#the plot is a poorly written mess and many of the characters flat and barely developed at all

[sowlmates]

I gotta stop falling for booktok recs

[lurkingshan]

Every time I see a Wedding Impossible GIFs on my dash I keep thinking that when it's over I'd love to read your take on what went wrong with this show. In a form of a very spiteful rant preferably.

(the show probably doesn't deserve too much of your time but I am just very VERY curious and had to share)

WELL! I was considering just letting this show go quietly into the night, but I will take this excuse to do a good rant instead.

*cracks knuckles*

You asked what went wrong with this show, but truly, nothing went right with it. From top to bottom, it's an utter waste of a good premise and a total destruction of the rare opportunity to get some positive queer rep into a het kdrama for a broader audience than will ever be reached by a ql. Let me list the most glaring problems:

They made Do Han a supporting character in his own narrative. Do Han, his sexuality, his desire and need to hide who he is to protect himself, and his desperate plan to avoid a life he doesn't want is the core of the story. Despite that, the story treats him like a minor supporting character with limited screen time and virtually no interiority or character development that made any sense.

The relationships were poorly written and the bonds were not believable. Ah Jeong was meant to be Do Han's ride or die bestie, but nothing in their scenes together or her behavior towards him suggested this was actually true. They seemed more like acquaintances who were friendly enough but had no real loyalty to each other, or even like she was a random actress he hired to play his wife. And Ji Han and Do Han had no brotherly bond or affection to speak of; their relationship consisted entirely of Ji Han throwing tantrums and demanding things for no reason other than he wants them, and Do Han trying to avoid being forced into them.

The leads were terrible people and the show did not realize that. Do Han's brother and best friend entered into a romance while she was engaged to Do Han. Ji Han thought it was a real relationship and did not seem to feel any guilt about pursuing his brother's lover. Ah Jeong was under a contract she agreed to as both his best friend and as a job to protect him and did not seem to care that she was breaking her commitment and threatening his safety. They gallivanted around flaunting their relationship in public with no regard for Do Han or his reputation whatsoever. And the show tried to convince me that Do Han was the selfish one in this scenario for the great sin of being gay and not just fucking off and getting out of the way of their relationship. Ji Han and Ah Jeong were never held accountable for what they did to him; instead we got to watch many scenes of Do Han being shamed and berated. Anyone who contributed to the writing and depiction of this can get fucked.

Every element of the story was poorly written and the resolutions were either unearned or so badly set up that they fell flat anyway. Do Han was being harassed and stalked and the story only barely cared about this. The family drama was boring and the grandpa character was a mess of contradictions who changed on a dime depending on the demands of the plot. There was no chemistry to speak of between the leads. The romance was utterly unbelievable and developed so poorly that it was impossible to care about whether these two assholes got together. The show used romcom tropes randomly to fill time even if they didn't fit. The final episode was stuffed with cameos by actors with personal connections to the cast and crew in the hopes it would distract us from what an unsatisfying conclusion it was, and the whole thing ended on a bizarre wedding gag that didn't work at all. The only good part was Do Han coming out on his own terms and leaving to go live his own life in New York, but the way they framed that was so gross I couldn't even enjoy it.

Most importantly, the messages of this show were deeply, unforgivably homophobic. This story went out of its way to tell us over and over again that Do Han is a selfish coward for being closeted, that his sexuality is a burden for his loved ones, that his family and friends are the real victims for having to deal with him, and that he was the one in the wrong for trying to protect himself. At no point was he allowed to get truly angry at the way his family and friends were treating him; he remained benevolent and shouldered the guilt and blame for everything, despite doing absolutely nothing except try to live an authentic life. At every turn the show depicted his siblings and grandfather and friend being hateful and/or careless with him, but then told us it was Do Han's fault for being who he is. They wanted us to blame the gay character and sympathize with a brother who resented him for not being the straight business leader he wanted him to be, and a friend who betrayed him without a second thought. The show argued passionately that the lies Do Han told to protect himself were the real problem, not the homophobia and hatred and rejection he faced every day of his life. It was an abysmal and offensive message and exactly the opposite of what a responsible piece of media would be trying to communicate.

I don't know if the people who made this show are actively malicious or just deeply incompetent, but they had no business telling a story involving a queer character if they were going to do it like this.

[thelocalconstellation]

Decidedly, I'm posting little drabbles with some of my OC's, mostly from my fun little project Refraction. Have a movie night! Characters will be listed and described at the end!

"Okay- no, no! Fuck off! Oh my gods- Auran!" Angel laughed from the tv room. Sounds of a scuffle came through the doorway.

"I'm not mediating anymore! This is y'alls problem! If Tia wants to start shit over what flavour goes on the popcorn, that ain't on me!" The microwave beeped, telling him the next bag of popcorn is done. Auran sighed, taking it out and putting a new bag in.

"No- it's the fucking glitter again!"

"IT'S EDIBLE!"

"And it never leaves the carpet!" Iris shouted. "Three- get in here!" Auran rolled their eyes, bringing the finished popcorn bags into the other room.

"I've already said I'm done trying to keep this circus from shenanigans. If you make a mess, clean it up, or I'm putting you on filing duty at Central for three days. Tia, if you get glitter in the carpet, you're responsible for getting it out, and unless either Con or Central explicitly says you need to go in for something, you get to be Central's point of contact until it's out of the carpet. 'Kay?" Tia shuddered, and pocketed the glitter bottle. Angel relaxed, though not before scooting away from Tia, poorly supressing a smile to give Tia a pointed glare.

"Boo! Acab! Fun police!" Tia complained.

"Take it up with HR!"

"We have an HR?" Antros asked, raising an eyebrow. Auran grinned.

"It's Authen. Authen is HR, so good luck getting in touch dickstick." Iris snickered. "You also get to be HR! Everybody, direct your complaints to Iris! Iris also gets to be HR!" She stuck her tongue out at Auran.

"If you complain to me, I'm responding in my language. And Rosa and Alex will not be translating." A chorus of disappointment sprung up from around the room. Iris simply smiled and curled up tighter in her chair.

"Wait! Valis could translate!" Antros exclaims, perking up.

"You think you could get Valis Reilli Sycora to translate for you when it's their mother who started it? Valis- as in- plotted against this whole team with their mother for up to three months before April Fools, telling nobody- Including! Not even telling Rosaline and Alexander, about said prank? Not even me? You think you could convince Valis to translate something Iris said due to your silly crimes?" Auran exclaimed. "Please do, I'd love to see that conversation." Antros wilted.

"... Cassia?"

"Why are you even trying to solve this issue, this is my problem? Fuck off??" Tia questioned.

"OH I'M NOT ALLOWED TO BE HELPFUL??" Antros laughed, turning to Tia. She launched a pillow at him.

"OH I'M SORRY IS THIS OUR EMOTIONAL STABBING? No! Stay out of it! Bitch!" Tia laughed. The microwave beeped from the kitchen again.

"Alright, you clowns better have picked a movie, video, or stream to watch before I finish with the popcorn. And if Statera, Ethan, and/or Virtro don't show up in time for it to start, you have full permission to rag on them on coms next time you catch them online."

--

Spoiler alert- Ethan showed up right after that, Virtro didn't show up flat out, and Statera was 15 minutes late. She was in the house the whole time. she fell asleep at her desk.

Anyways! Present characters:

Auran - Any pronouns, primarily written with he/they, though if there's too many people in one room/scene, he/him. She writes her reports like this too. Iris and Authen refer to him as Three on occasion. He's got shorter black hair, 5'11. Bright purple eyes and tan skin. Sometimes he changes his hairstyle to be longer, done up in a pair of buns.

Irisaya (Iris) - She/they with an inclination towards she. Black hair that was dyed a dark blue a long time ago. Her hair has since long grown out. She usually keeps it done up somehow, just to keep it out of her face. It's down in this scene. Brown eyes, one slightly lighter than the other. She's about 5'7. Just barely paler than Auran. She's one of the non-humans by birth. She's from the planet Everia (There's worldbuilding here and a Lot Of It. I had a project for school when I was 13, if that says anything.) She is also quite literally an edited version of my very first OC, if that says anything.

Angel - She/her. Long, medium brown hair. Gold eyes, looks older than most of the group, though isn't the oldest by far. At the time this happened, she would have been one of the newer additions. About 5'9. Lighter tan skin. She usually has a longer red sweater she wears, about halfway down her thighs.

Antros - He/him. blond hair going just barely below his shoulders tied back into a small ponytail. His eyes were originally light blue, however after an incident regarding his magic, he now has one purple eye as well. There's a streak in his hair that matches the colour of his hoodie. 5'6. Pale skin.

Tia - She/her, shorter black hair with a cyan streak in the front. Brown eyes, about 5'10. She has a tiny top hat she likes to clip into her hair. It's black with a dark cyan ribbon on it. Darker brown skin.

Mentioned characters:

Rosaline (Rosa) - Iris's partner. They/them. The communicative braincell.

Alexander (Alex) - Iris's partner. He/him. He's a delight, and also so oblivious sometimes. We love him anyways.

Authen - It's. Uh. Good question! Spawned in one day. Between Iris and Auran, One and Three, respectively, Authen is Two. It/it's pronouns. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not! :D

Valis - Iris, Alex, and Rosa's child. Genderfluid (He/they/she). Full of silly and full of crimes! They and their mother are a duo to be reckoned with and banned from teaming during game events.

Cassia - Valis's wife. She/her. She's the first human to be introduced to this family tree!

Statera - Another member of the Crew. She/they

Ethan - Very possibly the youngest of the Crew, but he knows Far More than you'd ever think he could. He looks like he's twelve. Don't trust that thought. He/xe

Virtro - Auran counts him as part of the Crew and she get's treated as such. As of the time of this, Virtro is still getting used to having people she can rely on. He's kind of like a stray cat. They're just waiting on her. He/her

[didilysims]

Any thoughts on the Star Wars EU novels?

Of course! (Long post ahoy.)

Disclaimer: I haven't read many yet, but I'm chipping away at the pile...and really what I've collected is just a drop in the bucket for all the Star Wars novels, so there is a lot I haven't gotten to and probably never will. I'll actually talk more about what I read in the past, because I only started revisiting the Extended Universe in the past week or so, and I'm rereading some anyway.

My first foray into the Star Wars EU was several years ago when I decided to stop fighting the SW geek within and give them a try. Allegiance was my first book, and it was not only better than I expected, but a great read! I read the sequel, Choices of One, and then, following some advice from a self-proclaimed Star Wars nerd, delved into the books that started it all: the Thrawn trilogy.

All of these books are by Timothy Zahn, and he's a very good writer. His plots are intricate and have good payoff, and his characters not only feel like their movie counterparts, but have believable thought processes as well. They don't always make good decisions, but they make decisions believable to their characters, and I appreciate that. Sometimes I felt like Thrawn was a little too smart, but after my recent reread I realize he made some miscalculations as well (so he can still feel 'human'...even though he's an alien), and even if it is too much, I definitely prefer an intelligent villain to a stupid one. Also, Zahn's world-building is excellent and I really like how he makes the galaxy feel diverse and big...even though main characters still have to all conveniently end up at the same place for the plot. :D

Next on my list was The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyres, and I remember thinking it was okay: a good read, if not really memorable. But after that I got into two trilogies written (one in full, another in part) by Kevin J Anderson. Ai-yi-yi.

Honestly I have no idea what even happened in those books: they were so tedious. I was really excited for the Jedi Academy books because Luke rebuilding the Jedi order sounded like a pretty fun story to me (plus the video game Jedi Academy was awesome, though completely separate from these stories), but uh, no. Basically everything that Timothy Zahn did well, Kevin J Anderson did very very poorly. His plots were boring and I got lost so many times in them; his characterizations were irritating, and I remember being ticked off at Han especially, though all were just...bad. They felt more like caricatures of themselves to me. And the Callista trilogy: UGH. To be fair, 2/3 of those books were written by another author, and I think the awkward romance-ish stuff was mainly in her books, but it was very painful to read and the whole time felt very pointless to me...like it wasn't going anywhere. And by the end, yeah, that's exactly how I felt: we'd come in a full circle and really nothing seemed to have changed. Sorry to any Anderson fans out there, but he just didn't do it for me. (Kind of dreading the Young Jedi Knights series he co-authored that were included in my thrift store trove...but maybe he does better for younger readers.)

The Courtship of Princess Leia I found disappointing--it just fell flat to me--but again, can't really remember much of it. I vaguely recall some interesting worldbuilding ideas, but as a whole it didn't feel very strong.

As for The Crystal Star...it was the absolute worst SW book I've ever read. Luke was completely off his rocker in it--actually the entire plot was off its rocker--but Luke especially was so pathetic it was very hard to read. I think the main plot was something about the Leia's kids being kidnapped but they were annoying so I didn't care much about them. Meanwhile there's some mind-controlling dude running around and possibly that's why Luke is such a loser here (?) and something to do with a star crystallizing and giving the evil villain superpowers while all our main characters just run around wringing their hands. Seriously, if you are wanting to try out the SW novels for yourself, do not start with this travesty of a book.

The next book I read was quite a jump in terms of publishing date: Revan, based off one of my favourite games of all time: Knights of the Old Republic. I'd heard the novel was not well-received by fans, but wanted to try it out for myself. I actually didn't mind it much until the ending, which felt like a forced twist to me, and kind of made everything before it pointless. Also some of the character decisions felt...off. So I can see why people didn't like it. And I guess I'm one of those people too, although I don't have intense feelings about it. I liked the descriptions of some of the worlds and there is one that I can still imagine, so that was fun.

I could talk a lot about my thoughts on a video game vs. a novelization spin-off too, but that's a completely different topic. But I do think that the difficulties of translating the one into the other are major factors into why this book was not so well received. I'm pretty 'meh' on it, but it was kind of fun with a let-down ending.

Anyway, I think that is where I ended my first Star Wars novels adventure, and journey #2 has barely started with me just finishing my re-read of the Thrawn books. Does it sound like I'm very negative about the EU? Maybe. Honestly, most of the books aren't great, with some big exceptions, but I don't go to Star Wars for highbrow culture. I love the SW movies (uh, the old ones anyway: I only saw the first new sequel) but I'll be the first to admit that they have a lot of flaws, particularly in the writing! But they're fun and exciting and I root for the characters and sometimes feel bad for the bad guys, and that's what I want. Maybe the more recently published books are higher quality, but I kind of doubt it. There's no denying this franchise is a cash cow and quantity trumps quality in that case. It's easier for me to find the old books than the new, but one day maybe I'll give some of the new books a try...

One last comment: I realize that every single book on this list has been deemed "Legends" since the Disney takeover, and only the newer books are now considered canon. Whatever, they can do what they want with their property. I do not have strong feelings about this, and actually understand why they did it because the Extended Universe is honestly a big mess. But I'm still going to read the big mess of "Legends" because that will always be my Star Wars era, and whether it's canon or not, there are still some fun, trashy, terrible, and exciting stories to enjoy.

In summary: If you enter the Star Wars EU with low expectations, you will never be disappointed, will probably still have fun, and sometimes might be pleasantly surprised. :)

[phoenix-before-the-flame]

little witch academia gif <3 Also in response to your response of my last ask, agreed, MLB does not execute its premise well at all, which is a damn shame

Bruh i was there from the first trailer dropped (the 2d trailer)

I was there when the concept art trailer dropped

When i heard about the change from 2d to 3d i was kinda saddened but still excited.

I watched all of season 1 religiously and it was good. Not perfect mind you, but a good place to start the series and the character off. We got the setting, bad guy, a good understanding of powers, character personalities and relationships and it ended on a point where it implied that things would pick up the pace in the following season.

And it just, didn't.

It ran through the same pattern as season 1 with the akuma per week, barely expounded on the capabilities of our main 2 as heroes ( does Chat have more abilities? What happens if a lucky charm doesnt work?) and started the trend of introducing new heroes which while cool to see just oversaturates the show. And because of it running through the exact same pattern for each episode the plot moves at a snails pace.

A lot of the characters didn't get the chance to develop, feeling regressive or just downright annoying to watch. ( how many times has marinette been embarassed publicly for her crush? Nino used to be Adriens friend but now hes just Alya's boyfriend, Chloe is just....a mess. Same for Lila. Adrien is so flat, the shows insistence on keeping him perfect when he clearly has flaws just sucks.)

Then there was a lot of introduced plot lines or concepts that just.....don't make much sense or are poorly written and bloat the main plot. The introduced love triangle, Gabriel and Nathalie's whole...thing, that thing with Felix and the rings, Master Fu in general (thats a whole other can of worms), the powerups but we only see two

All that plus the wonky animation quality ( i know they use 2 different animation studios. The better one that animated the majority of season 1 is more expensive but with how much miraculous makes off merch i dont see why they have to cut that corner), the fact that the creator boasted way early that the MC is biracial and how its important but we just, dont see it any at all in the show, the spoilers for season 4 makes me so disappointed in the series.

It just.

I love the concept and the characters,the execution not so much.

[nadziejastar]

Thoughts on the dlc? After it released and after you watched it?

Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t spend any money on it. It was really just...not very good. It didn’t help KH3 feel any more complete. This series has really alienated me. I never thought by the end of KH3, I’d be so uninterested in the future of KH. But I really do think the Dark Seeker Saga was irreparably destroyed. It’s heartbreaking.

KH3 would have been faaaar better if we had gotten to see everyone use the power of waking. This whole “the power of waking is taboo” thing, I’m just not buying. The power of waking is supposed to be the power to awaken a sleeping heart. This power was the key to the plot and Ansem’s data. Many of the characters would need to have it used on them to be brought back and have their pain healed. That was, ya know, kinda the whole point of KH3.

But...the power of waking does not work on those who were wiped from existence. Okaaaaaaay? Why is everyone suddenly wiped from existence? Nomura originally said that there’s no concept of death in KH. The whole point until now was that everyone in trouble simply needed to be woken up. Birth By Sleep. Dream Drop Distance. In KH3D, Yen Sid says that the three lost Keyblade wielders needed to be woken from their sorrow and slumber. Even in Saix’s boss fight, Lea says “Isa, it’s time to wake up!” Which just...makes me sad.

Really, the focus of KH3′s finale should have been these characters being woken up. That’s it. Not time travel. Not the black box. Not Xigbar being Luxu. Not Yozora. Not Sora getting transported to another world. Not setting up KH4. Save that for later. Because the story was such a hot mess, even the reunions felt anticlimactic. TAV’s felt rushed. Lea and Isa didn’t even get one.

Overall, I thought the DLC was just really boring. They tried to give some explanation for why Sora was there during everyone’s boss fight, but it still barely made any sense to me. The battles should have played out with you playing as each character without Sora there. Period. He just plain shouldn’t have been there. No time travel shenanigans can fix that.

Most of the DLC was just rehashes of the Keyblade Graveyard battles with a lot of scenes that felt like they didn’t add much. Was that extra scene of Demyx with the Gummiphone really necessary? I dunno, maybe. I didn’t think anyone really felt like they got better much development than they did before. I liked seeing Aqua get more dialogue during her boss fight with Terra. But still. There’s just something...missing in all of these fights. And that is...you guessed it, the power of waking. 

I don’t care about why Sora is there during everyone’s fights. He shouldn’t be bringing everyone back like that. I wanted to see Ventus dive inside Terra’s heart to find him, piece him back together and wake him up. That’s what KH is all about. The characters and their bonds. That is the heart of the series. In KH3, the character development just flat-out sucked.

I don’t buy the explanation that the power of waking is soooo taboo and that’s why only Sora got to use it (at great cost). The power of waking was built up SO MUCH. Each Guardian of Light should have gotten a chance to use it to make their character arcs feel more complete. Aqua should have used it on Ventus in the Land of Departure when she was randomly unconscious. Riku and Mickey shoulda used it on each other when they were randomly unconscious. I wanted to see Lea defeat Isa, then use the power of waking on him to wake him up.

Roxas and Xion’s presence in that fight still made no sense and doesn’t feel any more organic than it did before. Xion was made out of Sora’s memories. How did they even bring her back? How is she suddenly worthy to be a full-fledged Seeker of Darkness now? Originally, she needed to merge with Roxas to become a complete Sora Replica. Honestly, Nomura should have just stuck to his guns and not brought her back. Too much of KH3 felt like it was just written as cheap fanservice. Let’s bring back everyone. Then maybe fans won’t notice how shitty the character development is. 

I was much more aware during KH3 that I was playing a game made by a huge corporation to make money than I ever was before. With the older games, I felt like I was playing a creative work. Regardless of how zany the plot could get, I could always feel the love that each game had put into it. On the other hand, KH3 felt much more like a disposable “consumer product,” if that makes sense.

It’s really sad how obvious it was that Kairi and Isa spent most of their fight standing around doing nothing. Really solidified my opinion that bringing back Roxas and Xion (physically) was a huge mistake and that it was thought up at the last minute. Nomura was complaining that there’s too many characters and admitted he couldn’t keep track of who has met who. Well, I’m pretty sure he had Roxas and Xion in mind when he said that (just look at the final scene at Yen Sid’s Tower when Lea reunited with Ventus and how awkward it was). There really are too many characters and some had to be sacrificed so others could shine.

Yeah, Kairi got one extra scene fighting Xemnas before she got kidnapped. But it did little to change the fact that she got benched in her own fight and got fridged. Lea and Kairi trained hard for that fight. They were preparing to fight Isa, Lea’s best friend from childhood who was possessed. But Kairi and Isa stood around and did nothing the whole time while Roxas and Xion got all the spotlight. The Recusant’s Sigil was surprisingly brought up again, but the scene made no sense to me. We’re definitely missing some vital backstory there with the Sigil.

I’m glad Kairi got to fight in an actual boss battle, so we can see her play style and everything. That’s great. Of course, she should have gotten that in the original game. And I still think killing her off at the end was a huge mistake. This DLC tried to make her feel more important, but I stand by my original opinion. The ending of KH3 should have just had Kairi rescue Sora at the end with the power of waking, then Sora and everyone celebrate their victory on the beach.

There’s a sense of closure, and a happy ending. Then they could start building up a new arc. Just overall, KH3 had no sense of closure or emotional satisfaction. It doesn’t even feel like the Dark Seeker Saga had a definitive end. Really, KH2 had more closure, yet KH3 is supposed to be the grand finale. KH3 felt more like a teaser for the new arc than the conclusion of this one. The DLC doesn’t fix that at all. It certainly doesn’t make KH3 feel like a “Final Mix”.

People say that Nomura was more interested in what came after KH3 than KH3 itself. And it’s true. I’m sure that if KH3 had been able to come out in 2014 or 2015, it would have been a drastically different game. KH3 is a product of Square’s huge problems as a company, and that’s a damn shame.

I liked seeing more of Scala ad Caelum. But it doesn’t make up for the fact that it should have been an explorable world in the main campaign. Sora should have been able to go there and learn about Xehanort, the Recusant’s Sigil, etc. It was very poorly integrated into the story. The story itself was just a mess.

Finally, I really couldn’t care less about Yozora. Let’s be real, if KH3 had come out in 2015, Yozora wouldn’t even exist. Noctis and his bros would have probably appeared in KH3 instead and it would have felt like a more traditional KH game. I was sad about Versus XIII’s cancellation. I still am. But Yozora just feels out of place and shoehorned in. Nomura is obviously unable to move on and this has affected his creative choices. Sora’s disappearance at the end just felt like a gimmick to introduce him to Yozora.

Overall, I really got FFXIII-2 vibes with Re:Mind. Like all the nonsensical time travel stuff, the hollowed out characterization, Sora turning to crystal. Pretty graphics, but lacking a soul. I’ll always love the older games. They’ll always have a special place in my heart. But KH3? Eh....not so much.

[theartofmedia]

The Art of Review: YIIK: A Postmodern RPG

I have been sitting here for about two hours with this tab open, trying to find out how to properly introduce this. At the time of writing this (May 7, 2019, 10:02 PM), I have just finished watching YIIK several hours ago. However, I have been doing just about everything to avoid actually writing about it, because I have no idea how to ease the reader into this.

YIIK is so reprehensible that I created this segment--”The Art of Review���--because I needed to talk about this game. I needed to explain just why this game fails on every single account, and is so blatantly offensive. Initially, I was going to do a piece on something creator Andrew Allanson had said about games and his protagonist, Alex. It had to do with character development, and a common criticism was Alex’s sheer lack of it; naturally, I decided to watch a walkthrough online in order to see this for myself first-hand.

I was not prepared for what I saw. I have never had to take as many breaks from any media before due to sheer anger at what I was witnessing. I have never seen a game that fails in every single sense, that is regarded as such high art by its developers. Except maybe David Cage, but he’s a topic for another day.

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is one of the worst pieces of media I have ever had the displeasure of viewing... probably in my entire life. I wish I was exaggerating.

Before I go any further, I would like give immense credit to GrandmaParty and the others at the Something Awful forums for doing an LP of the game with commentary and cutting out the fights. GrandmaParty graciously linked the thread to me--which is full of sources that I will also be linking to throughout this piece--and made the entire game tolerable enough for me to power through. It wouldn’t have happened without you guys, so thank you very much for extending a hand to a small creator trying to get her footing in the world. <3

I will also be linking to the various episodes of GrandmaParty’s LP with timestamped links to show particular scenes or dialogue. I’ve heard that one Andrew Allanson likes to say that people doctored screenshots of his game to make him look bad. Sorry, but I don’t like being accused of forgery, so I’m going to just preemptively strike that claim down.

Now then. This is going to be a big, long review. Allow me to tell you how we’ll be separating this.

We’re going to have two main sections: a non-spoiler review, and a spoiler review. This is mainly due to the fact that a lot of the game’s issues come from its mess of a story, one that can only be understood fully if you’ve seen it through to the end (and its multiple endings).

But let me be clear here.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

Don’t buy it for a laugh. Don’t buy it to see how bad it is. It’s broken, it’s offensive, and the creators and proven themselves time and time again to be genuinely awful and prejudiced people. Do not give these people money.

The non-spoiler and spoiler sections will be divided into subsections, which may also have subsections of their own.

With that said... let’s begin my review of YIIK: A Postmodern RPG.

Non-Spoiler Review

Plot:

The plot of YIIK (it’s pronounced like Y2K, but I’m going to pronounce it as ‘yick’ personally) follows Alex, a freshly-graduated college student, and the strange events that begin to occur once he returns to his hometown of Frankton. He follows a cat to an old factory/hotel, where he meets Sammy, a young woman who appears to live there. When she is taken by some mysterious creatures in front of Alex, he begins a journey to try and find out what happened to her, and begins to make discoveries that could endanger the very fabric of the universe. In theory, at least. In reality, the story is an absolute clusterfuck of vague metaphysics, and the rules of the world were never clearly established, so everything just becomes an incoherent mess.

Characters:

The characters are bare-bones at best and absolutely insufferable at worst. Alex especially is infamous among critics and detractors of the game for his arrogance, ignorance, underlying racism/sexism we’ll get to that, and lack of properly-written development. I’m not going to go into full detail with Alex just yet--there will be an entirely separate post on him. Something also to keep in mind that general consensus appears to be that Alex is an author-insert for Andrew Allanson. Whether that is or isn’t true is frankly up to the viewer, but there’s no definitive proof of it.

(Oh!!! Quick thing!! This image here keeps circulating around--this person is not Andrew! That is someone named Cr33pyDude on both Twitter and Reddit! He just so happens to look like the main character. Don’t rag on this guy, everyone, he doesn’t have anything to do with this shitshow. <3)

Most of the other characters are bland and underdeveloped, but all have potential to be better (Rory especially, in my personal opinion) if they were in the hands of a better writer. The female characters, though... either they are fawning over Alex, being written as nagging and overbearing, or having so little significance that taking them out entirely would change nothing. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that. Other NPCs are forgettable, and enemies are out-of-place monsters that hold no consequence to the story.

Writing:

And the writing--dear god the writing. The writers don’t know the phrase “show, don’t tell.” So frequently would Alex monologue about nothing. Upon coming back from seeing a woman get taken by supernatural creatures, he goes home and reflects--only to go on a tangent about his mother. Immediately after that, he goes on a rant about p/o/r/n/ when sent an email and how girls that he used to go to school with wouldn’t be doing “particularly unladylike” things. And the entire game is like this. Alex will go on pseudo-philosophical rants to himself, and they reveal nothing about his character except that he thinks he’s better than everyone else. He’ll also frequently describe things as though talking to someone--while this does get explained later, it still is completely frustrating when the narrative says “I said this and she said that” instead of just having dialogue or actions between characters. A lot of the dialogue doesn’t exactly... sound like anything a human would say. It’s stilted and unnatural.

Graphics:

The graphics are... bad. Really bad. The style is supposed to be a throwback to old-school, very polygonal games, but environments lack any and all actual texture, making them incredibly flat and uninteresting at best and painful for the eyes at worst. Everything is extremely colorful, but in the sense of neon colors. Everything is so bright and vibrant, and there is barely a place where someone’s eyes can rest--it’s balance in art. Brightness like this needs to be contrasted with darker, more muted shades, or else it just hurts to look at. The viewer’s eyes need places to rest, and the muted shades allow them that reprieve. You don’t get that with YIIK. It’s just a constant bombardment of colors and lights, to the point where if you are sensitive to these kinds of things, you may not want to look even at game footage unless you’re prepared. The character portraits are fine, even if some expressions are odd, but the in-game chibi-esque models are... bad. Really bad. They’re so uncanny and unsettling, and their expressions almost never change. (Also Alex has detailed teeth and it’s just as horrifying as you might think.)

Music/Audio:

The music is. Awful? It’s awful. It’s genuinely really bad. Case in point: one of the boss battle themes. You can hear this poor guy trying so hard to put power behind his voice, but it just sounds unnatural and strained. (Also he clips the mic at some points, and the balancing in general is. Bad.) He’s out-of-tune and occasionally off-beat, and it just makes for a very unpleasant listening experience. And a lot of the music is like this, being just an assault on the ears. The one real exception to this is the track “Into the Mind” made by one Toby Fox, presumably before he made Undertale and was doing freelance work. (He has since deleted his tweet promoting it. Screenshot of the tweet here, courtesy of @GameTheoryRejects.) The audio in general is poor, with irritating sound effects, occasional distorted audio that’s supposed to be scary but is so poorly done that it just hurts to listen to, and voice acting that’s lackluster at best and utterly emotionless at worst.

Gameplay:

Full disclosure: I did not personally play the game. But just looking at it shows how irritating, slow, clunky, and repetitive it is. Each character has a minigame that you play in order to attack, defend, use special attacks, and even run away. These minigames, unlike in something like the Mario & Luigi series, are slow, drawn-out, and completely break up the flow of the fight. And none of the other characters matter then anyway, because turns out if you max out your LUK stat, you can use a particular move that hits all enemies and completely one-shot them from critical damage. (And this move can even glitch out the game in some cases!) The menus are crowded and visually uninteresting, making everything sort of meld together. (Another minor criticism: YIIK has a tendency to put the player in unwinnable fights. You are never aware of what fights are winnable and which fights are designed to kill you. More on this later.)

Speaking of gameplay, the leveling system is... bizarre and tedious. You get EXP, but you don’t gain the ability to level up (yes that is an ability you have to gain) until a couple hours into the game. Leveling up is done in the Mind Dungeon, which you access from save points, and you have to go through doors that increase the stats you assign it. There are four doors per floor, and when you go to the next floor, you and all of your teammates (even if you haven’t met them in-game) level up. Sounds simple, right? Well. It’s slow and repetitive, and NOTHING HAPPENS. You walk in a door. You walk out the door. Rinse and repeat for 70 floors. (280 doors, by the way.) Here’s GrandmaParty doing this for an hour to get an idea of the tedium that this induces. You get to play a minigame when you banish certain enemies, but that serves less as ‘spicing up the gameplay’ and more of ‘adding more steps to this already-boring section.’

So to recap: Flat characters, word-salad plot, painful prose flat-out ugly graphics, backwards gameplay and leveling system.

Tl;dr: Game bad. Don’t buy it.

... This ends the non-spoiler portion of the review. And also the section where we start to talk about some... sensitive topics.

As such, I am going to issue a legitimate trigger warning: the following pieces talk about suicide/depression in detail, as well as physical & domestic abuse situations.

And a small content warning for those who aren’t legitimately triggered by these subjects but still feel uncomfortable reading about the following: homophobia/transphobia; sexism; racism; and the actual use of a real-life woman’s death as a plot device. No I am not fucking kidding about that last one.

So. Let’s get into the real shit about YIIK.

Spoiler Review

Plot:

Let’s start with the plot. There isn’t really a driving force for this plot; initially, it’s finding Semi “Sammy” Pak (well, everyone except Rory says “Park,” even though all of the written lines say “Pak,” so that’s great) after she is taken by mysterious figures. However, as the game progresses, the search becomes less about finding Sammy until she’s just a footnote, and becomes more about... meandering around the world going from one goal to another while fighting things. (The game points this out, but self-awareness doesn’t excuse the fact that it happens. Especially considering the upcoming plot points...)

Then the metaphysics start--people have been trying to decipher this world’s rules for a while with little success, so bear with me, I’m going to try to make as much sense of what we’re given as possible.

There exists a “place between places“ known as the Soul Space. It exists between parallel realities. A person can actually will themself into the Soul Space via... depression? One character, Vella, says that another character, Rory, left his body when he “surrendered himself to his misery” following the death of his younger sister, and explained herself that she fell into a deep depression as well before entering the Soul Space... but it’s not dying? Or it can be? Here Rory asks The Essentia 2000 oh we’ll get to her don’t you worry if dying means you enter the Soul Space. She says that it’s complicated. Her explanation boils down to, “if you care only about material goods and not about your bonds, when you die, you will cease to exist. If you don’t care about materialistic goods when you die, then ehhhhh???”

Also, if your reality is destroyed but you go into the Soul Space, you can become a Soul Survivor (aka the not-Starmen, seen in the cutscene with Vella and Rory linked above) and get stuck in other’s realities as you try to find a physical body. Also, people share a Soul across parallel realities--meaning, parallel versions of yourself would share the same Soul. But they’re not the same people. They have different lives, races, genders, names, but they share the same “Soul.” Only one person with that “Soul” can exist in a reality at a time, hence the form that the Soul Survivors take if they enter a reality where another person with that “Soul” lives. If, however, that person with your “Soul” is no longer in that reality, you can retake physical form and essentially take their place--though not as them, but as you.

And if you go into the Soul Space you apparently understand the secrets of the universe and are beyond normal human follies.

Confused yet? Me too, and I wrote this damn thing. The worldbuilding is so vague, and the players aren’t given set rules that the world plays by. Even when the more surrealist elements of the game start to appear, there should still be rules. Perhaps nonsensical rules, but rules nonetheless. Instead we get talk about Souls and parallel realities, scenes of bright colors and strange imagery that never gets explained or really acknowledged (other than a mention of them being “breaks in reality” like, once), and some plot twists that imply... a lot.

Let’s talk about the characters before we get to the ending.

Characters

Besides Alex, there are five major characters in YIIK:

Michael, who is Alex’s childhood friend and who doesn’t really have much relevance between the beginning and the end of the game. No, really, for the middle portion of the game, he doesn’t really do anything. He hangs around, that’s about it. He gains relevance again during the end of the game where he goes into the Soul Space and becomes Proto-Michael, and that... happens, I guess. I think it contributes to the revelation later on about reality breaking.

Vella is... a strange character. A strange character forced to contradict herself because the plot demands it. She’s shown to be a character who takes no shit, but also bends at the first flimsy apology Alex gives her. She is compassionate to someone like Rory, but spends most of her time calling out Alex. (And yet, somehow, they fall in love???) These notes I took previously on Vella’s first appearance show how what kind of walking contradiction that Vella is as a character:

”Stop creeping on me while i’m at work”

”Okay I’ll go to the house of two strangers who i just accused of perving on me, in the middle of my work shift, to look at these pictures of me on this website i’ve never heard of that can’t go wrong”

”So let me tell you about this traumatizing experience i had with a supernatural creature, saying how emotional and painful it was without any emotion in my voice”

”also i’m not going to tell you how I got to where the supernatural creature was because it’s very personal and I don’t know you and revealing that would make me vulnerable”

”By the way I’m going to give you my number as well as this other number for a training dungeon basically because I like you two”

... yeah,

Rory is probably my favorite character out of this dreck, and he deserves so, so much better than being in this shit. He’s a quiet scene kid who initially gets roped into the plot with the disappearance of his 12-year-old sister--turns out, however, that she killed herself, and Rory struggles with the resulting grief, trauma, and depression that follows. He’s a sweet kid who’s a pacifist, is teaching himself how to make games, knows a lot of random bits of information about many things, and overall deserves so much better than this game. Sorry Allansons you’ve lost your Rory privileges he is My son now

Claudio and Chondra... are just kind of there? Claudio’s a stereotypical weeb. Chondra is the “sassy black girl”/little sister type (which is later revealed to be even stranger, because she’s apparently a graduate student). They don’t have much outside of that, and that’s a shame, since they had a lot of potential to be really good. However, they also seem a bit... tacked on and included for diversity’s sake, as both of them mention racism at some point, and... yeah. The game isn’t very graceful with that topic, as I’ll soon get into.

There is also the character of Panda, who appears out of nowhere in the factory/hotel and is never questioned. It becomes very clear that he’s a figment of Alex’s imagination, and is Alex personifying him as his sort of “conscious“ when he is, in reality, only a stuffed bear. He only talks when Alex is alone. A lot of people really don’t like him, but I will admit that I got mildly emotional when he drifted away in space near the end--but only because I myself make stuffed animals and dolls, so nearly any stuffed animal holds a place in my heart. However, I can very much see why people wouldn’t like him at all.

Anyway.

The Fucking Ending:

So everyone just kind of meanders around for the middle portion of the game until surprise! On New Years’ Eve the world is going to be destroyed. Not just the world--the entire reality. And it’s going to be Alex’s fault, somehow. Also Sammy--who Alex becomes obsessed with--Vella--who is an explicit love interest for Alex--and an android--the previously-mentioned The Essentia 2000, who Alex has a dream about and immediately becomes infatuated--with all turn out to be the same person! Why pick between love interests when they can all just turn out to be the same person?! Also, Sammy was taken by apparent demons because her Soul was in the process of going into the Soul Space, and the creatures the took her were actually the other 2/3rds of her Soul that had already gone into the Soul Space and they were just collecting the last piece. I think.

The game turns into a watered-down version of Persona 3, where you have about a month--from Thanksgiving until New Years’ Eve--to train and get strong enough to stop whatever is going to destroy reality. (The actual Y2K thing is mentioned about halfway through and serves little relevance other than to mark when the end of the world is, since Y2K isn’t actually the cause of the world ending). Then there are some weird plot twists about how reality has been breaking for a long while (this was briefly foreshadowed in Alex going to Michael’s house only to be told that Michael doesn’t live there, and then going to another house where Michael is) and it makes a lot of things really confusing?? And then New Years’ Eve comes where everything is really breaking. Turns out the end of this reality is caused by a meteor with Alex’s face on it a la the moon from Majora’s Mask, no I am not fucking kidding. And it moves around like an inflatable arm-flailing tube man, no I am not fucking kidding.

And then everyone dies. No, really, this is an unwinnable fight. You die. Your entire party dies. Their reality is destroyed.

Alex wanders around the Soul Space for a while until he finds other versions of himself, and various “dark versions” merge together to create the Proto-Comet (’proto’ being the suffix to describe the end product of parallel selves merging together to form one entity). Alex follows the comet around as it destroys reality after reality until...

He finds one that hasn’t been attacked.

And gueeeeeeess what?

You, the player, are a parallel version of Alex. So he enlists you and another party of parallels (using the names you were supposed to input in the beginning) to destroy Proto-Alex. Here, you meet a spectre who is very obviously Sammy Pak, and she says that she’s sorry that Essentia “used her to get to you,” and you hug her.

Eventually you do get to Proto-Alex, as well as a different form of Essentia. Turns out that Essentia lied to you about Sammy and Vella--turns out, Essentia IS you. Well, Essentia is part of Alex, and she tricked Alex into destroying Proto-Alex in order to free herself from the “Soul” that they share. So you can choose to fight Proto-Alex, and if you do, you lose. Again. The boss fight in unwinnable.

And then this... really weird section happens with the character of Roy from Two Brothers, Ackk Studios’ previous game that got pulled from Steam due to bugginess and crashing. Roy basically says that people were “trying to stop his quest” (aka critics) and that Alex shouldn’t give up. (Note that this is a complete non-sequitur to anyone who doesn’t know who Roy is, where he came from, or the story behind the game being pulled.)

After that, you control both the player avatar given and Alex in order to “unplug” Proto-Alex and Essentia, which will make them “whole”? It basically means that all the versions of Alex will merge together into you, the player.

Then the game ends.

At least. Kind of. There’s more than one ending.

But... we’ll get back to that in a bit.

There are many questions the game raises without answers. Why was Sammy bleeding and screaming for the Soul Survivors not to take her because “you promised you wouldn’t move me again!”? Who actually is Vella? Why did no one question Essentia and Vella being in the same space if it was already said that they couldn’t be? Who actually is Sammy? Why is she a ghost and not a Soul Survivor? Why were Proto-Alex and the other “dark Alex”-es trying to destroy realities? Why does Proto-Alex look different than the other Alex-es, who look relatively similar? Who actually was the voice on the phone--it was implied to be Proto-Michael, but he didn’t exist when those phone calls were made? Is Claudio and Chondra’s missing younger brother actually a version of Alex, as this clip implies (esp. w/ the anime shirt)?

Good luck getting answers, because we sure as hell don’t get any.

Also--glad to know that the entire month of training that you spent the latter half of the game doing was all for naught, since the last two major fights you’re in are unwinnable. There are four minibosses to fight, so it isn’t all for nothing, but still. You don’t even get the satisfaction of killing the final boss. You pull a lever and he and Essentia get weirdly electrocuted.

One more thing: the twist of “Essentia lied to you” made a metric fuckton of exposition in her Mind Dungeon utterly pointless, and also feels like a flimsy excuse to absolve Alex of blame for the shitty actions of his parallel selves--more on that later.

So let’s touch on some controversy now that we have gone over the rest of this incoherent mess of a plot.

Elisa Lam

One of the most famous controversies of YIIK is the use of Elisa Lam’s death to propel the story. This is true--the creator admits that he “was very moved” by Lam’s death.

For those not in the know, let me give you a brief summary of the case of Elisa Lam. (Yes this is going to be primarily from Wikipedia but it also has news sources cited for it.) Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old Chinese-Canadian student who was reported missing at the beginning of February 2013. On February 17th, the workers at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles (where Lam was visiting) discovered her nude body in one of the hotel’s water tanks after guests complained about the taste of the water. The police released footage of Lam, from the day of her disappearance, acting strangely in an elevator, appearing to be hiding from something, pressing elevator buttons, and gesturing and talking to no one. There was controversy surrounding her death, as people wondered how she could have locked herself in the water tank, and how the police could rule her death as accidental. People have suspected that it was due to paranormal activity that she was acting like that, or others said that she could have been having hallucinations (as Lam was diagnosed with bipolar and depression). Her death was quickly spread through internet circles as some paranormal myth.

YIIK incorporates this as a huge part of its starting plot.

Semi “Sammy” Pak is very clearly inspired by Elisa Lam. The two bear striking resemblance to one another, being young Asian women in their early twenties with straight black hair (even parted in the same place)--and this photo from the LA Times shows that Lam wore rounded glasses, like the ones Sammy wears. (Lam is Chinese-Canadian, while Sammy is stated to be Koren-American. Sammy is also 23 when Lam was 21.)

This photoset from JamJamJamJamuel shows the biggest criticism of YIIK: the recreation of the elevator video. It’s obvious by the angle and some of Sammy’s movements that this was, in fact, meant to emulate the elevator video of Lam. The game also shows that people are less concerned about Sammy as a person and more about the mystery of the elevator, like the internet stopped caring about Lam as a person and more of a supernatural myth.

However, there’s more than just this.

There’s a weird... almost fetishistic nature when the in-game protagonist talks about Sammy. Alex describes his meeting with her as “intimate” (they met for like. an hour), calls her “my Sammy” when comparing his story to the story of the news, says that he “misse[s] her. I didn’t know her really, but I felt like I did.” And the very next line is uh. “In the unreal twilight hours, in-between sleep and waking, she slipped into my dreams, got tangled in my thoughts, like the blankets tangled between my legs, her brain melting with mine.”

... Gross, to say the least.

And yes, by the way, Sammy basically becomes a love interest. That’s not completely disrespectful and disgusting to the actual human woman that the devs never met or anything at aaaaaaaall.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.

Rory basically goes on to describe a “creepy urban myth” about the water tower near his town. You can imagine what that leads to. It’s a beat-by-beat retelling of the finding of Elisa Lam’s body, except they make it a “nameless girl,” and the writers basically insert their opinions of how it was definitely a murder and the police called it an accident.

More tasteless than a fucking saltine.

OH BUT WAIT THERE’S EVEN MORE.

Near the end of the game, you find the ghost of Sammy Pak. Since she’s not a part of Essentia, it seems that Essentia used her form to get to Alex. She says that she’s sorry and that she’s going to go back ‘home’ now, and you hug her.

But that’s not even the worst of it.

Allow me to tell you about the second ending.

Second Ending:

YIIK has more than one ending--both are considered canon. Ending 1 is the one described above.

Ending 2, however...

Just before leaving the house for the last time, in order to get this second ending, you have to look at the computer in Alex’s house and read this post. It implies that you need to go find Sammy. (It also has some things to say about postmodernism but that’s for another day.)

You go outside... and she’s hiding behind a tree outside your house. No I’m not kidding. (Granted, this is the part of the game where reality is beginning to break apart, so.) She also says “I love you” which, given her “inspiration” by Elisa Lam... yeah. That’s not creepy and tasteless at all. And it also doesn’t make any FUCKING SENSE BECAUSE ALEX KNEW HER FOR AN HOUR AND NEVER SAW HER AGAIN.

Okay, okay, anyway, if you go back into the house and leave through the back entrance, you’ll be taken to the world map. Your destination is the KNN--the Korean News Network, where Sammy had been employed before she vanished. The faceless NPCs only refer to Alex as the name you put in at the beginning of the game, so presumably, everyone from this point forward is now talking to you, the player. (Also everything is pink. Really pink. For no real reason unless it’s “””symbolic””” of something?) You wander around for a bit, doing menial tasks, until you finally get to a pink version of the room you first met Sammy in. She calls you on a phone and tells you that she’s sorry for dragging you into this mess (because Alex/the player went looking for Sammy in the first place), and that she “has a solution” to prevent Essentia from using Alex any more.

You find yourself in front of an elevator, the same elevator that you rode with Sammy when she disappeared. She calls you on the phone again and says that if you go through the elevator doors, there’s no turning back. If you step through, you see the spectre of Sammy again, and she wants to show you where she’s been. You hug her, and she says that she’s so glad that she met you, “even if it was just a game. We’ll be together in your waking reality one day, I’m sure of it. For all I know, we may already be.”

... Roll credits!

No. Seriously. That’s the second ending. You, the player, (presumably) go into the Soul Space with Sammy for eternity, and Sammy basically gives you a love confession (after all she says “I love you” before anyway).

Need I remind you all that she is based off of a REAL-LIFE WOMAN WHO DIED THAT NEITHER OF THE ALLANSONS KNEW?!

Hi, yes, sorry, I’m fucking livid about this. Not just because of the disgusting use of a real-life woman’s death in your game, not just because they fetishized her and turned her into a love interest, not just one of the endings--which is a canon ending--had her telling you she loves you and having you go off with her...

... but because this game has been in development since 2013.

Elisa Lam wasn’t even dead for a fucking year.

Yes, other media has cropped up about Lam’s death, and I think it’s just as tacky and tasteless as this. But these guys had so much time to change it, to have someone say “hey maybe you shouldn’t do that,” and it happened anyway. The sheer lack of respect that the Allansons have for not just Lam but also her still-grieving family is astonishing, and it genuinely makes me sick. My thoughts and condolences to the family of Elisa Lam, having to deal with the press, internet conspirators, and people like this. I hope that they all can still find some sense of peace, even with all of this going on.

Racism:

So this game can be really, really fucking racist sometimes. Let’s start with the more explicit dialogue.

In the very beginning, Sammy calls Alex a ginger, and he says “that’s our word.” He’s equating “ginger” to a derogatory slur.

Here’s the next instance, with Alex referring to Vella--an Asian woman--as “vaguely ethnic” and “exotic.” (He doesn’t face consequences for this, either. Just a slap on the wrist of “don’t talk about race.”)

Later on, Chondra talks about race in an actually not that bad rant about how “I bet if [my brother] had been a beautiful white woman, everyone would have cared that he vanished.” This actually is somewhat insightful, as... well, it’s rather true. POC, when it comes to investigations, are often pushed aside, ignored, or given the least amount of effort. And then Chondra also calls out Alex’s lowkey racist fantasy of “being the white knight swooping in and saving the exotic Korean girl.” However... that’s it. Alex doesn’t get any insight from that, or rethink his reasons on why he wants to save Sammy.

And that’s where we get into Claudio and Chondra and the more implicit racism in the game. Neither of them have much in terms of personality--Claudio likes anime, Chondra is there for quips. Neither of them have any significant arcs, nor do they serve much story purpose beyond being extra party members and talking about race--which feels racist in and of itself, just to have characters of color there to talk about race. (Claudio even goes into an extensive rant about how it’d be racist to think that he knows how to pick locks, but he does know how to pick locks, just not the type that they need open. It comes out of nowhere, is utterly unwarranted, and is completely against the rather chill persona that Claudio has had up until then.) Their characters had a lot of potential to be good! However, much like every other character, they’re very underdeveloped.

(Also, if you have either Claudio or Chondra in your party when you get attacked by cop enemies, they will only shoot at either of them, you know, the only black characters in the main party, and my god I wish I was kidding.)

And then... the love interests.

Sammy is a Korean woman. Vella is an Asian woman of unknown descent. The Essentia 2000 has shown that many of her parallel lives are women of color. All of them are love interests for Alex, the white hero. Yeah. And the game calls it out, but no actual repercussions are given!

Speaking of these ladies...

Sexism

This game is really fucking sexist. Like, genuinely, it’s really sexist.

I think a lot of Vella’s contradictory character comes from this sexism and seeing her as a love interest rather than a character. Though she calls out Alex and is upset with him most of the time, she still accepts his weak apologies very easily--apologies that seem very manipulative and insincere when almost immediately after, Alex tries to convince her to let him into her Mind Dungeon, and if you take that as a metaphor than it gets even worse.

As well, Vella’s backstory includes her being used by a much-older man. What can you do after she tells this traumatic story about her being used by a man? Kiss her. And she doesn’t even get upset or angry with you; she just blushes and says to head back to the others. Because that’s not gross and manipulative or anything. That’s not taking advantage of a vulnerable woman at ALL.

The only female characters of importance that aren’t lusting after Alex are his mom and Chondra--I’ve already mentioned that Chondra has little story importance and personality, and Alex sees his mom as nagging for asking him to get groceries, gets angry at her when she says that she lost her job and asks him to get one to support the house (please note that she paid for his and his sister’s college educations in full, including semesters she didn’t plan for), and gets annoyed with her freaking out when he went missing for five days.

So yeah. The game doesn’t have the highest view of women.

But let’s talk specifically about Essentia. Essentia mentions that Alex has hurt her in parallel realities--but it’s okay, because they’re parallel versions, not actually him! And Essentia reveals that Alex’s parallel was the person who hurt Vella! But it’s okay, because she’ll love him unconditionally no matter how much he hurts her. It’s... really reminiscent of domestic abuse. And it frankly doesn’t matter that Essentia turns out to be a part of Alex and that any of the story of Vella or Sammy isn’t true; the game frames it as perfectly okay that it might have happened. It’s okay that parallel versions of Alex have hurt parallel versions of Essentia, because she loves him. It’s incredibly twisted, and it’s honestly a dangerous message to be sending.

(Also, in a very weird instance of sexism against men, out of all of the parallel selves that Essentia shows Alex, the only man is extremely hostile and violent towards Alex. It’s... kind of weird, honestly.)

Depression/Suicide:

Oh boy. Oh fucking boy.

A little background on myself.

I’m two years into my undergrad for a Psychology/Criminology double major. Classes I have taken include classes about pathologies of the mind and mental health (Psychopathology of Childhood, Developmental Psychology, Personality Psychology, Seminar on Positive Psychology, and of course Basic Psychology to be specific). I have also been clinically diagnosed with anxiety/depression, and both of these are genetically based, meaning that I have lived with them my whole life and will continue to live with them. (I am medicated, for anyone wondering. The meds are the only way I can function at a normal level.) I have felt suicidal before, I have had friends who have been suicidal before, and I have talked others down from self-harm or suicide. I’m not an expert, but I know a thing or two about mental health, depression, and suicide.

This game... this game doesn’t fucking get it at all.

(Just a quick thing: the game makes an OCD joke. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder jokes aren’t funny, folks, since people who have it are affected by it all the time to the point of it often being debilitating. Just wanted to mention it a) to give you an idea on how the game handles mental health and b) because it really doesn’t fit anywhere else.)

Most of this surrounds the character of Rory, as he clearly suffers from depression and suicidal thoughts, as well as feeling grief surrounding his sister’s own suicide. When this is revealed, you know what Vella says to “comfort” him? “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. I understand what you were feeling. 'This depression is unbearable.' 'I can't take it anymore.' The 'depression/pain' part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can overcome it is up to you. You decide if you're going to keep going. Your sister is dead. Nothing can change that. [...] You can't help but feel the pain, but you can get through the suffering. That will go away. Look, I understand that it's easy for me to say. I'm not the one whose sister is dead. But you have to understand that I am telling you the true reality of the situation. You're playing with some otherworldly dangers here!“

Let me break this down to show you why this is not something to say to someone who is traumatized and in a deep depression due to the loss of a loved one.

“[W]hether or not you can overcome it is up to you.” This puts full responsibility of overcoming grief and depression onto the person suffering from it, which is not okay, and not true. Rory lost his 12-year-old sister to suicide! Very recently in the game’s timeline, as well!

Vella is basically telling him “it’s your job to get over your grief and depression.” Putting full responsibility on someone for feeling depression and grief is disgusting. If someone is grieving, what they should do is reach out. If they aren’t, reach out to them. Don’t let them suffer alone. Suffering like this is not a choice. People don’t choose to suffer.

By saying that suffering is “optional,” it subtly blames the person suffering for their own suffering, which makes their chances of getting better plummet. So frequently will people suffering from mental disorders put the blame on themselves for “not trying hard enough” or “being broken” or “not being good enough” because they think that this is all their own fault, and they won’t seek help, because “it’s all my fault.”

Now, when someone is in recovery? Yes, they should definitely try--even if it’s in small bits at a time--to to learn to cope with their disorders in healthy ways. However, when in recovery, the person is assisted by therapists, friends, family, and possibly medications. They aren’t alone. They aren’t alone, and are often guided by those who know how to help them and want to help them. The responsibility isn’t pushed solely onto them. One doesn’t “get over” being depressed. They learn to cope. They learn to accept it as a part of them, rather than all of them, and learn that they are more than their depression. The suffering never truly goes away; it can lessen, though, and a person can learn to live with it.

Some people may defend this by saying that the Allansons lost their mother very recently, and this is how they handle their grief. I lost my father in February of last year. I know this type of grief. And just because that’s how they handle their grief, that doesn’t mean it’s a healthy way of coping, nor the type of coping mechanism you should promote in your game. (I will admit that my own methods of coping weren’t great, and that I’m trying to improve on that now.) There’s a quote that I heard somewhere that goes something like, “grief never really goes away. We just learn to live with it.” That suffering doesn’t ‘go away.’ It ebbs and flows, some days being bearable, and other days not.

But that’s not the end, friends. Oh, far from it.

At one point, you can flat-out tell Rory to “stop being depressed. Being depressed is a choice.” It is noted to be the “wrong” choice, however, Rory barely reacts to it, making it not seem like the wrong decision. I don’t feel like I need to explain why “depression is a choice” is a take colder than the depths of space. Depression’s not a choice, folks. Hell, I would love it if it was, I would love to stop the fatigue, the emptiness, the lethargy, the lack of motivation, the irritability, the messed-up appetite, the fucked-up sleep patterns, the fits of crying. That would be fucking great. But I can’t. BECAUSE IT’S NOT A CHOICE, YOU WALNUT.

Okay, okay, sorry, back on topic. So let’s say you’re mean to Rory. You wanna know what happens?

He kills himself. And according to this user, the story doesn’t change and barely acknowledges Rory after his death. (Obviously there’s not footage out there of the characters mentioning that Rory committed suicide. However, the developers themselves commented on the previously-linked Steam forum post confirming its legitimacy. This is so unbelievably fucked up. Suicide is already a topic that should be handled with care, but having a main character commit suicide and have that death have no impact on the story? I don’t even have words for how deplorable that is. (Doesn’t help that the game basically pushes whether Rory lives or dies onto the player, which is also disgusting, because I don’t think the developers had the insight into suicidal ideation to know that it’s a multitude of factors that lead to suicide, and not just one person being )

(Sidenote: here are the links to the National Suicide Prevention Line and the Crisis Text Line in case anyone needs them. Please take care, friends. <3)

[Addendum: as I was working on this review and listened to the podcast linked a little further down, Andrew Allanson had this to say at 2:08:47: "When you make an unlikable character, people expect Sherlock Holmes or Dr. House. They want flawed heroes, but only to the extent that they’re beautiful and intelligent and slightly Asperger-y."

Thank you for basically saying that having Asperger’s Syndrome is an unlikable trait or makes people unlikable.]

Anti-LGBTQ+

So let’s talk about the prejudice against non-straight and non-cis people!

Andrew Allanson has been rather fucking clear about his prejudice against trans people and non-straight people. In the “The Dick Show” podcast, starting at 1:45:45, Andrew Allanson was interviewed by the commentators. I will be providing timestamps of quotes since I can’t directly link to them.

(Sidenote: I was listening to this podcast and waiting for Andrew’s pa rt to start, and one of the commentators was talking about Women’s History Month, and saying “If a woman doesn’t have a man, she’s going to expect the government to be her man. That’s just the way they’re wired.” [1:44:24 - 1:44:31].  Yeah. That tells you the type of people who run this podcast and the type of people that Andrew decides to associate himself with.)

[1:52:15 - 1:52:] “... we made the mistake of asking the player, ‘what name did your parents give you?’ And it turns out that that is a very offensive question. Because some people, um, are trans, and don’t use the name their parents gave them. So immediately the game is targeted as being transphobic. [...] So we wanted to basically create a character off of the player in the game, the first thing we ask you ‘are you a boy or a girl,’ ‘what’s your name’, and people were so bent out of shape over this. Look, I’m sympathetic to trans people, I understand why it upset them. But the problem was when we apologized, that wasn’t good enough. People then took it and said ‘what else can we find in this game to prove that it’s offensive?’”

So here’s the thing: that... is lowkey transphobic? Because it’s like you said, these people don’t use the names that their parents gave them. You’re asking them, intentionally or not, to deadname themselves. There’s a reason they call it a “deadname.”

Later on they ask, “which of these do you identify with?” and show a male figure and a female figure. Which frankly, is alright.

And then they changed it in an update to “what do you look like?” which feels like a very direct jab at trans people, especially the ones who were upset by the initial question relating to names.

Oh, and then there’s this part (I only know DIck and Andrew’s voices, I’m afraid I don’t know the third, sorry m8).

[1:54:35 - 1:55:10]

Andrew: So you play as this guy, Alex, you just come home from [college, audio cut out here], you’re an entitled asshole--

Dick: You get points for stomping queers, as I understand it, that’s the game, right? You go around and--

Andrew: The goal is to establish the white ethnostate.

[unintelligible as others laugh and talk over each other]

Dick: --you have a little ‘gaydar’ in the corner and it points you to the nearest homosexual, and then you go, y‘know, “Hammer [X]”

Andrew: It’s - it’s - yeah, it’s a hack-and-slash.

Dick: If you buy the game they send you a special overlay you can put on your controller that turns all the buttons into ‘K.’ So it’s not ‘A’--

Andrew: Yes!

Dick: --Just ‘K,’ ‘K,’ and ‘K.’

Andrew: Just ‘K,’ ‘K’--yeah, exactly, exactly.

So we not only have the mockery of gay folk, but also mention of murdering them (whether in a joking fashion or not, this still isn’t fucking funny and not something to joke about, especially if you are not LGBTQ+ yourself. And to my knowledge, none of these men are).

And that’s just from the creator himself, as well as the first few minutes of the game.

Let’s talk bout The Scene.

What is The Scene? Well, it’s the scene where Alex and Rory talk, where you can tell Rory that “depression is a choice.” Should you be kind and supportive to him, you know what you can do? “Try to kiss [him.]” And there’s art for it. There is literally no reason for this to be here other than “haha it’s a guy trying to kiss another guy, gay people are funny!” It seems to be an attempt at humor, but it fails... rather miserably.

The Legendary Third Ending

I call it “legendary” because no one knows if it actually exists or not, because people can’t find it, regardless of the hints given by the developers.

Andrew, while doing “The Dick Show” interview, mentions that he put DIck Masterson (the host of the show) into the game in the third update [1:45:56] , and that you have to give Dick a pair of aviator glasses, where he will give you a red pill [1:47:15 - 1:47:33]. Dick is also found in Chapter 4 of the game [1:47:40].

The devs also tease it on Twitter, saying that it’s “sad and challenging to complete”, and they give vague and unclear hints that don’t seem to help even the fans of the game--after all, no one has found it, apparently. Even the YIIK Discord (though this is just hearsay) has been losing steam in trying to find this ending.

I think it’s a testament to the quality of the game when one of your major three endings is nigh-impossible to find. (For the record, I feel the same way about how PT went about its ending, and how arbitrary it felt to do these very specific things that the game barely tells you about.)

Miscellaneous Other Things That Don’t Fit In The Above

There are a couple other things that irk me about this game, so time for a rapid-fire round!

You can kiss Rory, who’s implied to be a senior in high school (due to this talk of college). So he’s, at best, 18. Alex had 5 and a half years of college (the game says “five and a quarter” but unless I’m mistaken colleges work in semesters not quarters,), so he’s probably 23-24. Yeah. (There’s also the issue of consent--when you kiss Vella she just blushes and acts more docile, while with Rory, he rather vehemently rejects it. So women just accept an unwanted kiss? Hm.)

You fight a flasher as a miniboss. Because sexual harassment is hilarious. (And if neither Michael nor Rory are 18 yet, then there’s the possibility of minors being involved. YEAH.)

The title card is intentionally glitchy af and it hurts the eyes, honestly.

If you go through New Game+ and go to the 70th floor of the Mind Dungeon, Alex will basically talk to himself about some things:

It mentions that “crows are ugly.” You fool. You absolute buffoon. Crows? Excellent. Very intelligent birbs.

This is basically “hey we suck, but so does everyone around us, it’s fine”

This game unironically uses Wonderwall lyrics in an emotional scene, like I know it was popular and not a meme in the 90s but my guy, you gotta think about the connotations with the audience you’re releasing this for,

“I sighed as the elevator began to shake, vibrating with motion.” Thank you for using three words to describe the elevator shaking,

The One Thing That I Liked

Surprisingly, there is something I liked about this game. Not solely in concept, not in its potential, but in its actual execution.

It starts on the day of New Years’ Eve. It’s dark outside and inside. Alex suddenly starts getting many random calls, some from people he knows, others he doesn’t. Some voices are distorted, some aren’t. Some are talking to him, some aren’t. And they’re quick little calls before they hang up, and Alex barely says a word. He can’t leave the house, and keeps getting phone calls that get more and more distorted as time goes on.

That? I think that actually really works.

It’s a more subtle way of showing reality breaking: getting calls from people, both friends and strangers, that are slowly getting more and more broken, and you can’t do anything. You’re trapped in your house, you can’t see outside, you don’t know what’s going on. You can’t help your friends, even when Michael screams for your help. The slowly deteriorating stability of the calls are your only indication of what’s going on outside.

And for me, that works. It was the one section of the game that I felt legitimately invested in. So, kudos to the devs for that one.

Conclusion

YIIK isn’t just bad. It’s offensive. It’s ignorant, it handles serious topics incredibly clumsily, and the worst of it is that Andrew Allanson considers it to be ‘art.’ (If you’re wondering why I didn’t talk about the “video games aren’t art” quote, don’t worry. That’s going to be its own essay.)

YIIK fails on every level, from technical to storytelling. Please, I beg of you, don’t give this game money. Just go watch the LP.

You may have noticed that I didn’t talk much about the “postmodern” aspect of the game, nor much about Alex as a protagonist.

Both of those are going to be their own separate essays.

This wild ride still ain’t over, folks. Hang on.

[metalandmagi]

March Media Madness!

Hello and welcome to the post where I talk about all the movies, books, and TV I consumed this month in my seemingly never ending quest to shout my feelings into the void. And oh boy all the winter anime is ending so I feel dead inside.

*puts on sunglasses* Let’s do this.

Movies!

Bohemian Rhapsody: The one about Queen Freddie Mercury. And it’s pretty good. It’s a little weird seeing a biopic of a band with literally no struggles getting into the industry, and I wouldn’t say it does wonders for the negative stereotypes about bisexuals...but who cares because if you’re watching this movie, it’s because you just want to sing along to some Queen songs and see some big hair! 8/10

How to Train Your Dragon- The Hidden World: The third and final installment in the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, in which Dreamworks pulls a Butterfree on us, but at least we get a happy ending. This franchise holds a special place in my heart for so many reasons, and I’m glad that this one stuck the landing. Each movie has its own specific feeling and message, and they all advance the story in unique ways. Apart from being beautifully animated and hilarious, it also packs the big emotional punch we all were expecting and ends on a satisfying note overall. But it’s still not perfect. The other riders are at their most useless by far, and this is coming from someone who never really minded them before. They’re a lot more irritating if you’ve watched the tv series and can see how they can be useful. And Astrid really only provides emotional support instead of her usual ass-kicking. The villain was...fine...but he didn’t really pack much of a punch. And I really wished they had kept some sort of continuity and embraced the television series (I NEED A DAGUR CAMEO)! But these are mostly small things. If you haven’t given this franchise a try yet, please give it a chance! 9/10

Ralph Breaks the Internet: The poorly named sequel to Wreck It Ralph, in which Ralph and Venelope must travel to the internet to save Sugar Rush and keep the game characters from becoming homeless. It’s a fine follow up, but it definitely doesn’t have the same impact the first one did. There’s a heck of a lot going on in this movie, and it feels like it tried to do too much in terms of plot and character arcs in favor of sacrificing the humor from the first movie. And I really miss Felix and Calhoun. But there are a lot of good things about it too. Everything the Disney princesses do is pure gold, Shank is amazing, and there is a ton of effort put into building the world of the internet. I’m sure it will be pretty dated in a couple years, but it’s not just a quick cash grab full of name dropping and references (even though Disney seems like it wants it to be). It’s still worth checking out. 7.5/10

A Quiet Place: A family must survive in a world where deadly alien monsters that are attracted to sound have invaded the planet. I am the world’s biggest wimp when it comes to scary movies, and even I was interested enough in the premise to want to see this movie. And yes it’s amazing! The performances are all incredibly moving and believable, we get good representation of a Deaf character, the sound design is so creative it should be used in film classes, and it tells a thrilling and heart wrenching family story in only an hour and a half. I think I liked it because the focus wasn’t on the monsters just going around killing people. It’s about a family and what parents will do for their children. People like to say there’s a ton of plot holes, but if you actually think about them for more than five seconds, you’ll see there’s really nothing to pick apart because their decisions all make sense in the end.

My only question is about the cochlear device the daughter (Regan) uses. Was the dad (Lee) trying to make a new cochlear implant? Did Regan already have the internal component implanted in her cochlea? Had she been using one since before the monsters came? Did it break earlier because of the monsters’ connection with electromagnetic waves? Because if not...CIs don’t really work like that. I’m just confused about that situation. But that’s kind of nitpicky when this movie is still amazing. Even if you hate horror movies, I’d highly suggest it simply because of how creative its production is. 9/10

Mary Poppins Returns: It’s exactly what it sounds like...Mary Poppins returns to help the now adult children of the Banks family with the help of Lin Manuel Miranda. It’s fun, but it definitely goes on too long. Though I appreciate Emily Blunt putting her own spin on the character. Odds are if you like the original, you’ll probably like this too. 8/10

Fantastic Beasts- The Crimes of Grindelwald: The second movie in the Harry Potter prequel-verse, where Grindelwald basically becomes wizard Hitler and Newt is more concerned with winning Tina back then saving the world. Okay...this movie is not great. Structurally it’s a mess, the fun is being sucked out of the wizarding world, the characters make decisions that don’t align with previous behavior and make no logical sense, and there really is just the bare bones of a plot. There are also several characters that don’t need to be there and are just thrown in for fanservice (for now anyway). I found myself constantly saying how things don’t work like that and asking why things are happening. But even so, there are still good things about it. Visually it’s...fantastic. Jude Law makes a good young Dumbledore, and even Johnny Depp embodies what I always imagined Grindelwald at the height of his power would be like...I just wish it wasn’t Johnny Depp. I also wish it had more humor, because what was there was funny. It’s really just a transition film, which proves this franchise should never have been five movies, and Rowling should have focused on a Marauders era series or on young Dumbledore and Grindelwald. You just have to form your own opinion. 6.5/10

Maquia- When the Promised Flower Blooms: An immortal girl becomes a teen mom to an orphaned baby after her clan is killed. It’s basically a high fantasy version of Wolf Children. I honestly don’t know what to think about this movie. It does the family relationships so well and really drives home what it means to be a parent. However, its setting really throws me out of the movie because it tries to focus so much on the politics and background of this world without really succeeding. And because it is about a baby growing up, the pacing is so fast it will give you whiplash. But it is beautifully filmed and animated, and I would have bawled my eyes out at the ending if I wasn’t so distracted by how much I didn’t like the other characters and things that were happening at the castle. So...yeah, it’s a well animated, hard hitting movie that will probably mean more to parents overall. I just wish it was a TV series or a trilogy or something other than a two hour film. 7.5/10

Free Solo: A National Geographic documentary covering Alex Honnold, a man who is attempting to climb up the 900 meter side of El Capitan at Yosemite national park...without ropes or safety equipment. Yes, this is an incredible feat and the actual climbing portions are gripping and super intense. But personally, I found who Alex is as a person much more fascinating...and not necessarily in a positive way. Honestly, he can be a jerk. This sounds horrible to say considering he’s a real person and he’s doing something amazing, but seriously watch this movie and tell me this man is not one step away from being a sociopath. It’s completely understandable why he thinks the way he thinks, but it’s not exactly healthy for the other people in his life. I would be just as interested to see a two hour therapy session with him as I was with his climbing. Anyway, if you love gorgeous scenery and butt-clenching thrills with a side of psychologically interesting perspectives, watch this on the biggest screen possible. 8/10

The Matrix: REALITY IS AN ILLUSION, THE UNIVERSE IS A HOLOGRAM, BUY GOLD BYE

Yeah I’d never seen The Matrix, but I really didn’t expect it to be EXACTLY like the Oto arc in Tsubasa Chronicles. It’s too long, Neo’s an incredibly flat protagonist (but I feel like that’s on purpose to serve some sort of self-insert fantasy), and it seems like a YA dystopian fantasy series from 2013...but in an endearing sort of way. And hey it’s got a lot of cool slow motion fighting and neat body horror if you’re into that sort of thing. 7/10

Books!

Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman: What happens when California literally just runs out of water one day? A group of teens go on an apocalyptic field trip to find some of course! I’ve only read one other Neal Shusterman series before, but I’m sensing a pattern of how well Shusterman can propose a theoretical question and then build an entire world around it. And this duo knows how to cover as many bases as possible because every time I ask a question about how something world work, the authors answer it almost immediately. This is a great story with very well written characters, and it even has a small hilarious twist in the end that makes you completely rethink everything about one of the characters. Most importantly it doesn’t follow the Scythe series’ formula of terribly written romance. However...it’s definitely a major bummer. It’s very interesting to think about, and it’s a roller coaster of a story...but the roller coaster only goes down and makes you want to scream all the time. If you like books that make you question human behavior and society, definitely check it out, but get ready to start hoarding all the water you own. 8/10

Jackass!: Okay this one’s a manga, but I’m still counting it. Honestly I don’t even know how to describe the plot...there’s two boys...there’s pantyhose...there’s a fun side character who is openly gay and doesn’t take shit from anyone...there’s introspection about how to deal with developing feelings and realizing you care about someone. It has the most awkward premise ever, but it’s unfairly good I promise. The less you know going in the better. 8.5/10

TV Shows!

The Umbrella Academy: A family of seven children with super powers who were “adopted” by an eccentric billionaire become child superheroes. So naturally, they all grow into jaded adults who are now tasked with saving the world from the inevitable apocalypse. And it’s...amazing. Like, this should be the new Stranger Things amazing. It’s a Netflix original based off the Dark Horse comic series, and it has one of the most binge worthy plots I’ve ever seen. It is capable of pulling off some very weird things because it just leans into it. The setting and aesthetic is very similar to A Series of Unfortunate Events where different time periods seem to collide, and it works pretty well. It has (mostly) likable characters, interesting and/or empathetic villains, great use of music and editing, and Emmy worthy performances. The only thing I don’t like (aside from them killing off a perfectly interesting character for no reason at the beginning of the show) is the romantic relationship between two of the siblings. Because naturally they had to put a romance in it, and it just sort of conforms to the idea of “adopted siblings aren’t related so it’s not weird.” But even they have some great scenes together so I can’t be too annoyed. It’s amazing. Please watch it. 10/10

Ducktales (2017): The reboot of Ducktales, in which the three nephews of Donald Duck go on mysterious adventures with their obscenely wealthy uncle. I’m pretty sure we all know this as the cartoon where Scrooge McDuck swims in his giant pool of money. It took me a long time to get to, but I like it! Webby is an amazing character, and even though the boys can be annoying, at least they all have their own personalities. I just wish Launchpad was a little less...stereotypically clueless. I’ve never seen the original series, so I can’t compare them, but I’d recommend it for everyone who likes Gravity Falls style mysteries and satisfying story arcs. 8.5/10

Carmen Sandiego (2019): The Netflix original animated series that focuses on a master thief who travels the world stealing important artifacts before an evil organization can get to them first...AND HOLY CRAP WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS!? I don’t know anything about the original Carmen Sandiego franchise, but dang this revamp is awesome. Carmen is a great character who banters enough to be a Marvel protagonist, there’s unique animation, some mystery, and its own twists. The side characters may not be for everyone, but I like them...well, most of them. Apparently the purpose of the original franchise was to be educational, so they do sound like they’re reading the Wikipedia page for every new place they visit in the beginning of each episode, but at least the cultural things they mention always come back into play later. If you liked the new She-Ra or shows with great heroines, PLEASE WATCH IT! 9/10

Queer Eye (season 3): The third season of the ridiculous makeover show where five fabulous gay men rocket into people’s lives to boost their self confidence and keep them from living in filth. I hate that I love this show so much. I don’t like things that try to be overly emotional, but dang it, this show will just make you feel happy...and then sad...and then happy again. 10/10

Honorable Mentions

THE LAST SEASON OF STAR VS THE FORCES OF EVIL IS AIRING! Stop sleeping on this gem people!

Netflix finally released the rest of Arrested Development season 5

I started watching Yu Yu Hakusho because it’s a classic and the dub is hilarious.

I also started watching The Librarians. It’s...something that’s for sure.

And I’m currently reading Reign the Earth which is basically Avatar the Last Airbender set all in the desert.

[skateurgency]

Netflix Death Note 2/10

I watched this POS. I watched all of it. I forced a friend to watch it with me because I couldn’t go through it alone.

I couldn’t go more than 5 minutes without pausing it to sCREAm at how poorly it captured the original. I dented my wall guys. I became so enraged seeing one of my favorite series brought this low. It destroyed its source material and left behind the worst adaptation yet of Death Note and just an all around poor quality film. If you haven’t seen Death Note and are afraid of spoiling the source material with this film, don’t worry! Maybe 7% is the same. Maybe. However, there will be spoilers below.

Oh Boy. It was hard to get through. There as just so much wrong with it. Light’s a little bitch. Ryuk is barely there. Misa, aka Mia, is one of the most unlikable charterers I have seen in a long time. Granted, I didn’t care much for Misa Misa in the manga, but Mia took it from indifference to strong dislike. Mr. Turner (Light’s dad in this version. I can’t recall a first name) is such an unlikable man. Also, a plot point is that Light’s mom is dead and he doesn’t have a sister so you know right there that the whole Mellow arc is basically scrapped.

Now I know that this was an “adaptation” of the manga, and an Americanized version. There may have been a few too many creative liberties used because almost nothing followed the source material. It seemed more like a bad high school drama than Death Note. Hell, an important scene takes place at a homecoming dance. Light Yagami (Turner) at a homecoming dance. Talking about the Death Note in BROAD FUCKING DAYLIGHT.

After watching the film I made a comment to my friend that you could have taken out Ryuk from the film and it wouldn’t have changed the plot one bit. Except we would have been spared the scene of Light shrieking in fear and cowering under a desk. If you’ve made a Death Note adaptation that could easily remove the shinigami and nothing would be different, you know that you messed up right there.

Speaking of Ryuk, he is an odd presence in the film. He is no longer bound to the owner of the death note, instead it seems like he comes and goes while he pleases. Also, now he can only be seen by the owner of the death note, not just anyone who touches it. Thus Misa (Mia) can never see or talk to him throughout the film, which leads to some odd exchanges. Unlike the manga Ryuk, this one never goes in to the boredom speech. Remember when Light asks what he did to receive such a great power and Ryuk tells him it was just dumb luck that he picked it up, Ryuk just dropped it because he was bored? Yeah, there was none of that. There isn’t the scene of Ryuk telling Light that if he uses the death note that he won’t go to heaven or hell, and that Ryuk will be the one to kill him in the end. I always liked that scene in the manga, it gave Light’s choices more weight.  Ryuk honestly... doesn’t do much at all. He eats some apples, that’s pretty neat. Ummm... he has a nice line at the very end of the film... I think that’s it, asides from Light screaming or threatening him a few times.

Which really bothered me. Like, REALLY bothered me. This movie screws up shinigami death, along with a lot of the rules of the death note. Light tells Ryuk he’ll write his name down in the death note, and Ryuk just tells him “the most anyone ever got was two letters.” You can’t kill a shinigami by just writing their name down. There’s only a handful of beings that know how to kill one, two of them being Ryuk and Rem, who isn’t in the film at all. Yes, a shinigami can die if thery forget to put names down, but a way to kill one is by having a shinigami extend the life of a human they care for when that human’s life was supposed to be up. Rem’s friend does this for Misa Misa and then brings her his death note per his request. Not like any of that comes up in this film. Misa (Mia) never gets a death note, never becomes the second kira, and never gets there eyes. Because oh yeah, something key like the shinigami eyes and this girl being so in love she quarters her life span for a guy doesn’t make it in to this film.

A few other rules are off though, such as the way ownership works. The film makes it no longer Ryuk’s death note and has a scene about how it will pass from human to human (I don’t remember the specifics and I’m not about to watch it again) after a certain amount of days. I also do not think the owner loses their memory. There’s also this odd clause that if you write a name down but later destroy the page before it happens the death will be cancelled. But you can only do this once. This becomes a major plot point for the film when it isn’t at all in the manga (that I recall. Feel free to correct me on this.) Also, you apparently don’t need the right names because Light fucking writes down Watari as fucking Watari AND IT WORKS. WHAT. WHAT THE FUCK. WHY?

This is getting very long winded because I have a lot of rage, so I’m going to break this down by issues I had with each character and how off they were from their manga counterparts.

L - I’ll start of positive. For the most part, I liked L. The actor was much better than his rival, and made L seem human. His performance was a highlight. My main issue with L was the weird limo scene with some odd neon shades and asking Watari to sing him to sleep. It also upset me that he showed his actual face in a press junket. They focused more on his candy than how brilliant L actually is. Both he and Light don’t seem to be anywhere near as intelligent as they should be. In the film there is scenes of L coping with the loss of a friend that wasn’t in the manga since L and Watari die at about the same time. It was actually nice to see and made L seem a little more warm and human.

Watari - Good actor, gave a good performance. Odd casting choice in my opinion? Watari was one of the few Japanese actors in the cast when he’s playing the only non Japanese character. Watari was an old English gentleman. His name is Quillish Whammy for fuck’s sake. The actor gave the roll a good go, unfortunately it was just written poorly and most of his scenes take place at what looks like an old horror movie set.

Ryuk - I already touched on Ryuk previously. The VA did a fine job, he actually looked pretty decent. Sadly, his lines are all pretty worthless and for the most part he just makes Light nearly piss himself when he shows up.

Mr. Yagami (Mr. Turner) - This man is such a fuck. I disliked him so much. I really respected Yagami in the manga. He made tough decisions and was ready to do what he must to catch Kira. In fact, he quits the police force in near disgrace to fight Kira. That scene where he asks L to confine him as well because his son is confined in suspicion of being Kira? That scene where he is prepared to shoot his son and then himself? His father trading for the eyes but never using the death note on Mellow because he still wants to redeem him? Yagami being a good, developed character? Yeah, none of that. Instead we got tense conversations between him and Light because they don’t like each other. We get him choking L out at a family dinner because L says Light is Kira and Yagami abandoning L to protect his son at all costs. He even finds out his son is for a fact Kira and does nothing. 

Misa Misa Amane (Mia) - Boy did I dislike Misa in this film. The first scene is her being a cheerleader but being too “over life” to do the cheers? God, she is such an unlikeable, uncharasmatic bitch in this film. That’s such a big change from bratty but cute and bubbly superstar model Misa Misa. The actress had very little charm in her delivery. A lot of her scenes were of her trying to convince Light to kill more. A lot of them. Most of her scenes in the later half of the movie. She seemed to be going for a Harley Quinn vibe, complete with a “normal people scare me” hung up in her locker. Misa steals pages from the death note (since she doesn’t have her own) and sneaks behind Light’s back to kill the FBI agents trailing them. She also writes Light’s name down in the death note, to try and gain ownership of it. It honestly seemed like Light and Misa’s personalities were switched from what they were in the manga. Maybe it was to try and make her a strong female character, but it fell flat. What I found was one of the major characteristics of manga Mia was that she loved Light. She would do anything for Light, such as trading for the eyes twice or giving up her death note and memories when Light asks her to. This Misa seems to care much less for Light and more about the death note and killing. It doesn’t make her endearing to the audience, I don’t know what they were trying to do with her.

Light Yagami (Light Turner) - Where to begin. The acting was quite weak. The boy can scream and cry and beg, that’s for sure. However, he’s playing Light. There should have been no need for any of that. If only. I think what upset me most was that this film didn’t make Light seem smart. He does people’s tests for them at school and... that’s it. That’s where you’re supposed to infer that he’s a brilliant top of his class, getting primed for great things. Film version Light isn’t liked at school where as manga Light isn’t super popular, but he has friends. He has girls ask him out a few times. There’s some dialogue between Ryuk and Light about how popular he is with the ladies. Whereas Film Light is pretty much alone except for deranged Misa. There’s also no secrecy about the death note. He fucking has it in his lap during gym class, just chilling there. Misa asks what it is and he shows her how to use it. Just like that. They talk about it and killing people constantly out in public or in classes. It’s so unrealistic. Light doesn’t try to hide anything. On his first time meeting L he confesses to being Kira, just like that. He confesses it to his dad later on as well. He has a few exchanges with Misa about how much he wants to give up the death note and run way together because he loves her. After all, there was a montage of them making out while writing down names, it’s true love. The climax of the movie has Light writing down “if Misa takes the note book from me she will die” and Light telling her “it’s the notebook or me.” She chooses the notebook and you see him sob “I never thought you would take it!! I thought you loved me!!” and it’s so very manga Misa Misa. Light acts like the worst parts of manga Misa. He’s always ready to just give up and cry under a desk. The only good thing he does in this film is kill Misa.

One of the brilliant things Death Notes does is it challenged the reader about what is truly good and evil. Reading it for the first time I remember siding with Light up until he makes the jump to killing anyone after him. Then I was with L and the SPK. But then L dies. The leader of the “good side” dies and Light has his iconic “I win” panel. The whole world turns to Kira in support, and the reader does once again. He won out, he must be the good force after all. Then Near and Mellow show up and once again the reader is unsure of who to support. Mellow uses such underhanded tactics and causes Mr. Yagami’s death so he can’t be good. Near was a little kid so by virtue he had to be good, although personally I dislike Near. L and Mellow grew on me, Near didn’t. At this point Kira can’t be attributed solely to Light as he has Mikami and Misa working for him, but Kira is the bad guy again to the reader. The reader is thrown back and forth with who they support as things develop, but the characters themselves still fully believe that they all are what is good. The side of justice. The SPK thinks that they are in the right by bringing Kira down. Kira thinks that he is right by serving out justice and acting as god. It makes the reader really, really question what they think about right and wrong.

This movie version stripped that away. I never got the feeling that Light believes he is actually doing the right thing. He constantly is questioning their actions and wanting to stop. The viewer never thinks Light is in the right for a second, the viewer never wants him to win. You never have to question is Kira’s justice right or wrong.

I think what sums it up better than I could is the difference between these two scenes (Please note I do not have my copy of the book on hand and I’m not rewatching the film so this is from memory. Words may not be exact but the overall sentence is). In the manga Light comments “They have chosen to call him Kira. I don’t particularly like it as it sounds similar to the American word for killer, which is not what Kira does, he is justice.” In the film, Light states “I chose the name Kira because it’s close to the Japanese word for killer.” There ya go. Light chooses (CHOOSES) the name Kira because it sounds like a nice edgy name that is a word for murderer, which Light views himself as.

Bottom line, don’t watch it unless you too want to be upset. L, Watari, sometimes Ryuk, and the plethora of awful snapchat stickers my friend and I got were the highlights.

 2/10 - just not no chip scene, barely any scenes from the manga.