#I think from a writing perspective the whole downside thing is based on a characters perception

[fallofthecelestial]

Okay. Since we're going over all the takes on Mr. X at this point.. What if his powers really don't have a backside. What if (the state of) his normal life is the backside.

What if his normal life is akin to that of heroes where he has to pretend to be something he's not and follow rules that the people who control his life came up with to further their own goals. What if he can only be free of other people's beliefs and expectations when he's a hero.

What if in reality he truly is like everyone else. The other heroes. The ordinary people. All those who work themselves to the bone, who are tired and overworked and sick of all the exploitation...

What if when he's in the form of the number one hero.. when he becomes the most sought after product on the hero market..

Is when he gains the freedom to truly be himself

[ruby-whistler]

I recently took your latest survey and I was having some thoughts like I tend to do and thought I would try to understand your POV better and give some insight into mine. I wouldn’t consider myself a “apologist” for any character and actually really hate how the term is used, but in general I disagree with the main opinion I’ve seen on your blog which is that Dream should get a redemption arc. However, my reasoning isn’t one that I see you commonly argue against. (Being that dream shouldn’t get a redemption arc because he’s done bad things.) You always ask some interesting questions, I enjoy taking your surveys, I’ve done all the ones I’ve seen on my dash. So I’d like to in turn ask for your opinion on some things and see your opinion on my POV, if that is ok with you. I just find it interesting to discuss.

the view I see a lot of Dream apologist have is that everyone should have the opportunity for a good ending, which is true.

But I feel like it kind of misses the point of well, we are discussing characters, not real people. Now of course, what we say and write about characters can still have an impact, but I feel like sometimes this fandom in particular goes too far down the route of seeing these characters as people. To the point where anything said about the character is seen as proof of that persons morals, and not something said about a story.

For example, going back to the point about how everyone should have the opportunity to heal, I think that is true. But the fact of the matter is, not everyone will. It’s not realistic. So it makes sense that in stories, not ever y antagonist will have a redemption. I think there’s a huge difference between saying you don’t want a character to heal in a story, and saying you don’t want someone to in real life. For me it completely depends on how well it would work narratively in the story, not how much I think the particular character deserves it.

There’s a reason why the whole “power of friendship” trope is often mocked. It’s because it’s anticlimactic. It takes away all the stakes, leaving you with a rather stale, and hard-to-believe ending. People who have had a considerable downward spiral often can’t be completely derailed by a simple “no, this isn’t right” or a brief act of kindness. To better explain this I think it would help to take a step back from the story and characters we are attached to and just take a look at different stories that are pretty well known. Just to kind of put what I’m trying to say into perspective better.

I’ll take Marvels Infinity war/endgame as a example here because I think a lot of parallels can be drawn from Thanos to c!dream. (And I used to be really into marvel.) What with the whole “greater good” “one big happy family” thing they want to achieve through harm, murder, and total control. Also the disc war finale was literally pulled from endgame lol. With both characters we can see they have at the very least a not terrible motive. If you look closely enough it’s possible to sympathize with them. Less so for me with c!dream simply because we haven’t gotten a real solid backstory or reasoning from him, besides pieced together fanon that we have no real way of determining the accuracy of yet. But I get that some people do really like the character. But keeping along those lines of comparing the two, they’ve both done a ton a very terrible things, and don’t seem to feel any regret for them. (Actually, scratch that, there are scenes that imply thanos at least did feel somewhat bad about what he was doing, another reason that he’s more sympathetic for me. Of course you could claim that c!dream is less emotional or just doesn’t show it, which could be true, but there’s also the claim that he just doesn’t care, which could also very well be true. Again, we sadly don’t have too much insight to his character, which is a shame in my opinion. I’d like the see more of the writers intent.)

So the reason for my comparison is to ask this question, taking away all bias. do you think that giving thanos a redemption arc would of been the right way to take the story. Again, I think both their arcs are easily comparable, seeing as the dsmp pretty much took direct inspiration from those movies in the latter part of season 2. This might be a bit harder to answer if you haven’t seen it but you could easily look up a summary if you wanted to, or just take my word for it that they are pretty similar lol.

Becuase, if the answer is no, then I’m not sure how much some of the points you’ve made on this blog hold up. Besides being based off your liking of the character, which is valid. (there’s a reason why fanfic and fanart exists) but that doesn’t mean that such a ending would be good for a story. Again, I can understand why you would want a redemption for c!dream, just like I want my favorite characters to have a happy ending, but that doesn’t mean I actually want it to happen. Above all else I want a good story.

Just to clarify, I’m not asking if you think these characters deserve redemption. I’m asking if you think it would work well narratively and give a solid conclusion. Because, like I mentioned earlier, this is a story. We arnt discussing the fate of real people here. Having a villain not be redeemed is not the same as saying people who have done really bad things should not be redeemed. Likewise, having a villain be redeemed isn’t saying what they did was ok. Villain redemptions can be well done, but they have to make sense narratively and be satisfying. In this case, I personally believe a redemption for Dream would not be interesting or compelling in the slightest, for the same reason I don’t think endgame ending in a redemption arc for thanos would be interesting or compelling in the slightest, despite the fact that I like both characters.

Part of the reason I brought up marvel at all is I want to kind of reframe the story, because I feel like this fandom has a oddly unique way of viewing the characters and story. Like I mentioned, the characters are often discussed like they are real people. Discussing c!dreams fate is treated like your discussing the fate of a real man, not a character in a story. I think there are some possible reasons for this. For one, all the characters are somewhat attached to their steamers counterpart. So, we feel more attached to them as a whole, and they feel more like real people. Another reason could be that you can watch almost any perspective you like, and leave out any ones you wish to as well. It’s a bit like a choose your own adventure book. So, in a way, pretty much every character could be considered a protagonist.

Which is where I can see a possible argument against my point. In a story where every character is the protagonist, the only satisfying outcome would be one that pleases fans of every POV. Which is where I can see this argument take place of “well, do you think ___ deserves a good ending? Then what about ___?? Surely you must think everyone does, or you just have bad morals!”. It’s a unique situation that I don’t think I’ve seen before. Of course, everyone has their favorites in a story, but the difference here is there are no supporting characters or solid antagonist.

And honestly, I think originally Wilbur saw the possibility of that problem arising, which is why he once stated that he wanted the characters to serve the narrative, not the other way around. It’s interesting that we didn’t have nearly as much discussion like this back when Wilbur was writing, because the story was much more conventional. But by the time we got to season three, that sentiment had been pretty much completely thrown out the window, leaving us with what we have today.

This is why I personally prefer the previous narrative. On one hand, this current way of story telling is very unique, and has a lot of potential, but comes with a lot of downsides. Conventional story structure just,,, doesn’t work out as well. Which is why I personally see the best course of action as using Dream as the overall antagonist. Giving Dream a tragic backstory, hidden motives, and eventual redemption arc just wouldn’t do much for the story in my opinion. Sure, it would make people who enjoy and sympathize with his character happy, but it runs into the problem of all the storylines being very separate. Like yeah we can have a separate redemption arc for each and every character, but I just don’t see how we would get an actual story out of that. I think a central villain could really pull things together, but at the moment it’s unclear if that is what they are going for. I guess we’ll just have to see where things go? Maybe there’s some answers to our questions in the aforementioned Dream lore stream? I personally believe he is being written as a central antagonistic character, but I can see where the opinion that he is not comes from, despite not personally wanting the story to take that direction.

I know this is very long, and I apologize, but seeing as you often make surveys and things asking for others povs, which I would imagine results in pages of paragraphs, I figured you wouldn’t be opposed to this. I’d like to hear your opinion/thoughts, but if you don’t want to respond I am fine with that.

alrigh, putting this one onder the ol’ cut because the ask is long enough /lh

so, i don’t actually take “everyone deserves to heal” as an argument why c!dream should have a redemption arc - more like an anti-argument for why he shouldn’t. my main reasons for why i believe he should be redeemed is 1. it’s the only thing that makes sense for the story 2. it’s the thing that makes the most sense for the character 3. he just genuinely deserves better after what he’s gone through 4. at this point anything else would send a really bad message 5. he’s the perfect character with the perfect setup to get one. it’s not just because i like him.

i don’t take what people say about characters deserving redemption as proof of their real life morals, or an example for how they’d treat real people, however i can still say these takes are atrocious, make no sense, or even upsetting and make me want to interact with the person less. they’re often born from bias and are completely illogical from both an objective and a philosophical sense, which is why i speak out about them, not for real life morality issues. this fandom has some of the most ridiculous and unsettling views of the story i’ve seen.

stories are not meant to be 100% realistic. art is supposed to have an improvement of real life - redemption arcs in stories that are well-written aren’t invalidated just because in real life, people don’t become better more often than not. if all bad people became good people, that would be cool actually - it’s not what’s gonna happen in real life, but doesn’t mean i should be opposed to it if it’s pulled off well.

alright, full disclosure, i have never watched a marvel movie in my life. i don’t plan to, really, i read books instead of watching movies most of the time. with the limited knowledge i have of thanos, i’d say some parallels can be drawn, but they’re not the same character at all, nor is their personality, story, or narrative the same. we have gotten confirmation on the fact his goal is peace and for people to get along, and i don’t know what you mean by “pieced together fanon”, but people believe or deny what they want, so whatever. i’d argue he’s easier to sympathize with, but then again, i haven’t watched marvel movies, so in my mind thanos is less a “sympathize” and more of a “understand his motives” type of guy.

i think that if thanos was a character in an environment of less than thirty people, with a home he owned and his family torn apart and divided, becoming more and more ruthless in attempts to stop people from starting long-winded conflict, who has proven again and again to care about people, but employ horrible tactics less despite and more as a result of it, and was defeated and abused in a cruel prison system for several months, while the narrative deliberately shows of his humanity - then yes, i think he should be redeemed. if that is not thanos, then perhaps you should’ve chosen a better comparison, or not used one at all.

seems very out of character to me. perhaps if you think c!dream and thanos are really the same person, you should start considering actual canon more than your own feelings about the character. just a suggestion.

i myself think that everyone on the smp deserves to heal and be redeemed, however i think c!dream will be the only person to get an arc in the upcoming months, because everything is pointing towards the fact and at this point it is pretty obvious the story has picked that option to go with. this is purely story and narrative-based, and my feelings match up with it more than the other way around.

i believe that a redemption arc for c!dream would, because of recent as well as older developments, be the only compelling and interesting writing choice in the upcoming arc. you disagreeing - well, i guess that’ll be your opinion until you’re proven wrong or not. however i strongly disagree because of the themes, narrative and characterization that seem to strongly disagree with you on the subject as well.

cc!wilbur’s literal last wish when leaving the writing was to keep all characters morally grey, no overall antagonist or protagonist. and the writers did a hell of a good job with that, however i guess the fandom wasn’t ready for darker and more philosophically difficult themes to be explored so they promptly switched to a pure black-and-white view of the story (which cc!wilbur straight up criticized them for), i think to try and gain a moral high-ground or something?? idk, they ruined the thing for themselves though, it was definitely not the writers’ fault.

there is no “the story” from a narrative stand-point. all of the characters have wildly different narratives and outlooks. if c!dream’s redemption wouldn’t do much for the story you are watching? honestly why should i care, the dream smp is more complex than that.

if you think c!dream should stay the overall antagonist, maybe you’ve already lost track of the lore. quackity at the moment seems to be the character with the most potential to make a negative impact on several characters’ narrative (hence becoming an antagonist of at least part of the overall story) while c!dream is stuck being the literal victim of his in a prison that is deliberately framed by the writers as dehumanizing and corrupt. if “this character’s vulnerability is being exposed and he is being actively traumatized and outdone by a different villainous character” doesn’t scream “extremely likely redemption arc” to you, i don’t know what will.

c!dream hasn’t been the “central antagonist” for the past six months and there are like three characters already fighting over filling in the spot. if you don’t want the narrative to take that direction? i am sorry, but i don’t think there is much you can do about it.

[mikami]

not exactly a dn question, but during your time in the fandom, what have been the big sites for fanfic? i think ao3 is the biggest now, but it seems like the landscape would have been different in the early 2010s etc. what do you think are the pros/cons of the different sites (like, their layout and tagging system etc.)? do you have any preferences between the different sites? i want to go back and read more old fic but i don’t really know where to start. thank you!!

I've never been as deep into fic-writing and fic-reading as other people, so my perspective is a little limited, but I'll try!

When I started out, fanfiction was laaargely centralized at livejournal and fanfiction.net. There were also a number of independent fanfiction sites that allowed content that was forbidden on ff.net or specialized to specific fandoms, but I never got into that subculture.

livejournal was still a center of fandom until 2011. Fanfiction-wise I feel like you could find a lot of the more mature writers there. The downside was that livejournal does not have a centralized tagging system and instead operates based on communities with their own tag systems. So as someone coming in later, trying to figure out there the action was at...? It's tough detective work.

A lot of the really good stuff for DN was located at dn_contest though!

FanFiction.net was a more mixed bag in terms of quality - and it's still active, so it probably doesn't need as much introduction. The bad part is a pretty barebones tagging system. At the same time, the good part is ALSO the barebones tagging system. On AO3 if I look for my favourite character, I will find 500 fics in which they say a single line and are tagged for that appearance. Since you can only tag four characters on FF.net, you're gonna have an easier time finding content for a specific character instead of just ships.

But really things started to centralize at AO3 from 2012 onwards, the way I remember it... and it stayed there since.

(However, I guess wattpad is technically also a fanfiction hub and I don't even know how one would navigate that site so I am sure there is whole other worlds out there that I don't know...)

[rayofspades]

How to Write a Horror Story: The Magnus Archives

This post is kinda weird since most tumblr fandom content is based on the assumption that Everyone Has Seen The Thing, but since this is a transcript of a video essay, it’s more broad. 

I might link the video in a reblog since, you know, tumblr doesn’t like links.

Anyways, here’s the post:

Hello Jon, apologies for the decep-

I’ve seen a lot of mystery shows in my day, and some supernatural shows, and the common thread between them is that they kind of...fall apart as they go on. 

Obviously, this is a generalization and I haven’t seen every mystery show or every paranormal show, but it’s a pretty common problem. 

At this point in pop culture criticism, it’s basically common knowledge that these shows fall apart due to a lack of planning. If a mystery series is making shit up as it goes along while trying to surprise the audience, it’s going to stop making sense at some point. And if an episodic paranormal show is constantly trying to up the stakes, eventually it’s going to become absolutely ridiculous and stretch the audience’s suspension of disbelief past a breaking point. 

Other people have already talked about this stuff to death, but today I want to talk about a paranormal mystery show that actually succeeds at what it set out to do.  

The Magnus Archives is a podcast written by Jonny Sims and directed by Alexander J. Newall. It ran from 2016 to 2021 and it’s...really really good. It’s an episodic horror story, taking place at the fictional Magnus Institute where the head archivist reads various statements about people’s encounters with supernatural entities. It’s got it all; scary stories, mystery, an overarching plot, office comedy, office romance, office tragedy, a villain that’s making straight men everywhere question their sexuality, and an overall really solid structure. 

If you listen to the Q+As put out by the writer and director, you’ll hear them talk about how they planned the series from the beginning, setting up the layout for each season. Some things were definitely changed throughout the actual writing process; that’s just inevitable and necessary when you’re working on a long running show, but in a general sense, they knew where they were going. But, writing a good story doesn’t just involve knowing where you’re going; it’s about executing whatever plan you have effectively. And I think the execution of The Magnus Archives is pretty brilliant, so I want to talk about it. 

And for the record, I said “brilliant,” not “perfect.” I do have a lot of criticisms of this show, and I’m definitely going to talk about those too, because honestly? Even the problems with this show are interesting in their own right. 

Ok, let’s go. 

Oh, spoilers by the way. For the whole plot. Whole thing. 

Part 1: Horror and Mystery 

Ok, so The Magnus Archives has two separate plots going on: the episodic stories that can be listened to individually, and the underlying meta plot. The former is where most of the mystery storytelling takes place, and it’s a really engaging mystery. It’s starts off slow, and almost undetectable at first. The main character, Jon, also known as The Archivist, is just reading out old scary stories that people have delivered to the Magnus Institute. Stuff like; a college student sees a ghostly inhuman figure asking for a cigarette, a woman’s fiancé dies and she finds herself trapped in an empty graveyard, there’s this goth kid who apparently murdered his mother and then skinned her? But she’s kind of still alive? What the f*ck? Hope we never see that kid again. Also, this “Jurgen Lietner” guy wrote a bunch of cursed books and Jon knows about this? Are more books gonna come up? And then you’re like, wait is the goth kid who killed that burn victim the same goth kid who killed his mom like 8 episodes ago? Holy shit the family of that girl’s dead fiancé FUNDS THE MAGNUS INSTITUTE? Did this famous youtuber meet one of the missing people from episode one? The goth kid is back and he’s looking for Leitner books? The name “Michael” has come up like 6 times? Are they all the same guy? I just—who the f*ck is Jurgen Leitner? 

So yeah, as you can see, a lot of these stories connect in cool ways, and I’ve only mentioned like, 0.2 percent of all of those connections. Furthermore, these stories are told out of chronological order, and sometimes the same scenario appears in more than one statement, told from different perspectives. This asymmetrical storytelling and odd doling out of information creates a mystery that’s really interesting. It also makes for a great re-listen, since you can retroactively see what elements were set up before you even realized that they were going to come back.  

The audio format contributes to this too; you can’t just see that the table from episode three matches the pattern on the box in episode eight. You have to pick up on clues that were mentioned and pay attention to what people are describing, and it’s highly rewarding when the pieces all start to fit together. 

There is a bit of a downside to this though. Technically The Magnus Archives is a horror story first and a mystery second, and these two elements can mesh in weird ways. 

The horror is element is really strong. Each story is completely different, sometimes focusing on psychological horror, body horror, or supernatural versions of more primal fears like heights, darkness, enclosed spaces, etc. Basically, if you’re afraid of anything, there will be at least one episode of The Magnus Archives that gets under your skin. 

Jonny Sims can really sell his stories through both his writing and acting. He plays Jon, by the way, and plagiarized his own birth certificate for the character name. (For future reference, Jonny is the actor, Jon is the character). Overall, he’s really good at writing prose, and each narrator has a very distinct voice even though the large majority of the stories are being read by one character/actor.  

Obviously not every episode is a bull’s eye. Sometimes it’s due to the subjectivity when it comes to what you as an audience member are scared of, and occasionally it’s just weird writing decisions. I’m thinking specifically of episode 21 where the line “the sky ate him” is said, and it is the worst line in the entire show. The whole goddamn show. That’s it. That’s the number one worst line. 

But still, overall, the horror storytelling is incredibly solid, and some episodes even gave me brand new fears, like the unholy isolation of being in space, or the concept that someone you love could be replaced by someone completely different without you noticing.  

But here’s the thing; 

A lot of good horror is based on the absence of explanation. Most of the episodes that gave me the most visceral reactions of genuine terror come from the first two seasons, because that’s when the audience has the least amount of information. 

For example, in episode two, a really terrifying coffin is introduced. It’s creepy, it reacts very strangely to water for some reason, and appears to compel people to try opening it. By the end of the episode, the audience never finds out what’s in that coffin and that is a good thing. That is a huge part of what made that episode so unnerving.  

And then a few seasons later, we do find out what’s in the coffin, and to be fair the answer is both very creative and very scary, but it also takes a lot of the punch out of episode two. 

 No matter how f*cked up your thing is, it’s not going to compare to whatever the audience can conjure up in their own mind after such a creepy set up. This problem isn’t just stuck in this one scenario either; there are a lot of early episodes that, while still good, seem a lot less creepy in hindsight after you learn more about the scenario. 

I don’t think it’s bad writing, but I do think it’s a double-edged sword. Jonny Sims even mentions this sort of issue in the first Q+A. 

But yeah, to sum up; the narration is good, the ideas are creative, and seeing the mystery unfurl itself is deeply compelling. And for the record, the mystery elements aren’t of the Sherlock Holmes variety. It’s less about finding out who did the thing, and more about discovering how all of these individual points are intricately connected, pulling on each other as they move. Woven together like a... oh shit what’s the word? Gah, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Ah, whatever, I’m sure it’s not like a running motif or anything.  

Part 2: Stakes 

One of the main reasons I stopped watching Supernatural is that it devolves into complete f*cking nonsense. At the end of season five, the boys literally defeat the devil, and then the show...keeps going? Which would be fine. It’s also, largely, an episodic show, so if they have more creative ideas, they could definitely keep going with it. In fact, there are some post season five episodes that I thought were pretty good. But as they kept trying to outdo themselves with Bigger Bads, it got kind of difficult to suspend my disbelief. And the final nail in the coffin for me was the end of season nine, when Crowly basically points out to the audience that the main characters keep dying and coming back to life, so there are no stakes. The most-badest bad guy can always be defeated because some new Thing can just come out of left-field, and dying isn’t even on the table as a threat since people have tons of ways of coming back to life. 

The Magnus Archives, while being a show based in the supernatural, notably doesn’t bring anyone back to life, even though some very beloved characters die. I say “notably,” because in the season three Q+A, Jonny even says, “We make a point not to bring people back from the dead in Magnus, I know it sometimes feels like that, but we are very careful to never actually resurrect anyone.” 

Upon listening to this I said “oh my god, these guys are the only writers left who at least kind of know what they’re doing.”  

Also, as far as plot progression goes, The Magnus Archives is lowkey structurally perfect in the way the threats escalate in the underlying plot; both in terms of destruction and power and in terms of emotional consequences. Season one starts off with one major threat that’s dealt with by the end of the season, season two reveals the main villain, season three lays out the grander forces at play, season four ends the world, and season five is about un-ending the world. The difference between season one and season five is vast, but how we got there makes perfect sense. 

As for the emotional stakes, let’s talk about themes and characters. 

Part 3: Themes and Characters 

At the very end of season two, it’s revealed that the supernatural happenings in the Magnus universe are the result of entities far beyond our understanding. Since their existence is so fundamentally different from what we can comprehend, they interact with the world through cursed items, creatures, and humans who have dedicated themselves to an entity.  

A lot of people read this as a metaphor for late-stage capitalism, and I am one of those people. A bunch of faceless entities exploiting humans through means of dehumanization and causing people to suffer because it feeds them seems like an appropriate metaphor. 

While we’re on this topic, I do want to talk about Elias, since he’s the main villain of the entire series and also one of my favorite villains of all time. The Magnus Archives is a series that deals with a lot of moral questions and has a lot of characters who do morally questionable things, so one might assume that the villain of said series is, you know, morally ambiguous and sympathetic to some extent despite being “the bad guy.” 

Nope! No stops, full bastard. It’s great. 

He falls under what I’ve deemed the “unbeatable boss” archetype. He just doesn’t tolerate insubordination or resistance, and that combined with his lack of empathy means that anyone who crosses him is either killed or brought to heel. His power set is cool too. On the surface the ability to see out of any eye and read minds sounds useful, but not deal breaking, but the way he uses that power to manipulate people and anticipate threats...yeah, it makes him kind of impossible to beat.  

He’s just...so evil and he loves being evil and every single f*cking thing he does pisses me off and makes me want to kill him. It’s. Great. 

Anyways, I think Elias’s role as the central antagonist is what makes the capitalist reading so common. He’s the head of the institute, he’s wealthy, he’s powerful, and he dehumanizes people in ways that are both brutal and chillingly indifferent. He seems like an appropriate stand in through that lens. 

I also love how voice actor Ben Meredith plays him like’s he’s trying to seduce the audience.  

With all of that said, I wouldn’t call this the critique of capitalism a direct allegory or anything; in much looser terms, this could be a metaphor for any power structure that exploits humans. Organized religion or cults might be even more on the nose, considering there’s a lot of mentions of rituals and worship within the show. 

But if we boil it down to its barest aspects and focus on the avatar characters, The Magnus Archives is a series about people becoming monsters. Or, at the very least, becoming worse versions of themselves. That can mean a lot of things to different people in a metaphorical sense; the tense relationship between desperation and morality, the eagerness to please at the cost of one’s own mental health, the psychological traumas that lead people down dark paths, and how personal choices can still be dictated and manipulated by outside influences. It’s kind of heavy stuff, but put into a digestible package through the show’s abstractions. 

Well, for the most part.  

There’s some debate as to whether or not Daisy’s arc was handled tastefully. While her demise and Basira’s character arc were clearly meant to condemn police brutality and the deeply corrupt system that allows it to foster, it’s still a weird subject to discuss in such a fantastical context, and there is a strange sympathy for the devil angle that can get kind of uncomfortable for some listeners.  

Okay, stepping back from that for a bit, let’s talk about Jon and how he fits into this whole “people becoming corrupted” thing. 

Jon has one of my favourite brands of character arc, which is one based in deterioration alongside growth. The most obvious way this takes form is his departure from humanity as his relationship with the Eye drives him to psychologically harm others, and he finds himself sympathizing more and more with the people he was afraid of, stating in episode 152 that anyone listening to his recordings might compare him to the other avatars that have had their minds and morals twisted. 

Over the course of the series, he is repeatedly traumatized and the show makes a point that he is being both physically and emotionally scarred. These happenings are what drive his motivation for revenge in season five, and he even states that revenge is making him a worse person. As a character he’s constantly berating himself and his own monstrousness, much to Martin’s dismay.  

That’s why the finale destroys me in the best way. Upon seeing that Jon has betrayed him and basically given himself over to the Eye, Martin asks “how much of you is even left?” And when Jon tries to reassure him that he’s still himself, Martin’s response is “how would you even know?” This cuts through me every time. Up until this point, Martin had consistently stood up for Jon and Jon’s humanity, even in the face of Tim’s doubt, Basira’s mistrust, Elias being cryptic, and Jon’s own self-hatred. This is the ultimate breaking point, the point where even Martin, the love of Jon’s life, doesn’t really recognize him. It’s brutal. Because at the end of the day, Jon is still himself; he’s a deeply broken person trying to make the right decisions.  

We’ll come back to the finale later, but for now I want to talk about the romance. 

Jon’s emotional growth throughout the series is largely tied into Martin. Martin’s the first person that Jon really opens up to, and this later grows into trust which then turns into a genuine emotional connection.  On the flip side, Martin’s growth in season four is largely tied into Jon. Martin starts season four basically waiting to die, but Jon’s return gives him a reason to keep living, and he’s later able to recognize his own value outside of the pure utility of ‘you need to set yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm.’ Both of them give each other reason to push onward despite everything becoming more and more hopeless.  

It’s a good romance. I wish the two had had a few more scenes together before the culmination, but it is built up over the course of four seasons and comes together in an utterly fantastic confession.  

And yeah, the scene with Martin and Jon in the Lonely is cheesy as hell, but it is the highest quality of cheese. These are some gourmet nachos.  

Umm, also kind of stating the obvious here, but it’s also pretty cool that the main character in this horror story falls in love with another man. You don’t see that a lot, and it’s cool that no one even makes a big deal out of it. It’s just a normal romance, but with two guys. It’s nice. 

So, they go to Scottland, they hang out, they’re in love, Jonalias starts the apocalypse through Jon, the world ends, and season five starts! 

...Let’s talk about season five! 

Part 4: Season 5 

At the very start of this post, I said that supernatural mysteries tend to get worse as they go along, and I am deeply sad to report that I don’t think that The Magnus Archives is an exception. It just goes downhill in a very different way than its ilk. 

And, so we’re clear, I don’t think season five totally tanks or becomes unlistenable, it’s just, in my opinion, notably worse than the rest of the show. 

As discussed earlier, it doesn’t fall apart due to a lack of planning; everything still makes sense, but the presentation has changed drastically. The episodic statements are no longer scary stories, but more like slam poems about the various hellscapes that Jon and Martin are trekking through. Honestly if these were published in a book of slam poetry, I would probably think they slapped pretty hard. I genuinely believe that Jonny Sims is a good writer, but as a podcast a lot of these statements just made me zone out. There’s at least four that I don’t even slightly remember. Myself and many others have noted that they just...aren’t scary, unless there’s a specific episode that really gets under your skin due to a certain fear or phobia. 

To quote my friend, “it’s harder to feel a solid impact when the setting is literally divorced from reality. People would either go numb or insane to the point where their fears become unrelatable.” 

And, to be honest, I think that this same surreal odyssey set up could have worked with a slight shift in narration. Two stand out episodes for me were “Strung Out” and “Wonderland.” Both of them show the tormented target actively trying to resist and interact with their tormenter, instead of just trying to escape or live through their situation. “Strung Out” is also more of character study; you learn about Francis’s life before the apocalypse through their interaction with the Web hellscape. Meanwhile “Wonderland” is just...f*cked, and you get to see Jon take the perspective of first-person Bad Guy throughout the whole thing, which is its own level of disturbing. 

But the majority of episodes feel so abstract that I kind of forget the people trapped in them are supposed to be characters and not just concepts, so it’s harder to feel their dread and pain. 

But I’m still here for the metaplot, the drama, and the romance. And when that’s good, it’s great! I think the final handful of episodes are really solid in that regard. 

Buuuuuuut... 

A decent chunk of season five is dedicated to the “kill bill” plot. Jon discovers he has the power to smite people, and while at first, he’s embarrassed about this, since he actively enjoyed killing Not!Sasha, Martin is super into it! He’s encouraging Jon to murder people.  

This is actually the set up for a really good arc. As Jon gets more and more into his own avenging angel persona, Martin could get more and more disturbed by it so by the time they get to London, Martin could be really upset that Jon is so willing to wreak his own divine justice by killing or torturing all of the avatars. 

And this does kind of happen. We do reach this end state, and it makes for a good final conflict, but the way we got here was borderline nonsense. Thematic gibberish, if you will. 

Throughout the journey, Martin is clearly motived by a sense of justice; these people are bad, and so they should die. Whereas Jon is clearly more motivated by revenge; he only goes after the avatars that hurt him personally. At one point, Jon admits that maybe all of this killing isn’t making anything better, but just making him worse. Martin apologizes for egging him on, Jon absolves him by saying he started it, and then Martin’s like “I’ll keep my apology then.” This is the second worst line in the entire series, right after “the sky ate him.” And it’s close. 

But it kind of feels like we’re back at square one. Jon is back to being ashamed of killing and Martin is still keen on his justice stance, but now just less pushy about it. The arc is basically half resolved at this point. 

But then it doesn’t matter, because Jon kills Helen anyway. So, Jon’s back on his revenge/justice thing. Then what was the point of his earlier revelation? Why have that if it’s not going to matter and the conflict that was escalating still culminates with Jon leaning into the avenging angel stuff, and Martin being disturbed by it? It just makes both of them look like huge hypocrites! I f*cking hate it when they’re in the tunnels and Martin says “you weren’t meant to enjoy it this much,” regarding Jon’s smiting. Where did this come from?! Why didn’t you say this earlier? Third worst line in the series. 

And yeah, I’ll say it; the boys fight too much in this season. I loved their romance up to season five, and their cute moments and more lowkey serious discussions are still good in this season, but God, they fight so much. And I’m not saying couples can’t have fights or tension, that’s just realistic and also stories need conflict to be interesting. Jonny Sims is on the record saying that balancing a healthy romance with the stress of a literal apocalypse was a priority, and I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s well balanced.  I’m just saying that sometimes it feels like they don’t even like each other and it really started to grate on me. 

Maybe it would have been better if the beginning of this season was dedicated to charming romance at first, so we as an audience could better appreciate how strong their love is and how it’s truly being tested. But obviously that was never on the table— 

ALEX NO. 

So, yeah, I have a lot of problems with season. I think it’s the worst one by far, even though there is a lot of it I still enjoy, including the ending. 

As I mentioned before, the moment where Martin confronts Jon in the panopticon absolutely kills me, and Jon’s reaction kills me even harder. Throughout the season, Jon had largely been motivated by revenge, martyrdom, and the subconscious call of the Eye, and all three of those factors led him to his position as the pupil. He’s getting revenge against the powers, sacrificing his humanity to get rid of the Fears, and taking his place as wearer of the watcher’s crown. But all of this gets thrown out the window when he realizes that Martin is going to die. And not only is Martin going to die, Martin is going to die specifically because he loves Jon and refuses to leave Jon alone to die horribly. Martin had always been an underlying motivation for Jon, his “reason” as stated in episode 167, but now love as a motivator has come to the forefront, and Jon can no longer go through with his plan because of it. But at this point in the series, they’re both utterly doomed, and Jon concludes that the only possible chance they have of surviving, however unlikely, would be to sever the pupil of the eye, technically killing Jon, but maybe, just maybe, allowing them to escape with the Fears. Whether that’s meant to be literal or more ethereal is left unclear. Hell, maybe Jon’s just making it up completely and creating his own potential happy ending. It’s a pretty potent ending in emotional terms; Jon has to release the Fears and Martin has to kill Jon, and those are the two things they were dead set on not doing.  

The Web, arguably the real main antagonist, basically won, and their manipulation of Jon worked. The destruction spread, and there is kind of a bleak underlying tone to that. 

But at least this ending has some semblance of hope to it. I’m not saying that releasing the Fears was objectively the correct moral decision; the entire point of the dilemma is that there was no objectively correct moral decision. But, while Jon’s solution does have merit, it was also the most hopeless. I think dramatically, any one of the choices on the table could have worked if the writing was well executed, but thematically this one seemed like the perfect combination of grim and optimistic. Like, all of the evils that plague humanity can’t just be defeated forever and things could get worse, but maybe not. Maybe everything works out... 

So yeah, The Magnus Archives...is a podcast. And it’s a really good podcast. Great, even. I can complain about season five all I want, but regardless of how that worked out, you can tell throughout the entire show that the people working on it were trying to tell a genuinely excellent story. 

It’s good. Go listen to it. Even though I spoiled the entire thing and if you’re still here, you’ve probably already listened to it. Listen to it again. 

[cosplayinamerica]

COSPLAY THEME PAGE : ShareMyCosplay.com

Tell us about ShareMyCosplay, what was the genesis of the ShareMyCosplay? 

Share My Cosplay has gone through quite the journey to get to what you see today. I can still remember the day that I came up with the idea that would eventually lead to Share My Cosplay. I was eating lunch with a few friends at my day job. A friend of mine showed me a cosplay of Jessica Nigri as Pikachu, and because I worked in IT,  for some reason had an idea of doing a website related to cosplay. The actual website took a while to set up, but I started off slowly, with an initial launch on social media. We launched with Tumblr and Twitter, slowly building an audience. Then eventually a little bit later adding Facebook, and eventually much later introducing Instagram into the “family’. Eventually we added the website and have been going strong since then. We’ve of course made tons of adjustments over the years, and most recently started adding content on YouTube. It’s been a great ride so far, and hopefully it will continue.

What was your first experience with cosplay as well as the convention scene?

Like a lot of people who are into gaming and comic books, I was aware of cosplay, but didn’t really know much about it. It was only after looking into the idea of starting a site that I really got to know what goes on behind the scenes. It was meeting and talking to people in the scene that made me realize what an amazing community of people are involved. That is why I have continued the site for so long. As our social media following grew, I got to know more and more of the cosplayers, and was so happy I was able to use what I had created to help them gain more exposure. Share My Cosplay exists as a place where all cosplayers can have their work properly showcased.

As for conventions. While I live in the capital city of Canada, Ottawa is a relatively small city of one million people. Conventions have only really made it big in the last 5 years or so and before that were never a really big thing. I had travelled to other cities within Canada for some conventions, but those were mainly toy based conventions, so there would just be a handful of devoted cosplayers hanging out. It wasn’t until much later, when conventions started to take off, that our city got it’s own “Comic-con”. Then things exploded quickly. When our first Ottawa Comic-con launched, I was there day one, and the lineup was out of the building and wrapped around the whole building. I think it took a couple of hours to actually get into the convention floor. I could only assume it was similar to something like entering SDCC, but on a much smaller scale.

So while that has been a staple in our city for the last 10 years, I’ve also been traveling to Montreal Comic-con, which is a little bigger. Since there are maybe fewer conventions in Canada, people seem to come from great distances to show off the cosplays they had worked out. The dream has always been to try and get to SDCC, but that hasn’t happened yet. Travel is so expensive from Canada.

So for the short term I had set my sights on visiting NYCC, which is a “quick” drive from my area of Canada. However like all plans, they fell through. I had plans to go to NYCC and E3 in 2020, but of course those fell through because of what happened around the world. I miss conventions. One because they are such a great way to meet and interact with the cosplayers, and two, it’s one of the primary places we get content to share on our site and pages. So that has been lacking for us recently. Fingers crossed things will get back to normal soon.

How has cosplay changed over the years in your perspective?

Like everything you get to know, it evolves and grows over time. Being knee deep in cosplay all the time (my inbox once had 100+gb of cosplay submissions), I have certainly seen it change over the years. Obviously cosplays have become more elaborate in construction. Things like LEDs are so cheap now, I always find it amazing when people incorporate them into a costume. So the cosplay builds just get bigger and better every year. Also I find the resources on the internet have gotten better. Cosplayers are now able to find more detailed pictures of what they want to create, giving them a way better idea of what and how they will do it for a certain character.

Another thing that has changed, are the absolutely stunning Cosplay edits you’ll see on social media. So why the cosplay photographers have always been an integral part of the equation (we try hard to tag them when people include their details on submissions), the level that the editing on pictures has changed over the years is dramatic. You’ll often see the time-lapsed photo creations on Social, and they are just mesmerizing to watch. People put so much time into creating these worlds to help elevate the cosplay to the next level. That has certainly changed over the years. That being said, we still love regular shots of cosplay too, the amount of photographers that specialize in cosplay has jumped a lot too.

In general, it seems cosplay has evolved from a simple hobby where you could throw something together to wear to a weekend convention, to a full time gig where people spend months on at a time for each one of their creations.

How has ShareMyCosplay changed over the years?

In my eyes SMC has evolved greatly over the years. As the editor there have been two major changes, and I think it has improved the way we do things. The first thing would be, when we first started I used to go “collect” the cosplay that we shared. So I had to either go find it, or reach out to people. I spent a lot of time tracking down cosplay to share, that I personally thought was cool or very creative. As you can imagine this took a lot of time. So this has changed dramatically over the past 3 -  5 years. Now I’m happy to say that we are 99.9% based on submissions from users. So while there is less than 1% of content that we do go out and ask for, it is basically all based on what people send us to share. So that is why you see such a great variety of cosplay content on our pages. There is a downside to this in a way, as compared to some other pages out there that only feature certain types of cosplayers, some people enjoy that a bit more and those pages can have more of a following then we do. However we are really happy with the content we put out. 

Then the second big change, that has certainly led to better content for our pages, is the introduction of automation. When SMC first started, I had to do everything manually. Like I would be on Twitter or my phone doing everything live, and sharing items. It took up a lot of my time, and greatly affected my personal life. At times I think I must have been crazy, as this is a free service that we provide, and I was putting hours into each day. Now of course things have changed and the Social Media aspect of SMC is way easier to manage. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all have official tools available that allow you to schedule your posts. So you can easily take an hour or 2 and work on several days of a week at the same time, or if you were really organized, schedule the whole week. So I’ve learned to embrace this a bit more and learn the ins and outs of it. This leads to a more constant stream of content that our followers seem to enjoy. Which seems to lead to more engagement from our followers.

What’s the best part / worst part of running a cosplay theme page? 

The best part has obviously been meeting & interacting with the community throughout the years. We do our best to present a positive place where everyone can share their cosplay creations. We’ve been invited to some really cool events over the years, and our team has been able to go to a lot of conventions all over the world. It’s been a fun ride.

The worst part for me personally, is that while our team has grown and shrank over the years, I do most of the work by myself. Sharemycosplay.com is run by a single person, me. Also for the most part there is a single person doing all of the social media. So I do my best to have content up all of the time, but sometimes life gets in the way. We’ve put a few calls out for people that might want to help with content creation for the site, but sometimes it’s hard to attract people interested in helping. Right now I’d love a few writers that could write articles that I could wrap around cosplay posts for the page. We will have to see how that turns out.

What future plans do you have for ShareMyCosplay?

I’m always looking to expand Sharemycosplay.com with new content. During the pandemic I’ve been off my normal schedule so unfortunately updates have been a bit slow, but hoping to get back to things. With conventions off the table for now for the most part, I’m trying to move in different directions. I’ve recently tried to put more effort into YouTube, but even that has been impacted by the Pandemic, so I’ve leaned more on gaming content. That is going to change as I’ve started a new initiative that I just launched on our page a few days ago called “CosplaySELF''. Basically we are looking to have cosplayers interview themselves, and us edit the footage into the “episodes' ' featuring 3 cosplayers. Hopefully those will start to be live very soon. We are already into the editing phase and hope to have the first episode live soon, over on our YouTube page. Keep your eyes peeled. Hopefully, as long as people show interest, this is something we will continue to create and upload on a regular schedule.

Is there anything that wasn’t covered you like to talk about?

 Lastly I want to thank you for taking the time to include Share My Cosplay in this interview. It really means a lot when someone else in the community that you respect, takes a moment out of their busy life to recognize the work you’ve done. There have been times in the past where I have considered possibly giving up doing SMC, but getting some recognition really helps put things in perspective and allows me to continue on. Hopefully Share My Cosplay will continue to grow over the coming years, and continue as a great tool for all cosplayers to use.

https://www.sharemycosplay.com/

[bltngames]

SAGE 2020: Indie Games

SAGE may closed more than a day ago, but thankfully, the website remains up for those who still want to download its games. So even though this article is technically very late, nothing listed here is out of date. The event may be over, but the games live on! Which is honestly a relief, because I think doing ten games per article is taking its toll on me. Normally, when I’d write for TSSZ, I’d do somewhere in the realm of 5-7 games per article, and even that would eventually burn me out. After writing about 20 games this year, I was clearly starting to feel like I was running out of steam. Oh well. We live and learn. Here’s another ten games!

There’s one more article left after this, a sort of “honorable mentions” round-up that will feature much shorter blurbs as I blow through way more games way faster. If I didn’t talk about your game here in these three articles, now’s your chance to let me know so I can say something about it in the final article.

Anyway, onwards to our ten indie games.

Victory Heat Rally

I’m all for any game channeling the spirit of Sega’s old SuperScaler arcade technology, and Victory Heat Rally is all about that. Everything about this game seems so MY AESTHETIC that my only complaint is that I’m hungry for more. A lot more. This demo is a simple time trial on one race track and I’m itching to sink my teeth into literally anything else this game has to offer. There is an older demo from back in April with more content, but it’s running on a different version of the code base -- this newest demo is significantly improved both in terms of visuals and control. I really don’t have anything else to say about it. There’s not much here, but what’s here is charmingly retro in the style of Sega’s Power Drift, but cuter and even more colorful.

  Sondro Gomez: A Sunova Story

I had been interested to revisit Sondro Gomez after playing the first demo last year, but I don’t know if I just wasn’t in the right mood for it this year or what, but I kind of bounced off the game this time. To my memory, Sondro Gomez is a kinda-sorta side game in the Kyle & Lucy universe. You may remember Kyle & Lucy as one of a growing number of games coming out of the Sonic fan gaming community trying to break out as an original title. A while ago, the developers announced a partnership with Stealth to use the Headcannon engine to make the game with, something that extended to Sondro Gomez here. The problem is, it feels kind of weird now, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I think it’s the little stuff -- you don’t get a lot of positive feedback when attacking using your whip (the sound is a bit quiet), and the difficulty balancing errs on the side of caution. I died a couple times in my time playing this newest demo, but I wouldn’t characterize Sondro Gomez as a game that feels challenging. Some of that probably has to do with the fact this is still just a demo, which means you spend a long time fighting the same four enemy types in every single level. There’s a lot of charm to the story and the characters it involves, but that only takes you so far when it feels like you’re doing the same things over and over in the actual levels, you know? Either way, the touched up visuals and the new boss fights are welcome. Interested in seeing what the full release looks like next year.

  Delta Gal

In retrospect, a Mega Man Legends fan game seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Where Delta Gal has a leg up is in controls. Even considering the era Mega Man Legends was released in, it had very awkward controls. Delta Gal’s response is to embrace standard third person action game controls with a mouse and a keyboard. Now, there is controller support, but even once you get it set up, you have button layout presets like “Bad” and “Almost Good.” Honestly, if you can, just play it with a keyboard and mouse. The demo offers about 30-40 minutes of gameplay, with a bit of the town, a forest section, a cave, and one whole dungeon. Visuals nail the best parts of the Mega Man Legends low-fi aesthetic, colors are vibrant, and the pixel art textures look very good. The town is full of characters with lots of personality, too. A particular favorite being the guy who runs the junkyard who likes to show off by flexing his muscles but then ultimately chickens out when it comes to exploring the cave he discovers. The only downside I’d say is the sound design. The game sounds okay, but some of the music is a little bland, and certain sound effects lack the right kind of punch. Granted, this style of sound design isn’t easy, so I can empathize with the developers in that respect. Honestly, it doesn’t really detract from anything at all, so maybe it’s not even worth bringing up. Either way, good stuff, and I’m looking forward to the full release.

  Bun n’ Gun

Here’s a cute little game about a bunny in the old west. I’m absolutely in love with the visuals and the music here, but the gameplay is… interesting. Bun isn’t a typical shooter or platformer, thanks to the fact that he appears to only have one arm, which is occupied by his gun. Now you wouldn’t think this would matter, as it’s pretty easy to design a game around only having to jump and shoot, and that’s fair enough. But there’s a strange heft to this character. It takes them a little bit to pick up speed, and it takes them a bit to slow down, and there’s an unmistakable, split-second delay between pushing the jump button and actually jumping. I know enough about this kind of game development that a delay between pushing a button and actually jumping has to be a deliberate design decision, and I split on whether or not I like it. I don’t think I hate it, because it’s pretty easy to get used to the way it feels, but it does mean you’re working with a handicap when it comes to split-second movements. Given the bunny seems to only have one arm, though, perhaps that’s the point. Either way, it’s cute. Give it a look.

  Shield Cat

I feel like I’ve been over-using the word “charming” to describe games at SAGE this year, but you know what? Shield Cat is charming as heck. People also tend to think it’s reductive to describe things by comparing them to something that already exists, but I say nuts to that, too. Saying “It’s like…” is an easy shorthand, and besides, if somebody is saying your project is like one of their favorite games, it just means they’re giving you praise and might lack the words to accurately describe that praise. Thing is, that’s actually kind of hard to do with Shield Cat. The nearest relative to this game would be The Legend of Zelda, but Shield Cat honestly plays very little like Zelda, beyond having a top-down perspective. Secret of Mana, maybe, with the stamina meters? I don’t know. Regardless, this is a charming (!!!) top down action game where you roam around exploring an overworld and solve light puzzles. It controls well and the aesthetics are nice. Can’t really get much better than that, though I do have to wonder what it is you’re supposed to be doing in this game. It took me about 30 minutes to see everything available in this demo, but there’s no story setup and only the smallest pieces of what could be considered a dungeon. What’s on offer here is interesting enough that I find myself wanting to know more about this world. For example, it’s called Shield Cat, but clearly you’re some kind of ferret. What’s that about? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

  Prototype N

I’ve sat here staring into the void wondering what to write about for this game for a long time, because it’s one of those demos that’s just… a solid and fun game that nails exactly what it’s going for. I would say that Prototype N leans a little too far towards the easy side of things, but the third level provided in the demo ramps the challenge up enough to be just about perfect. And, really, that’s it. That’s the game. You get two softer introductory levels to get you acclimated to the controls (which are similar to Mega Man, but different enough not to be a direct clone) and one “real” level to actually give you a bit of a work out. There’s nothing else to really say. This has the vibe of a 1993 or 1994 Capcom game, or maybe something from Data East. Every single part of this game’s presentation is laser-focused on that aesthetic, and it pulls it off flawlessly. Sound design, music, visuals, it’s a bullseye. This game fell out of a time machine in the best way possible. Definitely give it a look.

  Yan’s World

From a game that nails the SNES aesthetic to this, a game which pays tribute to the Virtual Boy… but not really? I actually became aware of Yan’s World many years ago through a mutual Discord, and it always looked interesting, but simultaneously a little confusing, something that still mostly holds true to this day. Per the game’s own Kickstarter sales pitch, Yan’s World is “stylized as a lost title for Nintendo's Virtual Boy.” I can get down with that, but the game almost instantly breaks its own rule because Yan’s primary method of attack is to shoot a missile from his head that can only be aimed using the mouse. As such, Yan’s World doesn’t have controller support, even though one of the stretch goals currently listed on their Kickstarter page is to make a version that can be played on real Virtual Boy hardware. And, honestly, what’s the deal with this game’s whole… everything else? Why is this kid an onion? Why are the platforms made out of clocks? Why does all of Yan’s dialog make him seem like he’s sort of pissed off when he’s got such a big happy smile? There’s a bit of a hand-wave to suggest the entire game takes place inside of a dream, and for once that actually means throwing logic out the window, I guess. Oh, the missile is a pillow? Fine, whatever. Use it to blast this demonic apple, and then threaten to kill an innocent NPC. It’s a dream! Despite how little sense that makes, it… kind of works? The sprites are big and lovely, the game controls well, and the level design is plenty creative. I can’t fault the game for that, it’s just trying to figure out everything wrapped around the game that feels so bizarre.

  Cosmic Boll

I don’t know if I really understand what’s going on in Cosmic Boll, but I love to play it just the same. This plays like if Treasure made Dragon Ball Advance Adventure while strung out on cocaine. The end result is pure hyperactive chaos. There is a whole complicated combat system at play here, and a very lengthy in-depth tutorial when you first start the game, but you can figure out a lot of it by just skipping the tutorial and playing the game for real. You can get by pretty easily by just mashing buttons and seeing what happens, and that’s not a complaint, because a lot happens in this game. Like, constantly. It never stops, it never really slows down. You’re always zipping around, spinning and flipping and punching soldiers, explosions everywhere, collectibles everywhere, just utter madness. It’s Sonic the Hedgehog plus Devil May Cry plus Gunstar Heroes and all of it is mixed up in ways you probably don’t expect. All of this is to say that Cosmic Boll is messy and cool and fun and you should probably play it.

  Brock Crocodile

This is a game I’ve seen a lot of around social media, and it’s nice to finally be able to try it. Weirdly enough, this is the first game all SAGE that has flat out refused to see my controller. For the last few years at SAGE, I’ve been using a Playstation DualShock 4, which typically causes me all kinds of headaches with games expecting an Xbox controller. This year, I’ve been using an 8bitdo SN30+. These things are designed primarily to be used on the Switch, but using a controller macro, you can change it to Xbox or Playstation modes. The “Xbox” mode has served me well so far, but Brock here fails to let me use the controller at all. Fortunately, with only three buttons, Brock manages to be mostly playable on a keyboard. That being said, a lot of this game feels a little bit off. The camera is kind of swimmy, as it's almost constantly in motion trying to get a better angle on what's around you. Brock himself doesn't have a smooth acceleration curve either -- it's more like shifting gears in a car, where you reach one top speed and then click up into the next highest speed. That can work, but Brock changes gears much too quickly and without much feedback, making it look like one jerky acceleration curve instead of two. And then there’s the visuals. Level art looks great, character portraits look great, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of the sprites I’ve seen in this game. Take Brock himself, for example: he’s got insanely thick thighs for some reason but the rest of his body looks thin and wispy, and he stands with kind of weird posture. The good news is, despite these complaints, Brock Crocodile is actually really fun to play. You eventually get used to the game’s control quirks, and the level design and included boss fight are excellent, striking that perfect balance where they aren’t too easy but don’t feel unfairly difficult, either. Plus, even though the cutscenes aren’t skippable (annoying as I was dealing with controller issues), the writing is snappy and the dialog is funny. It may not be perfect, but there’s still a lot to like here.

  Marble Launcher

Here’s one of those games where you can tell the creator is just starting out making games. And that’s great! These sorts of endlessly complex, winding mazes are exactly the kind of levels I started making when I first got into game development when I was 16 or 17 years old. One could spend hours searching every nook and cranny in these levels, which is simultaneously awesome and exhausting. Thankfully, near as I can tell, nothing FORCES you to go exploring, so if you’d rather just finish the game, it’s easy enough to head straight for the goal. Gameplay is extremely simple, otherwise. You’re a marble, you can attack enemies by bouncing off of their heads, and you have a slam move. That’s it. You might think that with this being a marble game, you’d get real rolling ball physics, but all you get is simple platformer controls. They’re good enough, especially considering how esoteric the shape of the levels can get, but it’s hard not to be a little disappointed. Still, it’s not a bad little game for what it is. Controls a bit better than some of my earliest attempts at game development, too.

Thirty games total! That’s a lot of games to talk about. And there’s still more to come, so stay tuned for that.

[sunset-spring]

So, uh, not to address the elephant in the room, but does this mean Cadet Squad!Allura will now have cosmic Space Goddess powers?

Well, me and @manifi have our own plans for the Cadet Squad and how things will go. Since it is and AU there will be room for changes that do not follow the events of the show - as seen with the current plot, setting and so on going on right now on the blog. However no spoilers will be given, we’re not going to just spoil things to say whether or not we’ll be following specific events. That’s something for viewers to find out along the way.

As for the elephant in the room of what happened in season 8, I will give my personal thoughts on that specific plotline:

I think it was a bad decision that comes with many bad implications, though I do not believe that it was done with ill intent. I fully understand those who feel hurt and offended by it, as Allura is a woc and she’s important representation for other woc, and their feelings are valid and it’s important to be mindful of such implications, which I hope to be in my own original and personal works. But I don’t think it was done to be hateful or that the crew had any ill intent when writing it. 

From the perspective of Allura as a character, it makes sense for her to be self-sacrificing for the sake of others she cares more about and protecting others on a grander scale. So as a decision made in character for Allura, it makes sense. And because the conflict of the story had her as essentially the source and catalyst for the events of the series as a whole, having it come down to her makes sense as well. So I can see the logic behind it. 

There are a lot of problems with it from a storytelling standpoint, though. Such as how she found the solution she came to, the aftermath of how she restored the universes restoring things such as Altea itself, what it means for other planets destroyed by Zarkon after this and if they were restored, and a lot of unanswered questions that needed more follow-up based on that. And it results in a happy ending with things lost being returned, which A) causes there to feel like the 10,000 year war had both a lack of consequence to have a wrapped in a bow ending while also having an opposite effect, and B) Giving a happy ending that would’ve been exactly what Allura wanted, but cannot personally enjoy herself. Which in a way I can see making sense, as such sacrifices usually have that effect in a story and makes them more potent. But due to the nature of happened and the results being not quite clear, it leaves it feeling less like a grand gesture and a bit more of a confusing disconnect between cause and effect.

And that also comes from the grand scale of the finale as a whole. Taking it to the level of Honerva threatening the destruction of all existence makes sense: it takes the aspect of multiple realities that was introduced, combines it with her personal goals as a character and is a natural progression for the climax to move towards. The issue is that when reaching that grand scale, they didn’t really seem to have a solid solution in mind for how to fix the damage done - at least that’s what it felt like. 

All of it has groundwork that makes it line up logically in concept, but there’s a lack of foundation in how it resolves that needed more refining that causes it to not work and feel very messy. 

And again, I absolutely understand where people are coming from with being upset and they’re feelings are valid.

For me personally, it was not a good decision and I was not a fan of it either, and it was a downside for the season and finale as a whole for me. I would’ve preferred them finding another method of fixing the damage done by the conflict between Honerva and Voltron, but again with such a grand scale I’m not sure how the would have while still keeping it believable and making sense. 

[doktorpeace]

Top 5 Games Of The Year #1

[Downside Ballad - Pyre OST] 

Pyre is something really, truly, special and let me prove that to you by just describing it in the most literal sense. It is, essentially, a Basketball RPG and Visual Novel about escaping Purgatory. Not only is it wholly unlike any other game I’ve ever played or, really, even heard of before but works; it takes such a wild concept and turns it into absolutely one of the best, most unique, most touching games I’ve ever played in my life. To sum it up here right at the start, because this is going to be very long, Pyre is a game that combines a beautiful visual aesthetic and tangible, easy to parse, always expanding lore to build a cohesive, believable setting for its world and inhabitants. It then fills that world with fully fleshed out characters, so fleshed out in fact you will miss content in your first go round, because of the nature of the game it is impossible to see all of the content for every character in a single run which I’ll get into more later. It conveys itself to you in the style of a visual novel for the most part, giving a lot of time for character interactions, dialogue, and a conveyance of the world at a pace that keeps the game continuously fresh and easy to digest. It caps off each set of interactions with a gameplay segment, called a Rite, which are the ‘Basketball’ segments I mentioned before. While that’s a bit of a simplification of what all the gameplay has to offer in terms of depth and strategy it’s still a pretty apt way to describe it. Cap everything off with a unique and memorable piece of music for almost every major NPC and major part of The Downside and Pyre takes so many seemingly disparate elements and so many ostentatious ideas and turns it all into a cohesive whole basically without error and for that it deserves so much love and praise. The Downside and every location therein is so distinct and memorable it’s incredible and I think it’s helped by how colorful it is despite the narrative purgatory and harshness it has. Every location stands out from one another based solely on color palette and design. I’d like to just post a few examples:

This is helped by each Rite arena having a unique layout as well, integrating the uniqueness of the overworld and carrying it over into gameplay. The geography of The Downside has an almost dreamy, impossible to exist feeling about it from start to end which contrasts in a good way with how well realized the setting is. Part of what helps each location and every Rite feel unique is that every single place the party travels to is in and of itself a monument or major landmark of some kind. Be it the largest ship to ever crash in the sea, the remains of a titanic scorpion which once wandered the deserts near the beginning of the game, or even just where many of the Downside Imps reside every location has a tangible existence to it. This is helped by one of the smartest conveyance features I’ve ever seen in a game, and it really takes advantage of the visual novel style presentation of Pyre. Every single time a proper noun is used in conversation the text is highlighted in a bold red text and highlighting that text, be it about a person or a place or an event, the game will reveal just a snippet of information which clues the player into key information as they play in a non-obstructive way. In fact, this is used for one major character to convey the meaning of all of their dialogue, as they do not speak english.

Then, once the player has met said person or been to that place, or heard a bit more about that event in another conversation a full page or more gets added about it to the Book of Rites the player has from the beginning of the game, giving the player an optional chance at more reading to invest themselves further into the game world. Some of these pages open solely through gameplay challenges as well; Lore about the stars which you follow and the constellations in the sky and the major locations will only unlock by playing the game in ways relevant to that information. All of this information can be obtained in a single playthrough and, to me, represents what a ‘100%’ run is for this game, a great reward in my opinion. The more you want to interact with the world the more it opens up to you, 179 pages of optional text in all and as someone who read every last drop of it I promise you it’s interesting and worthwhile as a reward, it would take far too long to go into detail about here.

[Strange Voyage - Pyre OST] The inciting incident for the plot is that the player, yes you as the point of view character is intended to be literally you, has been breaking the law by knowing how to read and keeping books. The game lingers on this only in an opening cutscene, showing your collection being burnt before cutting to you exiled and sure to die in The Downside. Being as the player themselves are intended to be involved in the world and setting the game never asks for a name but instead only asks for your pronouns. He/Him, She/Her, and They/Them are all options and as a minor details I personally like that She/Her is the default, most games with features like this assume male as default. Regardless, this changes nothing mechanically about the game every character interaction with you stays the exact same, they just use the proper pronouns used to refer to you by. It’s a nice little option. Your importance to the characters who save you is immediate and thus your ability to be invested is as well and your importance comes from your crime: You can read. You, the player, are literate in a world where literacy in illegal and that allows you uniquely to read The Book of Rites, a magical book in the possession of the other protagonists (the reason they have it at all is explained later, it’s not just a Way Too Convenient happenstance though I will not reveal why here in order to avoid spoilers) which can be used to determine the next location a Rite will be held. Thus, from the very start putting the onus of deciding exactly how to get from point A to point B on the player. This immediately gives the player a reason, but a mundane and believable one, to be special and to have decision making power in this situation. You’re not some god touched, ultra special, prophesied savior. You are defined by this literacy so strongly that your special title is ‘The Reader’ which carries different connotations to different characters. Ultimately you’re just you. It’s good writing and I love it. The game then focuses on the journey you take with the other starting characters Jodariel, Rukey, and Hedwyn travelling from the furthest point south in The Downside, hitting all of the major locations along the way to conduct the Rites being held there, and travelling as far north as possible to the place where special Liberation Rites are held. These Rites are always between your team The Nightwings, and the best scoring team in that Liberation Cycle. The lore based reason for your team always competing is given in the song played during these Rites and is expanded upon through other lore, including a major plot twist at the end I won’t spoil but in short The Nightwings are the team all others are measured against. The writing surrounding this works well enough as a means of never excluding the player from the most important content in the game, while also giving good reasoning for your team to be unique. As their name implies, these rare and special Rites are used to determine the worthiness of a single individual, one selected from each team, to ascend back up into The Commonwealth with all of their crimes forgiven. As one could imagine this can result in some INTENSELY bad blood between members of The Nightwings and other team’s players. Imagine you’ve worked your ass off succeeding in these Rites, surviving a downtrodden and harsh purgatory with little in the way of food and you get ONE STEP away from finally being free, only to be rejected at the last minute. It’s gonna sting and it’s GOING to change how these characters feel about each other. Since everybody in the plot has been here longer than you have and they’ve all got relationships and opinions regarding each other. Some as simple as hating a whole team and some deeply nuanced and seeing them slowly open up to the player is another nice treat that helps the world feel oh so real. [Vagrant Song - Pyre OST] The pacing through this first half of the game is absolutely superb. You’re introduced to every playable party member you’ll receive, of which there are 9 in total, given an extended opportunity to interact with them and learn about who they are, their motivations, the crimes they committed to end up here, just a whole lot about them though not all join quite yet. While you won’t learn all of this immediately and, oftentimes, can miss major information on a character if you manage to have them Liberated that’s a purposeful part of the game’s structure. You can’t always see everything or know everything about someone, even if you really want to. It drives home the quality of the writing just a little bit more while also giving the player real, meaningful reason to play through the game again. From here on though, the game’s pacing enhances dramatically and the player is really given the reigns to decide a lot of things. I won’t go into too much detail since it spoils a big part of what makes the latter half of the plot special but basically a lot more Rites than normal begin occurring at once. Typically only a couple can happen in a night, since it is based on the glow of certain stars imbuing their respective landmarks with the magical power needed to perform Rites at all. Since so many are happening at once the player can really dictate what characters they get to see and where they get to play a lot more and that’s great from a gameplay perspective. While I felt the pacing of the game got a bit too fast compared to the first part and initially found it jarring Pyre never loses its poise and the player will quickly get into a groove with their newfound freedom. Plot events are still meaty and there’s a lot of unique little dialogues the player can miss simply by not bringing certain party members to certain locations against certain other teams. It’s all very granular and means no two playthroughs will be alike. Before I forget a little thing I love about this game is how The Blackwagon, the home you all share, starts kind of plain and bare but every character you get adds a little personal something to the interior and as you travel through the world it gets filled with all sorts of nick-nacks. It helps flesh out your party members and the world while also making the Black Wagon feel genuinely lived in, it’s nice. Also, if you highlight any given personal item of a party member it’ll tell you what they’re currently doing, so even if you can’t talk with them that day you can still get just a little bit more flavor text out of them.

The game has variable endings in both major and minor ways. I would consider there to be about four ‘major’ variations on the ending, all of which are determined by your overall success in the Liberation Rites. There are then somewhere around Two Hundred Million end state variations depending on the player’s choices, successes in Rites, what they learned, who specifically they freed, and more. While the player could get all of the main variations in just a few playthroughs this sheer dedication to detail gives every player something to feel accomplished for that’s all their own. All in all, I could gush about Pyre’s writing for hours but I think that will suffice for now. I think it goes without saying as well that Pyre is a visually stunning game. The  almost paint-like models and dreamy appearance of everything is beautiful to see in motion. Every animation is clear, every particle effect stunning, every location beautiful, and every character expressive. Pyre is a beautiful, gorgeous game and I wish I could give it the description it deserves but frankly I don’t have the words to. Hopefully just the pictures I provide throughout this review will help sway you but trust me, if you like playing games for their visuals, their character designs, their environments, just how pretty everything is Pyre won’t disappoint you. [The Eight Scribes - Pyre OST] About the gameplay itself Pyre manages to build a Sports RPG that, at least to me, didn’t feel like a ‘Sports’ game in the colloquial sense. It felt involved, tactical, and had enough of a fantasy element to it to make it stand head and shoulders above its contemporaries. Pyre’s gameplay is deep, balanced, and most importantly fun. All 9 of your playable party members feel different from one another, in part thanks to the amazing variety of body types at play lending themselves to intrinsic gameplay differences, and they each add something valuable to the three man team composition that each Rite is conducted with. This combined with each map in the game being just a bit different also means the player is constantly incentivized to try new team compositions and to not fall into just a comfortable rhythm. 

Rites are contests with no time limit. The only goal at hand for each team is to extinguish the Flame of their opponents, which is essentially their basket. To do so each team must try and carry an orb that spawns in a neutral position to their opponent’s flame with any member of their team, leaping with force into it. The Flame of each team has a standard worth of 100 and most of the time your goal is to earn 100 Points or inflict 100 damage depending on how you look at it, though there are variables which can make this number higher or lower for both the player and their AI controlled opponents. Each character lowers the flame’s value by a different amount, usually inversely proportional to their speed and size. Your largest, slowest, hardest to navigate party member, Jodariel, can snuff an entire flame in just two or three scores meanwhile your faster, easier to score with units such as Sir Gilman and Ti’Zo typically lower a flame by 15 or 20 points.

[Talon Sheath - Pyre OST] Importantly, however, is to note that scoring with a character removes them from the field until another goal is made. This means the team that scored last must now play 2 against 3 and, if they continue scoring, will continue to play at that disadvantage for the entire game after the first score. This system, like so many others in the game, ensures the player never gets too comfortable relying on ‘old reliable’ strategies and must constantly think and play to their fullest. Alternatively, characters can both pass and throw the orb to facilitate team based play and allow for advanced strategies and unique abilities to be made use of. Throwing the orb into the Flame of an opponent takes a bit longer and is harder to do than jumping into the Flame and also nets less points BUT keeps the scoring player in the game, since they were not banished by the Flame. This opens up a lot of playstyle variety and strategy on its own and is a very smart feature in my opinion.  While playing a match each team can only move any one character of the three at a time, and while it’s nigh instantaneous to change who you’re controlling it does make for an interesting, almost chess-like approach to gameplay. To make this more clear there is no AI to control the teammates you’re not actively playing as, they simply stand there until you choose to move them around again. Some characters are only really good in movement where others can easily be useful just standing still it creates a unique gameplay feeling which keeps the tension high and thus player involvement up. It’s hard to describe exactly how it works, but trust me, it works quite well. [Path to Glory - Pyre OST]

Banishment is another major part of how matches are played in Pyre. Each character has a different attack or set of attacks that, if they connect with an opponent, Banishes them from the field for a time and it is possible to have an entire team wiped out at once, leading to free goals. In addition to their dedicated attacks characters also have a stat called Presence, generally tied to how large they are and their demeanor, which causes them to cast a flaming shadow in a circle around them. If any opponent so much as touches the ground in this area they are instantly banished, allowing large characters to function as ‘goalkeepers’ in a sense. Note that I said touches the ground, however, some characters can leap a VERY long distance to undermine all but the absolute largest of Presences given good spacing and timing. This mechanic functions well, but can sometimes be frustrating since the AI can be VERY good at making called shots or long distance snipes to take out characters. Just flinging the orb into opponents can banish them as some characters, that’s fun. Interestingly as well a character’s Presence Aura disappears while they perform an active attack which in and of itself is a good balance for characters with exceptionally large Auras.

Each character has a few major stats: Glory, which determines the damage they deal to the Flame anytime they extinguish it. This is generally inversely proportional to a character’s speed, but some characters who are particularly righteous still score very well even while being fast such as Pamitha. Presence, which as mentioned before determines essentially their defensive capabilities. This is generally tied to the character’s size, though Ti’Zo the imp has an extremely large Aura regardless of being so small. Quickness, which determines their speed. Generally the smaller the better, but the fastest character of all, The Vagabond Girl (Who for the purposes of this review will be called ‘Fae’ from here on because LITERALLY everyone I know chose that name for her) is of an average size. and last but not least Hope, which determines their respawn timer after being Banished by an opponent. This is entirely informed by the character’s personality and thus has nothing to do with their other statistics. It is also the most fickle stat, being the one most prone to both temporary and permanent changes. These stats can be adjusted by Charms, each character can hold one and every character has at least one completely unique to them that no one else can use. Charms generally just raise stats to give an edge to a character, but they also can give access to unique options such as a farther leap, augmenting a character’s special abilities, the ability to cause earthquakes by jumping, the opportunity to instantly respawn after being banished once per play in each match, and more. Characters can also be adjusted as they gain experience, known as Enlightenment in this game. As you play through characters will slowly gain access to four permanent and major adjustments to their playstyle. There are 8 options with many being mutually exclusive. These are permanent changes with I believe only a single opportunity to respec a single character on any playthrough so the decision is tough especially since often all the options presented are fun and interesting. For some characters these upgrades push them to one role or another but for others, like Hedwyn, it can take a relatively mediocre and unspecialized character and make them into an absolute powerhouse. Other things that can adjust the character’s stats include your dialogue options with them and about them to other people, plot events, and who is Liberated at the current time. Most of these are temporary but sometimes you can have permanent effects on your teammates, for good or ill.

[Never to Return -  Pyre OST]

Now to get to perhaps the defining trait of the gameplay side of things, the event around which the plot revolves: Liberation Rites. As I touched on before these Rites are used to determine if a character is worthy to go free from The Downside and return to society at large with their crimes forgiven. This does have gameplay ramifications which are permanent in each playthrough, whoever goes free is removed from the game. Be they your teammate or your opponent they are gone for good. For you this means no more talking with them anymore, no more finding out about them except by secondhand accounts which are generally less detailed than the source, and no more using them in future Rites. Only your three most experienced party members are options for Anointment on any given Liberation, too, so don’t think you can just send your least favorite party member who you’ve been neglecting; You must give up someone of great value to you every single time. It’s a tough decision which, again, drives replay value AND the narrative along letting every last element of the game coalesce in a meaningful way. One might decide to keep their very favorite character around a little longer so they can help in more Rites and so they can talk with them more, since every character has unique dialogue all the way up through the very end of the game, but then you may risk them never going free as there are not enough Liberations to go around. It’s a tough decision every time and there are no right answers. It’s a great, amazingly considered concept from a narrative and gameplay perspective and it was well worth building a game around. I would like to talk briefly on each party member, but not too much since I want to keep them special. I will only talk about eight of the party members here since two of them are spoilers in and of themselves. Hedwyn is the closest thing to an ordinary person you get in your party. He’s a kind, level headed man who’s always there when you need advice. While initially he might seem boring compared to the other options Hedwyn ultimately surprised me with how much I liked him though in terms of gameplay he’s definitely the most plain party member. Not the worst, far from it, but definitely the most plain. His role in gameplay initially starts as an ‘all rounder’ kind of character but eventually he blossoms into a supportive role, acting essentially as a cheerleader for your other party members, giving them AMAZING boons just for taking the field with them and honestly that fits his personality so well. Jodariel is a Demon, she has managed to survive in The Downside for a very, very long time compared to most. She’s gruff, very slow to open up, and generally quite harsh and realistic. All that said she’s still quite personable if you have the drive to get to know her. As a result of being down here so long she’s also got a lot of ties to the other teams you’ll be facing giving her some of the most interesting relationships in the game. She’s kind of a team mom, too, and very self sacrificing over the course of the game. In terms of gameplay I think Sandra puts it best:

She is arguably the weakest party member you receive on the whole but she is far from useless. She’s a great auxiliary party member and slots well into just about any team of three characters. Defensively she’s a monster as well, her Presence stat can reach ludicrous levels, making it impossible for opponents to score in any way other than by throwing the orb or banishing her first. She’s quite fun to use on the whole. Rukey Greentail is a Cur (yes that is his species name) and is quite the rogue. He’s got that kind of disposition where you just know this jokester is hiding something from you but he’s very good at deflecting attempts to pry so he’s slow to open up. He, like Hedwyn, is actually quite kind from the get go though his snarkier more eccentric personality can make him harder to read and get along with at times. Ultimately though he’s a good guy, he’s just also kind of greedy. Early on in terms of gameplay he will absolutely be your offensive star. He’s fast, he’s got a long jump, and he can dart right through enemy defenses and only gets better at it as you go. I tend to find he has kind of a reverse bell curve of effectiveness. He’s incredibly good early on, then in the middle of the game most other characters overtake them as they can fill multiple roles on a team compared to his specialized speedy offense, and then he unlocks the ability to double jump and shit absolutely hits the fan. Rukey is a great long term investment and is the character most able to just ignore enemy defenses and terrain difficulties in order to seal the game for you. Fae is another human, like you and Hedwyn, though she’s a bit more in line with the world you find yourselves in in terms of personality. She’s very out there, having visions and a very deep interest in and almost idolization of The Eight Scribes and their lore, giving her almost a religious aspect other characters lack. She’s difficult to parse and doesn’t develop as much as the other characters but her relationships are developing at the same time yours are, since nobody knows her before she joins you. Seeing how the party members get along with her over time is a treat. She’s an endearing character, just a bit of an oddball. In terms of gameplay she has ridiculous mobility and overall really good stats. Though she doesn’t gain as much from her personal upgrades as most other characters she’s still consistently useful since she has can run VERY fast and leap VERY far. Like Rukey she’s almost entirely offense oriented, but she can be used for other roles more easily thanks to her superior size. Also you get to choose her name when you meet her and all of the options rhyme with ‘Gray’. Everyone I know chose ‘Fae’ and I gotta say it’s a very fitting name for her personality.

Ti’Zo is a Wagon Imp and a natural resident of the Downside. Having never been to the Commonwealth and also not of a typically ‘intelligent’ species he cannot speak in human language. Thankfully he is very expressive, so you can always understand him anyway.

He’s been a member of The Nightwings for longer than almost anyone else and thus actually gives some good insight to the Rites themselves and the history of The Downside. He also has complex relationships with some other party members and enemy teams. He’s just a great wellspring of character and completely avoids the annoying ‘Mascot Character’ bullet. In terms of gameplay he’s the most different party member you get. His attack hits a MASSIVE area but also banishes himself, he has a huge presence, high hope, his Glory can be raised through his personal upgrades to great levels, and he’s fast! So what’s his downside? His movement is in set bursts. As you move around with him he jumps from place to place and you cannot adjust his jump mid arc. He takes a lot of commitment to play but I would argue he’s one of the strongest party members overall since he’s just so good at everything. Honestly it makes sense given how long he’s been conducting Rites, but still! [Knights of the Sea - Pyre OST]

Sir Gilman is a Wyrm Knight and he’s about everything you would expect. He’s honorable, a good and true person, and loyal to a fault. He’s also maybe a bit too forthcoming which can get him in trouble sometimes. Nonetheless he’s great to have around and is a funny guy, too. Despite his seemingly carefree nature he does a lot of introspection and worries about the choices he’s made in his life giving him a hidden bit of sadness that’s interesting to tap into. Gameplay wise Sir Gilman is a great, well rounded character. Though his presence is small he is great defensively, with perhaps the safest attack in the game, a teleport that damages everywhere between where he starts and ends. He can easily defend your Flame and wipe out whole teams. He’s also amazing offensively as he’s quite fast and has a good leap, but his orb throw is very slow and easy to intercept making his offense a bit one dimensional. Overall Gilman is a great party member who slots comfortably onto any team. Pamitha is a Harp with a troubled history and a great desire to make good out of the mess that is her life situation. She’s had a rough lot in life, growing up in a society that demands everything of you, something she still struggles with growing past. Despite that she’s got a fun loving personality and is pretty personable, she just has a hard time gaining the trust of your other party members, especially given the conditions she joins under. She’s an interesting nut to crack open and she’s got a lot of depth but I feel that goes without saying. In terms of gameplay she’s unquestionably the best party member in my opinion. Like Ti’zo she’s not really bad at anything but unlike Ti’zo she can fly. Flight is exactly as overpowered as you might anticipate in a basketball game. Once she has the orb she’s basically already scored. Pamitha is absolutely incredible and can do anything the player needs. She can win whole matches entirely on her own without breaking a sweat. There are two other playable party members, but I’ll refrain talking from them here. I’ll just say they were both among my favorites, one in particular holds a lot of context to the game as a whole, so getting to meet them will be a special moment for anyone who decides to play the game after reading this! All in all your party members are diverse, well balanced, and interesting. They truly are the draw for this game and though I didn’t anticipate liking them all so much truly they all, each and every one, surprised me with their depth and just how well realized they were. I love the cast of Pyre, well and truly. Additionally there is one quasi-party member, the above mentioned Sandra. Though never playable she does offer you help and advice through the game. She’s snarky and has a very negative personality though even from her you can eke out a friendship if you’re consistent in talking with her. She has an extremely unique perspective I won’t spoil, but she has character specific challenges, one per party member, which require you to beat her 1 vs 3 in a challenge built just for that party member. Succeeding unlocks a unique Charm for that character and they’re great moments of progress and inspiration for each and every one. Sandra’s a tough opponent though, so don’t take her lightly. While all of her content is optional, it’s good bonus content and I’d absolutely recommend talking with her anytime possible and taking her on with all of your party members as the chances arise.

[In The Flame - Pyre OST]

The last one I want to talk about is you, The Reader. While you aren’t playable in Rites directly you do control the Rites, and this game controls really well. Regardless of if you prefer a controller or a keyboard and mouse the game feels good. I played with a Keyboard+Mouse setup and was able to unlock every singleplayer achievement on my first run, though some did take multiple attempts. You have the option to restart Rites at no penalty at anytime as they’re being played, keeping the stakes from getting too high, but savescumming is obviously not within the intent of the game. Still, it’s an option if you wish to use it. Overall Pyre is not too hard of a game at default, but there are 12 Constellations which unlock over time, all of which make the game harder should you choose to make use of them. In exchange your characters get 3% or more bonus experience per each one in use. These range in effect from ‘Make the AI faster/better’ to ‘Damage your own Flame at the start of a match’ to giving opponents basically hacks, such as allowing them to keep their Presence Aura while holding The Orb, which normally is not allowed. These can add a severe challenge to any match in the game and are worth exploring, since winning a match with any given one active unlocks more lore in your book! Still, the customizable difficulty means no player should get bored or find the game too tough or too easy. As you may have noticed I’ve been linking to some of the game’s absolutely stellar OST throughout this review and, frankly, it’s one of the best OSTs I’ve ever heard in a game. It’s about 2 hours long despite the game itself being relatively short in length. The sound design of the gameplay itself is really great too, but again I’m not really skilled at being able to say why. Still, everything from moving around to scoring, to banishment sounds impactful and distinct. Even different body types cause different sounds while moving which is a great touch. The game also has a multiplayer mode in which you can play any combination of ANY named character from the main game including some who never showed up in a Rite! It’s good fun with a friend and a nice bit of extra content once the main game is finished. Really, there’s a lot more I could talk about. I haven’t even talked about the many, many NPCs but they’re quite lovely and distinct too, each readily coming back to my mind as I think about the game. Pyre is a game with so much depth, so much to it despite being only about a 15 hour game in total. Please just, play this game, it’s a complete package in every sense of the word: Great gameplay, stellar soundtrack, gorgeous art design, AMAZING writing, and an awesome concept all rolled together, it’s not often such a thoroughly and completely amazing game comes along just to blow you out of the water. It is such a special game with so much to give! It’s $8 dollars on Steam right now and its soundtrack is just an additional $3. Supergiant Games truly knocked the ball out of the park with this one, I truly feel Pyre is something special and stands head and shoulders not just above Supergiant’s other products, Bastion and Transistor, not just above other Sports games like Golf Story, not even just above other Visual Novels. No, Pyre stands above every single game I played in 2018. I love this game and you owe it to yourself to experience all of the great, unique, and amazing things it has to offer.

[our-happygirl500-fan]

Shuichi Saihara and Kaede Akamatsu For the mene!

 GIVE ME A CHARACTER, and I’ll break their ass down:

Shichi Saihara

How I feel about this character

Sigh, so much wasted potential. Like the fandom version of Saihara who’s relatable™ and is nice to Ouma is pretty cool, and people like him because he’s pretty much a typical YA novel protag in a way but I don’t think he’s all that good a protagonist or character. There were a lot of things I had problems with and since the game was mainly from his perspective a lot of fans and lets players that I watched fell into the trap of absolving Kaede for her actions, liking Maki (despite her many many many many flaws) and demonizing Ouma instead of looking at and appreciating the characters themselves. I don’t like how he always seems to cling to someone and puts whoever he’s clinging to on a pedestal and I was really bitter even before playing the game about Kaede being fridged for him.

Like Maki I think there’s a lot of the writer telling you to like a character so most people do but he isn’t really all that good as a person or a detective. It’s always pissed me off how much more Ouma did in investigating and trying to end the killing game than Saihara did. They definitely wouldn’t have gotten as far without Ouma but never acknowledge it, all Saihara does is continue the game through solving the trials and moving to end it at the very very end.

I might have liked him if he hadn’t been the protagonist maybe but he was and there is just so much terrible writing. Writing-wise he and Maki might be the worst written characters in the game.

One thing I want in fiction is a character in some way or another facing the consequences for their actions and when Saihara’s whole deal is he doesn’t want to do anything because he doesn’t want to face any form of negative consequence that frustrates me.

Also I don’t like his design the hat was my favorite part.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Kiibo? As you probably noticed I’m not a huge fan of his character so I don’t really ship him a lot, I guess him and Kaede if we’re going canon but even then I prefer Kaede with other people consider how she was reduced to Saihara’s love interest when for so long we had thought of her as the protagonist leading up to the game.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

The survivor trio, I like them all hanging out after the game and all that.

My unpopular opinion about this character

If they had made Saihara a girl I think I would have liked their character a lot more, it’s unpopular because of the whole ‘weak girl stereotype’ but for me Saihara’s character isn’t about weakness it’s about learning that if you can act if you can do something then you should even if you might not like the result. If Saihara had been a girl we would have gotten a better design probably. We’ d have a female protagonist like we had been promised, Kaito would be viewed with less toxic masculinity, I would get to deal with Saiouma a lot less because no yaoi fangirls which would personally make me very happy and Kaede and Saihara would be lesbians so you know no downsides to that.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I actually wish that he had been the second victim instead of Hoshi, 1. because Hoshi is a much more interesting character and I would have enjoyed him living longer 2. it makes more sense for Tojo to kill a detective to give her more of a chance of getting through the trial the actual hard part of escaping the school than going for the person easiest to kill. Also I think it would be interesting to see a character who is dedicated to getting stronger after losing someone close to them only for them to die anyway, it would also be really interesting for Kaito’s development to have the person he just announced he was going to take under his wing die. Also, the fans would keep waiting for whoever was the third protagonist to die only for it not to happen, I personally would have prefered Ouma as the third protagonist because it would have been such a good arc for him because he’s the only one who knows what’s going on so he’d have to try and lead the trials no one else could but to do that he’d have to figure out how to step outside his own comfort zone and his identity as a liar to get them to listen to him which I would have enjoyed watching. We’d also get Ouma insight and actually see someone properly investigating the school which is 10/10 good stuff, I understand that there are some things Kodaka couldn’t show which is why I think the perspective would be good to be switched back and forth between Kaito and Kokichi, it would be funny because the first time this happens everyone would be like ‘oh god they’ve killed off another protag and Kaito’s next’ only for Ouma to show up alive again and the perspective handed back to him again.

Either that or Tsumugi is forced to become the protagonist to keep the game moving but it would be presented as her getting out of her ‘plain girl shell’ only for the reveal that she’s the mastermind which would be a huge trip for the player.

Kaede Akamatsu

How I feel about this character

Really like her, I’m actually really into music so I loved her design and when they announced that she was going to be a protag I was skeptical thinking ‘no way are they going to give us this’ but also really excited. I liked having a more headstrong character as a protagonist and prefer her over Saihara. Super angry about her getting fridged and framed, she deserved better.

I think the fandom is doing her dirty just as much as canon did, not everyone but in a lot of fanfiction she reduced to just the supportive friend type or perky love interest or add on to the training trio, come on give her her own friend group don’t just tag her onto her love interests group. It makes me feel as if Saihara is allowed a life outside Kaede but she’s not allowed a life outside of him.

I love Kaede and her ride or die nature and the fact that she’s straight up willing to kill for her friends 3 days after meeting them and she deserves so much more than being reduced to Saihara’s love interest, Kaede dump Saihara’s bitch ass and date Tenko instead.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Tenko! Rantaro, I think they have a good dynamic and Komaru Naegi my two underappreciated girl protags together. Other than that I’m not a huge fan of shipping her romantically with people since she was reduced to a fridged love interest in canon.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Ouma actually, I wanted them to form a dynamic duo where they just snark at each other. Also, I like them being friends because a lot of their character is being reduced to them liking Saihara by the fandom and they both deserve so much better than Saihara honestly. Canon and Fandom did them both dirty in that regard.

My unpopular opinion about this character

 Kaemaki while beautiful and gay wouldn’t work. Once Kaede learns Maki’s real talent they would have a falling out and Kaede would have as big of a prejudice as Ouma against Maki. In interviews we’re told Kaede has a strong sense of justice which is part of the reason why she tried to kill the mastermind; I see Kaede with her sense of justice and everything having a fall out with Maki when she learns her real talent. A lot of their friendship is based on Maki the SHSL ‘childcaregiver’ not Maki the SHSL assassin and Kaede wouldn’t just accept it she’d need to go through a lot before being ready to be Maki’s friend again.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Have you read “I’d Trade My life For Yours”? Because that I want that! God I wish it was an actual game for me to play, who do I have to pay to make it an actual game!? I’m not joking I’m 100 percent serious! I’d really had loved to see her continue on as the protagonist and watch her lose her optimism and grow more cynical and more like her pregame self, also watching someone start out as the leader of the group and them slowly lose that influence is really good. Also it would be so good to watch a protag go from “let’s all work together!” to “Stop murdering eachother you assholes!” just going from Naegi to Hinata through the course of the game, it would have been glorious, we could have had it all.

[under-snow-vixen]

Yuletide Letter

hi author! i’m vixen - UnderSnowVixen on Ao3. this’ll be my first yuletide :0

i like worldbuilding, especially around religion, government, and language; religion in general; change in government over time; character studies; explorations of close relationships; post-canon settings; canon divergence; crossovers, especially characters from one canon visiting or joining another canon; gender weirdness and exploration; POV outsider, especially with OC POV; Epistolary fics, especially through paperwork or (transcripts of) broadcast media; unusual formats in general; paperwork in general; political or legal comedy; fluff and comfort; temporary death/revival; travel, especially vagrancy or space travel; finding home in another; hope in the face of doom, be it futile or successful; complicated politesse; memory and its fallibility; storytelling; immortality and all that come with it, especially the gender of immortals; ensemble pieces; growing apart and fighting or accepting that; place-as-character; haunted, wrong, or angry places; liminal spaces; play and joy in terrible times; exploration of inhumanity, real or perceived; what it means to be a “good person” and worries over that; morality; conversations about music and art; prairies, forests, and lakes; things that live in those places, be it human, animal, or other; explorations of advancements in technology and how that affects personal lives; color and light; fables and fairytales, especially those that aren’t as well known; being trapped by snow or other weather; beauty in imperfection; existentialism; and what death means in different cultures

you can write your fic in french if you’d prefer!

DNW for all canons: works that would be tagged Explicit for any reason (mature is fine); references to COVID (other illnesses or even pandemics, even real, are fine); human, no power, highschool, or modern AUs; gender bending without trans readings; crossovers with RPF fandoms; bad endings; or podfic

Kino no Tabi | Kino's Journey - Keiichi Sigsawa (Kino & Hermes) : i love this canon for two big reasons: one is the exploration of cultures or individuals from an outsider’s point of view, and the other is the exploration of gender and identity through various cultures or personal lives. this is also a very existentialist canon, which i adore.

Kino no Tabi lends itself well to two of my favorite things: crossover - i’d pretty much read any crossover with it, even if i’d never even heard of the other fandom! - and outsider POV. Kino is a perfect outsider POV character, but often an outsider’s perspective on Kino can be more interesting. what does your favorite world think of vagrancy? what would Kino think of that world in turn? alternatively, make up an entirely new country for them to visit. a lot of canon countries are based on fables or psychology or philosophy problems, but they can be based on pretty much anything! as long as it’s something different for Kino to see i’ll be happy with it!

Kino is often read as nonbinary and i personally headcanon Hermes to be nonbinary too, but Kino and Hermes have never come across another nonbinary person in their travels. What would their time in a country that explicitly recognizes nonbinary people be like?

any pronouns are fine for Kino, play up the confusion! please do not use it/its pronouns for Hermes though, even from characters who wouldn’t know better. anything else is fine. no ships with Kino, please, Kino is transient. ships without Kino are fine, but of course shouldn’t be the focus.

Dr Cataclysm (Webcomic) (Agrippa & Melon) : if youre here for a different canon and haven’t read this... do so. its pretty short and its free. it’s also by the guy who made Off if that’s a drawing point. find it here.

give me some wholesome found family slice of life and i’ll love you forever. agrippa and melon need a break!! give them a nice dinner or something!! i don’t super ship but tossing in some agrippa/crocodile could be fun. or everyone!! just have agrippa and melon host everyone for a nice dinner. janos can be there as long as he’s chill.

alternatively... that last issue sure is somethin huh. what do you think happened? a where-are-they-now would be fun. i have my ideas, but what are yours?

if the crocodile girl shows up, don’t hurt her!!! she’s just a sick little girl she doesn’t need more stress :(

Moon Knight (Comics) (Marc Spector) : marc :( i love him but hes had such a hard time! (especially lately!!!) you could give him a nice day :) he’s honestly pretty chill despite all the uh... divine annoyances and mercenary tendencies, i’m sure there’s a few people he could just hang out and enjoy company with.

orrrr you could... make his day worse? :))) so many people hate this man, half the time he’s on a team he’s belittled constantly. what’s that like? i love ensemble pieces, if you stick him on a team or with a couple loners and explore their relationship that would be fun. what do people marc works with think of Khonshu? i’m a big fan of suprise revivals, and marc dies... so often.

marc is also really fun to shove into crossovers, and has a built-in excuse for it with Khonshu! part of his whole deal is he 1. is adaptable and 2. just Does Not Give Up. this means he will survive in any world you stick him in or die trying. and then get up and keep trying.

my favorite runs are v2 (1985) and v5 (2015-16) (the first half of v5 is really good), as well as his time with the WCA and the Secret Avengers. i also really liked contagion and conan serpent war despite their... debatable canon. i don’t really know what’s going on with the most recent avengers run.

don’t be weird about his mental illnesses. if you write Khonshu, i like Khonshu-as-God 10000% more than Khonshu-as-delusion and he should be an asshole, but in a lot of the more recent comics he’s just cruel which is :(. please keep to the asshole god side of things as opposed to a cruel god. the 2019 annual and conan serpent war have my favorite Khonshu characterizations. My Explicit-rating ban is lifted for this canon, but only for extreme violence and death.

Nuclear Throne (Video Game) (Yung Venus) : what’s his deal?? he’s a really comical character and probably has the least Bad Stuff going on with him in canon, but he’s still a god of money of all things. what does that mean in a world where currency is extinct? what does being a gun god mean when everyone has guns? is he revered or ignored? i’d love a more serious exploration of YV-as-god, or of his relationships with the rest of those around the campfire.

pretty much anything goes for this canon. mind the general DNWs. My Explicit-rating ban is lifted for this canon, but only for extreme violence and death.

Pyre (Video Game) (any) : while i love the characters of Pyre, what i love more is the world. what were the Scribes like, and what do people think of them now? we know that the Triumvirates were only a tiny portion of the Downside population, what are the rest of them like?

If you’re more partial to the characters, great! i love them all! (or at least all of those who were nominated this year!!) slice of life or post-canon political comedy is the way to go. give me a missing scene from the time spent on Mount Alodiel, or show me how the new government is handling things. depending on who made it up, they either have a lot of experience or none at all!

please feel free to play around with end conditions, but one i’m fond of (and the one i got my first time through) is to liberate Hedwyn, Jodariel, Rukey, Fae, Ti'zo, Pametha, and Oralech, while sir Gilman, Volfred, Bertrude, all non-Nightwings, and the Reader(+Sandra) remain. i tend to use Fae, Mae, or Gae for the moontouched girl but any name is good! i also tend to not give my Readers names, but if you’d like to go right ahead :)

please nothing with Manley, Lendel, or Brighton unless it’s an ensemble piece. no jodariel/ignarius.

thank you !!!!

[lunafeather]

judeehopps replied to your post “If anyone else has seen The Last Jedi already and wants to discuss,...”

I’m curious about what you think. What did you think of it? I have mixed feelings...

Overall I enjoyed it a lot, but it did have a lot of issues. I think I liked The Force Awakens a lot more, so I’m glad that JJ Abrams will be directing Episode IX and not Rian Johnson, though obviously Abrams isn’t perfect. This film also continues Star Wars’ penchant for gorgeousness; so many scenes and shots were absolutely breathtaking in their beauty. This might be my favorite film when it comes to that.

Spoilers below the cut! (Also, fair warning! I have a lot of thoughts)

I wasn’t a fan of the limited interactions between our main trio, especially Finn and Rey -- whose relationship literally drives the narrative of this trilogy. Don’t get me wrong, that hug at the end literally made me squeal with joy it was so pure and sweet, but that is seriously all we got and like??? I DO ship Finnrey but I also just enjoy watching their friendship so this was a major downside.

Speaking of ships, I am VERY anti Rose/Finn. I feel like the kiss at the end of the film was incredibly forced and awkward, and came out of nowhere. They have okay chemistry, but I didn’t get a romantic vibe from them at all, so for her to swoop in with this huge romantic gesture and pull out the “I love you” before passing out was very out of place. I feel like they barely know each other, and Rose’s feelings are heavily impacted by her initial view of Finn as this Rebel Hero, and that her jump from awe to fury to love is just a natural progression of her fangirling, and not actual love. Not to mention the fact that Finn literally just froze when she kissed him, it wasn’t reciprocated at all. I hope that they have an adorable “WOW that was awkward” moment in the next film but that they remain friends only.

I really enjoyed Rey’s arc over the film. I think she is more powerful than we realize and I really hope we get to see that power as she trains to be an actual jedi (I’m sure we will). I also really enjoy her parallel’s to Luke in that she is insistent that Kylo can be turned and tries to sway him against her mentor’s wishes, that she is just SO GOOD inside (I, like others, was afraid they may try to tease her switching to the dark side, but I’m glad this film just reiterated how good she is), but I also love that where Luke succeeded, Rey did not. I think it would be very predictable and boring for Rey to “save” Kylo the way Luke “saved” Vader.

Branching off of that, the trailers had a lot of people spouting that whole, “ohhh this is just another copy cat/rehash of Empire, just like TFA was identical to ANH” (which is bullshit anyway, TFA had many homages to ANH but the story was different in a few key ways) crap that I am glad was destroyed immediately. All this chatter about the AT-ATs and the rebels trying to escape a base and Degobah and blah blah blah. None of it was founded, the film was actually VERY different from ESB. Which isn’t necessarily a good thing.... but I digress.

I am a tad miffed that Finn’s force sensitivity wasn’t touched on AT ALL. As far as I’m aware, someone has to be force sensitive to use a lightsaber and Finn used Luke’s at the end of TFA. I hope they touch back on that in Episode IX.

A big thing I am distressed about is the fact that one of the original trio is basically going to be killed off in each film. Han in TFA, now Luke in TLJ, and obviously Leia will need to be killed off in Episode IX... It’s really fucking depressing. Part of me hopes that they will write IX in a way that Leia doesn’t need to die but never appears on screen -- I feel like of the three, she would be the one to survive. It’s possible, narratively, but I doubt they’ll do that. Still.... Also, seeing as Luke became one with the force or whatever, I feel like he will train Rey from beyond, the same way Obiwan often advised him after his death. So maybe we’ll at least have that.

Upon further reflection, I feel like the Casino excursion was very misplaced and unneeded. It was hectic and rushed and urgent, the whole movie was, and I wasn’t a huge fan of that. Star Wars movies ebb and flow with their pace, usually taking place over a moderate amount of time, but obviously this film had a very short time span and I gotta say, I’m not digging it. I prefer the story building, character building pace of the other films.

Humor was out of place a lot of times. The other movies were funny, yes, but the humor in this one was much too....modern? Even in TFA the humor was more classic, in this film it was annoyingly snappy. I really hated the opening scene and its “joke” with Poe pretending he couldn’t hear Hux. Hux should be scary and looming and menacing but that scene just made a fool out of him, and for that to be the OPENING scene is just.... no. Turned me off immediately. Some of the humor was spot on, like Chewie being watched by the family/friends of the bird thing he was trying to eat. THAT was good. Even Rey knocking that giant piece of rock over the cliff and annihilating those aliens’ cart of stuff was good. But most of the other humor was off.

My favorite moment/shot, and I’m sure it’s a lot of people’s, was Holdo hyperspacing into Snoke’s ship. Everything about that was GLORIOUS. The quick burst shots of the lightning blue spikes cracking the ship, the DEAD SILENCE -- no music, no sound effects, nothing -- until the delayed noise of the explosion, I was AWED. The ENTIRE THEATRE gasped and then hushed in the same awed silence as myself. What an amazing idea and execution.

Other favorite shots, Kylo and Luke standing on opposite sides of the screen, waiting to battle -- the colors and composition were beautiful. Crap, there are more but I can’t remember them now.

Mother fucking LEIA ORGANA, using the force to survive being blown into space. SHE DID THAT, Y’ALL. Do you have any idea how powerful she has to be to do that kind of shit??? I seriously thought they were gonna kill her off.

Luke Skywalker being a sassy shit during his astral projection gave me so much life. I love him.

I’ve seen a lot of disparaging comments about Yoda showing up but I actually liked that bit. I think it was one of the times when the humor was on point, and they had to have used a puppet because he looked great.

After a lot of discussion with my ex, we came to the conclusion that Leia must have known Luke wasn’t really there at the old rebel base. Initially I thought it was a vision/wonder twin connection like Kylo and Rey were having (which..... wtf???? Why was that happening? Could it not?) but then everyone else saw him so.... still, I think Leia knew it wasn’t really him. I think that’s why she didn’t touch him/hug him -- because they are VERY huggy twins -- and why she left Han’s dice behind. I think she knew she wouldn’t see him again, which breaks my heart. Because how alone is Leia now? She lost the love of her life, she lost her son, she lost her brother. Ughhhh.

So yeah, this stupid “connection” between Rey and Kylo the film was trying to force on us just.... irked me. I have heard that R*ylos are fangirling over the movie, which boggles my mind because Rey literally hates his guts?? She was disgusted by his naked chest and demanded he clothe himself?? She literally tried to save him because she’s a good person, not because he’s ever done anything to deserve it or because there’s some kind of “love connection” there?? He fucking mind raped her, guys. He almost killed the first person to ever COME BACK FOR HER. (again, why did this movie focus on the Rey/Kylo shit when there is a goldmine with Rey/Finn??????) Oh he’s also a fucking pyscho murderous asshole who killed Rey’s friend and hero in cold blood.

Anyway.

Snoke as a villain: Disappointing. Boring. Anticlimactic. I pity that we didn’t get backstory on him, though I suppose we never got any for the Emperor until the prequels. Still.... Snoke was a very thin and half assed master villain. Shouldn’t there be waaaaaaaaay more lore about the Knights of Ren? Is that going to come into play in Episode IX, seeing as Kylo is now the Supreme Leader? Also, how the fuck am I supposed to take Kylo seriously as the next major villain when he continues to throw temper tantrums and be easily manipulated by outside forces?

On that note, did he choose to spare Leia because of that conflict inside of him, or did Leia force sense him and mind influence him to not shoot?? WE’LL NEVER KNOW.

Second to last point: Not enough Chewie.

Final point: I liked the examination of perspective. Luke’s story of what happened the night Kylo went crazy, Kylo’s story, and finally the truth. How we twist things to feel better/to get what we want. How every story is biased. I thought that was neat.

I lied, one last thing: I am on the fence but leaning towards hating Rey’s parents being “nobodys”. I think it’s an interesting choice but not one that lends anything to the narrative. I think the hype around her parentage was stoked just so they could say, “HAHA she actually isn’t anyone special, you were speculating for nothing!”. Speculating is fun. Bloodlines are fun. Let nerds discuss! A big part of me hopes that Kylo was lying to Rey to make her more upset and thus “more likely” to swing to the dark side. To encourage her fear that she really was abandoned for no reason. BUT it would also be unique to have her be so special despite coming from nothing.

Alright, I’m done. I may think of more but that’s it for now. My rating would probably be like.... 6.5/10. In the top 5 but not the top 4. Enjoyable and beautiful but nothing special and a let down in regards to story and character development.

[thewritersguardianangel-blog]

Hi, I'm in love with your blog! Question: I spend a lot of time planning my story, however I'm stuck because I don't know if I should narrate it by third-person omniscient or first-person. What are the pros and cons of each type of narrator? I would like to have three people as the protagonists, but it's also my first novel so...

Thank you!

Now this is a struggle that I know particularly well. It’s a debate I often have with my own stories. There’s always one that will work with your particular story the best, but sometimes it’s a really close call. 

Let’s compare the two.

First Person:

Pros:

It’s natural: For a lot of writers, using the first person is the easiest way to tell a story, just because it’s what we do in our daily lives. We don’t say “The anonymous asker- who is myself- sent a question the other day,” we say “I sent a question on anon the other day.”

Your narrating character has a unique voice: Most well-developed characters will often have their own way of talking that is different from the voices of your other characters or from your own voice. Using first person means that you can play around a lot more with the language. 

VIP Tropes: Like with the other perspectives, there are special tropes or tricks that you can only do with this perspective, such as the Unreliable Narrator and more. 

Front Row Seats to the Angst: One of my favorite parts about using first person is the ability to really tap into the main character’s emotions. Characters can directly state how they are feeling and why, which actually very much helps readers relate to or understand them.

Empathy and Understanding: Basically like the point above, but more specifically, it can help the reader understand decisions that might otherwise seem strange, immoral, etc

Cons:

Limitations: The most obvious downside is that the story is now limited to only the scenes in which your character is present, which can limit things such as your additional character arcs, etc.

Tinted Glasses: Because things are only seen through your character’s perspective, the details they provide are therefore tinted by their thoughts and opinions.

Lack of outside perspective: You don’t always know what the other characters think of the main character, because the main character is only perceiving the details of their interactions based off of what they think of themselves. Again, a colored perspective, but this time involving interactions. 

Poetry sounds a little weird: Most people don’t really talk like that. You say “the wind was like, biting cold today”, not “the wind bit like a sharpened blade grazing the skin.” If your character says the latter, I am a little concerned and befuddled by them. 

Third Person Omniscient: 

Pros:

You don’t have to use their voice: If you don’t like to use your characters’ voice, congrats, you don’t have to. You can now write with your own Special Writer Voice.

Details: Because third person is no longer limited to that which your character can sense, you can bring a bunch of random details that people tend not to actually notice, which means all that poetic stuff can now be included. That means you can now say the thing about the wind.

In fact, all the descriptions get a lot more posh. One of the other problems with first person is that your main character probably won’t be very well described unless they have a cheesy Mirror Scene or something, and as I also mentioned, you have little idea about what the other characters think of MC. In third person, that all opens up.

You can play around behind closed doors: Once again, since you are no longer reliant upon what your character can sense, you can now track other characters and their goings-on. That means the reader now gets to be privy to all the secrets, betrayals, and other private interactions between the other characters. This is particularly good if you have multiple character arcs to keep track of. 

Mindreading: You can now dive a little bit into everyone’s minds to see how they think or feel. Granted, you don’t get to know anyone as especially well as you come to know the first person MC, but now everyone has the same level of empathy, and bonus, without the “tinted glasses” of the MC.

Cons: 

Basically, everything you gained in first person is lost in third person.

Mindreading 2: You know everybody, but only kind of. 

Empathy gaps: It becomes a lot harder to establish an emotional connection from reader to character. When you cannot relate directly to the character’s feelings, it takes a lot more work on the writer’s part to make them care. 

Confusion: True, you now have more opportunity for moving around settings and perspectives, but sometimes, with so much to keep track of, it can be disorienting if you don’t balance all of your scene changes and movements. 

It may seem like there are a lot less disadvantages, but the whole-emotional disconnect thing is a lot more significant than it seems.

How do we know which one to use? Well, it’s hard to say sometimes. One way that modern writers have developed these days to get around a few of the disadvantages of the first person is to have multiple main characters, and alternate between their perspectives. In that way, you get multiple views, opinions, etc.

Of course, that presents its own problems as well. For one, if a reader doesn’t like a particular perspective, they’ll be tempted to skip their chapters, and for another, it can sometimes be difficult determining which scenes should be narrated by whom, just as examples.

Upon looking at the advantages and disadvantages, think of what best serves your particular story. As I frequently advise, when in doubt, try it out. Sometimes I start in third but then find that the characters are begging to tell it themselves. Other times, they are incredibly grudging and unwilling to speak.

With consideration, you might be able to figure out just by the obvious pros and cons which option is best suited for your story. If not, that’s okay. Try a chapter either way and see what conveys the correct flow.

It’s a rather important decision to make, and sometimes it takes a lot of writing it one way and then changing your mind thousands and thousands of words in, but ultimately, finding the right way is imperative.

Best of luck to you, and I hope this helps you sort it out a little easier :)

~Penemue

[audriel]

Audriel’s FF Ouvre

As this tumblr is intended to be focused on writing, I think it’ll be fitting to list my favorites of all I’ve written so far and the reasons why they are my favorites.

Title: Ayame (FFnet) Fandom: Naruto Pairing: Gen, OCs feat. Uchiha Itachi Summary:  Ayame, a beautiful flower that means happiness for those who believe. Hikari Ayame was supposed to be an ordinary girl until a fateful event took her to Konoha where her fate entwined with unexpected people that will affect the future of Konoha.   Thoughts: My first published fanfic. Like every first in our lives, they have a special place in our hearts. When I published this fic, I’ve just truly started writing fanfic for a year or so, the kind of fic that is not just bits of pieces of dialogues or descriptions. Naruto was the most popular fandom back then, at least for anime/manga (was it Harry Potter? I feel old...) with a huge cast that is not dissimilar of Haikyuu!! so naturally it’s a perfect place to stretch writing muscles. Even back then I was content in exploring in the current universe/world, picking at the blanks and filling them up with my own ideas without straying far from canon, and those ideas are often my own characters.

Hikari Ayame is my OC, who was the daughter of the Yondaime (who was still a mystery back then) and teammate of Uchiha Itachi. Through Ayame I explored the world of Naruto, from its jutsu to its history. Looking back, I’m pretty surprised that I hit the nail in the head on Itachi being the good guy all along. It doesn’t have many reviews, but I had a blast writing it. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up completing the fic. By then I’ve figured out I’m muse-based writer, if my muse is shot, then there’s nothing, which holds true until now. Plus I was rather (if not very) faithful to canon, so once my ideas didn’t fit, I didn’t force them to fit, or take AU route.

Title: Promises (FFnet) Fandom: Final Fantasy VII Pairing: Cloud x Tifa, CloTi Summary:  Tifa's thoughts about a certain man... a certain ring... and a certain promise.... [Advent Children Spoilers] Thoughts: I wrote this after watching FFVII: Advent Children. Without prior knowledge of the games (I am and was not a gamer), I was intrigued by the ambiguous relationship between Cloud and Tifa. I remember pretty obsessed with the Advent Children, scouring the internet for screencaps, and backstory, then ofc, fanfics. Tifa’s ring was one of the things that caught my interest, particularly how it bore resemblance to Fenrir, Cloud’s Fenrir. So there went my muse and the result was my first one-shot and my first experience in having more than five reviews for my story. I remember how happy I was when I had such positive feedback, and back then FFnet did not have reply feature, so I just basked in them (or I PMed them? I’m not sure, but I did remember always trying to respond to the kind words).

Title: What Are We? (FFnet) Fandom: Naruto Pairing: Sasuke x Hinata, SasuHina Summary:  What happens when two of the most unlikely people are united in the holy matrimony? Especially when there is no love between them to start with. [Sasuke x Hinata] Thoughts: My most popular fanfic in FFnet with 13 chapters, 465 reviews, 323 favorites and 278 followers. I’m pretty sure it’s my highest achievement in terms of popularity. Even back in my Naruto days, I have strong preference towards rare pairings, and SasuHina was the rarepair, back then, not unlike KuroDai, the writers and the readers are often the same people and formed a close and tight-knit community. However, if I am to compare it with current pairing, SasuHina is more like OiKuro, neither have truly interacted in canon, but their personalities made them an interesting match to explore. (I like OiKuro, btw) And as I was wont to do, I have fun in exploring their potential. I used the common trope of arranged marriage because considering their families, it had the highest possibility for them and I was inspired by another SasuHina fic and author who used the same premise. I wanted to do my own spin on it, even though my only experience in relationships is through books and literature XDD

This story suffers the same fate with Ayame. The muse is shot, thanks to canon. Sasuke gets on my nerves. Until the very end, (honesty I cannot believe I managed to get myself finish Naruto, I gave up on Bleach at the same time) he is insufferable. He’s not worthy of Hinata. And don’t start me on Hinata and her characterization. Kishimoto sucks at making strong female characters. Hinata and Sakura are reduced to a love interest and damsel in distress, despite their potential. I was and am still mad at the injustice that I don’t even bother correcting them in fanfic. So unfortunately, this fic is discontinued. I’m not even sure whether I want to continue even if I still remember what I intend to do with the story. There’s still a possibility, if only to give the story a proper ending. Who knows?

Title: Shades of Grey (FFnet) Fandom: Vampire Knight Pairing: Zero x OC Summary:  A series of what ifs leads to a series of questions. This is the story that explores the question: What would be left for Zero if he let Yuuki go? A character study of Zero and an exploration of Vampire Knight world. Thoughts: My longest running fanfiction, with 20 chapters and 159K words and my first M-rated fic. The least popular of my fics but my personal favorite. I consider this story my pride and joy, because this story showcases my strength and growth best as a writer. By now I’m more flexible with canon, willing to play with canon divergence and alternate universe. So when I’m dissatisfied with canon/current storyline, I goes to fanfic to correct it. I really, really hate love triangle problems in shoujo/romance stories, because it often feels like it’s just thrown in there just to make relationship problems between main pairing and the third person usually ends up underdeveloped as a character, and there are times when the main character has more chemistry/potential with the third person than the person he/she’s meant to be with, which is what happens in Vampire Knight. Yuuki is meant to be with Kaname, but I just cannot like Kaname, or see him with Yuuki. And poor Zero gets the short end of the stick. It doesn’t help that Yuuki keeps him hanging. So frustrated I was that I stopped reading the manga and threw myself into writing my own version and gives Zero a love interest.

So it can be said that this is the most selfish work of mine. What I like most from OCs is that through them I can push the boundaries of canon without stepping outside of them. I use the opportunity to develop Zero as a character alongside with mine and explore the world of VK, which is not delved deeply in canon. While VK seems to take place in a distant world unlike ours, I make it as though it is our world’s alternate universe where we have vampires in our midst. So compared to my previous works, with the exception of Ayame, this story requires and demands the most research for the world building, which naturally pushes me out of my comfort zone of thinking and writing only of the characters and their relationships. I also delve into darker and more mature themes whereas before I did more gen or PG pieces. It ends up pretty angsty, it looks like I like to have my characters suffer ^^; Poor Zero and Misaki (my OC).

The story is currently on hiatus, due to writer’s block. Unlike Ayame and What Are We?, I actually have a rough draft of the whole story and even have the ending written. It’s only the problem of getting there.

Title: The Gentle Princess (AO3) Fandom: Princess (manhwa) Pairing: Yapha of Skarde x Theodora of Anatoria Summary:  What if Theodora was married sooner to Yapha and became his third wife, right after Haisha? How would this change the fate of the three kingdoms of ASR? Thoughts: This is my first taste of joining a Big Bang Challenge, to be precise Het Big/Little Challenge 2011 by het_bigbang in LJ (ooh, the LJ days, I’m lookin’ pretty ancient, aren’t I?). Wait, wasn’t it stated 2012 in AO3? Well, I didn’t manage to meet the deadline, so I submitted the completed work for next year’s challenge. This story has the most impressive word count (71,126 words), and I am damned proud of it, especially because it’s completed. OMG, it makes me really happy that I have completed multi-chapter work.

The only downside is the fanfic from a relatively unknown fandom and characters, which leaves not many readers and reviewers, but I’m still happy and proud of this work of mine, because now I can read this and pretend that this is how it goes in canon for this favorite, but minor pairing in Princess. (I’m pretty sure my fanfic is the only one in the fandom in AO3 XDD) Princess is a Korean manga, known as manhwa, which story revolves around the princesses of three kingdoms (and three generations, I think) of ASR. So it’s a epic story, which naturally makes the fic, an epic fanfic. However, unlike VK I have easier time in worldbuilding since the manhwa is quite thorough, the problem is in the political undertones and intrigue throughout the story. I am guilty of using the non con sex and unexpected pregnancy as plot device again in this story as in Shades of Grey. While I like how it affects the plot and development, I hope I do not offend or worse trigger anyone :( Otherwise, I love the development in Yapha and Theodora, and between them as they grow from strangers to friends and to potential lovers.

Title: Perspective (AO3) Fandom: Daiya no Ace, Diamond no Ace Pairing: Gen, Kuramochi Youichi, Shirasu Kenjirou, Miyuki Kazuya Summary: An unfortunate circumstance puts things into perspective. Alternatively, Kuramochi and Miyuki from Shirasu's perspective. Thoughts: My return to fanfiction scene after a year without publishing anything that is not a incoherent mess of ideas, of disjointed dialogues and descriptions. As I look back, I’ve come to realize that my muse works best when I start with a premise, then build on it. The premise is simple: what if Kuramochi gets sick? Injury does have the most potential, but I've got enough of that in Act I and now we have another in Act II, sighs. Then I explored the 5W+1H based on what I know (and hope) about Kuramochi and the others around him. And voila, 16K fic! Shirasu provides an interesting perspective, he does not have the all-knowing eyes like we did as readers, but I feel like he knows more than most of Seidou (esp he gets help from Miyuki-specialist, Kuramochi). The fic ends up into a pretty interesting character study, and most importantly relationship study between Kuramochi and Miyuki.

I was afraid that I was getting rusty but the response is surprisingly positive with 7 comments and 33 kudos, considering it is a rare gen fic among mostly slash fics in the fandom. Admittedly it can be considered as pre-slash, with my KuraMiyu goggles, they look like one :D I hope I’ll come around to write a proper KuraMiyu one day. Regardless I’m very happy and satisfied with this piece, because not only it’s completed, but it also achieved what I want to achieve, a further look into KuraMiyu and Kuramochi being treated as precious friend/teammate/brother as he should be.

Title: Until Next Time (AO3) Fandom: Haikyuu!! Pairing: Kuroo x Daichi, KuroDai Summary: Kurodai Week 2017 Day 1: First Meeting / Next Time Pacific Rim AU. Thoughts: Not exactly my first dip into Haikyuu, but it’s my first non-gen fic after my long break from writing and my first try in portraying my fave pair (and rarepair), Kurodai. I have a lot of reservation in writing in Haikyuu fandom. Despite having followed the anime and manga closely, I am not certain in my grasp of the wonderful characters, more so in my favorite characters and pairing. However, I’ve read the whole fics with Kurodai tag, to the front and back, and front and back again. Then, thanks to @spring-emerald who reblogged kurodaiweek, putting the prompts front and center in my dashboard, I was stoked to join, especially when I was sort-of successful with hqbrofest (though satisfied it’s another matter, neither fics from the challenge are listed).

It is also a mean to challenge myself, because for once, the theme is already decided and it’s up to me to make something out of it. Somehow it’s gotten to my head that I want all the fics for the kurodaiweek to be AUs. I have no idea why I wanted to do that, when my grasp on the characters were weak and tenuous at best, and now I had to put them in different situation/universe while keeping them in character. WTF BRAIN?????? 

My initial take of the theme/prompt is hello and goodbye and my mind goes to dark and depressing Hunger Games AU where KuroDai are from different districts who both in their own ways try to defy the Capitol and end up teaming up together to protect Hinata, the youngest and most innocent tribute. Despite death looming over them, they build a pocket of peace and happiness between the three of them where they become a makeshift family and KuroDai quietly falls for one another even they know it is not meant to be, but it strengthens their resolve to get Hinata home, and they do. In their final moments, they promise to meet each other in the next life and build a life together that they are robbed of in this life. 

asd;akjfadkjfslkldkjdfladksl, I’m only writing the idea and I’m crying. Not a very good way to start Kurodai Week isn’t it? So I scrapped the idea and look for other possible AU I can do (I have a list of AUs, believe it or not), and I end up choosing Pacific Rim AU. Unlike the HG AU, I have no clear idea in mind, except using the iconic Kurodai phrase of until next time. I spent half of the time researching and fitting all the characters into PacRim universe, and before I knew it, I’ve got 10K story. While I feel like the story is solid, I have my doubts whether it’s good enough, and it seems so with how few and sparse the hits and comments at the beginning, but then slowly it gains readers and reviews...and up until now I’m still flabbergasted at the reception. Right now it’s my highest rated and reviewed fic in AO3. I’m just glad that I finally write my own KuroDai, my first and hopefully not my last. Cheers!

[riverflowsthroughit]

Chameleon, New York City - RiverFlowsThroughIt  

Who expects a woman to be just one thing anymore? Plenty a' folks unfortunately... When I met Lyana we were sitting around a board room at a training session in the ER asking questions. This woman is tough, I thought, I want to be paired up with her! "Bitches get stuff done", said Tina Fey once. Lots and lots of stuff. Although Lyana and I don't live in the same city, I've been following array of interests and angles to this lady's existence. Corporate cape by day turns into scuba tank on weekends, actors stage on weeknights and spirited activist's pen come out any time of day inspiration for activism hits (which these days plenty). With the latest WOW Woman feature I flick a light on my friend Lyana Fernandez. 1. Name. Lyana Fernandez 2. Where is your hometown? Miami, Florida 3.​ What is your profession/career/title/self-label/designation? I’m an Executive Assistant by day and an Activist, Actor and Joker (Forum Theatre Facilitator) by night. 4.​ What was the journey like to get where you are (career wise)? When was the mental shift to start the journey? At some point during the year after I received my Fine Arts degree at NYU, I resigned myself to the fact that I’d likely never reach a point where I could support myself solely as a working actress. I just didn’t have the patience or endurance to scrape by on odd jobs so as to make myself available for recurring cattle calls and auditions. So after graduation I went to work as an office receptionist, then as an assistant at a public relations company, before I decided to take a year and a half off and live abroad in Japan as an English teacher. Japan enchanted me, and living in a culture that was so demonstrably different from my own changed my perspective on how to interact with the world. I could finally embrace how multifaceted I was instead of feeling I had to commit to just one aspect of my life and run with it – but I didn’t have to feel like a sell-out simply for wanting to have a job that could afford me a reasonably comfortable existence, either. Not long after I returned to the U.S., I began working at my current job in the finance industry, where I’ve been for 11 years. It’s been good enough to me that I’ve been able to dedicate my free time to giving back to my community in various ways – and which brought me back full circle, since one of the ways I’ve given back was by returning to acting for a non-profit arts and social justice theatre group, where I now work part time. 5.​ Biggest accomplishment since making the (physical/mental) move? Two come to mind: having served as a volunteer Advocate for survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence at Domestic and Other Violence Emergencies (DOVE) at New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital for four years; and becoming a host and co-director with People’s Theater Project, a Washington Heights-based arts and social justice organization that creates bilingual plays based on their community volunteer actors’ experiences with social justice issues. Both have given me a keen understanding and appreciation for my community, its often limited resources, and the enormous resolve and creativity of my friends and neighbors to help each other and combat the challenges that face them. 6.​ What was biggest disappointment and plan to overcome it? Like most other people I know, I’m deeply disheartened by the current president and his administration, as well as what I see as a rise in nationalist and fascist movements here in the U.S. and parts of Europe. To see so many proposed cuts to healthcare and social services programs, as well attacks on and legal measures against immigrants, is especially difficult in light of the work I’ve done with assault and violence survivors.  Sometimes it feels as if for every step forward we take two steps back. But for all its downsides I feel that connectivity on social media is restorative because it reminds me on a daily basis that I’m not alone, and that there are myriad ways in which I can take up the cause of resistance. The sheer number of civic action groups that have popped up in my community is invigorating and gives me plenty of reasons to keep up the struggle for justice and not get caught up in despair. 7. ​Advice for other women? Travel as much as you can, by yourself at least some of the time, and make time and room to get to know people from every place you go. It will strengthen your compassion, broaden your understanding, and forge your sense of independence. If you’re young, don’t let other people impose their expectations on you or dictate your personal timeline. You don’t have to have your life figured out by age 18 or your secondary school graduation or any other perceived milestone set upon you by society. As I get older, I’ve found that the goals I’ve felt proudest of achieving are the ones I’ve worked towards at my own instinctive pace. 8.​ Where in the world do you feel “tallest”? “Tallest” is an interesting choice of words since I only measure 157 centimeters!  The answer would have to be onstage, though. I’m sure most people who know me would tell you that I love a spotlight. Whether it’s singing or acting, nothing is as thrilling to me as performing for an audience or the transformative power of words and music when I’m doing it. 9. ​What extra-curricular activities/hobbies are you most proud of? Why? Right now, I’m proudest of having learned how to scuba dive just last year. It wasn’t anything I’d given a moment’s thought to before I was invited to try it by a cousin of mine on an impulse while I was on holiday in Cuba last May, and I just fell in love with the experience. Now that I have my diving license it’s opened up a whole new lot of travel destinations for me that I hadn’t thought of visiting before. It’s very gratifying to discover something you’re passionate about quite by accident like that. It’s like you’re a house, discovering there is this room that has been left in the dark that you never even knew you contained, and then suddenly flicking on the light switch. 10. ​What is the future goal/challenge (career and/or life goals in 5-10 years)? I’d really like to live abroad again, and for a longer period of time. My insatiable wanderlust and the wearying political climate of the U.S. have me longing for saner places to spend my time. In terms of career goals, I think I’d like to continue exploring where acting and activism intersect. Know Your Rights training workshops, civic action teach-ins, and support groups all present an incredible opportunity to use theater as a mechanism for instruction, group therapy, and social change, and I believe there is a demand for a theater company of actors that can create plays for this purpose. 11. ​What fears are you still hoping to overcome? I’ve never tried my hand at public storytelling or spoken word, which is entirely different from acting. For me, it’s a lot easier to embody other characters, or even to play host, than to simply represent yourself in front of other people but I’d like to give it a shot someday. Apart from that, the prospect of romantic partnership seems overwhelming for me because I’ve been alone for so long. If someone compatible enters my life I’d like to believe I’ll be flexible and accommodating enough to adapt to them but it will be challenging to navigate those changes to my lifestyle. 12. ​Anything you'd do differently (if you had another go at life)? I sincerely have no regrets, but if I had to do it all again I’d learn at least one more language and live in another part of the world than I currently do. 13. ​What inspires you? Art does. And stories of human resilience. I think that’s why I know and love so many artists, because some of the best art is the product of people’s need to process their own pain or sense of peril in the face of all the world has thrown at them. 14. ​What are you hopeful about? The progressive activism and sustained resistance that’s been building around the world in response to totalitarianism. The growing awareness of, pride in, and defense of the heritage, histories, and culture of people of color in the U.S. Despite all the troubling things happening in the world right now, I believe young people growing up today are at an advantage for being exposed to these wonderful movements so prevalent today. I’m very excited for what they will accomplish. 15. ​What are you reading now? (what books do you gift most and what are your favourite reads?) I’m finishing Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and enjoying it very much. As for my favorites, I love historical fiction, travel writing anthologies, and historical biographies. Though lately most of the books I’ve been gifting tend to be baby and preschool reading books for my friends’ children. 16.​ Who is a “WOW Woman” in your life who inspires you (and why)? This is such a difficult question to answer as there are so many women I’m continually in awe of, but a woman I’ve become friends with in recent years, Cynthia Cherish Malaran, comes to mind. She is a woman of color who has survived cancer, abuse, and serious injury and has transformed herself into a radio host, motivational speaker, and world-travelling DJ.  She’s exceedingly talented and has demonstrated that you can live a life beyond your wildest dreams not in spite, but because of, unimaginable difficulty. I hope to see her profiled on Wow Women one day! You can learn more about her at http://djcherishtheluv.com/. 17.​ Where can others find you/your work (links to websites, blogs, etc.)? On Facebook, on Tumblr under Lolitapop09, and on Instagram and Twitter under Lolitapop9.  Also at the People’s Theatre Project website at www.peoplestheatreproject.org.

[cwdcshows]

Arrow - S8 E3 - Leap of Faith

Come on now, I'm not even a trained martial artist/assassin or whatever you want to call Oliver or Thea; and even I could tell who was who in this fight. I'd give almost anything to find out that the "league business" Nyssa had to deal with was a bowling league. Fuck you writers, if you honestly think I'm going to accept that Mia would say "frak" instead of fuck.  We've had no indication that she's nearly as nerdy as her mom; and even then, nerds only say that to be cute.

I am fine with them using William as bait.  Anyone here actually have a problem with that?  They only downside is, he makes it out of the trap. As Diggle and Lyla recount their relationship history of getting married, then divorced, then re-married and having JJ, I half expected them to mention how JJ was once Sara, before Barry fucked with the timeline. Which in relative perspective means that at least some percentage of the horrible future we're seeing is Barry's fault.  Fucking Barry. Anyone else still bitter about this whole "Ra's al-Ghul" being a title passed down to different individuals? Did they have to remind us of that bullshit? (Sigh) and they still can't pronounce his name right.

"So the looters just happened to leave behind the one thing we're looking for?" Hey, that's my line. Thea knows there's a difference between being able to read Arabic; and speak Russian, right?  Still, it's impressive; and I sort of wish we'd have gotten to follow her journey the last year or two, but then I remember who the writers are and realize it would have sucked donkey balls.... Come on Ollie, Bruce would have memorize the constellations. Fuck, Oliver, Bruce probably wouldn't have let Talia get the drop on him either..... ....I mean...maybe... he does tend to have a blind spot for certain women; and Talia is one of them, sometimes.... Oh, hey, I've seen this movie; there's a treasure hidden under Mount Rushmoore. Or is it that episode of Deep Space Nine where Worf searches for the lost sword of Kahless? It just occurred to me, what are these lighting sources hanging from the ceiling in these catacombs?  They can't be flame based, the way they're enclosed.  Is there electricity down there? "Hey, they (Connor and his mom) are going to be okay"  Judging by the flashbacks, no, they won't; or at least Connor's parents won't, if Diggle and presumably Lyla end up raising him as their son. I mean, what did you expect would happen when you push someone over during a sword fight, then just stand there? I can't say I'm terribly sad about Zoe dying like that.  I barely remembered who she was when she popped up in the first or second episode; and I couldn't even remember her name.  Her death might have been a little more poignant if Renee had been there instead of Mia. I was just about to mention the fact that we hadn't seen Dinah or Renee the entire episode or the last.  I guess that's what I get for acknowledging their existence.... Can't say I'm surprised the....I don't even know what to call the team from the future....The F Troop?... I'm not surprised they ended up in the past; it had petty much been spoiled through various promotional photos and stuff posted on social media, not to mention the whole proposed 

*******Spoilers********* *******Spoilers*********  Canaries and Green Arrow spin-off  *******Spoilers******** *******Spoilers********

I had kind of started to wonder when and how that would happen; and it's interesting to see them pull the trigger on that sooner rather than later, but this seemed super random and tacked on, especially considering where they were in their future story.  It's almost like a producer came into the writers' room and said, "Oh, hey, so we need to William, Connor and Mia in the present day so they can interact with the main cast." "Okay, when did you want to do that; during one of the Crisis episodes?"  "How about episode 3?" "I'm writing episode 3 right now; Oliver's on the other side of the planet; the characters in the future are in the middle of this whole thing.... I can't just abruptly stop the story and have everyone inexplicably show up int he same place." "Why not?" "Good point.  Let's grab some lunch."

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Another Set of Choices

by Dan H

Tuesday, 31 August 2010

Dan displays unusual loyalty for a Ferretbrain reviewer~

We have a bit of a tradition here at Ferretbrain. We like to encounter things, squee like crazy over them, then come back to them a little while later and decry the fact that they went shit.

A little while ago I reviewed the debut outing(s) of Choice of Games, an indie game company which manages to be completely unpretentious. I'm seriously not sure how they manage it, I suspect it involves corrective surgery. They've released two more new games since my last review, and have published several more fan-creations.

Having been burned by Popcorn, Soda … Murder? I decided to give the fan creations a miss and go straight to the official games.

These games were Choice of Romance (a multiple choice court intrigue game) and Choice of the Vampire (a multiple choice vampire game, duh).

I played through both with Kyra, and we both thought Choice of Romance was brilliant, while we found Choice of the Vampire to be rather less so.

As ever, spoilers abound!

Choice of Romance

Choice of Romance is a game of courtly intrigue set in a fantasy kingdom with a vaguely Italian feel. You play a member of a noble family, heir to some small land, some small income, and some small magical power (it's one of those “all the nobility are mages” settings).

Like most Choice of... games, it's pleasingly non gender- and non hetero- normative. You get to pick whether you play a male or female character, and whether your character is homosexual or heterosexual and much as with choice of broadsides, the norms of the setting flip to match your character's gender and orientation. Even more interestingly, unlike Choice of Broadsides, which regendered its setting to allow a female protagonist to play in the masculine-defaulting sphere of swashbuckling adventure, Choice of Romance regenders its setting to allow male protagonists to engage in the female-defaulting sphere of securing social and political advancement by making an advantageous marriage.

This last point is one of the most striking things about Choice of Romance. One of the largest but least visible manifestations of sexisim in the games industry is the way in which video games focus on the fields of endeavour traditionally dominated by men (war, sport, more war) and ignore those traditionally dominated by women. Of course this is in large part because gamers of both sexes like to blow things the hell up, but it's also because narratives focusing on women and the spheres associated with women are considered boring, so it's remarkably interesting to see a game which not only focuses on court intrigue from a feminine perspective, but gives you the option to do it with a male protagonist.

What really sold me and Kyra on this game was a scene about ten percent of the way in. We had started off fairly so-so. Okay, we're a noblewoman. Okay, we're going to court. Okay, we've defined our sexual oritentation (we were a lesbian by mutual acclamation). Then we got asked to take part in a masque. It turned out that somebody had dropped out, and we were to play the part of Virtue in a masquerade representing the triumph of Perseverence and our job was to be rescued from a tower by the hero (or rather heroine, since we had chosen the non-heteronormative setting). Hang on, we thought. This sounds a bit familiar.

Then we were told that on the night of the actual performance, the role of Perseverence would not be taken by the young lady we had rehearsed with, but by the Queen herself.

Hang on, we said, this sounds

very familiar

.

It was at that point we realised that we were playing a lesbian wizard Anne Boelyn.

Suddenly we realised how clever the game had been. Without telling you anything more than that you were a noblewoman (or nobleman) going to court to find an advantageous marriage, the game had put you into the shoes of one of the most famous women in English history without even realising what you were doing (and again, remember that the game gives you complete control of your gender and orientation so it's entirely possible that you could be playing Anne Boelyn as a man which feels strangely subversive). Suddenly everything started to slot into place, the brash combative queen whose sole heir was illegitimate, our ambitious uncle who kept encouraging us to cultivate the queen's affections, the poor but ardant young suitor who kept writing us poetry.

You didn't need to understand anything about the history to play the game, but if you did everything fell together into this fantastic “aha” moment which was genuinely delightful. I was even more pleased when we managed to discredit the King-Consort by playing on the queen's frustrations at his inability to provide her with an heir.

We got the crown, by the way.

Mechanically, Choice of Romance returns to the simpler style of Choice of the Dragon. You have six stats, Booksmart, Charm, Subtle, Magic, Wealth and Reputation, which are easy to track and relatively straightforward to work with. We were big on Subtlety but weak on magic, and our reputation tanked early on because we were rather above ourselves. The stripped down system made it easy to see where you were going and what you were doing, and we always felt very in control of the game.

The only real downside to Choice of Romance is that it's a “part one”. Perhaps I'm not giving the Choice of... crew enough credit, but since the company is not (last time I checked) a full time job for any of them I don't really expect them to keep to anything like a release schedule, and on a more practical note I don't quite see how they expect you to import your old game information into the sequel.

Basically what you get in the game is the first season of the Tudors. Once we'd worked out who we were (or who we were based on) we stuck to the script, as it were, fairly closely, and we had the crown by the end. Presumably the challenge from here is to avoid getting beheaded, but the game finishes before you get that far. The ending feels a little abrupt, but abrupt endings seem something of an occupational hazard with these sorts of games (I found that Broadsides had the most satisfying denoument) and I still thought that Romance was their best outing yet.

Choice of the Vampire

Interestingly I got an invitation to the beta for this one (didn't get one for Cataclysm, but I got one for this) and so I actually played it through a couple of days before release. I wasn't entirely sold, although I did go back and try a couple of different pathways, and there are some interesting differences early on.

I then asked Kyra to play through it with me. She … umm … hated it so much she made us stop halfway.

As you might remember from our Edinburgh podcasts, Kyra and I have something of a mantra for things we don't like but don't consider to be irredeemable piles of putrified bat intestines, which is “Well at least it wasn't as bad as Shafted.” Choice of the Vampire is not as bad as Popcorn, Soda … Murder, and I am willing to accept that a lot of what I thought was iffy and Kyra thought was unplayably terrible about it comes down to questions of personal preference, but here at Ferretbrain we generally like to lay out in great deatil why we think our personal preferences are right goddamn it.

Let's start with the writing. The writing in the previous three games has been simple, clear and to the point. It hasn't been remarkable prose of mind expanding beauty, but it's been sharp, witty, and got the job done. The writing in Choice of the Vampire is … well … to say it is more ambitious would be euphemistic. It's laboured, it's overwritten. It never chooses to express itself in a manner which could be considered precise, direct or succinct if it can instead employ some florid, flowery, or redundant turn of phrase which uses nine, ten or even eleven words where one or two would be entirely sufficient.

For example, when you start the game you are given a choice of potential “Makers” (or “dominuses” as they are later called). Here is how your memories of that first meeting are described:

You remember his gaze--bypassing your skin and your sex as being irrelevant--eating its way through to your soul. You know that in the world, these things are not irrelevant, and yet he judged you on some criteria which you could neither perceive nor understand... and when he was done, he spit you out again, altogether lessened by the experience.

Now again I should say that this is a question of personal preference, and some people have actually praised the writing for “creating a sense of alienation” - so perhaps the writer is doing something I just don't get, but to me that whole thing just looks clunky and inarticulate. It mixes its metaphors (“eating through” does not sit naturally alongside “spitting out” despite their shared oral component) it repeats itself, it's heavy handed. Gah.

I think Kyra gave up at about that point.

It then gets you to pick your gender, whether your dominus chose you for teh sexxorz or for some other function, and then gets to the “character creation” questions, where you explain what was unique about you that attracted the vampire's attention. You get a large number of different background options here, the exact choice varying depending on your choice of gender, dominus, and whether they wanted you for sex or assistance which is an admirable flexibility but comes at the expense of both clarity and – paradoxically – of player choice. Why, after all, should your choice to play a particular type of character be contingent on your having chosen a particular dominus? It creates the impression that the designer is more concerned with the consistency of his creation (apparently there are only three possible tasks which he feels “West” could want a woman for, for example) than with giving the player the freedom to create their own story.

One of the biggest flaws of Choice of the Vampire is what seems to be an unwillingness to let the player experience the game for themselves. The text is constantly telling you how you feel and what you think about things. When you are given a choice those choices often either feel, or turn out to be, purely cosmetic.

Worse, it puts words into your mouth, and does so with such frequency that there is always a sense of the game being played for you. For example, your behaviour towards your maker is consistently polite and subservient, there are long, non interactive scenes in which you interact with your maker in a subdued, subservient manner, acquiescing to all of his demands and calling him by his full title as he requests, with no option to challenge his authority or show him disrespect. This goes on for long enough that by the time you finally get the option to choose your own reply (“I am ever your servant” or “I have better things to do”) the defiant option simply feels inconsistent with the character that has been presented to you.

The whole thing has the difficult feel of a not-very-well-run Vampire: the Masquerade campaign. There is always a sense that player agency is limited to defining things about their character, and even then those things are treated much like character background in the stereotypical roleplaying campaign, stored on a sheet somewhere and forgotten about.

A particularly egregious example of the way the game asks you to define things about yourself, then ignores them comes when one of the other vampires asks you to describe your preferred prey (which you get to pick from a very large list, some of the options on which will be greyed out if the game deems them to be “out of character” for you) and having said “I like to feed on children because I am a sick bastard” or “I exclusively feed on animals because I am all tortured” the other vampire tells you to go and try the blood of some random french dude because it apparently has a “unique terroir”. And then you do. Despite the fact that you have just directly and explicitly described your character's feeding habits, you immediately head off to chow down on M. Hebert. Your character's preferred prey is occasionally referenced in passing and is of course dutifully recorded on your stats screen and repeated to you at the end of the game, but there are no scenes in which you actively hunt, in which you demonstrate your choice of prey through in-game actions.

While you are feeding on Monsieur Hebert, you encounter a young voodoo priestess named Clotho. The text immediately tells you that you are attracted to her. And your options for the next three choices are essentially “pursue a romantic relationship with Clotho” or “do not pursue a romantic relationship with Clotho” (you do not get the option to pursue a relationship with Herbert, any more than you got the option to stay away from him in the first place). If you do pursue a relationship with her, events seem always to pan out the same way (there is a particularly annoying sequence where you uncover a threat on her life, but if you try to rescue her it turns out that she had everything under control all along – which is all very empowering I'm sure, but I'd much rather you found a way to show me this character was strong and independent without railroading me.)

As part of your very linear introductory conversation with Clotho, she idly threatens you. At this point you get precisely two options, one being a line of typically overwritten dialogue (“You could no more harm me than a lamb could harm a lion”) and the other being to physically attack her. Not only do you get no other choice, no option to let the threat slide, no option to apologize, no option to do anything but be a dickbag or a slightly different sort of dickbag (again it feels like the writer had a very clear idea of how he wanted your relationship with Clotho to play out, and the only options he bothered to write in were options to break it off early) – not only that but if you do choose the option to physically attack her she actually takes you down. Because apparently her clothing is lighter than yours (I am not making this up), and that makes all the difference. I don't think I've ever felt less like an immortal bloodsucking fiend in my entire life. That time I couldn't open a jar of salsa, and then it exploded in my face and I got covered in chunky tomato pieces? Still made me feel more like a vampire than that part of the game.

And that was my biggest problem of all with Choice of the Vampire: It just doesn't make me feel like a vampire. Now again, this might be deliberate, the writer said in a recent post on the Choice of Games blog that:

I’m not writing this story so we can imagine ourselves as fabulously beautiful, wealthy and emotionally tortured teenagers. Rather, I’m interested in what it means to be immortal, what it means to watch the world pass you by, and what are the compromises we make to get what we want in our lives. Just as you make choices in life, so too must you make choices in the game.

(Clearly he missed the surgery)

This, once again, reminds me of nothing so much as the stuff you'd get in the GM advice section of White Wolf games. Being a vampire isn't cool. Being a vampire isn't about being powerful. Being a vampire is about serious issues to do with the torment in the human soul. Being a vampire is a curse and you shouldn't enjoy it.

By the way, here's our NPC list of awesome sexy rich fantastic people.

Playing Choice of the Vampire doesn't feel like being a vampire, it feels like reading somebody's unpublished novel about vampires. I've made three full plays-through of the game, and several incomplete plays-through to check options and I can honestly say that there is nothing in the game which allows me to explore what it means to be immortal, there is nothing that allows me to explore what compromises we must make to get on in our lives. There are, however quite a lot of fabulously beautiful, wealthy emotionally tortured teenagers (there's even a scene where your broodmate humiliates a rival by making her think he fancies her, then dissing her about it), but I'm not allowed to live in their world, because I'm just the player.

It doesn't help that the game is incredibly overambitious. It bills itself as telling a story covering two hundred years, but the actual game as released starts with the Battle of New Orleans (1815) and ends with the Siege of New Orleans (1862) meaning it only actually covers forty-seven years (about as much as Choice of Broadsides), at which rate it's going to take four full instalments just to bring it up to the modern day. And whereas Choice of Romance at least feels like a complete story (it ends with your marriage more or less) Choice of the Vampire just stops after the Civil War.

Similarly, the vast number of character backgrounds you get to choose from at the start of the game seem to lead to very little. Aside from shuffling around some of your (enormous number of) statistics, your background is rarely referenced in the game. Kyra and I tried to play as a priest, I played as a Scots-Irish washerwoman, a slave of both sexes, a free person of colour, a Germanic lady of warrior ancestry, and a French aristocrat. The game dutifully wrote down all of the details I gave it, but I always felt very much like I was playing a generic video game protagonist. The game makes quite a big deal out of race and gender but I found it made very little difference in practice. Ironically this might be because unlike the regendering in Courtesan or Broadsides, where social norms shift to fit your character which results in some genuine and observable differences in gameplay Choice of the Vampire is set in a world where perceptions of gender and race are concrete, which means whenever your character's sex and ethnicity are ignored, instead of feeling like the game has subverted your expectations, it feels like the game has just forgotten that you aren't a white man.

The romance options in particular feel strangely normative. Your relationship with Clotho consists entirely of you running around trying to save her from things and being invited to meet her family (who don't seem to care if you're a woman) while your relationship with Silas the Soldier consists of you sending him delicately perfumed letters and waiting for him to return from the war. Both relationships contain references to the fact that a homosexual relationship is unusual in the setting, but I still felt that my character was “the man” in my relationship with Clotho and “the woman” in my relationship with Silas. Similarly regardless of my character's ethnic origin, I very much felt that my attraction to Clotho (an attraction I could not choose not to have, only to act on or not act on) seemed to be based on the fact that she was mysterious and exotic, even if I had chosen to play somebody from the exact same culture.

A lot of the flaws of the game can be traced back to the necessary restraints of this overambition. Race and gender were big freaking issues in nineteenth century New Orleans, and while I respect the writer's attempt to engage with those issues, the only way to do it properly would be to write a completely different game for every character background you chose, because in that kind of setting people are going to treat a Choktaw Native completely differently to a Catholic Priest. The backgrounds are sufficiently specific, and sufficiently diverse, that they create an expectation on which the game can not deliver. If I am playing a Catholic Priest, seduced away from the church by my sadistic master then I expect faith, the church, and my struggles with my religion to be the central focus of the game. If I am playing an interpreter of the Choktaw people, I expect to interact with the Choktaw people at some point.

The game tries to do too much, and as a result winds up doing nothing. It keeps telling me that I have the option of pursuing all kinds of interesting things: seeking the truth about the origin of vampires, searching for a love that will transcend death, acquiring wealth or power, and so on and so on, but you get no option to pursue any of these goals in the game. Instead you get taken on a whistle-stop tour of forty-seven years of New Orleans history, with the primary focus being not your character's personal journey into undeath, but real historical events in nineteenth-century America, more Choice of the Civil War than Choice of the Vampire. Indeed most of the vampire segments involve no choice at all, and the game glosses over the business of hunting and feeding almost entirely. Instead it focuses the majority of its attention on questions like “does your character support the Union or the Confederacy”.

The thing is, it might get better in later instalments. The elements of the story which are sold to you as important (finding out the origin of vampires, achieving redemption, attaining wealth and power, experiencing the cruelty of an immortal existence) might be explored more fully in part two or three but the game as it currently exists is incomplete and unsatisfying. It has ambition, but lacks execution.

Conclusions

Having played all of the Choice of... crew's games thus far, my current ranking is Romance, Dragon, Broadsides, Vampire.

I can only speak personally, but I think that the games which work best are the ones which focus on telling a simple, clear story without trying to over-define or over-mechanise things. Broadsides suffers a little from having more statistics than you can easily keep track of, and Vampire suffers even worse from the same issue. There simply isn't enough space in a short multiple choice piece of IF to adequately explore all of the themes that a more ambitious game might want to explore.

So yeah, Choice of Games, still going strong. Not a big fan of their latest.Themes:

Computer Games

~

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~Comments (

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Arthur B

at 09:37 on 2010-08-31ROCKIN' ARTICLE NUMBER, DUDE! /makes sign of the Horns.

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Wardog

at 09:46 on 2010-08-31AMG!

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Wardog

at 09:54 on 2010-08-31Just to expand, as Dan says I really hated Choice of the Vampire. I've played about to the halfway point three times now before giving up in frustration. It reminds me of a badly GMed Vampire: The Masquerade game. It offers you about million ways to determine the minutae of your character and then no way whatsoever for these to impact the game - other than to arbitrarily close off options.

Also you can't get any sweet sweet manlove if you're not compassionate enough - whut?!

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 11:19 on 2010-08-31Is there some way that The Choice of Romance addresses the whole lack of legitimate heir thing, or do they pass it by? Not criticize the scenario in the game, I just wondered if how they resolved it, through magic, legitimizing the illegitimate one or something?

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Wardog

at 11:40 on 2010-08-31Hehe, you should play it and see - it only takes about half an hour.

It's actually rather clever - they use light/dark magic to subsitute for gender and inheritence issues (a light mage has to inherit the throne after a dark mage), and apparently light magic makes it possible for same sex couples to have children.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 11:48 on 2010-08-31Oh yeah, I noticed the link just now. Very quick of me. It seems awesome, although I guess I won't findout until later, after I've played it through with a character that's so blatantly a dream image of myself it almost hurts. By the way, I got more of a spanish feel from the names, but I don't know.

I don't know whether I'll try the Vampire thing, I haven't really bothered with the glamour vampires after reading Anne Rice and I always preferred the more monstrous take on that, but I guess I'll try.

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Dan H

at 13:16 on 2010-08-31If you take the designer's comments at face value, he shares your preference for "monstrous" vampires.

I feel a little bit bad for laying into CotV as badly as I did, because the folks at CoG are generally very sweet and responsive. For example, they seem to have changed the way your initial meeting with Clotho is presented in response to a couple of comments on the blog from people saying they felt pushed into it. I don't think it makes a huge difference, but I think it makes *some* difference.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 13:31 on 2010-08-31I wonder if part 2 of the Choice for Romance will have continuation for the other storylines as well. For now, only the Boleyn Plot has reference to part 2.

But the game itself pulls the player very deep into the plot and even if it is rather short, you get very involved with the character. Are there more games of this kind around. As good as this one is, one starts to wonder how a game with a larger scale with even more plot affecting choices would be like. Of course it would take huge amounts of effort to create something like that, but one can dreram, I guess.

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Dan H

at 13:47 on 2010-08-31I'm not sure if there's anybody else doing exactly this choose-your-own-adventure style of game (although there's always old-fashioned gamebooks) but there's a ton of text-based games out there (Kyra knows more about IF communities than I do).

It's worth pointing out that Choice of the Vampire *is* much larger and more complex than their other games, and I think a lot of its issues come from exactly that. Check it out for yourself if you're interested, I know Kyra and I hated it, but a lot of people have responded very positively.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 14:07 on 2010-08-31I'll do that next. And judging from your review, I can guessthat the problems are the inflexibility of the plot and that the choices you make don't influence it enough. This would require a considerable amount of effort to correct, I guess.

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Dan H

at 15:00 on 2010-08-31The plot is actually more flexible than it seems, if you tack /scenes/ onto the end of the URL you can look at the source code and there's a lot of different paths you can go down.

It's just that unfortunately a lot of them are either locked off unless you manage to max out your stats or else or else require you to make decisions that the game strongly hints are bad ones.

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Jamie Johnston

at 08:34 on 2010-09-01Just finished

Choice of romance

(as far as it currently goes) and found it jolly enjoyable.

I tried it before reading on to the substance of the review, so I was taken by surprise by the way the flexibility of gender and sexuality worked itself out. Having glimpsed the big bold reference to Anne Boleyn I assumed from the outset that I was a woman, so when I was asked to choose I confirmed that, and set up a reasonably Boleynish character but with a bit more of an interest in actual romance. But when I got to the choice of sexual orientation I was a little flummoxed.

I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that the way you're asked to choose is that you're at a party and you're flirting, and the game asks you to say whether you're flirting with the girls or the boys. Well, I say to myself, I'm a woman who's aiming to work every angle to get myself advantage and if possible a bit of romance too. But, you see, I'm at this point assuming that the game-world (though not the game) would be approximately as sexist and heteronormative as the Renaissance Spain that it clearly nods at. So I felt I pretty well had to pursue the men, didn't I? And the game had carefully asked me who I was flirting with, not who I was actually interested in, so my choice was based on my character's strategy rather than her inclination.

It isn't a complaint, really, because it's such a short game that I can just play it again with a different set of choices. But if I could give it a couple of little tweaks based on that experience I might make the social mechanics of the world clearer before those choices need to be made, and also make it clearer that the flirting choice determines your actual preference and not just what you happen to be doing at the time. In fact it would be nice to be able to pursue both women and men with the same character. But in any case I'm quite intrigued to find out how the game differs if you play as a man, so I might try that next.

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Dan H

at 12:31 on 2010-09-01I actually like the fact that it's presented as a statement of action rather than intent, because it's not just about defining your character's orientation, it's about defining the entire way the world is set up. It's possible that your character is actually a heterosexual woman, but flirting with the women because all of the most powerful people at court are female.

I think it's possible that the team assume you've played /Broadsides/ and so have a general idea of how CoG sets these things up.

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Furare

at 14:20 on 2010-09-01

I wonder if part 2 of the Choice for Romance will have continuation for the other storylines as well. For now, only the Boleyn Plot has reference to part 2.

I'm pretty sure I got a reference to part 2 when I completed the game by marrying the rich merchant and becoming the queen's lover on the side. It's possible that you have to be involved with the monarch to progress to part 2, which I guess makes sense.

I actually played the "traditional" Boleyn story with a heterosexual guy, which amused me - it was fun to play at being a scheming "kept man". I think that, even if you're straight, there are a couple of references in the text to the fact that not everyone else is, which I thought was nice.

Oh, and the "run away with your impoverished lover" storyline is fun, too. I want to find out if it differs if your Booksmart skill is low; maybe you can't work out that s/he is not as smart as s/he thinks s/he is if you're not all that bright. Game basically begs to be replayed, doesn't it?

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Jamie Johnston

at 13:52 on 2010-09-02

I actually like the fact that it's presented as a statement of action rather than intent, because it's not just about defining your character's orientation, it's about defining the entire way the world is set up. It's possible that your character is actually a heterosexual woman, but flirting with the women because all of the most powerful people at court are female.

Yes, and that's kind of what I thought was happening, except that in the end I think it's fairly clear that the game doesn't accommodate any divergence between your tactical flirting targets and your personal inclinations. Once I'd told it I was flirting with the boys, my romantic options were the king, the rich boring guy, and the fun but not desperately charming libertine guy. And the libertine guy's the give-away, surely. Because he's positioned as the guy you hook up with if you want to turn your back on both power-seeking and conventional security and just have a good time. There was no libertine girl I could hook up with to just have a good time, and that's got to be because I'd told the game I was flirting with the boys at my birthday party and it took that to mean I was a raging heterosexual.

I think it's possible that the team assume you've played /Broadsides/ and so have a general idea of how CoG sets these things up.

That's quite possible, and quite possibly not a good thing if they want these games to spread beyond a core of loyal fans. But if they're only doing it for fun then I guess there's no particular reason they should mind if that doesn't happen.

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Dan H

at 14:36 on 2010-09-03

There was no libertine girl I could hook up with to just have a good time, and that's got to be because I'd told the game I was flirting with the boys at my birthday party and it took that to mean I was a raging heterosexual.

I don't think it's so much that. I think the game takes your statement that you're flirting with the boys as evidence that within the context of the game, you are interested in pursuing heterosexual relationships.

Essentially, from what I can tell, you read the "who do you flirt with" question as asking "are you flirting with the boys, implying that you are either heterosexual or homosexual and pursuing men for social advancement, or with the girls, implying that you are an overt homosexual in a patriarchal, heteronormative society."

What the game doesn't implement is the option to be gay in a heteronormative society, and I'm actually okay with that. It means that you get the option to play a gay character without it being your character's one defining feature.

I can see that the heteronormativity selection could have been more clearly flagged (again they did this better in Broadsides where they make it quite clear that if you choose to play a woman, you're not cross-dressing and running away to sea, you're living in a world where gender roles are reversed).

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Craverguy

at 11:30 on 2015-10-04I love Choice of Games. It's like it was tailor-made for people who love gaming and are broke and/or massive cheapskates. You know, people like me.

In particular, I unequivocally and enthusiastically recommend that everyone who likes choice of adventure games or sci-fi even a little bit play Choice of Robots. It is, hands down, the greatest entertainment-enjoyed-per-dollar-spent value I've gotten this year.

The plot is incredibly branching for a text-based game, and covers everything between building a multi-billion-dollar, war-winning defense contractor, to being a peace-loving bohemian who writes robot novels and dreams of building a robot capable of love, to becoming a cackling mad scientist who has a gun for an arm and leads a robot army in its conquest of Alaska. I spent hours on that sucker.