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iamumbra195 · 2 years ago

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The other day I saw someone say that the plot of Bleach is mainly driven by the distrust and lack of belief in their friends’ character most of the main cast has in their friends, some examples being Chad and Orihime thinking that Ichigo will run away from the war if given the choice when Urahara told him to do what he believes is best despite Ichigo giving them no reason to doubt him And uryuu not telling anyone what he was doing with yhwach and the other Quincy despite obviously knowing before hand, thus making bleach very different then most shounen around the time it was created, given that those were driven by the trust and friendship the main characters had in one another. Even Ichigo himself refuses to rely on others, a fact of his character that’s made obvious in the arrancar arc where he think Rukia and Renji won’t go to heuco mundo with him to save Orihime and even refuses Ishida and chad’s help at first

and for some weird reason my mind has been fixated on a crossover between one piece and bleach where ichigo and Rukia end up in the one piece world

this is basically an AU where aizen attacks again after yhwach’s gone and everything goes kinda bad

ichigo ends up on an island near punk hazard three years before canon and five years before the timeskip (I’m making it up on the go). The island is a black smithing place where Mihawk’s Yoru and several other swords were made. Not going into details but it’s basically ruled by a tyrant and based of something in mythology

Rukia ends up at a revolutionary because a) I think she’s a great contrast to Sabo since she went from street kid to noble while sabo did the opposite and b) she’s a soldier in a corrupt military organization, the irony of having her end up with ppl who directly oppose an organization similar to the one she served, and being forced to acknowkedge the twisted corruption of the marines, a military organization headed by nobles. sound familiar? (Central 46 and the Gorosei)

like she technically knows that the soul society aren’t exactly the good guys they’re just the lesser evil most of the time so yeah, I think it’d be a great character arc also I think her sabo and koala would be a cool trio

you know what’s even more fun, neither of them have their original shinigami powers (yes, I nerfed them but I kinda have the reason why planned). They have their base swordskills and stuff but none of the fancy powers they had before, No zanpakuto, no kido. Just the basics.

They spend the next like five years adjusting, learning haki and or in Ichigo’s case, learning how to make a sword from the man who made Mihawk’s sword after making a deal to save the island from the tyrant

I love him and the weirdly fast way he learns everything so I’m applying it to this, where he wants to learn how to make a sword because none of the ones he tries feel right in his hands and he wants zangetsu back but obviously doesn’t have him so he goes about making a sword and eventually manages it after like four years

rukia on the other hand, gets her hands on a devil fruit in the second year since her arrival there— the cold cold fruit, the opposite of that Oven dude in Whole Cake Island. Obviously she eats it and learns how to use it. She’s not too creative with it at first because she misses Sode No Shirayuki but after a while she breaks that habit. The awakening would be something like her bankai because I love it and I really love her ice vibe. Also once again contrast to sabo’s flame flame fruit

blah blah blah, timeskip stuff happens and the straw hats, Law, and our favourite samurai hitch hikers get caught in a storm on the way to dressrosa and get blown into Ichigo’s island. More blah blah blah stuff that I haven’t planned and then Ichigo joins them. anyways back to my original point, the straw hats trust each other in a really great way like yes, they’ve had some bumps here and there but they would trust each other with their life AND lay down their lives for one another in the blink of an eye and that’s like a direct contrast to relationships in bleach and I think Ichigo would probably benefit from the knowledge that there are ppl that fully trust him and that he can also put his trust in

some one said in another post that luffy doesn’t have daddy issues, he has daddy solutions because he makes everyone’s daddy issue go away and Ichigo needs that shit on his life

also I think it would be really cool that since Ichigo’s whole life had been surrounded by the idea of death and a large part of his character arc in bleach is accepting death as part of life and finally moving on from his mother’s death, it would be another great character arc for him to genuinely start living his life as he likes and Luffy, the embodiment of freedom and working towards achieving your dream so you can live your life without regrets, is the best person to make Ichigo finally start living his life

this part is pretty much AU and kinda based off a fic but Ichigo’s dream in this AU would have to do with his fascination with languages and that he wanted to see the whole world to explore it and soothe the itch to run into the unknown headfirst. Pretty much wanderlust ichigo + language nerd ichigo

since he’s a blacksmith/sword smith as well, his conversations with zoro, Franky, nami, and robin would be cool plus his dad is a doctor so he’d have some medical knowledge as well so he and chopper would get along

also how could I forget the man himself, soul king brook? Brook knows there’s something fucky going on with Ichigo cause his soul is weird and brook has an awareness of souls as seen in canon. He’s basically a plus soul that’s piloting a skeletal body in a way. He’s able to see hollows and all that weird shit

this is such a fun idea I could talk about this for hours 😭😭

#bleach #ichigo kurosaki #rukia kuchiki #one piece #monkey d. luffy #strawhat pirates #crossover au #pirate ichigo and revolutionary rukia are some thing I didn’t know I needed in my life until like yesterday #crossover #bleach x one piece crossover

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klysanderelias · 3 months ago

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Listening to the AMCA March Q&A and hearing the question about how cool and awesome dave filoni is

But for real, though, there's something I'm still trying to unpack where like, I don't like Dave Filoni. I think he's a loser. I think if I had to work with him in real life, it would be drastically annoying. I can't imagine being George Lucas and coming to the showrunner meeting and having Dave go 'so we spent like ten hours trying to make sure the dejarik table look perfect.' I would dress that dude down in public! I'd be a dickhead! Like, I genuinely think I would react in a way that makes me unhappy with myself! But also I think I would be so fucking fed up with every goddamn time he's like 'yeah so I made sure to add in a scene with the Republic Commandos from the video game Republic Commando'.

And a lot of that is because the times I can really tell his influence (or when he directly takes credit for things), it genuinely often makes the show worse. Every time there's a Seven Samurai episode, it's actively worse by trying to draw that comparison, because he doesn't understand what makes Seven Samurai good, and also because he's completely unwilling to commit to the basic premise of a Seven Samurai episode, which is that most of these seven* people are going to die. No, they don't get harmlessly thrown off the train and meet up later. No, they don't all live because it would be a downer if they didn't.

But also it's like, sorry Dave, but the magic Force wolves are cringe. You also didn't actually DO anything with them, they're barely tangential to the plot and mostly serve as a deus ex machina to solve problems that you didn't need to solve, but that's why they're cringe, because they're awkwardly jammed into storylines that don't make sense with them in there. What do the Republic Commando (2005) guys actually do? Nothing, they're just on-screen, because Dave wanted to show off.

And part of it is, I don't particularly want to know how much money Dave Filoni makes in a year, right? I don't want to think about how highly placed he is, how rich and influential he is, for a guy who seems completely incapable of critical thinking. Again, it's hard to know if what he says in interviews and the Filoni Zone/Rebels Recon/etc shorts is actually what he thinks, or if it's just fluff to avoid getting in trouble with corporate, etc etc. But unfortunately, that's all the evidence I get, so when I've pretty much only seen Filoni the fanboy who misses half the context of his own show in order to discuss the weird awkwardly jammed in concept that he seems REALLY proud of, y'know, it's hard to say 'but he's probably not that way in real life'. The things I've heard his coworkers say about him reinforce the idea that he's a fanboy first.

And really what it comes down to is, this is a guy who probably makes at least six figures, probably seven, and he's writing bad fanfiction. Shoutout to good fanfiction, I've read a lot of it, but also, if you're working a professional capacity, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard. Fanfiction doesn't have writers' rooms, it doesn't have editors, it doesn't have millions of dollars in backing. And quite frankly, a lot of fanfiction writers have a better understanding of how to plot a story than Dave Filoni seems to.

And I think functionally, that's my problem, right? Is that Dave Filoni works for one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world, on one of the biggest entertainment FRANCHISES in the world, and he really feels like he failed into the position. And that's entertainment, right? A lot of showrunners and executives kind of suck at their jobs, and often waste millions of dollars to make mediocre slop but because of the name recognition, they keep getting jobs (like JJ Abrams).

It's just deeply annoying to be like, yeah, Dave Filoni (according to his interviews) doesn't really pay much attention to the themes and undercurrents of the episode, because he's too busy putting in easter eggs for his own amusement, and he also makes millions of dollars doing it.

#long post

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casliveblog · 1 year ago

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Custom Toonami Block Week 170 Rundown

Inuyasha The Final Act: We get another one of those episodes where several plots that clearly happened in different orders are kinda happening all at once, so I’ll tackle them in the order they’re resolved rather than the order they show up in. Sesshomaru is still dicking around in the background trying to master the Meido Zangetsuha because it can already kill everything in one hit but really mastering it means a slightly bigger AOE of killing everything in one hit. Meanwhile Inuyasha’s actually kind of proactive in searching out his next upgrade like ‘you know I’m just gonna steal the arc villain’s powers anyway so might as well just hunt him down’ and luckily they find Dakki just as it’s being perfected, like minutes after, it’s crazy. Inuyasha kills the dragon demon that gave the scales for it with a classic game of demonic energy tennis and then the human that forged it pulls a Kaijinbo and decides to start wielding Dakki anyway despite the corrupting influence it has on his body. Another game of demonic energy tennis ensues and Tessaiga loses all its power but manages to crack Dakki and get it scared enough that it just starts pumping energy into its human wielder who just fucking explodes from it, so yeah Tessaiga has its second most useless upgrade now. Like I feel like since it gets Meidou Zangetsuha right after this and it’s very situational and hurts the user at first, Dragon Scale Tessaiga never really gets the chance to shine. Like it ‘absorbs demonic energy’ but that doesn’t really amount to much given Inuyasha doesn’t do anything with that energy, it’s basically a switch that turns off Naraku’s auto-healing. Energy absorption is really weird for a heroic power and Yashahime did a lot of weird shit with Towa using it too but at least with her it made her attacks stronger. Meanwhile Koga gets set up to be attacked by a baby wolf demon kid whose brother is being held ransom by Naraku’s newest incarnation once he realized ‘oh shit Kagura did all my grunt work what do I do now’, Byakuya. I don’t really get what the plan was, like this kid was never going to kill Koga and leading him back to them was kind of a whim that basically amounted to Byakuya getting to see the Goraishi in action. But Moryomaru does come around and Inuyasha gets to save Koga from having his shards taken for like the tenth time (though this time it’s because of bs conveinient Midoriko shenanigans so I guess the good luck cancels out the bad) and they do get to do a cool team attack now that Koga has an energy blast like the rest of the big boys. Also like, they gave the wolf demon kid a jewel shard? Naraku has almost the whole jewel completed at this point, we’ve seen it, so is he like… breaking off new shards? That seems like a bad idea given the only shards besides Koga’s and Moryomaru’s is the one you gave to a random kid to fuck with Sango and it’s currently Naraku’s biggest obstacle, like you’d think he’d stop giving out jewel shards and risking losing them. But yeah, turns out Dragon Scale Tessaiga is too much for Inuyasha to handle rn so he has an upgrade but he really doesn’t so now it’s time for second upgrade.

Castlevania: So yeah we get the fabulous scene of the demons murdering Frollo which I think is the most popular scene in the series with good reason. Meanwhile Trevo gets help from Sypha doing crowd control and it’s really funny how he’s like ‘damn priest you almost made murderers out of these people’ only for the people to fucking murder the priest, like they switched fucking fast, guess a little ‘ ‘ey isn’t this guy an asshole?’ is all it takes to overcome years of Catholic guilt because all Trevor really does is say ‘they’re lying’, offer no evidence and everyone’s willing to just jump the priest over it, like he’s telling the truth but I feel like the villagers are just a bit too ready to believe him right away. The two of them manage to Seven Samurai their way into teaching the people how to fight demons just in time to have a really long scene of falling into Alucard’s daddy booboo room. Alucard and Trevor have a really cool fight because it’s like Sonic Adventure 2 you’re more likely to believe there’s one supernatural vampire/hedgehog that looks slightly different than you expected than the more unbelievable option that there’s actually two supernatural vampires/hedgehogs. But yeah they get all their flamboyant male showboating out of the way and agree to go kill Dracula because they’re all getting kinda sick of this whole demon horde genocide thing.

Jujutsu Kaisen: I don’t know who’s in charge of directing Meimei’s scenes but they always do it like it’s some kind of survival horror and it’s a special treat. Meimei defeats smallbox with the powers of birds and death which is definitely a sentence I never thought I’d say. Meanwhile Maki, Nanami, and Papa Zenin encounter that lil baby Cthulu thing who’s just digivolved into Perfect Cell Cthulu thing and he and Papa Zenin have a weird meta discussion about animation and HD while Cthulu’s just like ‘my friends are dead and I’m mad’ like I legit thought with how hyped up this tentacle guy was in the first OP and just kinda hanging around in the background of Kujaku’s hiding place he’d be some key figure but apparently he’s just some guy they pal around with, it’s like that bit in the Simpsons where the small yakuza guy does nothing and you’re waiting for him to do something cool and this is cool but it’s not exactly what I was expecting. Papa Zenin’s technique is pretty cool too like a weaponized form of windows movie maker and if you don’t make a full AMV in half a second you get stunlocked but of course since he uses his fists and not like a sword or something he doesn’t have a really good finishing blow so it takes a while to beat the shit out of someone, like that that point learn how to use a sword so you can cut someone’s head off while they’re stunlocked instead of beating them around for ten minutes. Anyway Cthulu Expansions his Domain which is just Super Mario Sunshine with angry murder fish and Papa Zenin does the move which is different from the other move that cancels domain shit and it’s really poorly explained it’s basically just ‘nuh-uh’ to the Domain shit by doing a frame perfect input cancel. And like they always seem to get the guys that don’t have Domains to fight the villains that do because I’m guessing if Papa Zenin could do Doamin stuff he’d have done it by now. Still, the guys hold up as long as they can against fish that can literally just teleport into already biting a chunk out of them and Megumi comes out of nowhere to give Maki her nunchaku back and use his Domain he learned like a couple weeks ago to at least de-power Cthulu’s domain from an insta-kill to like an 80% kill which is enough to actually fight at least but Megumi’s not doing so hot trying to drag Super Mario Sunshine into his Shikamaru Shadow World so he just plans to rip a hole in the edge of the domain for everyone to get out of because it’s one of those once a day things so if you just like move out of the way they can’t spam it. Papa Zenin’s missing an arm and Nanami’s missing an eye so yeah they’re ready to get the fuck out of dodge but Dadgumi pops out of the hole of all people, like father like son I guess just popping in to Super Mario Sunshine to fuck shit up.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: I really like how despite the episodes being two separate vignettes likely derived from manga chapters being shorter than anime episodes, the two halves usually lead into each other in some way and carry a certain theme, it’s a good touch I didn’t see in something like Spy X Family that tends to go for mostly unconnected stories or full story arcs. Frieren and Fern are cleaning up a beach in exchange for a counterfeit book supposedly written by Flamme, who we find out in the second half is Frieren’s Master from a thousand years ago and famously didn’t write shit down so a bunch of people wrote shit down to say it was her. The running gag for this half is Frieren sleeps like a college student, up all night reading and then sleeping till noon, which means she won’t be able to see the sun rise on the festival when the beach is finally clean, but Fern Mama Bear’s up and knows it’s important to Frieren to see it and gets them out the door to watch it. Frieren contemplates why Himmel was so insistent on her seeing it back when they were in town and sees it as nothing special until she sees Fern smiling at it and realizes the real sunset was the friends she made along the way. The second half is the group visiting Eisen as the last other surviving member of the Himmel Troupe and Frieren’s like ‘bro I don’t wanna feel bad when you die too so lemme know any unfinished business shit you gotta deal with’ and sweetly enough, Eisen’s unfinished business is having Frieren deal with her unfinished business and getting her to voice her regrets to Himmel’s spirit in the afterlife. This is really kind of a setup for another ‘the way to solve your own problems is to help someone else’ kind of deal but I feel like this series has earned that kind of trite thing at this point and I’d honestly kinda prefer that to a magical ‘oh, heaven’s real and death has fewer consequences because of it’ twist. But yeah, they do find Flamme claims to have talked to the dead in the spot where the Demon King’s Castle was but she also was a notorious troll and may just be fucking with Frieren to get her to work her own shit out but either way Frieren was looking for a sidequest anyway so they might as well go on a NG+ adventure to the Demon King’s Castle to go talk to ghosts or whatever.

Vinland Saga: So yeah Gardar’s here to take Arnheid and their definitely alive and with her son but Wolf ain’t having that and Einar’s kinda slowly coming to the realization that just because they’re good to them doesn’t mean the guys that literally enslave people are the good guys. Thorfinn manages to talk him down and Wolf beats the shit out of Gardar so they can drag him off for questioning. The rest of the episode is kind of an awkward ‘what now?’ conversation between a couple of parties. Arnheid tells Einar about how Gardar left for war based of an unnecessary and vague idea of keeping his family safe and protecting them and ironically all the men running off to war for what amounts to the viking equivalent of fighting for oil is what opened up her village to being ransacked and her son dying (they don’t show them murdering a one year old obviously but I checked the wiki and apparently he was killed because you get more for female slaves that don’t have kids) and her getting sold as a slave. And now worst of all she sees the kind of monstrous murderer Gardar has become and is afraid of him so she’s ready to leave him to his fate and protect her own now that, get this, she’s fucking pregnant with Ketil’s kid (I’d fucking laugh if this story were different and she carried to term and the Ketil welcomes the kid and it comes out with Einar’s bright red hair that’d be fucking hilarious). But yeah, except all of that or at least part of it was a fucking lie because after everyone goes to bed Arnheid’s gonna sneak out and see him anyway. Sverkel tells her a contrasting story about how not going to war caused him and Ketil to lose everything they were avoiding fighting for in the first place, so moral of the story is fight or don’t, world’s fucked up and everyone ends up broken in the end so you gotta pick the kind of brokenness you can live with. And that seems to finalize Arnheid’s decision as she walks into the night in a way dramatic enough to ensure me she is definitely not coming back.

#ooc #Toonami #Custom Toonami Block #Inuyasha #Castlevania #Jujutsu Kaisen #Frieren #Souso No Frieren #Vinland Saga

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spicyicymeloncat · 3 years ago

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Okay general question for Ninjago fans but what are your favourite and least favourite seasons and why???

I’ll start: Master of the Mountain is my favourite, just because I liked all the episodes showcasing the ninja’s individual dynamics (Cole and Wu, Nya Jay and Lloyd, Zane and Kai) and tbh I feel like a lot of characters got a little moment of fame despite it being titularly Cole centric. It gave us backstory to Cole’s mother which was great, the scenes with her in, I found rlly emotional but maybe that’s because I’m very fixated on Ninjago rn idk. I though the jokes were really funny, idk I remember years ago screenshotting some dialogue to show my friend so that was fun. I really like Vania, her personality is great, she’s silly but also admirable like she really went “of course I wanna go on a ninja adventure in the middle of the night”. Like she really just dives headfirst into the action. I liked the other characters too, although if I had to critique it, vangelis didn’t have that much of a personality and his villain motivation could have been developed more. I enjoyed the animation, the animation recently has been rlly good! Overall standard season, but like I think jokes and family dynamics are what I enjoy most so while I get it’s not the most heart wrenching or lore heavy, and it’s kinda filler, it’s still probably my favourite.

Least favourite season might just be season 7 just because idk I think it had a lot of potential that didn’t get carried through. Krux and Acronix are basically time wizards and time wizards are supposed to be cool. I did find their dynamic funny so I’ll give them that, but they’re motivation is rlly boring and under developed. They’re just like “we should rule Ninjago because we have time powers” like bruh you don’t see Karlof decide to villain arc his way into becoming king of metalonia just because he’s got metal hands? They could’ve at least expanded on what time dictatorship would’ve looked like but instead the stakes are… no more technology? Even though that was mostly played off as a joke? And Acronix actually liked technology. And ig Ray and Maya were here which was cool but yknow I feel like the plot was a little uninspired somehow. Also like the parents only really act as leverage, not really as characters yknow and I kinda wish we saw more bonding and dynamics before Ray got hit by the time blade. The samurai X plot was interesting, it was a nice call back. People really don’t like the reuse of snakes but I don’t mind it honestly. This season was supposed to be a call back and the serpentine are rlly interesting in my opinion. The vermillion warriors were creepy and I liked the dynamic between the generals (although I’m pretty sure machia is supposed to reference a… well it it flew over your head maybe that’s a good thing, I’m not sure I should really discuss it). I think the time blade fetch quest wasn’t that interesting idk. My main crit is that the parent plotline and the time twins motives were kinda uninteresting. The temporal whip is cool.

But those are my opinions! I wanna know what other people think (this is kinda research since I’m doing Ninjago season rewrites)

#maybe my s11 rewrite is gonna be today idk!#my next rewrites will either be s7 for the reasons above and s12 because that was fully a filler season that didn’t really focus on much #even if Ninjago confidential is literally my favourite episode #this is also me trying to interact with tumblr #hello!!! how are you all doing??#ninjago #lego ninjago #ninjago s7 #ninjago s13 #ninjago analysis #I guess?#if no one responds that’s fine this is still at least an analysis post

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4ragon · 3 years ago

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I posted 12,562 times in 2022

That's 214 more posts than 2021!

135 posts created (1%)

12,427 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lavendercooky

@koi-janai

@grandpom

@gladiolus---amicitia

@elusivemellifluence

I tagged 4,841 of my posts in 2022

#ace attorney - 1,436 posts

#video - 1,025 posts

#apollo justice - 394 posts

#phoenix wright - 356 posts

#klavier gavin - 343 posts

#pokemon - 321 posts

#miles edgeworth - 298 posts

#klapollo - 259 posts

#trucy wright - 200 posts

#tales of - 199 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

My Top Posts in 2022:

I’m still replaying aa4 and just finished the second case and am starting turnabout serenade! I know its not a super popular case for fans since it gets really repetitive but i still find it immensely funny for a laundry list of reasons (i promise murder isnt one of them) do you have any headcanons on what klavier inviting trucy and apollo to his show was like?either for klavier or trucy and pollo!

I didn't realize people don't like Turnabout Serenade, I've always loved that case! It's so much fun. Ah well, to each his own.

59 notes - Posted January 30, 2022

Fixing Dual Destinies

an-android-child

I'm thinking about learning how to code and just taking matters into my own hands. As someone that has similar opinions to me, what changes would you think would be necessary? I want to keep the outline of the cases similar.... Maybe change a few if necessary. Where would you start if you could? How the plot would be changed? You don't have to answer this btw

Ha.

You don’t have to answer, they say. You fool. You have activated my trap card.

And by that I mean someone asked me about Fixing Dual Destinies in response to This Post and I haven’t stopped thinking about it for 24 hours.

I was actually thinking about this just the other day! I’d already started writing up a post, but that was more about fixing both 3D games, and involved putting SoJ earlier into the timeline and requires a WHOLE lot of restructuring, and since that’s not what you’re asking, I’m going to shelve that for now. This is about Dual Destinies. For the purposes of this thought exercise, we are going to keep a direct shot from AA:AJ to AA:DD. I can ramble about fixing SoJ another day.

So. Let’s get started.

See the full post

73 notes - Posted February 18, 2022

117 notes - Posted November 13, 2022

preferred social media of every aa character u wanna do ?

Oh god I am not the right age demographic to know what social medias there are in the world, BUT at the very least, I know in my heart of hearts that Phoenix Wright still uses Facebook. Even by 2028 and Facebook is basically nonexistent, he's still using Facebook the way that a grandmother still uses Facebook. Fortunately his phone still doesn't have internet so he doesn't have access to social media a lot.

Miles also doesn't really use social media, but he's weirdly big on LinkedIn? He also technically has a Twitter, but that's mostly Kay trying to get him into Twitter. He follows like several legal-adjacent accounts and several Steel Samurai fan twitters and he tweets in the way that a grandmother would tweet.

127 notes - Posted January 29, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

So I just reblogged another aa fanfic masterlist, and that seemed like a cool idea. SO, since so many people are migrating to here from Twitter (and especially since this is the only place where my name doesn't match my AO3 account) I thought should put a list of my AA fics together! (I'd do the other fandoms but I don't think I'd have a substantial enough list)

So here's the JJ Ace Attorney fanfic masterlist:

Long Fics -

The Miraculous Disappearance Of Phoenix Wright (107,213 words)

Phoenix Wright wakes up in a world where he never existed. What will he do when he's trapped in a world where everything he's ever loved is gone? Minor narumitsu. My first AA fic, and the fic that got me back into writing for the first time since I was a shitty teenager.

(Also please read the tags, this one has some heavy subject matter and a LOT of spoilers)

Singderella (28,103 words)

Apollo decides to try his hand at a singing contest, held by a certain ex-rockstar, for a chance to win some runner-up money. He didn't want to win the dang contest. And he sure as hell didn't want to become Klavier Gavin's mysterious disappearing muse. This one is Klapollo and this one's Silly As Hell.

Vacation All I Ever Wanted (111,197 words)

Six lawyers and a magician spend a week at the beach. One condo. Six lawyers. Seven secret plans. What could possibly go wrong? Established narumitsu, getting-together klapollo, platonic Athena and Simon, and Trucy Wright in all her glory. (Also has some AA4 and 5 spoilers)

also @/ministarfruit drew me fanart and it made me cry

Shorter Klapollo fics -

See the full post

134 notes - Posted December 4, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #HOLY SHIT THAT'S A LOT OF POSTS?????#please don't judge me

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sarahjtv · 4 years ago

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BNHA Chapter 300 Spoiler Thoughts: Crumbling Hero Society and Keeping Up with The Todoroki (Again)

OK, I got a good majority of my thoughts together for this chapter, so it’s time to start writing about it again:

Starting off, I haven’t seen anything about a special cover page for the big 300 yet and I doubt we’re getting a color page this time around. Most likely we’ll see it when it officially drops. I do hope it’s something light-hearted to lift our spirits up, but given where we’re at in the plot, it might be filled with some heavy symbolism which I’m also down for.

Edit: The full leaks are out and I saw nothing special about a cover/color page. It’s just the usual chapter structure with the only exception being the title’s at the end like Katsuki Bakugo: Rising was. I’m hoping for a sketch on Horikoshi’s Twitter at least since 300 chapters is worth celebrating, but there’s nothing super special with the chapter itself 😢

Villains are out and about after the Prison Breaks... Of course they’re causing chaos wherever they go. The citizens are actually fighting back using their own support items probably from Denarat since I believe the usual support items we’ve seen, like on heroes, have to be official via signed papers and such; they can’t just be bought off the market.

But, because of their lack of training, the citizens are causing more collateral damage than usual. They’d rather depend on themselves than Pro Heroes anymore. In a way, I get it (the authorities can’t always be relied on, unfortunately), but if you don’t have the proper training to deal with a situation, it can cause more harm than good.

I’m glad Wash is showing his worth as a hero! He’s still protecting the citizens and helping them capture the villains. It just sucks that he and a lot of other legit heroes are getting scolded for doing their job now. This follows up with that one panel of the crowd of civilians from the last chapter where you saw some people happy to see Best Jeanist and others just angry or disappointed. Hero society is crumbling at the seams and those cracks are only getting bigger.

Of course the number of Pro Heroes have decreased. We all saw this coming. What I didn’t see coming was the #9 Hero: Yoroimusha (the old samurai Hero) announcing his retirement. Not because of his age, but because he only wanted to be appreciated. It’s ok to want to be appreciated, but to use that as your drive to be a Pro Hero is less than heroic. And we know that he’s not the only Pro Hero who chose to be a hero for these reasons (Stain was created to drive this very point home).

I’ll get back to Stain in the next bullet point, but there’s one panel that shows that All Might statue at Kamino completely vandalized with a board sign around it saying “I AM NOT HERE”. That... oof... Look, All Might has his flaws as everyone else does, but the man has done so damn much for the people that he does not deserve this. It’s not his fault he had to retire, he did everything he could during his run. It would be a tough battle even if he was involved in the war. There’s a reason why All Might was so well-loved even after he retired, so to see him being slandered like this just hurts...

And Stain is back. He escaped Tartarus like everyone else. I’m curious to see where Horikoshi will take this guy. My guess is that he’ll probably go back to killing non-heroic “heroes”, but maybe he’ll do something else after being stuck in prison for several months. His vision of Hero Society is even more spread out than before at least.

And now the Torodokis. Hoo boy. Endeavor’s awake and alive. I’m personally glad because more character growth from him (I know some think otherwise and I respect that). Some people still support him, but most everyone else has turned their back on him. Endeavor reflects on Toya when he was a child pulling out his white hair to get his attention. In the end, Endeavor focused on Shoto more. I like that Horikoshi doesn’t let us forget that Endeavor was a piece of shit who abused his family. Endeavor can atone and try for redemption all he wants, but that history of abuse will never go away. It will always come back to bite him. You reap what you sow, Endeavor.

And, although Enji is alive, Endeavor has “died”. He can’t fight Toya. I’m guessing that means Endeavor is out as a Hero. This was probably going to happen regardless. Endeavor had too much against him to let him continue. Now all Enji can do is try to fix what he can, though I doubt it will be much.

Real quick, but there’s a funny page where Shoto walks in to see Enji crying (with a funny bloated face; Horikoshi why 😭), opens the door, and then immediately slams it shut! Enji yells out the classic “SHOTOOOOO!!!!!” 🤣 Idk if it’s pettiness or awkwardness on Shoto’s part, but it’s good to see some humor still being put into this depressing Hospital Arc.

Now, all the Todoroki are here together. Fuyumi feels sympathy for her father (bless her ❤️), but everyone else is straight up done. Natsuo is frustrated, Shoto’s probably conflicted given that he hardly looks his father in the eyes, and Rei is also done with Enji’s shit. She’s basically telling him that a lot of people have it worse than him (probably because a lot of people died, of course), and that Enji needs to get his shit together right now.

Also, REI TODOROKI IS HERE!!! 💙 OUR QUEEN 👑 With the flower Enji gave her while in the mental ward no less (gotta love that symbolism). Everyone, including myself, thought that seeing Dabi would through Rei off and send her back to a declining mental state. I’m glad that it pretty much had the reverse effect. It actually made her stronger than ever! She’s finally ready to confront Enji and talk about her family, specifically about Toya. My only disappointment is that we didn’t get to see Shoto’s reaction to seeing his mom out of the mental hospital for the first time in over a decade. I want to see it, Horikoshi! Give me some bittersweet feels 😭💙

And that’s it for this chapter! Heavy stuff in this episode’s “Keeping Up with The Todoroki” (love how that’s become a running gag in the fandom now). I’m really happy to see Rei’s back, but Dabi’s damage on Hero Society definitely left it’s mark. No Deku, Bakugo, Tamaki, or Kamanari this chapter so we don’t know what’s going on with them. I doubt we’re going to see them next chapter either if Horkioshi chooses to stick with the Todoroki drama again for a while, which I’m cool with. I would like to see Bakugo try talking to Deku though. I need some more good 🥦💥 in my life.

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algernoninwonderland · 4 years ago

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Hi i rlly like ur blog and ur takes!!, whats your fav episode of ml?

Hi! Thanks! It may not look like it, but Miraculous isn't a show I that I hate, because I don't tend to watch shows that I hate unless I really want to rip them to shreds. Which requires some intellectual honesty, so I need to watch everything so that I can discuss everything.

Miraculous is a show that frustrates me, because I actually like quite a few episodes! So giving you only one answer is going to be super hard. Would two-parters be considered as one episode? Who knows. I'll try to give you two answers for each season, and my favourite season 4 episode this far.

So, season 1! It was a fun one, there are very few outright bad episodes, it was a very promising one overall!

Stormy Weather

It is, to me, the best season 1 episode, and maybe the best episode of the show proper. It's basically all of what Miraculous can be, condensed in twenty-two minutes, and while it also includes some of the show's flaws, they are rather minor here.

The storyboarding is stellar, the use of shot composition is genuinely terrific and so is the visual storytelling in general, the character acting is brilliant, the rendering is the best the show has ever gotten, the lighting is so expressive, they make full use of the show being 3DCG by moving the camera around in ways that make sense rather than having it spin around stupidly and meaninglessly as would often be the case later on. The character writing is really effective, so that, by the end of the episode, you know who these characters are, and you've got a few ideas of where the show could be going next and you find yourself wanting more. It establishes the storyworld and the basic character dynamics in a very efficient way and it made a strong impression on me. This is how you make a pilot episode.

The Origins two-parter.

It's the proof that the show can attempt character arcs and continuity and be good at it, and make the Love Square actually appealing and not a somewhat annoying gimmick. It captured what falling in love as a teenager actually feels like, and that's an impressive feat I've rarely seen anywhere else. Thank Étienne Guignard for the Umbrella Scene, he's the one who boarded it (he went on to work on some of the best sequences in Steven Universe: Future). Back then, “they're made for each other” made actual sense and didn't make me want to turn off the show. It's a satisfying two-parter.

Moving on to season 2! Which also did tons of interesting things which made up for less competently-written and animated episodes.

Dark Owl

Worldbuilding revolving around civilian characters? In my episode of Miraculous? It's a rarity but we love to see it! It's a very fun one, the pacing is great and M. Damoclès' Knightowl cosplay/Batman fantasy actually makes a lot of sense and is very entertaining. The Love Square interactions in this one are great, that bit of reveal for the kwamis actually felt impactful, something actually happens to M. Damoclès once he's been deakumatised and what caused his akumatisation in the first place is being addressed and solved. It's very enjoyable! Just thinking about this one makes me smile.

Riposte

I like sabre fencing. I like perfectionist “gifted” kids crushed by parental pressure who put on a front of coolness but are still just kids underneath. So of course I liked Riposte and I loved Kagami from the very start. The fencing animation is good, they get the timing and poses right, the rendering is actually pretty great for this one too. It makes sense that Marinette would behave this way and have such a strong bias against that other fencer, even without knowing that it's Kagami. It's not without its flaws, the reveal that “it's actually a girl and she's cute, and could this be a rival for Marinette?” annoys me, and “she's Japanese, therefore that whole Samurai BS, in the year of our lord 2017” makes sense considering who her mother was but we could only make inferences back then, also it doesn't make it any less orientalist bullshit. Nevertheless, it's an episode I really quite enjoyed.

Moving on to season 3!

It's my least-favourite season so far. Doesn't mean there aren't good moments in it. I would put Oblivio on this list if not for the last two minutes which are, if you'll pardon my French, utter dogshit that makes me hate what they're doing with Chat Noir, it kind of ruins everything. Because the rest of the episode is genuine fun, like, actually genuinely fun and then this shit happens. Desperada could be a good Adrien episode but it's disguised as a Luka episode and it's just not very memorable. Most plot-heavy episodes have very mediocre execution and questionable creative choices that make me frustrated with a lot of them.

Chris Master

It doesn't get talked about a lot, and I understand why, but I also really like this one. The art direction is fun and reminiscent of A Town Called Panic, one of my favourite Belgian cartoons ever, which uses real toys and stop motion. The animation is lovely, the show remembers that Marinette is a fashion designer for once. Chat Noir is fun. The akuma is fun. It's just a fun time overall! Sometimes, you just want to watch giant toys and weird flying fish and Miraculous delivers on that.

Ikari Gozen

Hate the orientalist BS, hate that they're doing the whole Samurai spiel in, wow, 2019, but aren't actively disproving it by having other characters not buying into that. These are the only two Japanese characters in the show for crying out loud. Hate that Kagami is still wearing a school uniform for no good reason, even when doing kendo. Despite these flaws, Ikari Gozen is great, for both Marinette and Kagami. It has some of the strongest character writing in this show and I didn't expect that.

Moving on to season 4! But you probably know what my favourite episode so far is, it's the same as everyone else's.

Gang of Secrets

It's not perfect, not by any means, but it does so many things right that I can't help but like it. It builds on everything the show has been so far, and it's a very gratifying experience for the viewer. Continuity gets to play a major role for once. Alya finally gets to be a fully-realised character again, the show stops treating sadness like a fashion accessory and actually does something good and clever with the theme of its episode. And most of everything clicks together in a way that delivers in terms of emotional payback. This episode is a game changer. I hope there will be other episodes like that in season 4.

#ml #miraculous #long post #my favourite episodes #ml sugar #me? praising this show?#you would not believe your eyes

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blackjack-15 · 4 years ago

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(Pachin)Koping Mechanisms, KuroSAWa, and Putting The Ring On It — Thoughts on: Shadow at the Water’s Edge (SAW)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. For this meta and the next (CAP), I’ll have a section entitled “The Faerietale” where I break down the issue of genre within the game and how it adds to the experience.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SHA, SAW, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SPY, GTH, Rashomon.

The Intro:

Full Disclosure: draft titles of this meta include “Yurei-sing the Tension” and “Using Your Girlfriend’s Mom’s Horrific Death For Fun and Profit”. They ultimately don’t fit the tone of the game (or the meta), but I thought they were fun…so you’re being subjected to them anyway.

Freshly out of the games of growing pains, Shadow at the Water’s Edge is the first of our two Faerietale Games, where we delve fully into Theme and Allegory and other such literary devices — which happen to support some pretty fine mysteries as well. As such, in case you didn’t see it above, both SAW and CAP will have a section diving into the Faerietale-ness of it all (partially because it’s That Interesting and partially to keep the intro section from being like 2k on its own).

SAW is interesting for a number of reasons (which I’ll go into throughout the meta) but one of the things that stuck out to me on a replay was how much it leans on Rashomon for its story about the past. For those unfamiliar, Rashomon is a Japanese film by Kurosawa Akira from the 50s that deals with the rape of a woman and the killing of her husband, a samurai, as told through four different points of view.

Nowadays called “a Rashomon episode” or “false flashback”, the idea of different, opposite points of view being shot and filmed to present to the audience is almost a cliché, but Kurosawa was the first to really bring it to film and to popular consciousness internationally.

Like in Rashomon, we’re presented with different views of the situation at the ryokan (including but not limited to Kasumi’s death) from our characters’ perspectives — and, like in Rashomon, no point of view nor opinion on what happened is ever confirmed to be the Honest Truth.

Was Kasumi’s death accidental, and on whose part was it accidental? Does the world stay the same inside the ryokan, or is it just as prone to change as the rest of the world? Is the ryokan a resort or a prison? Should you respect what your loved one wants for themselves, or is it your job to want something better for them? Takae, Rentaro, Miwako, Yumi, and even Kasumi all have different opinions on these questions, and we’re never told who’s correct, nor to what extent.

Finally, like Rashomon, the game is content with leaving a few answers undiscovered. While shooting the movie, Kurosawa was approached many times by the actors, who wanted to know what “really” happened in the movie — and each time he refused to say, wanting the story to be truly Alive in a way that it wouldn’t be if he answered their questions.

Nancy’s job is to expose the malevolent force in the game for what it is, not to heal the family, nor to make decisions for them.

And speaking of their decisions, let’s talk about what motivates our characters in this game. I know, this intro is already kind of long, and I normally keep this kind of talk for the Characters section, but given how much they intersect in this game, we’re gonna go into it here. All of our suspects here in the game are driven and informed by one thing: their coping mechanisms.

C’mon, no surprise here. It’s in the title of the meta for more than just the pun.

Because our suspects are living in the “Once Upon a Time” section of the faerietale — aka the past — it’s their coping mechanisms that drive them. Takae is driven by guilt over her daughter’s death and fear of a changing world; Miwako is driven by anger towards her family and personally-assumed responsibility over Everything That Happens; Rentaro is driven by selfish pride and concern over his loved one; Yumi is driven by avoidance and individualistic willpower.

These are all common when dealing with loss, and each of these tell us exactly how our characters are going to act throughout the tale. In a very real way, SAW is a game about how we, as humans, deal with the stories that we tell ourselves (another thing that it has in common with CAP), and how that changes the way that we perceive the world.

It’s the breakdown of Rentaro’s coping mechanism — his pride in always being correct — that causes him to Do Evil while claiming that it’s The Right Thing. Everyone else’s mechanisms are what allows for him to be as influential as he is; Kasumi is already haunting Takae, and Miwako is already feeling the world crash down around her. Even though the yurei is just wires and metal and Upsettingly Damp-Looking Hair, its presence in the ryokan isn’t physical – it’s psychological.

Remember, “a ghost doesn’t need to be real to haunt you”.

The Title:

Let’s be real here, we’re getting into the segment of Nancy Drew games where the (most of) titles just kick butt and aren’t afraid to do so. Like, Shadow at the Water’s Edge? Gives you creepy vibes right off the bat even without the yurei on the front giving you The Ring flashbacks. Properly atmospheric without being too specific, and “shadow” gives us the idea that we’re dealing with a monster that’s more ghostly, rather than flesh and blood.

I don’t even have anything negative to say about this title, that’s how good it is — plus, I mean, the acronym is literally “saw”. Awesome.

Let’s move on then to the faerietale behind the title.

The Faerietale

SAW and CAP both function, genre-wise, as a faerietale — a story with few characters, big pasts, legends and magic, and a moral at the end to tie things off. In both cases, interestingly enough, it’s our villain who gives us our “moral” — the Truth that ties the plot, history, and characters together, able to be said in a single sentence. In SAW, it’s this (rather chilling) statement from Rentaro that does it:

“A ghost doesn’t need to be real to haunt you.”

But let’s start at the beginning.

Like in a lot of faerietales, we have two sisters who are as different as can be, an inheritance (a ryokan rather than a crown or a prince), absent/dead parental figures, a wizened mentor related to our main characters (Takae), and a Monstrous Force opposing them and their ‘kingdom’. In this story, Nancy is the Dashing Outsider (not unlike the Prince from The Twelve Dancing Princesses) who vows to learn the secrets, defeat the monster, and save the kingdom, restoring balance to the ‘royal’ family and allowing them to prosper.

(And no, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in this game Nancy’s the Knight in Shining Armor when CAP and Renate’s talk about them is right around the corner, but we’ll save that for next time.)

Having established that the game is a faerietale, let’s talk about why that actually matters (beyond the fact that it’s kinda cool in itself) when we’re looking at the game.

It basically matters for a handful of reasons: it allows us to figure out the suspect Fairly easily, it allows the writers to Allude to subject matters that are a little Dark for the E/E10 rating that Nancy Drew games normally get, and provides a bridge between the (overall) concrete games of the past and the more thematic, character-development-focused games that we’re coming up on. So let’s break that down.

Assigning our characters faerietale roles lets us see immediately that Rentaro is Missing an easy assignation. He doesn’t fit the prince, doesn’t fit a sibling — he doesn’t fit anywhere, in short, which is our first clue that he’s the villain.

Even ignoring the fact that the yurei is obviously mechanical, that Rentaro has free access to the entire ryokan in a way that no other character does, and that he’s responsible for upkeeping the ryokan (which is why it’s suspicious that he’s not the one Dedicated to figuring out the mystery) — which are all excellent things that point towards Rentaro, his absence in the faerietale points to a hidden role.

Since the only role worth hiding is either an 11th hour ally or a villain, and Rentaro is present from the beginning of the game, it’s pretty clear which one he is.

Situating the game as a faerietale also lets HER play with a few more themes than they normally can, given their target audience. Starting with a rather blatant implication of suicide, the game spins on to abusive relationships, overpowering guilt, and Nancy being, well, downright mean with her questions about a family member’s death.

While Nancy’s always been a bit insensitive, the mystery surrounding Kasumi’s death sends her into the realm of bullheadedly rude (to the point where you can get a game over for it). We see why this writing choice was made in SPY (which we’ll cover in that meta), but it’s one of my favorite things about this game; it takes a slight character trait of Nancy’s and gives it a character-driven purpose.

The last function of SAW (and CAP) as a faerietale is to provide a bridge between the older and the newer games. The older games tended to be self-involved entities: they began with Nancy’s room and ended with the letter to Carson/Hannah/Ned. As the game technology improved and the player base got older, however, that started to not be good enough; Nancy and her mysteries needed to become A World rather than simply a string of cases held together with a handful of familiar names and archetypes.

The first step towards this was the inclusion of the Hardy Boys back in our Expanded games, but it’s really SAW and CAP that show an Active Transition. Faerietales are often thought of, literarily speaking, as the bridge between children’s fiction and adult fiction; they involve simplistic plots and archetypes that children can easily grasp, but teach hard lessons about the world that adults will understand and resonate with.

The earlier Nancy Drew games, on the whole (there are of course a few exceptions), are largely concrete, like the children’s fiction they’re based on. The good and bad guys are simply and easily divided, Nancy and co. are always the heroes and always do right, and the bad guys always go to jail.

The past few games leading up to SAW start to shift slightly; while generally our heroes and villains are still sharply divided, nothing is quite as simple as it seems (look at TOT, where at least a few bad guys get away and actually profit from their bad actions).

It’s here in SAW, however, where we see that take a sharp shift. Those who should be good guys (Rentaro is a Love Interest, he enjoys puzzles, he’s a ‘fixer’ by trade) aren’t good at all; those who should be the bad guys (Takae and Miwako behave a lot like early Nancy Drew villains with their cageyness, dislike of Nancy, and ability to get Nancy to Second Chance) really aren’t.

In case this point is a bit obtuse, Logan is the perfect example of what I mean.

In SHA, Charleena Purcell has a receptionist (well-voiced by JVS) that at first prevents you from talking to her, but isn’t much of an obstacle. It’s a cut and dried ‘solve this one puzzle’ and then Nancy can talk to the author as much as she chooses — it’s barely an impediment, honestly.

In SAW, we’re dealing with another famous author, who also has a receptionist — Logan Mitchell. Unlike the receptionist in SHA, who’s just Doing His Job and exists long enough for a puzzle, Logan is a rather spiteful character who enjoys hanging up on people, and does it to Nancy with Great Joy.

As a character, Logan matters; he has his own viewpoints, loyalties (that are explored in SPY as well), and his own idiosyncrasies that make dealing with him — repeatedly — a bit like dealing with people in real life. The receptionist in SHA isn’t a character, no matter how much I personally like JVS’ voice work with him. Logan is. And that’s a huge difference in the approach of the games and the shift from the concrete, insert-puzzle-and-go nature of the older games and the more abstract, thematic nature of the newer games.

Whether or not that’s a good thing is up to you, the player, and your personal preferences. But it can’t be denied that there is a shift, and it’s the genius of SAW (and CAP)’s genre-shift to a faerietale that does it.

The Mystery:

Our mystery picks up where TOT left off, with Krolmeister sending Nancy to one of his favorite ryokans in Japan as a thank you for her help in the previous case.

This is how we find out that Krolmeister is apparently Spooky AF, as the ryokan is haunted.

Nancy decides to pick up a job while she’s there (the ‘how’ of her obtaining employment and an E-2 visa so promptly is ignored) as an English teacher to some of the cutest (and one of the most disturbing) children in Japan, which is how she spends her days — and how the game gets away with it taking place Solely at night.

The more time Nancy spends at the ryokan, however — and the more people connected to it that she meets — the more that she suspects that the ryokan might actually be harboring a malevolent entity bent on wreaking havoc and shutting down the place once and for all…

As a mystery, the game is solid; you spent most of your time “on-site” at the ryokan, soaking in the very well-done atmosphere, with only a few moments in-game spent at other locations (such as the pachinko parlor, Yumi’s apartment, etc.), and the amount of work that went into every detail of the ryokan is staggering (especially the garden).

Normally, I wouldn’t hang so much on the atmosphere when talking about the plot, but it’s actually relevant here, since the atmosphere is part of the plot — i.e., is it the ‘atmosphere’ of the ryokan that makes the hauntings happen, and did the ryokan kill Kasumi.

Speaking of Kasumi, she’s one of the biggest open-ended mysteries in this game. Did Shimizu Kasumi kill herself, or was her death an accident, or was it caused by a Paranormal Entity, leading to her becoming a ghost herself?

The game tells us how Kasumi died — cleaning a bath that she had never cleaned before, leading to her drowning — but the circumstances outside of her death like her will and her premonitions about her death speak less to an accident alone and more towards Something causing her death.

In my own point of view, Kasumi — remember, this is the Nancy Drew Universe, where ghosts are actually real — had a bit of Prescient Awareness to her, and knew that her death was coming, though not by what. While there’s evidence towards her knowing about her death that could, if looked at in that light, lead one to suspect Kasumi of suicide, it’s unexpectedly hard to kill yourself via drowning in a shallow body of water. Add to that her future plans, and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Kasumi knew she would die, but she didn’t plan and execute a suicide.

Of course, there’s good arguments to be made on the other side. Whichever way you look at it, I’m just happy with the presence of loose ends, as that’s not the mystery that Nancy’s there to solve — and, indeed, without the presence of an actual suicide note from that period, is a mystery that simply cannot be solved.

The Suspects:

We’ll start with (and yes, the names will all be in Japanese rather than Western order) Shimizu Miwako, the Younger Daughter in our faerietale and the current force behind the ryokan.

As the one (via a faerietale’s rules) destined to succeed, Miwako sure does get the short end of the stick when it comes to her relationships. Her causing/contributing/worsening the rift between herself and Yumi aside, her boyfriend is actively sabotaging her and her grandmother doesn’t think she should be the one running the ryokan, no matter how good a job she does.

As a culprit, however, Miwako would have been a bit confused, given how much she likes the ryokan and the good job she does with it. For a Miwako ending to make sense, she would have had to been influenced by an actual ghost, sabotaging the ryokan without wanting to and having your usual blackouts that come with Psychic Interference. It would have been interesting, but out of the faerietale genre (and out of the Nancy Drew game genre as a whole) and thus not a very good story.

Next up is the Elder Daughter, Shimizu Yumi, who left the ryokan as soon as she could and instead sells bento boxes in Kyoto. Framed as a sort of free spirit, Yumi doesn’t see any need for her to run the ryokan and instead does something that she likes and is obviously very successful at.

As a culprit, Yumi would have, to be frank, been a major disappointment. Already taking fire from her little sister and her grandmother for the Abject Sin of not taking on the family business, Yumi would have been way to easy, both character-wise and tonally for the game as a whole. The Elder Daughter in a faerietale is usually the one who fails (the Youngest Daughter almost always succeeds), and so it’s refreshing to have everyone but herself consider Yumi a failure.

Their grandmother and quasi-mentor, Nagai Takae, is the other person who helps run the ryokan — much to her displeasure, as tradition dictates that Yumi, not Miwako, help run the family business.

Because someone who resents being there will definitely be a much better worker in the hospitality market than someone who loves the ryokan.

Takae has absolutely no head for anything but her own ideas and clings onto tradition not for its sake, but because change is scary, hard, and (in the case of her daughter’s death) heartbreaking.

As a culprit, Takae would have been interesting, but absolutely impossible — unless she was working with someone else. And as interesting as a Takae/Rentaro team-up would have been, Takae simply has no motive for scaring everyone else out. She needs the ryokan to survive, to do well, if she’s going to be able to cling on to the things that she wants.

Rounding out our main faerietale cast is our Malevolent Force, Aihara Rentaro, the ryokan’s handyman and tech expert, who secretly builds robots resembling his girlfriend’s dead mother and uses them to scare people out of the ryokan.

He’s a peach.

Not only is Rentaro our only option for a faerietale ending, but he’s also just the best option for the culprit in general. Handy enough to build a “ghost”, expected in any place in the ryokan without suspicion, and with a strong (if dickish) motive). Like all Evil Wizards/Malevolent Forces in faerietales, he wants to ruin the kingdom and steal away the Daughter — though, unlike a lot of faerietales, he’s convinced himself it’s For Her Own Good.

Which yeah is super gross, but hey, he’s our Villain. Villains should be a bit gross.

Lastly, we’re going to look at two characters who are inseparable from one another for the purposes of discussion: Savannah Woodham and her assistant Logan Mitchell.

Savannah (as we meet her in SAW) is a former ghost hunter who now writes about technology (hence her presence in Kyoto) who mentioned the ryokan in a book about the paranormal. Not being fond of interruptions, she pays Logan to be her assistant so that he can deal with the calls that she gets.

She also brings in a nice little easter egg talking about CAP, where Castle Finster is implied to be the castle she mentions in SAW.

As a character in the Nancy Drew world (as it becomes a world), Savannah is an odd presence, in that she’s a sage without being an academic. Most of the ‘authorities’ that Nancy calls for information are professors, researchers, etc., but Savannah doesn’t quite fall into that designation.

Sure, she’s written a book, but ghost hunting isn’t exactly a…respected profession or topic — and yet, Savannah is clearly the smartest person in the game (and one of the smartest people that Nancy encounters as phone friends). This is great — Nancy herself is no academic, and I do get tired of the prioritizing of Academia over actual knowledge.

Savannah also gets the best lines, and her VA absolutely smashes it out of the park. I’ll talk more about her as the Nancy Games (beginning in ASH), as a lot of her dialogue is foreshadowing for our next games, but suffice it to say that, other than the Hardy Boys and the Drews, Savannah probably fights only Alexei for the most significant NPC in the ND universe.

Her assistant is no slouch in the Significance department, though.

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR SPY AHEAD, IF YOU DON’T WANT THEM SKIP UNTIL THE NEXT ALL-CAPS PARAGRAPH.

Logan (according to him) started working for Savannah to make some money during spring break and found the job too weird to quit once break was done (according to him). He loves hanging up on people, resulting in Savannah referring to him as her “lil’ Georgia bulldog”, and would like to go out on a date with Bess (according to him).

Yeah, pretty much everything about Logan should be taken with a grain of salt, as he’s the one who tells it to us, and…well, Logan is a spy. A spy who’s assigned to Nancy at least as far back as SAW, who gets close to her friend(s) and reports back to Cathedral that Nancy’s obsessed with her mother’s death and thus will probably be used by those who want to know Kate Drew’s secrets.

He ‘fires’ Savannah from being his boss prior to GTH because his work is done; he’s completed the mission he’s been assigned and is now working on other things. Logan isn’t a ghost hunter, nor a receptionist, nor a guy who wants to take Bess out on a date — until he needs to be. Like any good spy, Logan is all things to all people, and it’s his tiny bit of backstory in SPY (easily missed if you’re not paying attention — remember, in Nik games especially there’s no such thing as “optional reading” — that makes him so significant in SAW.

SPOILERS END HERE, YOU’RE ALL GOOD TO CONTINUE.

The Favorite:

There’s a lot to love about SAW, so let’s dive right in.

The first thing I’ll mention, because I just mentioned it, is Logan, who is one of my favorite parts of the Nancy Drew universe, let alone this specific game. His VA is great, his dialogue is great, his character is great — he ticks all the boxes, and I love it.

Savannah is, of course, also a favorite; any game with Savannah in it automatically moves it up a few clicks in my estimation. Savannah (and sage-type characters like her) is where Nik’s writing really shines, and her dialogue is always a joy to read and hear.

My favorite moment is actually a tiny moment, despite it being the titular incident: the shadow at the water’s edge. It’s easy to miss, but when Nancy looks in the bath and sees Kasumi’s shadow for that split second…it’s the haunting that games like HAU and CUR really wanted to have — subtle, upsetting, and fully within the bounds of the Laws of Haunting that the ND universe has set up.

My favorite puzzle is hands-down the bento boxes. Longtime readers of this meta series (which will be two years old this summer!) will know that there’s nothing that I like better than a good logic puzzle, and the bento boxes are a great logic puzzle. It’s fun, cute, and I love that you can do it as much as you want.

I do love, lastly, that this game is a faerietale. Having read and analyzed faerietales for a good portion of my life, it’s nice to see that niche interest represented within another niche interest.

The Un-Favorite:

There are a few things in SAW that I really don’t like, as much as I think this game is great.

The most important is my least favorite puzzle: the frame puzzle. This puzzle is one of the few puzzles that actually make me white-out in Rage and refuse to play further, which is a problem given that SAW is actually a great game and I enjoy playing it. It honestly stops me from replaying the game as often as I really should, given its significance to the ND universe, and for how just good it is. I usually make my sister or my best friend play it for me, but I do actually have to leave the room while they do it because it infuriates me that much.

My least favorite moment in the game is a little different, given how good the game actually is; it’s the very end where, depending on the choice that Nancy makes, Rentaro’s apology is accepted by Miwako. Sure, Nancy says it’s unlikely that they’ll date again, but this is a case where the choice to tell on him or have him tell himself should result in the same result: him having to leave. Handymen aren’t thin on the ground, and the ryokan needs help, rather than the same toxic influence that helped bring it down in the first place.

While I appreciate the choice for Nancy impacting the end — I really do — it should say more about Nancy as a character than it should about Miwako and Rentaro. That it doesn’t is a failure in storytelling at the 11th hour, which is a shame in a game this good.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Shadow at the Water’s Edge?

First things first, I would obviously change the frame puzzle a bit. I don’t think it needs removed per se, but I would definitely shift it. Give an option to skip it, perhaps, or make it easier the more time you spend on that screen, or make it easier if you go in and out of it a few times. Heck, even having it reset when you back out (or having a reset button) would be better, since getting stuck in the puzzle results in Hours of Frustration.

Other than that, I would only change the ending choice. Like I said above, the choice is great, but it should be changed to show us exactly who Nancy is (not unlike the choice in GTH). Is Nancy the kind of person who would not trust Rentaro to tell himself and thus does it, or is Nancy the kind to give him just enough rope to hang himself?

Either way, we’re given a view of Nancy that we’ll see more and more — that she is not always kind, nor infallible, nor impartial. She lets her feelings interfere with her cases, and while sometimes that’s good (again, GTH is a prime example), sometimes the only impact her choices need to have on her is to show us her character.

All in all, Shadow at the Water’s Edge is a good, mature look at the Nancy Drew universe, and continues the thread of connecting case-to-case. While it’s ultimately imperfect, I believe it’s not only one of the most fun games to play through, but also to consider in the larger realm of Nancy Drew games and in adaptation of genre altogether.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #clue crew #shadow at the water's edge #nancy drew meta #SAW #my meta #video games #long post #i didn't really go into the whole Japanese Culture influences in this meta b/c frankly it's not what the meta is about #but shoot off a message to @tinkchick555 if you wanna hear about it; she's the Expert

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sibillascribbles08 · 5 years ago

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If you could take creative control of ninjago what would you change

Christ...

WELL

Actually no idk where to start with this there’s so much anon there’S SO M U C H I guess I’ll do a run of MINIMAL changes tho (for as long as I can)

I don’t think I have to change much in the first two seasons, thankfully, since the writers actually sat down to think about what they were writing at the time but g o d did it go to hell afterwards

Season 3 - This Zane focused season is going to be ZANE FOCUSED DAMN IT. We’re focusing on his loss over his Father, having salt rubbed in the wound by having his father’s work turned into an evil army, and being faced with the fact he’s obsolete compared to it all. He keeps trying to stack up numbers to win, recalculate things, and it’s why his line at the ending ACTUALLY has impact. The thing that sets him apart from the nindroids, his ability to love, is what allows him to defeat the Overlord.

Jay, Cole and Nya love triangle is DESTROYED. Pixal, Zane and Cole is the new love triangle and later OT3

Season 4 - The explanation for the other EMs being around is far less stupid. Garmadon establishes that oh yeah all of your parents had elemental powers and even talks about a few of them because holy SHIT. Cole mentions his mom because he should have done that a g e s ago. Is this supposed to be a Kai season doesn’t feel like it. Open the season with better explanations of why the ninja split. Emphasis the fact that Kai blames himself for what happened to Zane, and continues to do so throughout the season. Add that to why he’s so desperate to save Skylor from her dad (not willing to lose someone else). We still lose Garmadon, Kai and Lloyd have a talk at the end of the season. Also ZANE IMMEDIATELY GOES TO GET PIXAL A NEW BODY WTHHH????

Season 5 - Idk this season was pretty good over all I think. A bit better lore established into the cloud kingdom, hints that they don’t actually control fate they just think they do. Explain where the FUCK NIMBUS CAME FROM?? Water can still beat up ghosts but idk feel like there should be some other factors involved, some magic. Kai and Zane figure out they can make water a LOT sooner. Also why doesn’t Kai just set the preeminent’s house armor on fire??? Should have. OH I did forget since this season is supposed to be for NYA GETTING HER WATER ELEMENT how about she actually GO WITH THE NINJA AND DO SOME SHIT SOMETIMES??? I don’t mind her training, specially Ronin helping her but like??? Wtf why not have her ENGAGE, idiots.

Season 6 - I’m the weirdo who actually likes season 6 but that doesn’t mean it’s not without its issues. I don’t mind Jay wondering about where he stands with Nya but his behavior throughout the season has to stay consistent. When he agrees with Nya he needs to let it go he needs to LET IT GO. IT LITERALLY SHOULDN’T BE BROUGHT UP AGAIN UNTIL THE LIGHTHOUSE. He also needs to linger more on his birth father (and besides he should have suspected he’s adopted since season 4 cause he knows neither of his parents had lightning powers). Zane doesn’t ignore Pixal’s warning about Nadakhan but if she’s off somewhere else idk how she gets threatened I’m sure Nadakhan could figure it out. OH and time can still reset and stuff idc but like, Jay and Nya need to talk about it and they need to GO BACK FOR ECHO. EVEN IF THEY DON’T FIND HIM THERE.

Day of the Departed - just wish it was longer tbh, but major changes: Why do the ninja not seem to care that cole is FADING OUT OF EXISTENCE and Lou should be a lot more worried about his son.

Season 7 - I mean, it’s mostly a trash fire, but I think it’d be a lot more enjoyable if they actually had good sibling dynamics going on. Acronix following his brother because he always has, but starts questioning their plans as things go. At first their relationship is much better, which is why they best Kai and Nya, but by the end that flips over. Actually have Kai and Nya having an ISSUE. Kai thinks their parents could have been traitors, Nya seemingly doesn’t care because she’s so wrapped up with her samurai x stuff being stolen. They end up fighting and don’t make up until the boiling sea. ALSO GIVE RAY AND MAYA A BETTER FUCKING EXCUSE FOR BEING GONE THEY COULD HAVE FUCKING SHANKED KRUX WHEN HIS BACK WAS TURNED GET OUT OF HERE HE HAD NO LEVERAGE.

Also Machia isn’t dead okay she’s just in the past she WILL COME BACK

Seasons 8 and 9 I’d say are pretty solid honestly? My minor changes: Garmadon isn’t Garmadon he’s a fucking fake get out of here with that shit THE REAL GARMADON WOULD NEVER. We actually learn where Mr. E came from I don’t even care if it’s just Harumi and UV talking about how they found him in a scrap heap and got him fixed just give me something. Stop treating Dareth like SHIT. Ronin and The Commissioner plan a jail break long before they’re let out in season 9. Teen Wu is a lot less... air headed. Like seriously he seems to have more logic when he’s a child it doesn’t add up. I’m not saying he has to remember everything but wth?? Oh, and Mistaké isn’t dead fuck you.

Season 10 - ............................................ delete it and start over. Literally, hate all of it, get it out of here. Four episodes for villains you built up like FUCK in the last two seasons??? All of them fucking as big as people???????? cowardly, weak, uninspired, I don’t want it I’m just going to have to redo this whole gd season. A) Oni leader is a QUEEN now and she can be up to 30 feet tall no I do not give a FUCK B) Fake ass Garmadon is revealed to be a different oni entirely he was an agent for the queen the whole time but never finished his mission C) She can still paralyze a bunch of people but man Lloyd you’re going to need more than a shiny tornado to fight her off. D) In fact you need to summon your other great grandma so the two of them can get over their divorce spat. E) Where’s the mask of vengeance bring that back into play. F) Mistaké shows back up to help. I suppose plot wise it can?? Mostly run the same but I think they’re going to have to run much farther than the city with how fast she spreads her reach. Also she’s weak for Lloyd because he’s the smol great grandson and he has to use that to his advantage to slow her down. Mistaké makes something that can unparalyze people and they get some of their allies back before the finale thank god. Faith isn’t just in a coma the whole GD time.

Season 11 - Fire half? Good. I need a much better reason why the ninja go to the never realm tho because wow did they just make everyone out of character in that last episode. The ninja have no reason to just ignore Wu and shove him out like that. Wu has no reason to NOT NOTICE LLOYD IS BREAKING INTO HIS ROOM WHEN HE WAS KICKING THE NINJAS ASSES IN THE FIRST EPISODE. Ice half?? ... h Yeah no they should have known Zane was the emperor from the start LMAO. Or at least suspected the possibility. The decades of time passing??? Deleted. Maybe give it a year. Idk why it’s just Lloyd snapping Zane out if why aren’t the other ninja involved like p l e a s e. Also kill Vex with an ice spike, thanks.

Season 12 - Over all I liked what this season had going but there... should have been more. And that ending felt so crunched together like damn... Unagami was a p cool villain at least BUT idk, despite all the focus on the plot so much of it didn’t feel tangible enough. Even if we’re going to focus more on the video game world I want to see more of what these NPCs are up to. Should have tossed in a couple of filler episodes. Also can someone just kill the Mechanic too SMH (and they should have tied Wu up in something sturdier how did he not just break out of that WHATEVER)

Suppose I’ll stop there I haven’t season season 13 yet.

Oh, the timeline itself needs some fucking work too. At least establish Wu and Garmadon’s sudden aging. At least establish how old Zane is (I’d believe he was built 40 years ago but I find it hard to believe he was active for all of it). Establish that yeah the FSM really did basically fuck off like idk 14 years ago and idk why the show acts like it was so long ago it couldn’t have been based on the other facts we know have Wu learn that his dad is a bitch ass motherfucker and he needs to ditch.

Honestly there’s more but like................. this is the simple version

#scribs speaks #ninjago #you asked I suppose #Anonymous

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beardycarrot · 4 years ago

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It is entirely possible that tomorrow, we’ll finally get a real look at the Breath of the Wild sequel. I’d like to make a few called shots... or at least state what I would like to see.

So, in my mind, that scene from the teaser was right at the beginning of the game, almost definitely in some catacombs under Hyrule Castle. Ganon launched his attack from down there, and it seems that up until the calamity began, his influence could only reach so far, right? I don’t have a solid guess as to why Link and Zelda have gone down there... maybe there have been strange rumblings from under the castle, maybe they’re doing research on ancient Sheikah tech, who knows.

I think this is going to be the very start of the game, with you immediately taking control of Link and leading the way through the underground ruins. You’ll occasionally have to fight small enemies like rats, Keese and Chuchus, and use the companion button (formerly the “whistle to horse” button) to sooth your pack animal. A couple times, you’ll have to take control of Zelda (OR, your friend will control her, because this game has co-op) and use the Sheikah Slate to solve simple puzzles. Maybe hold the companion button down to switch characters? At some point, Zelda suggests that you make camp for the night, and you get a cutscene with a bit of exposition.

After you resume, you eventually find your way to Ganondorf’s mummified remains, and... I don’t even know, man. Maybe Zelda, overcome with scholarly curiosity, accidentally disengages the magic holding him in place. Maybe the Triforce, which was basically not even mentioned in BotW, allows him to break free. Sheikah techology? Whatever the case, Ganon escapes, and the magic that was used to seal him latches onto Link’s arm for some reason. Ganon, freed, then... I guess raises Hyrule Castle from the ground? That’s what it looked like the original trailer was ending with. Who knows what he does then, hopefully time travel is involved and he sends them into a future fully controlled by him a la Samurai Jack, or into the distant past, or an alternate reality, or a dream world, or SOMETHING. So long as it’s not an ugly dreary Dark World (I likes me some green grass and blue skies) I’ll be happy... and speaking of, it would be cool to be able to travel between that setting and the one from BotW, just to do Tarrey Town-esque projects and rebuild the ruins of Hyrule. Or the ruins of whatever this new setting is.

Anyway, it’s only after this short tutorial area, maybe during the scene of Hyrule Castle being... whatever’d, that you get the title screen. The Legend of Zelda: Reach of the Abyss. Or uh. Hand of Eternity. Or maybe... Grasp at Some Straws. Yeah, the title could be anything, depending on the setting and plot. That magic hand power Link gets is definitely going to be a major gameplay mechanic though, so I feel like it’s probably going to be part of the title.

I’m fairly confident that the hand is going to be the new version of dungeon items, with Link gaining new powers for it throughout the game, while Zelda has the Sheikah Slate. Ideally, you’d have the ability to control both of them the entire time, with Zelda also getting new Sheikah Slate abilities... but that’s probably wishful thinking. I can also definitely see the revived Ganon just straight up kidnapping Zelda. Anyway, the most obvious use for the arm is having it stretch, to work like a hookshot. It’s glowy, so maybe it just naturally functions as a torch? Big fist to act as a hammer, maybe an ability to repel Ganon’s malice? An ability to stop time would be neat.

What else... the ability to enlist the help of a wide array of characters and creatures would be cool, as would expanded cooking and outfits consisting of more pieces. I also like to see underwater stuff in games, especially with free movement... and I’ve always wanted Nintendo to do another thing where Link can take on various different forms. It was cool in Majora’s Mask, it was cool in Kameo: Elements of Power, it was cool in Summoner: A Goddess Reborn, it... actually looks kinda lame in Balan Wonderworld, but that could just be me not liking the NiGHTS Into Dreams style. I’m pretty sure that glowy hand is the game’s major gameplay mechanic though, so unless they pull a Super Mario Odyssey and allow Link to turn into any creature he touches, I unfortunately can’t see this happening.

Just think... by this time tomorrow, we could know what the next Zelda game’s like. If they’re doing a Direct now, they could also tease Pokemon Diamond/Peal remakes, promising a closer look on the anniversary in like a week and a half... or even just do a full reveal, since the presentation is nearly an hour long. We could get Mario Odyssey 2, a new Donkey Kong game... hell, now that I think about it, wasn’t Smash was mentioned in the announcement of the Direct? Sephiroth was two months ago, and Steve two months before that... who’s next?

The safe bet is Crash Bandicoot, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Direct announced a new Fire Emblem, and its protagonist was in Smash. I’d be... annoyed, frustrated, underwhelmed... but not surprised. Dr. Eggman’s another likely choice, especially with a moveset reliant on robotic vehicles, but if I were to choose a character I actually wanted... I would go with Goemon, who isn’t going to happen because he’s already in as a costume, or Alis Landale, who isn’t going to happen because nobody knows who she is.

Honestly, I’m expecting another Capcom, Sega, or Namco character. Crono or Sora would be great, but two Squeenix characters in a row seems unlikely. I want Monster Hunter or Phoenix Wright, but y’know what? Namco’s kinda owed another character, in my opinion, so my official guess for the next Smash character is either Klonoa or Lloyd Irving. I don’t know that either of them would have a really unique, compelling play style, but the alternative is, what... someone from Tekken or Soul Calibur? Meh. I’m sure they could do something clever with Klonoa if they wanted. Like, how many people seriously thought Steve would have mining, crafting, and building as part of a fighting game moveset?

#zelda #breath of the wild #botw #ssbu #nintendo direct

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moved-attre · 4 years ago

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Rewriting Cyberpunk 2077 into a bullet point list! LET’S GO!

(Disclaimer: I’m trying to be realistic. So no, “every single detail of the game changes based upon every single choice V makes” but just things I expected in an RPG from an AAA company in 2020. I take a lot of inspiration from the old trailers, and rumors of pre-2018 development.)

And this is really long, too. Sorry. 😜

Okay, so first off: Act 1 generally goes off the same as it does in canon. I’m open to other ideas, but I don’t think it’s a bad starting point. I do think V and Jackie should have had more time together, doing smaller jobs until Dex calls. Like, there should’ve been side jobs that were only available in Act 1. You have to get a minimum of 5 street cred before you get the conversation with Jackie about Dex.

The heist still goes to shit; Yorinobu kills his father, Takemura rebels against him and Arasaka factions split. V inserts the chip into their head, Jackie still dies and Dex shoots V in the head. Takemura rescues V, kills Dex, V wakes up in Vik’s and is told they have 4 months to live. (2 weeks is not enough!)

On to Act 2! The origins actually affect the game, so there’s three versions of it you can play. (Some things happen regardless of the origin, though.) For example: Corpo V has contacts in the Corpo world and pursues leads about the Relic there through their old friends. Street Kid V has contacts in the gangs, like the Valentinos or Maelstrom, who have dirty dealings with corporations and can get V in on Arasaka knowledge, Nomad V has leads out in the badlands about the corporations and gets in that way, hijacking transports to get some info. All origins can work with the corporations (like Hanako’s branch of Arasaka, Militech, Biotechnia, etc.) or against them. Like, the point is to snoop around the corporations and dig up some dirt on the Relic and Yorinobu’s Arasaka branch specifically but each origin goes about it differently?

Maelstrom vs Meredith Stout choice actually matters. It’s one point in a subplot I mentioned above, where V continually makes choices on whether they’re gonna side with the corporations or the gangs/people of NC against Arasaka in order to be rid of the Relic. Also affects V’s relationship with Johnny. You can also have a real, long term relationship with Meredith if you pick her side and get Militech support, or count on Maelstrom to help you in the main plot against Arasaka. Both sides will still attack V if they poke their nose in, meaning random encounters can still happen.

^ The subplot is like, making a deal with the devils (The corpos) or... other devils (The gangs). One person objectively could say one is better than the other, but they’re both awful. Night City is kind of rotten to the core, and V’s problems can’t be fixed by a pursuit of justice. V can still be a good person in either case, and it’s still kept kind of punk by going against the head honchos. I think this more suits the “Wake the fuck up, Samurai. We have a city to burn.” quote because V is churning up a path to the top, even if their methods are purely selfish. V themselves can be uninterested in righting wrongs, but they kind of turn NC on its head by challenging Arasaka so changes come anyway.

Point, is you fuck everything up either way. THEN, V can choose whether to trust the corporations and work with Hanako to “change the system from within” without disrupting people’s day-to-day lives (short term good choice I suppose?) or to let the gangs rise up and cause total anarchy. (long term good? since the downtrodden are rising up and maybe there shouldn’t be absolute power in the hands of a few.)

T-Bug doesn’t die. V thinks she’s dead, but sometime in Act 2 gets an anonymous call and meets up with T-Bug. She went underground after the botched heist, and isn’t eager to work with V again. Maybe you do a few missions with her, and she comes around? Or you fuck up and never hear from her again. I imagine she’d love to poke around at the Relic, if V helps her.

Giving Jackie’s body to Vik has real consequences. If you give his body to his mother, you attend the ofrenda and get his bike, his mom allows you to use his den as a place to stay... It’s basically the ‘good’ choice, if you care about the characters. If you give his body to Vik, you unlock a side mission where Arasaka steals his body to find the relic. You have to go and find it but it was destroyed(?) at some point by Arasaka. You can get his pistols (Which are, aside from Johnny’s pistol, the best weapons in the game. I don’t get why they aren’t in canon...) in this route and whole lotta angst, so his mom basically hates you because she blames you for not being able to bury her son and the bar is off limits. No getting the bike, either.

More content involving Alt Cunningham. V still witnesses the scene with her and Johnny, her kidnapping and death. But, Ghost AI Alt allows V to look into Alt’s memories for information on Mikoshi. V accidentally accesses some more personal memories. We can see Alt as more of a fleshed out actual person, not just a tragic backstory for Johnny. Some of the memories do involve Johnny, and the tone is very different from her perspective. We see that Alt has genuine affection for him, but Johnny is possessive and abusive... It’s far from the relationship Johnny recalls. Of course, Johnny can see all this too since he lives in V’s head. He and V have a heart to heart afterwards, with Johnny realising how badly he treated Alt and yeah. I wasn’t satisfied with how Alt was just used as a sob story for Johnny, but I was sent an ask by an anonymous person about how the memory was from his perspective and thus biased. It really got me thinking! If I was more creative, I’d come up with a way for Alt to live... But Johnny still needs to bomb Arasaka and Alt’s death was the reason why he did that.

You have to return one of your apartments/safe houses every few days to wash and sleep. If not, V will get a penalty that means they are less accurate when aiming and slower when breaking in a vehicle. Also some NPC’s will refuse to talk to you if you don’t bathe, because... stinky.

And you have to eat! Otherwise you get hungry, and get penalties for that too. Can’t concentrate on an empty stomach. I’d say eating once or twice a day would be enough.

Instead of fast travel points (that are supposed to be taxi services, I think...? But we never see a taxi! And why can’t we just call Del? Ugh.), V takes the metro. There are side missions that can sometimes only start once you get on or off of a train. (You meet NPC’s in the train, or waiting for one.)

Takemura and Johnny are romance options, and are available for all genders. They’re the most difficult to romance, with some (kind of obvious) dialogue choices ending the possibility. Like, for example: Takemura’s romance ends badly if you choose to go against the corporations, and Johnny’s ends badly if you go with the corporations. It’s the same with Meredith, essentially, in that going against her won’t allow you to romance her. I know a rival-mance system is possible, but I think that might be too complicated.

Takemura and V’s relationship is much, much deeper. They have more time together, and grow closer. Takemura trains V in combat, and takes over from Coach Fred in the street fights side missions. You go with Takemura to fights, he’s your coach, is very proud when you win. (He’s basically training V in the event that they have to take on Adam Smasher and Oda. Like, why did we have no training montages with Takemura?!) V is able to choose romance or stay friends with him. There’s plenty more missions with Takemura too, mainly espionage stuff against Yorinobu. Finding out his weaknesses, replacing his staff with people that are loyal to Hanako, digging for dirt on him. Lots of stake outs, hehe. 😉 Romance!™️ Also makes it that much more tragic if V doesn’t choose to trust the corporations, since Takemura will end things and leave NC.

There are garages to upgrade your cars but Panam can upgrade it further if you do her missions + befriend her, and you can find super secret parts for your cars that Panam needs all around NC by stealing them from gangs or Corpos! Like, make your car go 200 mph fast or a setting to make it hover. 😎

FOUND FAMILY TROPE... Involving the LI’s + more characters. I wanted Misty, Vik, Judy, Panam, River and Kerry to all know each other and be friends. Also, somewhere for them to hang out. Judy coming down and hanging out with Misty and Vik would’ve been so cool.

Missions involving Vik. I think he deserved his own personal missions. Also, he’s gotta be romanceable! I’ll add more to this later.

I’m still figuring out how Johnny’s romance would go. It’s a tricky one. Lots of tension, jealously if V flirts with anybody... Heart to hearts... Holding hands... Passive aggressive confessions of love...

River is introduced in the main story. Maybe you team up to hunt down somebody who knows stuff about the Relic, like Anders Hellman, or something else to do with it. River’s like “What the fuck is going on?” but V doesn’t really tell him. Then, of course, you meet him later on and recognise him in the BD given to you by Jefferson.

Meeting Kerry earlier in the story, say mid Act 2? Ideally there would have been 5 Acts, and maybe I’ll edit this to include more once I figure out how the story could have gone. AND he’s part of the main story.

Less generic, “get in, get item and get out” side missions from Fixers and more side missions like the Peralez’s and that guy who got crucified. More freaky Cyberpunk subjects like what constitutes a soul, what is “intelligence” (What makes a machine different than a human? Without shitty false racism analogies), human rights abuses (and in that: classism, racism, ableism, transphobia), pollution, more on “Cyberpsychos” and how harmful that term is, etc. Nauced and thought-provoking. Reminding us that this is a dystopia and the issues are different but not all that wildly so from today. I would’ve developed Brendan’s mission more, because it seemed like we were going to see an earnest discussion on Artificial Intelligence but instead it was just confusing and “Haha, tricked you!” 🥱 Like, what if he really was a person capable of free thought and emotion? And that company still owns him and can overwrite him? Isn’t that fucked up?! It didn’t need a happy ending, just something to unnerve me.

Adding to that, Delamain had plenty of opportunities to discuss AI and the rights of individual contructs. His “children” could be freed, but nothing really happens as a result? I wanted consequences! The emails about human staff being made redundant because of Delamain were so interesting, too. I wanted to see something about the consequences of that in a city with no basic universal income. What happened to them? What can be done to help people who are made redundant by machines? So many possibilities for truly emotional and scary side missions!

I’m gonna watch black mirror for more inspiration, but stuff like the IRL blocking feature? Freaky as hell and totally plausible. Would’ve loved if one of the side missions involved V getting involved in some dispute involving something like that. “I can’t see his face!” or the copyright stuff about people’s appearances! Imagine if there was a Johnny lookalike? Engram Johnny would either find it hilarious or get really pissed off.

I’m hoping the DLC will deliver on more Takemura, so I’ll hold my breath for critiquing the Arasaka ending.

More to come! I’ll probably edit this later, if there’s any mistakes and/or I realise I hate an idea hehe.

#CP2077 rewrite challenge #cp77 spoilers #cp77 critical #If CDPR just released the pre-2018 script I could write about that instead so here we are #I've forgotten so much so I'm doing this bit by bit as I replay!

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365days365movies · 4 years ago

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March 13, 2021: Kwaidan (Review)

How do you review an anthology?

Either I go section by section, or I review it all in one shot. Since it’s all one director and writer, the latter seems appealing, so I probably will go with that...but maybe not for all five sections. Hmm...an idea occurs. I think I’ve got it. But, before I go into that, what did I think of Kwaidan on first recall?

Also, real talk, the above GIF is now one of my favorites, and I WILL be using it in the future.

Kwaidan is an understates masterpiece, and one of the many reasons I’m glad I’m doing this misguided film project of mine. It’s genuinely great, and also a wonderful ghost story in its own right. I don’t get scared easily, and I can’t say that this film particularly frightened me, but I can say that it was an unnerving movie in many instances. As for which segment was my favorite...oof, genuinely a tough question to answer. I love how In A Cup of Tea ends, and The Woman of the Snow is a gorgeous fever dream of a sequence. The Black Hair is EASILY my least favorite, but it’s still a good starting point.

But as for my favorite...

And in truth, I’m not completely sure I can articulate why. It’s close between this and The Woman of the Snow. Tea was a little too short for my tastes (even though I think it had the best ending), and Hair was...well, just fine, like I intonated above. Snow has some amazing visuals, and a great story, which may have been ruined for my by Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, but still was wonderful. But Hoichi...Hoichi was magnificent.

I love Hoichi himself, the opening kabuki theater is amazing in sound and appearance, and the reappearances of the visuals is stunning throughout. All I gotta say is, I loved every single part of this one. And yeah, it’s arguably the only one with a mostly happy ending, all things considered. But I may get more into that in the Review.

Yeah, speaking of that, how are we doing this? Well, some segments will be broken up by...segment, while others won’t be. Depends, you’ll see. So, let’s get to it! Below are listed the four segments, and their recaps. Click on them to read them in full!

The Black Hair (黒髪, Kurokami)

The Woman of the Snow (雪女, Yukionna)

Hoichi the Earless (耳無し芳一の話, Miminashi Hōichi no Hanashi)

In A Cup of Tea (茶碗の中, Chawan no Naka)

Without further ado, then...

Review

youtube

Cast and Acting: 9/10

Breaking this one up! Not a single shared cast member amongst any of the shorts, so this one is broken up by necessity.

Hair (8/10): Sorry to say, but this is arguably the weakest cast in the group. Granted, it’s not that many people, but it’s still not the strongest of these stories. The lead here is Rentarō Mikuni, and he’s fine. My only problem is that it feels like he’s acting. Which, to be fair, is very kabuki theatre. You know, over-exaggerated movements and emotions, all that jazz. But, without the physical trappings of kabuki, it just feels like, well...overacting. Again, not the worst, but not the best. Michiyo Aratama and Misako Watanabe are good as well, but they’re parts aren’t hefty enough for me to properly judge. Well, actually, Aratama is quite good, real talk.

Snow (10/10): Amazing. Keiko Kishi is absolutely enrapturing as the Yuki-onna, and Tatsuya Nakadai ain’t bad as Minokichi either, lemme say. Again, limited cast for this one, but they definitely manage to excel. Seriously, they’re great.

Hoichi (10/10): This one has some of the best, though, both in terms of the kabuki scene, and in the regular scenes. The range of performances here is interesting, considering that you have the overdramatic stylings of kabuki on when end, the gentle nature of Katsuo Nakamura’s Hoichi on the other end, and the actually entertaining comedy relief monks in the middle. Yeah, I never mentioned it, but there are comedy relief monks in this segment, and they’re funny! This one is, all-around, a really strong cast, and the best in the film for sure.

Tea (8/10): This one is strong too, don’t get me wrong. Nakamura Kan'emon is a strong lead, but he’s not...perfect. Nor is Nokobu Nakaya as the ghost of Shibuku Heinai. Even the three samurai are a bit stiff. But in truth, it doesn’t interfere with the short, even a little bit. The 8 out of 10 is how I feel about it, but I genuinely don’t have a problem with it.

Average score’s a 9/10, which feels totally accurate to me. Moving on!

Plot and Writing: 10/10

I was going to break this one up, since they all have different plots. But, first of all, they all have the same writers. And second of all, they’re all...basically perfect? Like, real talk, I love all of these fuckin’ stories, dear Lord. And it’s Japanese folklore, which is basically always great. But OK, let’s break it down. These stories were originally collected for publishing by Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-Irish man who lived in the United States for a decade, wrote about New Orleans, then moved to Japan and married a Japanese woman, eventually becoming a citizen and spending the rest of his life there as Koizumi Yakumo. Yeah. Dude has a STORY. He collected these stories in multiple books, and these stories were adapted by Yoko Mizuki, a female screenwriter, and one of the most accomplished female Japanese screenwriters ever, with 34 screen credits under her name. And this movie was relatively late in her career, too. Neat, all around. And yeah, these stories are WELL adapted, with the last one as a standout for me. In any case, this one is basically perfect.

Directing and Cinematography: 10/10

Yeah, this one’s perfect, too. I mean, come on, the fuckin’ SHOTS in this movie are fantastic. Director was Masaki Kobayashi, and the cinematographer was Shigeru Wakatsuki, and...yeah, it’s great. I don’t even have to say anything here, just watch the trailer for the movie. If there’s any specific standouts, though, they’d be The Woman in the Snow for Cinematography, and Hoichi the Earless for Direction. Amazing, and those two are the best examples.

Production and Art Design: 9/10

Um...yeah. Of course this one’s high, not even a question. LOOK AT THIS GODDAMN MOVIE. No more needed here, it’s a 10/10, it’s gorgeous all around. Well...OK, maybe it isn’t perfect. And that all basically falls at the feet of The Black Hair. I meant it when I said that this was the weakest short. Because...yeah, it is. From the initial old-age make-up, to the weirdly plain kimonos worn by an extremely wealthy woman who should be able to afford more ornately patterned kimonos, this one was...weaker, atmospherically. Still great, mind you...but weaker. So, OK, maybe not perfect, but still good.

Music and Editing: 8/10

And the music by Toru Takemitsu is definitely memorable as well...but is the editing perfect? Eh. Not really. Sorry, Hisashi Sagara, I know you’re working with 1965 technology here, but it’s not...perfect. There was some work needed throughout each short, to be honest, but it was still all pretty solid. Music really holds up this category, though.

OK, Japanese spirits, you’ve got a 92%! Don’t haunt me.

I really want to go to Japan, by the way. Like, I’ve always been interested, and I never would’ve turned down a trip there, but I REALLY want to go to Japan one day. I’d love to visit a temple or a shrine (respectfully, of course), I’d love to experience the people and the atmosphere...I just think it’d be very cool, to be honest with you. And movies like this have only heightened that desire.

Man, I loved this one! What comes next in the pattern? Right, surrealist films written by well-known and influential directors! Cool, I’m pumped! Let’s jump right into it! What could go wrong?

March 14, 2021: The Holy Mountain (1973)

#Kwaidan #masaki kobayashi #怪談 #anthology film #film review #movie review #fantasy march #user365 #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year #usermichi #mygifs #my gifs

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gross-gal · 5 years ago

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yo!! i dont know jackshit about Darkstalkers!! What's it about?? What do you like about it?? What do you NOT like about it?? Tell me alll!!!! (@gamer-gremlin-gf-ships)

AAAAAA THANK YOU @gamer-gremlin-gf-ships

SO. I’LL PUT THIS UNDER READ MORE BECAUSE THERE’S A LOT.

Darkstalkers is a fighting game developed by Capcom. The main gimmick is that, most of, the fighters are based off of horror archetypes. So ya got vampires, zombies, frankensteins, fishmen, ghosts, all that shit.

There isn’t really much story wise I can elaborate on since, fighting games don’t usually have that much of a story to begin with. BUT, in Darkstalkers 1 and 2, main story is that this big bad dude named Pyron kinda wants to determine if the Earth is worthy to be ruled under him or if he’ll destroy it. Pyron is a shape shifting alien dude from the planet, Hellstorm and he’s really looking for a good brawl so he goes and fights the most powerful Darkstalker, which is whoever you choose to play as.

Now then, to avoid confusion, Darkstalkers 1 and 2 (or Vampire Hunter/Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge) are basically the same game. 2 is more of an updated version of 1, has two new characters, better gameplay, and it also changes some part of the story because Demitri (the vampire dude) actually was the one who originally started the whole tournment thing in determining who was the most powerful and I think? Pyron kinda ends up in the way. In 2, it basically is changed to Pyron is the one that starts the tournament, and that’s the canonical version.

So 2 isn’t really that much of a sequel, while Darkstalkers 3 (or Vampire Savior) is an actual sequel to the series. This introduces the antagonist, Jedah Dohma, whose plot is that he wants to collect all the powerful darkstalker souls and put them into this big demon baby, which then be used as a vessel for him. Jedah’s whole thing is that he’s basically disappointed in what has become of the demon world (makai world) and decides that he’s going to annihilate both the demons and humans. He sees himself as a savior, and while there really isn’t a protag, Jedah kind of is considered to be one in 3.

NOW. WHAT IS A DARKSTALKER? It’s literally just...fucking monster? I guess? There really isn’t a specific definition but just know, everyone, besides B.B. Hood because she’s the only true human in the series, is a Darkstalker.

Just gonna get my problems out of the way. Obviously, the series has some sexual stuff, which is fine but it can get uncomfortable. Demitri is a pretty big example since he literally has an ability that just involves transforming the opponent into a younger, more desirable person so that he can drain their blood? I won’t go to into it since it’s gross but yeah. Then of course there’s Lilith and yeah...REALLY WISH THEY DIDN’T MAKE HER LOOK LIKE THAT BECAUSE SHE’S A PRETTY COOL CHARACTER.

Darkstalkers also doesn’t offer much as far as a story, this is sort of good because it offers a lot of freedom as far as writing, but to be honest? A lot of stuff which tries to elaborate on the Darkstalkers lore or whatever, KIND OF SUCKS. I myself, am not into the Udon comics or the mangas, the OVA also doesn’t offer much of a great story. Which is a shame because Darkstalkers has a lot of potential but so many attempts, just kinda fail because they miss the point in the series. Udon and the Vampire Savior manga in particular because they take the series way too seriously or just characterize really strangely? The OVA probably offers the best in terms of story but it’s not even much because the only actual good and satisfying one, is Donovan’s story. His is the only one that actually has a conclusion. Otherwise, the OVA suffers from poor pacing, lots of exposition, or just OOC moments. LIKE??? REALLY DOESN’T MAKE SENSE AS TO WHY FELICIA GETS ALONG WITH ZABEL OR MORRIGAN ENDING UP WITH DEMITRI?

And then I guess a more minor complaint. Darkstalkers has a very specific style, I really think the series look best in the first two games and in the OVA. I personally am not a big fan of the character art in 3 jdskal

NOW FOR THE POSITIVES.

I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH HOW MUCH I ADORE THE ART AND ANIMATION IN THE SERIES????

The main artists for the series are Bengus (Gouda Cheese) and Daigo Ikeno. Bengus really fucking nailed how the series should look. It’s got that perfect balance of the gothic, sensual aesthetic with exaggeration and fuckin weirdness of the series. Darkstalkers is a series that completely embraces it’s wacky side and just how campy it’s influences are. I mostly love Bengus’ earlier works from 1 and 2. Daigo’s stuff is much more casual and less elaborate compared to Bengus’ works but I kinda love that, he’s really great at showing off the characters in more casual situations and showing off their goofier sides. I’ll share some of my favorite pieces at the end.

OH GOD. AND HOW CAN I NOT BRING UP THE ANIMATION???

While I wouldn’t say it’s as fluent as Street Fighter Alpha 3′s sprites, because Darkstalkers is able to be more creative with it’s moves, the results are some super wacky and fun animation. Darkstalkers animators heavily referenced old Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera cartoons when it came to animating. I really don’t know a whole lot of fighting games, especially from Capcom, that look the way Darkstalkers looks. And a lot of that comes from the fact that Darkstalkers isn’t very limited. Characters can launch missles, fireballs, fucking blood?. Characters can extend or manipulate their body. Or just do weird shit like transform characters into basketballs, make characters perform in a rhythm game?, A CHARACTER STRAIGHT UP USES HIS ASS CHEEKS TO GRAB YOU AND SUMMON LIGHTNING?? Everything is super fucking wild and that’s what makes the series.

A lot of people say Darkstalkers needs to be gorey and sexual but that’s really not what the series is about. Yes, Darkstalkers is def sensual but it also really doesn’t take itself seriously. That’s what so many people miss. And honestly? Even though it was terrible, the American cartoon ends up being the most accurate to the source material because it gives no fucks and so much weird shit just happens.

Another thing I love about Darkstalkers is how much it subverts it’s characters and just how creative they got. You have an Australian zombie rockstar, a catlady that’s also an idol and a nun??, a demon possessed samurai ghost armor guy. The character design is genuinely fucking brillant and not at all what you’d expect to get when given the idea for monster characters. I would talk about the characters but you see how long this post is starting to get.

And I haven’t talked that much about gameplay but Darkstalkers feels fucking great. If you’re curious about which game to get into, absolutely go with 3/Vampire Savior. It feels great, combo inputs are relatively simple, you can straight up beat the game just by button mashing, and no character really feels too similar. It’s also a very fast game too, if you ever watch tournaments, they go by so fast and when you play it, you’re very much engaged. It’s a game that requires a lot of attention and I enjoy that. I also have to mention this but, pretty much every character has their own unfair, bullshit tactic that, if you plan on getting good, will require you to figure out how to avoid depending on what character you use. There’s a sorta popular joke with the game that, it’s balanced if all the characters are broken. I’ll admit, probably not the best game for someone like me that sucks as far as remembering stuff and being able to plan ahead, but I still have lots of fun with the game!

I really didn’t expect to become as engaged in the series as I did but there is a lot to appreciate about Darkstalkers. It’s unfortunate to because, sadly, Darkstalkers likely will never get another game.

While the series is technically popular, it’s still way too niche compared to most fighting games. It just never had the same impact as other fighting games, and ultimately, no matter how good those games feel to play, there’s always shit like Marvel vs Capcom that just is more well known and features more stuff that just is what people prefer going to. I think Capcom will pretty much stick with having Darkstalkers characters appear in crossover games vs actually giving the franchise another game

They tries reviving it with Resurrection, which was a re-release of the games on Xbox and Playstation, but it hardly even sold that many copies. Which is where the phrase “Darkstalkers are not Dead” originated from, a phrase that has become a joke now in the fighting game community. Even if they were to revive the series, it’d be difficult recapturing that same vibe since most of the original crew are working on completely separate projects. There’s also a part of me that does fear the idea of another game because of how it’ll be handled. I’ve heard people mention possibly having the Skullgirls team develop or maybe Arc Systems, I just don’t want a lot of the charm to be lost in a sequel.

Since a fighting game isn’t really possible, I do hope for maybe a show or comic series that explores the characters and story more.

My brain is kinda blanking rn but yeah. I just fucking love this series a lot. I hope maybe someday I can contribute something great to this franchise and I hope you listened to me ramble about it.

#i am so fucking sorry #but thank you djsakljdskalda #Anonymous

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foureoreos · 5 years ago

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oh please do delve deeper into why you think nya is not suited for romance (or at least the way she is written). I do think that jaya sometimes have cute scenes BUT Jay's desperateness ruined them for me. plus I feel like nya is not stupid. if she genuinely liked Jay she wouldn't have let a machine decide she is not compatible with him anymore which honestly makes me believe she just stopped liking him after s2.

Aight, let’s start this, shall we?

I’m really trying here not to turn this into a “why I don’t like ja/ya” answer, but it’s going to be a wee bit difficult to do if I don’t pull examples from that relationship. I’m also going to try really hard not to throw bias in here since I love bruiseshipping, but I will need it at some points to compare and contrast my different points and thoughts to make things clearer/better.

First, I want to start by saying that I’ve run into many people who tell me and mutuals things like “Wow, seriously? You’re still thinking about that? That was in the past, you gotta move on!” or “Look at Skybound again”. This is when I talk about both why ja/ya has been dragged on for so long and why Nya just doesn’t fit right into the whole romance subplot.

Well, buddy, call it what you want, but you can’t just base something off one point in time. Events like these carry over. That’s also what helps build relationships and gives them a stronger foundation.

i.e. How Jay and Cole, after making up during the Tournament of Elements, still continue to progress and develop their relationship. It actually got to the point where the character’s chemistry feels natural and very casual, almost to the point where the characters could write themselves.

For instance, we all remember that love triangle, right? I know people use the excuse “Nya is a teenager, she’s just acting like one” whenever she’s a b**ch or acts out very impulsively around Jay, but frankly, I think otherwise. Her character is really inconsistent throughout the series. There’s some moments when she’s likable and you can get behind her, but other times when she’s just straight up obnoxious.

She’s only nice to Jay whenever the plot calls for her relationship with him. Aka, ja/ya. When the plot doesn’t, she can be really mean and it feels like a complete one-sided relationship, because she acts like she just doesn’t care. And Jay loves and supports her like 24/7. (Also, ja/ya is really only developed one Jay’s end of the relationship? Very rarely or EVER Nya’s. What’s with that?)

Here’s where I point out how she contradicts herself in S3 and S6. Season 3, Rebooted, Nya lets a “match-maker machine” decide for her who her perfect match is. And while she was already dating Jay at that time, she still went ahead anyways to give Cole a shot, just because a machine told her he was the one. Okay. Can I add that she never apologized to Jay for what she did? Like, never explicitly told him that she started the whole mess? That she was the one who cheated on him?

Also, remember in Season 4 when she was telling Wu, “Jay’s funny and all but Cole, Cole’s not Jay…” (thanks to @afrenchfrypassingby for pointing this out to me)? So, what is Jay then? Or do you just have a very poor way with words?

Anyways, so, Season 6. I can’t remember the last time I ever watched this season. Must have been like years ago, because I always skip it in my Ninjago rewatches. Still, I remember a lot of things from that season. Especially when Nya told Jay that “Hey, when I first met you, I knew we were meant to be together”.

Well, hmm. Ah? Okay?

Can we rewind Season 6 a bit more?

I actually liked her at the beginning of Season 6. Only the beginning.

She wanted to be more than just “the girl ninja”, “Kai’s sister”, and “Jay’s girlfriend”. She wanted to find her own identity. And girl, I can 100% get behind that. Plus, she was basically forced to give up her Samurai X identity to become a water ninja. But then I don’t know what the hell happened that made her decide at the end, “I’m Jay’s girlfriend again”. And before anyone says anything about the lighthouse scene, etc. what she did in the end completely defeats everything she clearly wanted at the beginning of the season.

Follow up that Jay was a complete creep in that season. I know it gave him more development to his character and helped him to be more confident and have that “If I want it, I’ll take it” attitude, but the girl said “No” at the beginning and he was?? just?? so desperate to win her back and get the two of them back together? Ugh, that’s not how you write relationships, folks. When someone says “no”, that doesn’t mean “try again”.

Haha, my mind just did a flashback to that one line from Prime Empire when she told Jay she and him had chemistry. That was a lie. If anything, Nya and Ronin actually have more chemistry. And Jay and Cole have more chemistry.

I truly believe that from the beginning of this show, Nya was meant to be written as the “strong, independent, female character that could take care of herself”. But the writer’s try way too hard when they write her character.

If I’m being honest, Pixal actually shows that better. Not to mention Pixal can also be very feminine and still be a cool girl.

Strong female characters don’t have to be buff, they don’t have to want to be irritated by relationships or feeling like it pulls them down (not @ how Jay has said to Nya “I love you” over a thousand times and never once has Nya said it back because she doesn’t like showing affection because it distorts her image. When Zane and Pixal have said it to each other and show a very mutual, loving relationship), they don’t have to dislike “girly” things, and whatnot.

Strong female characters can be compassionate and kind. They can be badass and still care for other people. They can be in a relationship and still be powerful. They can show weakness and affection and emotion.

From the very beginning the writers pulled out the compulsive heterosexuality card and decided “Okay, we have one boy, one girl, let’s just put them together because yeah”. And then they started doing that with everyone else. Kai and Skylor, Pixal and Zane (though, not going to lie, is the only well developed canonical Ninjago romance). What a shame, honestly, because Lloyd and Harumi actually could have been really well developed if it weren’t for the whole “I want to kill you and bring back your dead father” abusive relationship. And, I don’t want to shame you for shipping Lloyd and Akita because I don’t care if you do, but they really had to make her go and kiss Lloyd at the end of the season huh? I personally feel like it was more a “thank you” kiss after some thought, but hah, you just can’t leave a girl alone for one second, can you, writers? And oh my gosh that subtle look between Lloyd and Racer 7 at the end of Season 12?? I got so scared. WOW.

I went OFF. And I don’t want to go any further because it will be so bitter and salty and I will rip her and everything about Ninjago canonical romances APART. But yeah!! This is all I will leave for you :)

Thanks for that ask!

#if you wanna add anything i missed #feel free #lego ninjago #ninjago #ninjago nya #asks #please!! who asked this???#dm me or smth #ninjago romance #why writers #wtf

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