that he had been played like a fiddle… and more important, he regained all of his strength. Which was more than Isaac’s. Oops, that part wasn’t very well thought-out. But it’s not Hector who kills him: he saves himself from the Curse taking complete hold of him just in the nick of time. No, it’s Death, who decides to use the “other one” (even making fun of him in the process) to resurrect Dracula. Either the ritual or Hector slashing his possessed body to pieces puts an end to Isaac’s madness. Despite Julia’s best wishes, Isaac never rose from the darkness that consumed him. He constantly chose loyalty to Dracula and hatred, and that doomed him. Furthermore, his own name acted as an omen: much like the Biblical Isaac, he was set to be sacrificed in the name of the closest thing to a God he worshipped.

As for Abraham… at this point in his arc, it’s pointless to compare him to Isaac, because he has officially turned into Hector. By reversing Isaac’s downfall, the writers accidentally recreated Hector’s character arc of finding agency for himself, killing the person responsible for his pain (well, he wants to, but Carmilla in true #girlboss fashion peaces out on her own terms), and then moving on from Dracula, accepting to live in full. It’s. It’s Hector. Except worse.

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What else can I say? Abraham got his revelation off screen, during a time-skip: now he wants to create, to do good in the world like when he killed the evil magician. He sets out to invade Styria to kill Caesar, but then changes his mind at the last second, and even tells him to not go with his plan of resurrecting Dracula. No internal struggle, just a ton of words. No mention of all the people he has gleefully killed for petty reasons. No remorse at all. Not an obstacle he had to overcome. Not even an ounce of self-loathing that at least made Hector more sympathetic. Abraham fails at being a good reinterpretation of Isaac, and fails at being an interesting anti-hero with a solid journey.

To be clear, I'm not saying he should have died like Isaac. Again, at this point I accept that he became Hector. But his happiness simply doesn't feel earned. He got what he wanted after a fairly small loss (Dracula died, sure, but he never got confirmation for that), and he had his character development offscreen. His narrative is a rushed version of what Hector was allowed to be through two mangas and a game, and yet he's the one hailed as the best character of all time.

Just to cap it off, I can’t help but complain about how dull and forgettable Abraham’s design is. He’s literally just a man who walked into the set and stole Isaac’s full Devil Forgemaster outfit. There is no reason for him to be associated with red (his magic), since the Red Oni Blue Oni dynamic with Caesar has been lost. His tattoos do not convey anything, and we rarely see them in full anyway. Also why does he have a different crest on his back???? IT'S A UNIFORM! It drives me mad! At least try to understand the source material for fuck's sake!

Isaac is iconic. He’s immediately recognizable in the Castlevania cast, but still fitting in thanks to key elements. He doesn’t look fully human, with his bright red hair and yellowish eyes: he doesn’t have the typical Kojima pretty face, but he has more distinguishable features such as a big nose: the tattoos tell a whole story about him and it’s fun to imagine what they symbolize – high pain tolerance? A desire to defile his own body to spite God? Some arcane symbol, the result of a ritual? And then there’s the Devil Forgemaster crest forever embedded in his back, representing his full devotion and the fate he could not escape from. He truly looks like everything Hector isn't.

This post got long. And again, I didn't even care to talk about Abraham, because I don't like him one bit and because I love Isaac independently from this overhyped character. But hey, you asked, and I ranted with great pleasure :P

also have this absolute banger

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does abraham have a sick ass theme? yeah didn't think so

#castlevania #curse of darkness #isaac laforeze #anti netflixvania #long post #like really long #like really fucking long #oh my god it took me a whole ass day #and i had to watch nfcv clips for this it did not calm me down at all #at least i got to explain why i love isaac so much in a convenient masterpost

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duskwingmoth · 8 months

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I'm of the opinion that Hideo Kojima was leading Metal Gear in increasingly tight concentric circles to the point that if he hadn't left Konami, the next Metal Gear after V would have strangled the series to death on its own insular plotting. His storytelling tendencies have only gotten increasingly esoteric and abstract as his career has worn on, his obscene loreboner is always erect, and he made no secret of his exhausted resentment of his own series over the years.

All three were very bad developments for a series whose roots are poignant post-Soviet political commentary and the real-world implications of nuclear weaponry giant death robots. Did the injection of philosophical musings on the nature of heritage and culture add a good post-modern spice to the series? Hell yes. But after the PS2, when these themes began to overtake the political commentary, you can feel the series start to lose itself. It detaches from the real world, from its own world, from its own characters, as they devolve into plot points and mouthpieces for Kojima to muse on human nature and the purpose of life, polemics ranting themselves at each other atop Mount Snakemore.

Sometimes an elderly Navajo man talks about how much he loves cheeseburgers and they're the only good colonial invention, and that's fun. I agree with that. But all the implications of his part in a story about colonization desecrating indigenous culture and atomizing native people is so buried by layers of metaphor and avant-garde storytelling and literary reference and being sidelined because Phantom Pain is really about the hollowness of chasing retribution and Cowboy Freddy Krueger being mad he had to clean up after Big Boss' dumb ass for several years (*sharp inhale*), that it ends up toothless. No point to make, because it's behind the hazy spectre of Metal Gear Solid. A grandiose video game ouroburos, a selfish, controlling, tired auteur's albatross of an opus.

Revengeance is an antidote for all this, as it reaches beyond The Saga Of Snake into a world that, while still divorced from itself, is far more grounded in the physical, the geopolitical, in exploring the logistic ramifications of all the Weird Plot Shit in MGS4, (accidentally) tapping into a very real and very dangerous sentiment that was brewing in the United States at the time that would boil over a few years later. It isn't perfect, it's far less intricate than Kojima's work, but it's such a breath of fresh air; a clear and strong sign of life in Metal Gear as a concept. It can absolutely persist beyond Kojima, provided it's allowed to leave The Dynasty behind.

I of course had the exact same thought about Star Wars in 2017, and I expect my hopes would be similarly snuffed out with regards to Metal Gear, should it move forward after Delta and the imminent rereleases. But there is a non-zero chance that the next entirely new Metal Gear will be an enthusiastic, daring work made with love, bursting with new material. If Kojima was still in charge, that would be another Return to Zero.

#actual blog post #metal gear #metal gear solid #mgs #i'm on a roll now. you can't stop me from writing

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fancyshooting · 8 months

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ocelot and love has been a topic I've wanted to write about for a long time. hope neither of you mind if I answer you both together. I want to make it very clear that the only reason for my scepticism is because we're talking about ocelot, my favourite character of all time in anything, ever. I feel like I dreamt him up sometimes. it does not come from a place of malice. I want to have the most thorough understanding of my fave and I don't want to misinterpret him. I also wouldn't show doubt without having a canonical basis for it. I'm only interested in what we are told in canon

it's undeniably true that the driving force of the series is ocelot's love for bb. you've given examples like the mgs4 kiss achievement literally saying the word "love" in japanese. since I've only ever been concerned with cold hard evidence like this, I used to believe ocelot was in love with bb, too. back when I first got into mgs, I was convinced that he was gay. shipping has never really appealed to me regardless of the series/characters but I actually liked bosselot. I used to read fanfic, something I don't usually do. I even wrote some of my own (that no one will ever ever ever be allowed to read). once I really started to think about ocelot, the way I saw their relationship/dynamic changed. my thoughts on that are probably clearest in the post I made about the westerns mentioned in mgs3, which is the first game we learn about the "true" ocelot, rather than the persona he adopts. we learn about his abduction as a baby, his oppressive upbringing, his connection to the boss and why bb is so important to him. obviously I've spent a tragic length of time writing about ocelot, so I'm no longer content to condense everything about his character into "he was in love with bb". I know this is a wildly unpopular opinion to have, especially on tumblr, but I'm only sharing it because I've been asked. I don't think ocelot being in love with bb is clear cut canon, like the anon before said. it is a matter of interpretation and I do not mean that to sound dismissive

there are multiple instances of the word "love" being used in relation to ocelot and bb. here's a list:

• the emblem for the "you're pretty good" trophy in mgs4 is "love" in japanese

• kojima describing the relationship between snake and ocelot as part of his commentary on mgs3:

「スネークとオセロットはひと目会ったときから、お互いに気になっているんです。純愛です」

"Snake and Ocelot have been interested in each other since the moment they first met. It's a pure love."

• this line after ocelot praises snake for surviving the colonel's torture in the novel (not strictly canon but kojima-approved):

「それは皮肉などではなく、本物の親愛の情動だった。」

"It was not sarcasm, but a genuine, affectionate sentiment."

• mgs3 leaked casting doc description of ocelot:

「常にしのがれることの畏怖に、オセロットはスネークを尊敬し深い愛情を抱くようになる。」

"In the awe of constant shunning, Ocelot comes to respect and develop a deep affection for Snake."

I've always been hesitant to share this because although I find it interesting, I do NOT understand japanese and I always make that clear when I post machine translated text. mgs is a japanese game series, originally written in japanese, so the connotations of certain phrases will be lost on non-native japanese speakers. there will be cultural references that we will not understand and nuances we are unable to comprehend. the explanations and translations I post here are inadequate and should never, ever be taken as fact. I rely on machine translation, online dictionaries and forums. this is based only on my own understanding after minimal research and I am ALWAYS happy to be corrected.

every one of the above examples uses one of a multitude of japanese words for "love": 愛 - pronounced "ai". translated directly, it does mean "love" in english and it can be used romantically. however, it's a term used to convey other forms of love too, many of which I believe are overlooked in favour of romantic love. this explanation is talking specifically about romantic love but the depth of feeling fits ocelot imo:

there's also this from an article by journalist based in japan in which he briefly describes the same phrase kojima uses in the mgs3 commentary:

those two examples were both romantic lol... but I'm using them because of the way they explain "ai" love as being all-consuming and selfless. it seems to be a charged word full of nuance and depth. this is the type of love mentioned in every example of ocelot being "in love" with bb. it's not an exclusively romantic word and changes meaning depending on context

"fallen for him?" and "in love with the legend" are not as simple in japanese as they appear in english either:

「伝説の英雄に惚れ込んでいるだ。」

"She's in love with the legend"

「惚れたのか?」

"Fallen for him?"

this is from the interview with kojima in mgs3: the countdown:

「スネークを追いかけるうちに、ほれこんでしまう。」

"As he chases after Snake, he falls in love with him. "

these examples all use variations of the word 「惚れ込む」, pronounced "horeru". direct translations to english give "to fall in love". the following screenshots are explanations from people who are japanese and/or based in japan, i.e. people far more qualified to explain this than I am:

(x)

I'm well aware that this the most pedantic, joyless post but as I said, I want to have the fullest understanding of ocelot's character and this is part of that. for me, a lot of indecisiveness on the exact nature of ocelot's love for bb comes from reading about "horeru" in particular, especially since the above screenshot mentions allegiance to a boss. my thoughts on their relationship are all over this blog, so I'm not going to write more of the same here. imo there's not enough solid canonical evidence to entirely convince me that ocelot is romantically or sexually attracted to bb. there are lines or actions that can be interpreted as such but those have valid alternative explanations, too. his feelings are deep and nuanced and I don't think the english translation can convey them properly

thanks for the ask x2

#BOSSELOT TRUTHERS GET DOWN #sorry if this disappoints anyone #I'm genuinely trying to understand ocelot #unsatisfied with how I've worded things but hopefully the screenshots alone are explanation enough lol...#mgs #metal gear solid #revolver ocelot #ask

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blusherbaker · 9 months

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Blusherbaker's Faves

A slightly expanded Venn diagram, placing (some of) my favourite characters within (some of) the categories I made in this post.

The original is here.

Write-up of categories below

Dramatic, well-spoken, well-dressed men with an odd interest

Azul Ashengrotto (Twisted Wonderland) William Shakespeare (Ikemen Vampire) Lucien Rire (Boyfriend to Death) Jade Leech (Twisted Wonderland) Trey Clover (Twisted Wonderland) Rook Hunt (Twisted Wonderland) Elliott (Stardew Valley)

Glasses-wearers with tentacles

Azul Ashengrotto Lucien Rire

People DESPERATE for love/attention

Azul Ashengrotto Kaidou Shun (The Disasterous Life of Saiki K.) Lua Klein (Baccano!) Charles-Henri Sanson (Ikemen Vampire) Vlad (Ikemen Vampire)

Capable women with terrible (ex/)partners

Lua Klein Leah (Stardew Valley)

Plant-lovers who will make you tea

Vlad Jade Leech Lawrence Oleander (Boyfriend to Death 2)

Manipulative caretakers

Saiki Kusuo (The Disasterous Life of Saiki K.) Jamil Viper (Twisted Wonderland) Jade Leech Trey Clover Rook Hunt Ren Hana (Boyfriend to Death/BTD 2/The Price of Flesh)

People who are DONE with their companions

Saiki Kusuo Jamil Viper

Charming, but only if they find you "interesting"

Jade Leech William Shakespeare Johann Georg Faust (Ikemen Vampire)

Non-human, sadistic scientists with glasses

Johann Georg Faust Sano Kojima (Boyfriend to Death)

#btd #btd2 #topf #I'm not tagging the other media on this one - they're already tagged on the original #Vlad I think also belongs in the ''Manipulative caretakers'' section but I couldn't figure out a way to get him to fit there #and I took out 3 sections and a few characters... it was just getting too confusing #also... pretty much all of them fit under the section ''Thinly-veiled Insecurities''#blusher's original ♥︎

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gazorninplat · 3 months

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I wish I was more excited for Death Stranding 2. I really do, but I was so unimpressed by the first one that it’s hard to believe something great is going to happen. I know this is a pretty unpopular opinion, but for me, DS was close to greatness, to truly be a shock to the industry, and it frustrated me that it wasn’t the case.

In my opinion, DS is an amazing core gameplay loop brought down by some of the most unnecessary and pretentious style choices Kojima has ever made. Walking around in the post-apocalyptic landscape of the U.S. carrying stuff to deliver was unexpectedly engrossing, and I wish I had spent more time doing just that without interruptions. Just putting music on and negotiating the terrain while keeping my cargo intact was immersive enough. I was annoyed every time the game took me away from that to listen to characters or watch a plot I couldn’t care less about.

Because, yeah, that’s the thing. The story of Death Stranding was trying so hard to be weird and quirky and mysterious and awe-inducing that it failed every single time it asked me to take it seriously, or pay attention. The surreal apocalypse of Death Stranding has potential, I think, but the imagery invoked to depict it’s so… tryhard. Very “this is a metaphor, man” that, granted, is the MO of Kojima, but here feels gratuitous and hollow.

I was never intrigued about what was going on. I just wanted to test this sweet golden exo-skeleton I just got and see if I can reach that damned Windmill without much trouble this time.

I didn’t like any single character besides Sam, either. And that’s because Norman Reedus just seems to be playing himself, and he’s as annoyed and uninterested in the going ons of New America or whatever as I was. I don’t understand it, Kojima is well known for creating absolutely ridiculous but memorable and charismatic characters that are deep enough to care about them. The Cobra Unit it’s still my Gold Standard of how to do “weird and poignant” characters. They are practically Lynchian in how the balance between silliness and seriousness can create very powerful storytelling moments.

Here you have a boring fuck named Die-Hardman, Guillermo del Toro for some reason, and a bunch of other losers I could not be bothered to remember. One of them was called Hot Mama or something. She looked like this:

All of them feel artificial and even a little condescending when talking to you. It’s all very “we are like family here”-type of corporate poise, pretending to give a shit about you while urging you to get on with your damn job. “You are our most important collaborator, Sam! Now go cross the Mountain Made of Knives to deliver this pizza. Don’t you fucking dare to tip it over. You will have a complimentary soda from Management if you survive :D”. They literally offer you likes in return.

HR at Kojima Productions must be a fucking nightmare.

Finally hitting the road after two hours of bullshit feels good, though. Preparing your cargo, finding the non-metaphorical balance between the boxes you need to deliver and the tools you need to survive the world is the absolute best kind of Video Game Choice you can offer. The post-apocalyptic U.S. is beautiful to look at, and incredibly inviting to walk in (seriously, the primary terrain consisting of black stone, deep green moss, and rainy weather is one of the best outdoor vibes I’ve seen in any game), and the idea of slowly building up some infrastructure to make each delivery easier, or at least quicker, was amazing.

Without a doubt, my favorite moment was taking a day or two to build a zipline through the mountains. I put down the final one and came back to the starting point in a couple of minutes. After hours of hard work and resource gathering, it felt amazing. I really wish that was the whole game.

Yes, the whole game. No combat. No bosses. Hell, even no plot. Just you, a pair of sturdy boots, and some ingenuity to open yourself a path.

That’s what I mean when I say that DS was close to greatness. What if Death Stranding was a AAA Video Game dedicated to blue-collar work? Can you imagine what *that* could have done to our current hellscape of over-bloated, over designed, live service, micro-transaction infested, big budget games? Can you imagine a game of this scope and resources literally being an Uber Eats Simulator? And being successful at it?

Because, let’s be frank. Kojima’s name by itself was a guarantee of copies sold, maybe even block-busting success. If anyone in the industry could have pulled that kind of game, it was him. And I’m pretty sure that was more or less the idea, but the final product is still full of, in my opinion, unnecessary enemies, combat, shootings, set-pieces and boss fights. You know, video-gamey stuff. All wrapped up in a plot that wants to be deep and philosophical so, so bad, and fails in every single metric.

I fought the final boss (or what I think was the final boss), got killed, and then realized that I didn’t gave a fuck about the conclusion of the story. I’d rather be delivering shoes or whatever. I’d rather be admiring the scenery for a bit before moving on and getting the job done. I’d rather be listening to music.

I never finished Death Stranding. It eventually left Game Pass without me noticing.

That was a shame, I was doing great progress with a highway, and had plans to expand my zipline network. But after avoiding the game for a month or so, I decided it wasn’t worth it. All the infrastructure you build decays quickly (thanks to a Rain that Makes you Old falling almost constantly all over the map), so I figured anything I built was surely gone by then, and I would need to start from scratch. Or even worse, maybe other players might have finished it without my input. In any case, I made my peace with it. Death Stranding was a good video game, like many others, even when it had the chance to be unique. If only Kojima had decided to not include the more gamey aspects, or had an editor telling him “no” when writing the story, or didn’t have the pathological need to flex his Hollywood connections.

Death Stranding 2 looks more of the same, sadly. But at least I know I’ll have some very rad moments of solitude between boring firefights when the thing gets released on Game Pass in 2028 or so. Meanwhile I’ll keep looking for the actual walking simulator I didn’t know I needed.

Maybe that is going to be my very own Death Stranding, I guess.

#death stranding #death stranding 2 #hideo kojima #kojima productions #video game rant

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vyragosa · 8 months

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hey! I’m currently playing death stranding (on episode 7 rn) and recently I stumbled on multiple articles and reddit posts calling this game controversial? I was confused at first but apparently it’s about the “asexual world” interview that got people mad for some reason, leading to “this game doesn’t know how to handle queer characters” headlines… do you know what is this all about…? It just seems super weird to me cause I’ve been enjoying this game with my whole heart and moreover, doesn’t this “asexual world” interview have a note (which is written by heartman i presume…?) stating that this whole article is basically discriminative and all aforementioned sexualities have nothing to do with the stranding event… Also Kojima is known for having LGBTQ+ characters in his games & Higgs is definitely a queer-coded antagonist (btw shout out to Kojima just casually retweeting samhiggs art on my timeline, I gotta respect that), so it’s not like the writer/s are queerphobic, right? Did people just freak out because of that specific “asexual” interview? Oh and im playing director’s cut if it matters.

🤔

i wasn't actually there when those articles appeared since i did know the story but didn't get deeper into it then, only for director's cut so i'm in the same boat as you

i did see all those articles and i believe it was about linking asexuality to being caused by the last stranding implying it as, effect from the environment rather than, you know, on top of linking declining birth rate = asexuality and all that implies

but the important that came out of this is really that this interview ends up with a big fucking sign on it that says it was a biased view that didn't take into account the multiplicity and variety of sexualities people could experience, basically distancing it from being "just caused by the last stranding"

BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT BEING, AN EXPLICIT MENTION TOWARD ACCEPTANCE AND EVEN HETERONORMATIVITY... so, those articles did have a non-negligible impact where a good thing came out of it, the addition of the flagged for archival review

personally i didn't even tick over the original, which literally already mentionned panromantics as well and demisexuals, don't really get it but yeah, no biggie

#anonymous

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mewtonian-physics · 1 year

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@hylasregilla sounds like a deal to me! the whole character ask with raikov... let's go

1. My first impression of them

'oh god, why? i hate this. why does this have to be a thing'

2. When I think I truly started to like them (or dislike them, if you've sent me a character I don't like)

suckered myself into liking him april 1 2022. the real april fool was me

3. A song that reminds me of them

hmm. last time i got this particular question i said bubblegum bitch. this time i'll give you the first song on the raikov playlist

youtube

4. How many people I ship them with

just ooooooone

5. My favorite ship of them

raikov/the guy @setphies and i made up just so he could finally have a good relationship 2kforever

6. My least favorite ship of them

[points at volgin]

7. A quote of them that you remember

from mgs3? i think about 'do your job' a lot. from other metal gear content? 'regretful'. and if it's about lines i wrote myself, i'm quite fond of 'eat from the tree of knowledge, and pay better attention next time'.

8. Your favorite outfit of them

well in canon he only has two outfits, so... uniform, duh

9. Your least favorite outfit of them

that'd be the non-outfit [grimaces]

10. Describe the character in one sentence

'a lot more complex than official canon would have you think.'

11. What’s the first thing you think about when thinking about the character?

eva theory of course!

12. Sexuality hc!

highkey fucking gay of course. but also ace. he likes men but sex itself isn't something he's really interested in. (he's also sex-repulsed due to trauma but without that it'd just be 'whatever' to him.)

13. Your favorite friendship they have

him and ocelot naturally

14. Best storyline they had

the one i came up with myself

15. Worst storyline they had

official canon

16. A childhood headcanon

he doesn't actually know his own real name. he picked out 'ivan' himself as a child because he hoped it would bring him luck

17. What do you think their first word was?

'cold'

18. How do you think they were as a kid? (Like, were they shy, noisy, wild, etc)

as said previously, he was very survival-oriented and had very few limitations on what he'd do to stay alive. would as soon steal from you as talk to you. still pretty manipulative and he had fun doing it. who'd have thought someone who looked so innocent would rob you blind in a heartbeat? well. he would

19. The most random ship you've seen people have with them

i try not to pay attention to ships with him <3 but i've seen him and ocelot which just feels weird to me

20. A weird headcanon

i think a lot of people in this fandom would consider all of my headcanons about him weird. especially the one where i think he hates volgin with a burning passion. sucks to be them and not get it.

21. When do you think they were at their happiest?

not at any point during canon, that's for sure

22. When do you think they were at their lowest?

that'd be immediately post-mgsv ('but he wasn't in mgsv' shut up i don't care)

23. Future headcanon

that man is going to settle down and find a very normal and average and kind person who treats him like he deserves. and they will have a cat. and he will be genuinely happy for the first time in longer than he can remember

24. What do you think is a secret they have that they never told anyone?

he's a spy lol the amount of secrets he has are insane. but i think he's always going to be very secretive about the exact details of his work. he really doesn't want to talk about them.

25. When do you think they acted the most ooc

when kojima writes him

26. When do you think they were being "themselves" the most?

when i write him

27. If they could meet a character from another show/movie/etc, who would be the most fun for them to meet?

mello deathnote i think he should meet mello deathnote

28. The most unnecessary thing they ever did?

all the self-destructive shit he did because he had serious mental health issues and didn't realize it was okay for him to just not do that

29. How do you think they would be as a parent? (and if they are a parent, how do you think they would be if they weren't?)

spy x family but worse

30. The funniest scene they had?

nothing i didn't write myself

#team mimikyu

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beevean · 2 years

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Kojima drawing Women's faces: Pretty diverse and unique. Nothing crazy but you can tell at a glance that they're all different people Kojima drawing Men's faces: "There's only one face that turns me on and I'm gonna draw it in a bunch of different ways"

Yeah, and unpopular opinion, I don't like it.

Her men are all really pretty, but the similarities sometimes are just too much

I love Trevor's design in CoD, and Richter in SoTN is really beautiful too... but they really look too similar:

Scar aside, Richter's hair is wavy while Trevor's is straight. That's it.

"oh but they're related" yeah, but Trevor was born 300 years before Richter, by this point the Belmont genes should have been diluted a little more

There was a post pointing out that Trevor and Mathias shave their eyebrows in the same way

Like, they have the same face! And Mathias sure isn't related to Trevor! Take notice of how many characters have the exact same eyebrows.

I know he's a fairly minor character, but Joachim is basically the illegitimate child of Alucard and Juste and in fanart I have trouble recognizing him because he has nothing to make him stand out

Also, as you can see, she really likes a specific shape of eyes and nose. You can tell Isaac wasn't supposed to be "pretty" because he has stronger features, much like Majima lol

This is a big issue in terms of character design. Almost all men drawn by Kojima have either have long hair (Simon in Chronicles, Walter, Trevor, Richter, Mathias, Maxime, Julius), fair hair (Leon, Soma), or more commonly long and fair hair (Alucard, Juste, Hector, Rinaldo, Joachim, St. Germain, Simon in GoS). The only exceptions I can think of are Isaac (shortish red hair), Graham (short grey hair), Hammer and Zead (both bald, and Zead's baldness is foreshadowing). Natural shades of red hair are nonexistent too: there are three characters with fire engine hair, and while I could accept it in Walter and Isaac's case to symbolize their villainy, Simon in Chronicles is such an eyesore that I refuse to accept it as canon lmao.

(this also seems to be a trend for women. She likes women with long, blonde hair, Mina and the Succubus in SoTN are the big exceptions. Oh, the Succubus also has fire engine hair. Women with long dark hair started to pop up in PoR and OoE, games Kojima didn't work on)

And this is nothing. Go ahead and count the non-vampiric characters that do not have blue eyes (heroes) or grey eyes (villains). I found teen Maria with green eyes (but as a child she had blue eyes), and Mina with brown (orange?) eyes. I get that blue eyes are really pretty, but you could have much more variety! How about giving blue eyes to the Belmonts only, if you have to?

Kojima is a brilliant artist, she really is, and she shaped the identity of the series. I like the general design of her characters, mainly their clothes... but it's undeniable that she suffers from severe Same Face Syndrome. In her Santa Lilio Sangre book there are a lot of men that look like other Castlevania characters, especially Alucard

#castlevania #ayami kojima #barely in the fandom and i'm already gonna get my fan card revoked lmao

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soukeyed · 1 year

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01 matel gear 02 otasune strangeboss and/or whoever u want 03 Talk about my bff Strangelove please. and/or whoever

METAL GEAR WOOO WOOOOO

Favorite character: STRANGELOVE !! OR THE BOSS. OR OTACON . OR SNAKE. or emma or meryl or eva um theres a few

Least Favorite character: ummm ummmmm ummmmmmmmm. huey obviously lol. also mgs4 naomi specifically mgs4 ... sorry girl im so sorry. also senator armstrong/sundowner/monsoon/whoever tf else is part of the rising guys im just sick of seeing their ugly faces

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): STRANGEBOSS NUMBER ONE FOREVER YEAAH. otasune number 2 obviously :) umm fortune and olga is pretty cute ... bosseva as well .. i cant fucking think of a 5th help. meiryl? also i like bosselot but specifically for how stupid fucked up they are

Character I find most attractive: the boss strangelove eva (specifically big mama) or mgs4 meryl :P

Character I would marry: MERYL !1 GIRLFRIEND FOR ME NOW itd be the boss or strangelove but i would never break them up like that.

Character I would be best friends with: STRANGELOVE !! together we will kill huey mwah. or para medic even if she is insane we will watch movies together. slay

a random thought: i think about that post about otacon being the one to carry out the boss' will without even knowing every single day. Oh my god. wauh. ok hang on one second i found it. AUHHH

An unpopular opinion: rising mid as fuck and the fans make me hate it. also i um. dont really care a lot for bb and the bb focused games sorry. like i get the point and mgsv's visuals+gameplay do slay but bb as a character i didnt really find myself invested in a lot and the weird hero worship some of the fandom has for him does NOT help LOL. like the people around him (ocelot eva miller eli etc) were way more interesting . also EVEN MORE unpopular opinion as a result of this ... mgs3 isnt really all that for me and even though its objectively pretty shit mgs4 is one of my favourites (behind mgs1 and ghost babel)

My Canon OTP: STRANGEBOSS !!!!!!! THANKS FOR THE LESBIANS KOJIMA!!!!

My Non-canon OTP: calling otasune noncanon feels so sickening but i need to face reality. so otasune

Most Badass Character: Hrmm. hrmmmmm. ok its a bit out there but otacon. after the shitty childhood that he came out of pretty um.. (gestures at the whole making a nuclear weapon thing) convinced he/his family was cursed etc etc. forming philanthropy, adopting sunny, basically ending the cycle that his grandfather and father started+perpetuated and fulfilling the boss' will :) just makes me happy. hes great. also he got to marry solid snake at the end of it all so like slay? like hes not badass in the usual sense of the word but his character development and evolution is incredibly badass to me. next step: therapy

Most Epic Villain: i dont think you can call a lot of them epic on account of every mgs villain being goofy as fuck. BUT. liquid ocelot as a villain in what was (supposed to be) the conclusion of the entire series was pretty fucking awesome though

Pairing I am not a fan of: pbbb. umm. i dont really care for snake/fox im way more emotionally invested in fox/gustava personally (still upset she didnt get mentioned in mgs!!!!!!!!! RAHH.) also johnny/meryl was so out of nowhere i still do not understand it like its funny as fuck but JOHNNY??? IT SHOULD BE ME WITH MERYL!!1 ME !!!!!!!

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): arhg. raiden. i mean gestures at rising. this could also count as unpopular opinion but i preferred him as inexperienced and a little stupid i mean even then the direction they were going in in mgs4 was pretty good with him being jaded and feeling alone. and then rising was just. huah ?!?! what ?!?!?!? also. um. ok naomi. mgs1 naomi was so so fucking good ok her speech at the end slays i loved everything about her can you imagine my shock and dismay at her doing all THAT in mgs4 ?!?!? like i could write a 50 page essay on how it fucks up her (and otacons LOL) entire character development ALSO WHY WAS FOX LIKE NEVER MENTIONED DESPITE THEM LITERALLY GOING BACK TO THE PLACE WHERE HE DIED BTW I THOUGHT SHED HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT THAT. but honestly just the thing i hate about it all most is at the end of it all shes framed as like.. the hero. using emma+sunnys code to save da world or whatever and i guess maybe that speech was supposed to reflect her mgs1 speech but it just doesnt work when mgs4 didnt give her half of that nuance. her morals are still so ??? to me, her and vamp was such a WEIRD choice, her and otacon was um. ok look i know the writers 100% didnt mean to portray otacons csa as that at all but like it is ... anyway having a csa victim be once again manipulated via sex and not really talk about it was just ?!??!! guys ?!?!? anyway AGAIN if all of that was portrayed as nuanced as it should have been. like naomi doing what she had to to save the world and struggling w her own morals. which it IS but we learn this only in that fuckign speech for like 1 line. like its jut bad. ok to end this half the women in mgs were done horrifically but we all know that. sorry for the wall of text i love you

Favourite Friendship: SNAKE AND MERYL funny as fuck whenever she insults him in mgs4 like deserve. sorry snake. ok no WOAH though i just loved mgs4 meryl entirely even though she definitely couldve been written a bit better, like her talking about how she used to admire snake so much and now hes just BITTER and OLD like ohhh its so slay. like i dont know if you could even call it a friendship but the way they clash entirely and debatably the only place where they can agree on things and work together is in the context of the battlefield ITS SO GOOD

Character I most identify with: otacon D:

Character I wish I could be: similar to utena NONE i would not put myself through that.

AGAIN REST UNDER THE READMORE GO!

otasune time

002 | Send me a ship and I will tell you:

When I started shipping them: again i was aware of them before the games because (points at dmitri) so i guess like always

My thoughts: GRAHH. the way theyre like all but canon like kojima just say the word. that cigarette lighting scene in mgs4 WHEW. like the way they invented love its just crazy to me like really. theyre everything to me.

What makes me happy about them: everything :) the way theyve both grown as people over the years... i already talked about otacons character development but SNAKE TOO!! him finally letting people in .. finding a place for himself OUTSIDE of the battlefield .... its all so WAUGHH. like they just work off of eachother so well. love wins. gay marriage. slay. bursts into tears

What makes me sad about them: mgs4 that is all. they had so little time together. i spend half the time watching the game yelling ITS NOT FAIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ITS NOT FAIR

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: umm i dont read a lot of fic to be honest so i guess standard fanfic complaints. also more of you should write about mgs4 there is so much untapped potential.

Things I look for in fanfic: again. WRITE ABOUT MGS4.

My wishlist: MGS4 OTASUNE !!!!!!!!!!!! BECOMES A WEREWOFL.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: sorry they are simply endgame to me.. i cant think of anyone LOL

My happily ever after for them: snake gets cured post-mgs4! how i dont care he just is. gay marriage becomes real. together they raise sunny and grow old together and everything is peace and love on planet earth :) god bless

STRANGEBOSS TIME!

002 | Send me a ship and I will tell you:

When I started shipping them: ok not until i actually got around to pw! dmitri you mentioned a few times but i didnt realise until then to be honest

My thoughts: AGAHRHGHGHGHGHGHGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. GOD. GOD. lesbianism. women. they are genuinely just everything to me. how can a relationship be so fucking powerful and tragic when you only ever hear about it from one side. Oh my god. AUH.

What makes me happy about them: canon lesbians in my metal gear games in the fuckass 2010s :) ok no but the way strangelove talks about the boss with such open earnest love. like i just. wauh. listening to her tapes is just. WAUH.

What makes me sad about them: i mean everything. as strangelove said they were just ships passing in the night :( THEY SHOULDVE HAD MORE TIME !!!!!!!!!!!

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: again dont read fanfic a lot but ive checked and theres not a whole lot for them at all anyway LOL

Things I look for in fanfic: any strangeboss fic to begin with would be nice. if you have recs give them to me. i'll cry

My wishlist: umm.. again more content of them in general. konami youre shit the least you could do is make a strangeboss spinoff.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: umm idk considering they both die LOL. bosseva is a fun ship but honestly i dont think strangelove ever really got over it so i cant see her with anyone else in a serious relationship

My happily ever after for them: isnt it crazy how they both managed to fake their deaths and now live happily in some random country away from the horrors of war? like woah!

STRANGELOVE TIME!

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

How I feel about this character: man what dont i feel about her. shes amazing. shes bitter shes heartbroken shes dramatic as fuck and shes a badass. like its tragic but tell me creating a whole ass ai based off your dead girlfriend in the fucking 70s isnt slay as fuck? women in stem strong!

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: THE BOSSSSS. as i said b4 i dont really see her with anyone else tbh

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: ok yeah there .. isnt a lot. i wish her terrible and awkward relationship with bb had been explored more though like the way she just HATES him at the start is amazing.

My unpopular opinion about this character: uhh.. yeah idk shes not really talked about enough for me to know if any of my opinions ARE unpopular lol. a shocking amount of people see strangeboss as unrequited so i guess my unpopular opinion is that they were definitely both in love LOL

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: just give her more relationships tbh... i already talked about bb but like do you think she knew ocelot was the boss' son ... what did she think of him shed probably dislike him for doing the complete opposite of the boss' will (though in the end he does help take down the patriots so liiike?) ... i would pay millions of dollars for them to interact it would be atrocious. in general i wish shed been given just a little more depth outside of the boss (like give me more about how she grew up!!! what kind of mother was she to otacon!!! and ps i wish hed spoken about her even though ik she wasnt even a thing before the solid snake era wrapped up) though ig that was the point considering she was so consumed with grief... but yk. shrugs.

Favorite friendship for this character: again idk. GIVE HER MORE FRIENDS.

My crossover ship: again i dont do crossovers. SHRUGS!!

#ask games #whew. sorry for the essays.

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civildisorderstream · 5 months

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E3 is dead, for real this time.

Citation first, then thoughts:

So uh... Mixed feelings eh?

E3 definitely had its problems. Coerced audience reaction, weird choices by Ubisoft in who to have give the presentations, etc. Plus, as the internet was more normalized for content delivery, it didn't make sense to have an event locked mostly to the press happening in a physical space. There could have been ways to adapt the event to fit the times, but the ESA just never chose to. And no, I don't have those ideas, but I do know that people still do attend other sorts of in-person events which is evidence enough.

Still, I'm gonna miss E3. There were a lot of years where the conferences were a spectacle that would be community watched. I remember in one particular year I was running back and forth from my computer to the living room since E3 was being broadcast on TV, exchanging view time and frantic internet posting in reaction. It's a nostalgia thing.

The obvious replacement people are talking about is The Game Awards, as sold by Geoff Keighley. This guy.

Cringe.

Look, I don't mind a decentralized, non-walled-garden replacement for E3 showing up. A neutral zone for video games. But the Game Awards - awards intrinsically suggesting that it's about the celebration of games already out and the people who made those games - should NOT be it. We've all seen how the TGA (yes, the The) has increasingly gone toward commercial time. This year was probably 40 minutes total of awards and speeches, with the other 3 hours dedicated to game announcements and related promotions. Oh, and let's not forget Keighley's habit of giving Hideo Kojima all the time he needs to talk about... a movie or game or whatever the fuck.

A star-fucker worshipping a star-fucker. A match made in heaven. But I digress.

It's the end of an era in video games. The writing has been on the wall long enough that it's not a sudden blow out of nowhere, just a sad as hell whimper.

#E3 #the game awards #geoff keighley #video games

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drwilfredwaterson · 7 months

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Choose the Avatar for Your Human Evolution: An Evolved Human Being in a Civilized Human Society, or A Helpless, Powerless, and Caged Bottom-of-the-food-chain Non-Human Petting Zoo Farm Animal? Part 2/5.

20:28:52 GMT+3 Jerusalem, Israel (approximately 1 minute, 28 seconds (88 seconds) after the 13/13th adversary posts at 17:27:00 UTC/20:27 GMT+3 Jerusalem, Israel.)

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English) Page 846: Isaiah 1:27 Zion shall be saved in the judgment; Her repentant ones, in the retribution. Isaiah 1:28 But rebels and sinners shall all be crushed, And those who forsake the Lord shall perish.

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English) Pages 1600 and 1601: Proverbs 1:28 Then they shall call me but I will not answer; They shall seek me but not find me. Proverbs 1:29 Because they hated knowledge, And did not choose fear of the Lord; Proverbs 1:30 They refused my advice, And disdained all my rebukes, Proverbs 1:31 They shall eat the fruit of their ways, And have their fill of their own counsels. Proverbs 1:32 The tranquility of the simple will kill them, And the complacency of dullards will destroy them. Proverbs 1:33 But he who listens to me will dwell in safety, Untroubled by the terror of misfortune."

Strong's Concordance #88 Oboth: "water-skins," a place in Edom, parents (Yiddish) Original Word: אֹבֹת

Earthquake: M 5.1 - 78.4 km (48.7 mi) N of Tatsugō, Japan

2023-09-08 17:28:52 (UTC) 29.155°N 129.602°E 22.9 km depth

In the Pacific Ocean adjacent to (approximately 20 km east of) Kojima Island, Kodakarajima Island, and Takara-jima Island.

Naze (名瀬市) "Rapids/Swift Water Current/Torrent/Downpour City," Kagoshima, Japan 88.5 km (55 mi) S

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English) Page 1522: Psalm 88:5 I am numbered with those who go down to the Pit; I am a helpless man

Matthew 13:53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there. Matthew 13:54 Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. Matthew 13:55 “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English) Page 974: Isaiah 55:1 Ho, all who are thirsty, Come for water, Even if you have no money; Come, buy food and eat: Buy food without money, Wine and milk without cost. Isaiah 55:2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread, Your earnings for what does not satisfy? Give heed to Me, And you shall eat choice food And enjoy the richest viands. Isaiah 55:3 Incline your ear and come to Me; Hearken, and you shall be revived. And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, The enduring loyalty promised to David.

Kōjima (幸島), "Happiness Island," is the site of one of the best-known studies in animal culture, in which it was reported that one monkey acquired various skills such as washing sweet potatoes in water, and that these skills then spread through the monkey troops by imitation.

Kodakarajima (小宝島) literally "Small Treasure Island."

Takarajima (宝島) literally "Treasure Island."

“All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

"There are so many different ways that someone can be beautiful. For me, I think that when I meet someone and there's that magical thing about them that makes them unforgettable, it's that they're sincere and honest and whoever they are, be that funny, happy, sad, you know, going through a rough time, sarcastic, I think that these personality traits that come through when somebody is really sincere is what makes them beautiful." - Taylor Swift

"And there's something to be proud of about moving on and realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn't fade or spontaneously combust…" - Taylor Swift (2012 Red album liner notes)

“Do not rely on following the degree of understanding that you have discovered, but simply think, "This is not enough.” ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

“I do not know how to defeat others. All I know is the path to defeat myself. Today one must be better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today. The pursuit of perfection is a lifelong quest that has no end.” ― Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai

“Perceive that which cannot be seen with the eye.” ― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“From one thing, know ten thousand things” ― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings: Miyamoto Musashi

“Get beyond love and grief: exist for the good of Man.” ― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is. And you must bend to its power or live a lie.” ― Miyamoto Musashi

“Under the sword lifted high, There is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, And you have the land of bliss.” ― Miyamoto Musashi satsujinken (殺人剣) "life-taking sword" katsujinken (活人剣) "life-giving sword"

Translation: “Under the life-taking sword lifted high, There is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, And you have the land of bliss.” ― Miyamoto Musashi “Under the life-giving sword lifted high, There is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, And you have the land of bliss.” ― Miyamoto Musashi

“You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain” ― Miyamoto Musashi

“Step by step walk the thousand-mile road.” ― Musashi Miyamoto “Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.” ― Miyamoto Musashi

“The ultimate aim of martial arts is not having to use them” ― Miyamoto Musashi

"A North Montana man doesn't care about hat-hair." - Disney's Meet the Robinsons

In the Runaway Snowman, Happy, the talking snowman, wins a local contest and soon becomes quite a celebrity in town. A scheming con man, Freddy Fast Talk, convinces Robin, who built Happy the Snowman, that there is money to be made! Along the way Robin learns important lessons about friendship and caring. Give a little love each day. Just a little love each day. And in a little while, a happy little smile will spread across your face and stay. Give a little love each day. Give it in a special way. And anywhere your eyes can try to realize the sun is chasing clouds away.

Goob 7+50+50+2=109.

Strong's Concordance #109 adab: to grieve, to languish. Original Word: אָדַב

109+13=122. Strong's Concordance #122 adom: From 'adam; rosy -- red, ruddy. Original Word: אֱדֹם

"And there's something to be proud of about moving on and realizing that real love shines golden like starlight, and doesn't fade or spontaneously combust. Maybe I’ll write a whole album about that kind of love if I ever find it." - Taylor Swift (2012 Red album liner notes)

Friday, 30 March 2007 = 11th of Nisan, 5767 Parashat Tzav י״א בְּנִיסָן תשס״ז Parashat Tzav is the 25th weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. Torah Portion: Leviticus 6:1-8:36 In Tzav (“Command”), God tells Moses about the sacrifices offered in the Mishkan (Tabernacle), including a meal offering brought by the high priest, guilt offerings, and offerings of thanks. Moses initiates Aaron and Aaron’s sons for priestly service in the Mishkan.

Meet The Robinsons (March 30, 2007/89th day) - Final Battle (Altered Future)

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Published: July 28, 2021 (209th day) Duration: 4:04 (244 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wiJxu3BSRk -wiJxu3BSRk wiJxuBSRk bijkrsuwx 2+9+600+10+80+90+200+900+300=2191. 2191+3=2194. 2194+244=2438. 2438+89=2527.

Strong's Concordance #2527 chom: heat, to be hot (warm). Original Word: חֹם

Meet the Robinsons (March 30, 2007/89th day): Lewis Returns to the Science Fair, Anderson Observatory Happy Realty Ending

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Published: December 30, 2020 (365th day) Duration: 4:40 (280 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxYIwAMHIeg jxYIwAMHIeg aeghiijmwxy 1+5+7+8+9+9+600+30+900+300+400=2269. 2269+280=2549. 2549+89=2638.

Strong's Concordance #2638 chaser: needy, lacking, in want of, without, destitute, failing, short, missing, deficient. Original Word: חָסֵר

Rob Thomas - Little Wonders (from "Meet The Robinsons") (March 13, 2007/72nd day)

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Published: April 28, 2018 (118th day) Duration: 3:43 (223 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3afO87AYrKA 3afO87AYrKA afOAYrKA aaafkory 1+1+1+6+10+50+80+400=549. 549+3+87=639. 639+223=862. 862+72=934.

Rob Thomas revealed on April 1, 2017, via his Facebook page, that the song 'Little Wonders' was written about him and his wife Marisol's first dog Tyler: "I wrote this song about our boy Tyler. Today would have been his birthday. He made us so happy and lives on through Camp Tyler at Pets Alive and in all of our fondest memories. #firstchild #rip #teetsie" (Wikipedia)

Tuesday, 13 March 2007 = 23rd of Adar, 5767 Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei כ״ג בַּאֲדָר תשס״ז Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei is the 22nd and 23rd weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. Torah Portion: Exodus 35:1-40:38 Vayakhel (“He Assembled”) opens as God commands the Israelites to observe the Sabbath. Moses asks for material donations for the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle), and the people donate. A group of artisans designated by God begin building the Mishkan and its vessels. Pekudei (“Accountings Of”) is the final Torah reading in the Book of Exodus. It describes the making of priestly garments worn in the Mishkan (Tabernacle) and the completion of its construction. At God’s command, Moses erects the Mishkan and puts its vessels in place, and God's presence fills the Mishkan.

Strong's Concordance #934 bahereth: brightness, shining, bright spot, macula: The macula is responsible for the central, high-resolution, clear color vision that is possible in good light. (Wikipedia) Original Word: בֹּהֶרֶת

TANAKH (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English) Page 1521: Psalm 87:3 Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. Selah.

Some inventions are all bad and have to be undone for everyone's sake, and for a healthy and happy future.

Psalm 1:6 (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English TANAKH) Page 1413 For the Lord cherishes the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is doomed.

Psalm 1:6 (New International Version Christian Holy Bible) For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

Psalm 1:6 (King James Version Christian Holy Bible) For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Cherish: (Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English TANAKH) 1a: to hold dear : feel or show affection for 1b: to keep or cultivate with care and affection : NURTURE 2: to entertain or harbor in the mind deeply and resolutely (Merriam-Webster)

Watch over: (New International Version Christian Holy Bible) 1: as in supervise; to be in charge of (Merriam-Webster)

Know: (King James Version Christian Holy Bible) 1: to perceive directly : have direct cognition of 2: to have understanding of (Merriam-Webster)

During the Roman occupation of Israel, before they tortured and murdered Jesus Christ and destroyed the Second Temple of the Almighty Abrahamic G-d of Israel and the Hebrews, the terms "watch over" and "know" accurately described what the Romans and Roman-loyalist traitors subjected Jesus Christ and His apostles to. Those terms are found in the so-called "Old Testament" that was translated from Hebrew and Aramaic by co-conspirators of the people who actually tortured and murdered Jesus Christ, destroyed the Second Temple, committed massive genocidal and ethnic cleansing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Israel and the native Hebrew population, and created the antisemitic, genocidal, ethnic cleansing, and antichrist/satanic Sunday "Lord's Day" that led to the implosion of their empire 55 years after its implementation.

In contrast, "cherish" is the term the Jewish Publication Society's Hebrew-English TANAKH uses to describe how the Almighty Abrahamic G-d of the Abrahamic faiths loves, embraces, holds dear, and nurtures all who keep His commandments, loves and blesses the Hebrews, and all who fear, honor, and glorify the Almighty Abrahamic G-d of the Abrahamic faiths. All true students of the authentic life and teachings of Jesus Christ immediately recognize "cherish" as being 100% consistent with the reason Jesus Christ was sent, the reason and ways that Jesus Christ shared the love of His ABBA Father and laid down His life for His Father, Israel, all Hebrews, and all who would believe in Him and His ABBA Father, the Almighty Abrahamic G-d of the Abrahamic faiths. And that's why every true student of the authentic life and teachings of Jesus Christ needs to have a Jewish Publication Society translation of the Hebrew TANAKH, compare it to the closest Christian Holy Bible translation, the New International Version, and ignore the blasphemy of the "Old Testament" of the Christian Holy Bible entirely; because the "New Testament" can't exist in the same book as the "Old Testament" that completely and intentionally invalidates it.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16 doesn't state that G-d gave Jesus Christ as a Passover sacrifice to prove He is supervising and in charge of humanity (New International Version Christian Holy Bible). John 3:16 doesn't state that G-d gave Jesus Christ as a Passover sacrifice to prove He is watching humanity and knows what everyone's doing (King James Version Christian Holy Bible).

"Cherish" is the only accurate and acceptable translation that matches John 3:16 of the "New Testament" about the authentic life and teachings of Jesus Christ; but it's not found in either of what's considered to be the two most respected and accurate translations of the Christian Holy Bible; it's only found in the Jewish Publication Society's Hebrew-English TANAKH. Friday night to Saturday night is the only weekly seventh-day Sabbath for all who would be the cherished and righteous true students of the authentic life and teachings of Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ, His apostles, and all of His followers and believers kept the seventh-day Sabbath holy every single week. And isn't it interesting that those suffering under the 5 generation curse of the antisemitic, genocidal, ethnic cleansing, antichrist/satanic Sunday "Lord's Day" were, and still are, unable to accurately translate the same original Hebrew scriptures that Jesus Christ studied, lived, taught, and died by and for; yet the Hebrews who keep the seventh-day Sabbath holy and keep the commandments of the Almighty Abrahamic G-d of the Abrahamic faiths can and do translate the Hebrew TANAKH scriptures accurately so they're a perfect match for the Christian "New Testament"? The simple, obvious, and undeniable answer is: Psalm 1:6 (JPS Hebrew-English TANAKH), Page 1413: For the Lord cherishes the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is doomed.

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omophagias · 11 months

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decided to do a thing i saw on letterboxd called “modular film festival” (original post here), putting the list up here b/c i’m very likely to lose the physical copy

self-imposed rule was it had to be something i either haven’t seen or literally can’t remember seeing. there’s no way i watch all of these in 30 days but i want to finish it by the end of the year.

✅ a winner of op’s moviebowl tournament -- metropolis (1927), fritz lang

✅ two movies thematically linked somehow -- theme: napoleonic era -- the duellists (1977), ridley scott

✅ see above -- the ashes (popioły) (1965), andrzej wajda

✅ a movie from eastern europe -- stalker (Сталкер) (1979), andrei tarkovsky

✅ a movie from the middle east -- death of yazdgerd (مرگ یزدگرد) (1982), bahram beyzai

✅ a movie from southeast asia -- a land imagined (幻土) (2018), yeo siew hua

✅ a movie from north africa -- wanderers of the desert (الهائمون) (1984), nacer khemir

✅ a movie from sub-saharan africa -- double-header: kwaku ananse (2013), akosua adoma owusu & touki bouki (1979), djibril diop mambéty

✅ a movie starring nicolas cage -- mandy (2018), panos cosmatos

✅ a kaiju movie -- shin godzilla (シン・ゴジラ) (2016), hideaki anno & shinji higuchi

✅ a movie based on a video game -- werewolves within (2021), josh ruben

✅ three movies by the same director i haven’t seen -- director: alfred hitchcock -- rebecca (1940)

✅ see above -- vertigo (1958)

✅ see above -- north by northwest (1959)

✅ a black and white horror movie -- the witch (häxan) (1922), benjamin christensen

✅ a non-english-language action movie -- samurai assassin (侍) (1965), kihachi okamoto

✅ a movie by an lgbtq+ director -- big eden (2000), thomas bezucha

✅ a movie by an indigenous director -- atanarjuat: the fast runner (ᐊᑕᓈᕐᔪᐊᑦ) (2001), zacharias kunuk

✅ a movie by a director neither white nor a man -- atlantics (atlantique) (2019), mati diop

✅ a movie from op’s list “the hundred” -- the third man (1949), carol reed

✅ a movie from roger ebert’s top 10 of my birth year -- maborosi (幻の光) (1997), hirokazu kore-eda

two movies i have not seen whose directors were nominated at the 2022 cannes festival -- oldboy (올드보이) (2003), park chan-wook

see above -- beau travail (1999), claire denis

a movie from the “hideo kojima canon” -- blade runner (1982), ridley scott

a movie that won best picture in the 1970s -- the french connection (1971), william friedkin

an animated movie not made in the usa or by studio ghibli -- azur et asmar (2006), michel ocelot

a movie 150 minutes or longer -- dwelling in the fuchun mountains (春江水暖) (2019), gu xiaogang

a movie 90 minutes or shorter -- another double-header -- ruddigore (1967), joy batchelor & nezha conquers the dragon king (哪吒闹海) (1979), wang shuchen, yang dingxian, & xu jingda

a niche documentary -- what counts as niche? -- cave of forgotten dreams (2010), werner herzog

a black and white non-english-language movie from before 1970 -- snow trail (銀嶺の果て) (1947), senkichi taniguchi

#.txt #.pers #once again i have become horrifically overfocused on a work night. in 2h30 i have to be out of the house

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ratralsis · 1 year

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More is more

I'm spending the next three months reading about writing. I was hoping to spend it writing. I'd still like to spend some of it writing.

Truthfully, a fair bit will be spent playing Zelda. I'm weak like that. I'm going to limit myself. I have to. Otherwise, I'll spend all day and night playing that game. It's a compelling game.

I don't know if it's a good game or not yet. But it's compelling, that's for damn sure. I do think that fusing items to your weapons is awfully tedious, though. I honestly don't find that nearly as enjoyable as I think I'm supposed to. Maybe I will like it more later, once I start plumbing the depths and finding non-decayed weapons and so forth.

I could, and likely will, write an entire post about how I think the fetishization of the Master Sword has become a problem that I don't think the series has figured out how to handle. But that's for another time.

I've been reading about writing.

I understand most of the ideas in the books. What I need are examples. One of my favorites is this one from "Techniques of the Selling Writer:"

Here's an example from a student manuscript: "The girl, in spite of her confusion and the hazard offered by the razor-edged shards of glass from the shattered window, somehow broke free."

Girl is the subject in the above sentence; broke the verb. Yet they're separated by twenty words of modification, and the separation renders the sentence distracting and confusing.

Is the separation needed? Or could our reader perhaps survive a different version: "Confusion seemed to overwhelm her in that moment. The razor-edged shards of glass from the shattered window offered an added hazard. Yet somehow, the girl broke free."

Fuck, I love that example. Break down that sentence! Show me what's wrong with that sentence, word daddy! I crave those sweet, sweet lessons! I need them!

I've gotten pretty good at writing stuff like this, this thing that you're reading here, over the last twenty-one years. That's how long ago it was when I first took up the name "Ratralsis" and began writing under it, on a site called "Conniving Pete" that hasn't existed in many years and never paid me a dime for anything I wrote.

I don't mind mentioning the name of the site, because you'd have to do a lot of work to find anything I wrote there. The site's gone! Good luck! It might be doable! I used to be able to do it! Haven't tried in a while!

I've been reading about writing fiction.

I want to get good at writing fiction. I don't want to take a reader by the hand and gently guide him through my world. I want to grab the reader by the collar and drag them, kicking and screaming, through it. I want them to hate how much they want to know what's going to happen next. I want them to hang on every word, wishing they already had answers to the questions I'm making them ask me, questions I'm not even asking, I'm just implying.

And I think that the worst lesson I've learned is that "less is more."

The idea is sound. It makes sense on paper, which is, incidentally, where I also want my stories to go. I wrote about it at length in my 14,000-word essay on Death Stranding, where I said this about Kojima's writing style:

…Kojima’s work is not a shoe with a narrow heel or a broad heel. It is a steamroller. It is gigantic and broad to the point of absurdity, but it is so heavy and so powerful that it will crush your entire body into a smear on the pavement if it rolls over you. It’s the difference between stabbing someone with a knife or stabbing them with a baseball bat: the knife, having a narrower point, is going to penetrate their body more easily. Kojima stabs with a high-powered cannon. The projectile is bigger, blunter, and heavier than either, but its sheer power makes up for it.

Less is more? No, says Kojima. More is more. Think about it. It just makes sense. This, I believe, is the great lesson that Kojima wished to impart with his game Death Stranding.

That's, and I'm being serious here, the way that I want to write. And I've been reading Discworld, as I've said, and I recently read a passage from my favorite standalone novel, The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle:

“I dreamed about her last night,” he said.

Molly cried, “So did I!” and Schmendrick opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

King Lír said hoarsely, “By our friendship, I beg you—tell me what she said to you.” His hands gripped one hand each of theirs, and his clutch was cold and painful.

Schmendrick gave him a weak smile. “My lord, I so rarely remember my dreams. It seems to me that we spoke solemnly of silly things, as one does—grave nonsense, empty and evanescent—” The king let go of his hand and turned his half-mad gaze on Molly Grue.

“I’ll never tell,” she said, a little frightened, but flushing oddly. “I remember, but I’ll never tell anyone, if I die for it—not even you, my lord.” She was not looking at him as she spoke, but at Schmendrick.

King Lír let her hand fall as well, and he swung himself into the saddle so fiercely that his horse reared up across the sunrise, bugling like a stag. But Lír kept his seat and glared down at Molly and Schmendrick with a face so grim and scored and sunken that he might well have been king as long as Haggard before him.

“She said nothing to me,” he whispered. “Do you understand? She said nothing to me, nothing at all.”

Then his face softened, as even King Haggard’s face had gone a little gentle when he watched the unicorns in the sea. For that moment he was again the young prince who had liked to sit with Molly in the scullery. He said, “She looked at me. In my dream, she looked at me and never spoke.”

He rode away without good-by, and they watched after him until the hills hid him: a straight, sad horseman, going home to be king. Molly said at last, “Oh, the poor man. Poor Lír.”

“He has not fared so badly,” the magician answered. “Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.” But his voice was a little doubtful, and he laid his arm softly around Molly’s shoulders. “It cannot be an ill fortune to have loved a unicorn,” he said. “Surely it must be the dearest luck of all, though the hardest earned.”

This is one of my favorite passages, and here is another, because FUCK IT, THAT'S FUCKING WHY, MORE IS MORE:

Schmendrick must have carried her for a time, because she was definitely not walking and his green eyes were ringing in her head. “That’s right. Nothing but magic matters to me. I would round up unicorns for Haggard myself if it would heighten my power by half a hair. It’s true. I have no preferences and no loyalties. I have only magic.” His voice was hard and sad.

“Really?” she asked, rocking dreamily in her terror, watching the brightness flowing by. “That’s awful.” She was very impressed. “Are you really like that?”

“No,” he said, then or later. “No, it’s not true. How could I be like that, and still have all these troubles?” Then he said, “Molly, you have to walk now. He’s there. He’s there.”

These passages, long as the first one is and nonsensical as the second one is, are perfect examples of my love of "more is more" and when it's appropriate to "tell, don't show."

"A straight, sad horseman, going home to be king."

"Oh, the poor man. Poor Lír."

"His voice was a little doubtful, and he laid his arm softly around Molly's shoulders."

"That's right.[…]It's true.[…]No, it's not true."

Sometimes, you have to tell the reader things. Important things. Things they can't be trusted to deduce on their own. To piece together like detectives. Sometimes, the reader needs to put on their deerhunter cap and put their pipe in their mouth and raise their magnifying glass to their eye and examine the text for clues, but that is not the way I ever want to write and it is not the kind of thing that I ever want to read.

Spell it out for me.

Here is a passage from Discworld's eleventh book, Reaper Man, another of the Death books:

And it suddenly dawned on the late Windle Poons that there was no such thing as somebody else’s problem, and that just when you thought the world had pushed you aside it turned out to be full of strangeness. He knew from experience that the living never found out half of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living. The onlooker sees most of the game, he told himself.

And another:

BECAUSE YOU’RE ALL YOU’VE GOT, said Death.

So.

What do I do with this dark and secret knowledge? The idea that it's okay to say things outright? That if what you're saying is worth something, then it's worth saying it?

I guess I'll have to say things, too.

I need to learn how to write like that. To hit hard.

Sometimes you have to use adverbs, even though you shouldn't use adverbs. You shouldn't say that "he laid his arm softly around Molly's shoulders" like that, what are you DOING, Beagle? He can place his arm around her shoulders the way you'd place a priceless antique onto a silken pillow, maybe. That way the reader knows he's doing it softly without you going and saying he does it "softly." Drop those "-ly" words, you fool!

Or… don't, actually. Keep it. It's perfect the way it is, and no other word than "softly" will work as well.

Use a metaphor! Use an image! Describe the man as something the reader can understand, not as a "straight, sad horseman," Beagle! What are you THINKING, just coming out and throwing a string of adjectives at me like that? You stupid, stupid man!

Or… leave it just like that. No metaphor is necessary. Hitting us with adjectives like that is, in fact, hitting us. It's swinging a baseball bat directly into our skulls, hammering home the truth of the moment: a man is sad that the woman he loves is gone forever and she left him without even saying goodbye, though she could have. Though she did say goodbye to Molly and to Schmendrick, and neither of them can help him. He is a straight, sad horseman. He is strong. He is a hero. He is injured. He will never feel the love of that unicorn ever again, and he knows it, and that is the saddest thing.

Even calling it "the saddest thing" is bad writing, isn't it? Shouldn't I use some flowery metaphor? "It will hurt him more than any physical injury," perhaps?

No. It is the saddest thing. The hero's reward at the end of The Last Unicorn is that he goes home to be king, and to be the saddest man.

Windle Poons's reward (yes, that is the name of the main character of the secondary plot of Reaper Man, who, I would argue, is the main character of Reaper Man) is to die. But he dies well, doesn't he?

And, with great relief, and general optimism, and a feeling that on the whole everything could have been much worse, Windle Poons died.

A 130-year-old wizard who needed to fail to die and return to life as a zombie to learn that, in this life, we're all we've got. And he learned it, and then he died.

What do I do with this? What do I say in my story?

That's the question.

For one thing, I think I need to get over any foolish notions of "less is more" and "show, don't tell." There's a time and a place for those things. There is. There absolutely is. Here is a passage, the opening passage, from "The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters" by Nick Smith (aka ulillillia):

Knuckles glides north 1500 feet above Lake Sakakawea at 800 mph following Highway 83. A small thunderstorm is somewhat visible to the south. The sky is 3/8 scattered with cirrus clouds and 1/8 scattered with altostratus clouds. The wind is 15 mph with gusts to 20 mph. A few small patches of snow in ditches, some with water, are visible but hard to see due to the speed. A 40-second pause in speech occurs while credits display on screen.

Knuckles resembles a human, but with differences. Knuckles is neither male nor female, though referred to as a “he”. Three-quarter-inch-thick dark-violet-colored (FFA000E0) fur covers his entire body. He is only 25 1/3 inches tall, 4 inches wide, and 2.5 inches deep. Knuckles gets his name from his large hands, 40% bigger than a human his size would have. A reflective, glittery, greenish (FFA0FF00) haze a half millimeter across borders his pupil. Knuckles has no nose and a mouth 2/3 as big. Every other aspect of his is that of what a human would have for his size. For details on the numerical colors (in parentheses), see appendix 5.

I will never, and I emphasize this as strongly as I can, NEVER say a single bad word about ulillillia. That man deserves nothing but kindness and respect.

But his writing? By his own admission: not great. The man is not a fiction writer. At the time he wrote this book, he wasn't much of a fiction reader. So he wrote the way he wanted things to be written. With extreme detail. It wasn't enough to tell us that Knuckles was a bit over two feet tall. He needed to know his precise dimensions. ALL of them.

That's too far for me, I think. There's a happy medium between Hemingway and Nick Smith, I think.

But I'd like to do more of my main character's inner thoughts in the third draft of my novel. I'd like to reference the physical descriptions of him and of the other characters more than I do now. Talk about the architecture of the buildings they see in the towns that they visit. The food that they eat. That kind of thing. I think it can be done.

If nothing else, I think I learned from Wyrd Sisters that I can hammer home the idea that Katia, the main heroine and an orc woman and a veteran of a major war from ten years before the story takes place, is big and muscular and has blue-gray skin with orange eyes and numerous disfiguring scars. Yet, by the end of the book, our hero William still thinks she is as beautiful as she considers herself to be, and he is right. She is. When he confesses his love to her and hugs her close to him, he rests his head under her chin, because she's so much taller than him. He feels her familiar warmth and smells the smell of her leather armor and her sweat, because she's not exactly showering every day and putting on perfume. When she smiles at him, her tusks glint in the light, and she has a stump for a left ear from where half of it was torn off in a fight.

But that doesn't matter.

As for him, he doesn't have as many obvious physical characteristics I can point out, but he's still a wiry guy who wears a lot of furs that he acquired himself the hard way, and he carries around a massively heavy backpack with things like a tightly-rolled up canvas tent, a bedroll, and a cooking pot so that they can sleep at night in relative comfort. He also has his longbow and his broadsword and his knife, and he looks like a patchwork packmule on two legs with all of his burdens. He slowly grows a beard over the course of the story and he hates how it itches. His eyes dart around a lot, and he stalks instead of walks, out of habit. He stammers and pauses mid-sentence to gather his thoughts because he's spent the last ten years living by himself in the middle of the woods and has gotten worse at talking to other people. Yet, by the end of the story, he's a hero who's willing to put his life on the line to protect someone else, a thing that he was never willing to do before then. He was well-known for his self-preservation skills. They're how he managed to self-preserve for so long.

Are they the same? No, not really. But they're what I've got, for now, at least.

These are just some thoughts.

I'll keep on reading. I don't know what else I can do.

#ratralsis writing #text post

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