#wonder if the dev hell of 2 and 4 has anything to do with it

[jonnyparable]

Autumn on the Farm

So things have been going well for Yuto. He is actually very rich and I did not expect to earn that much from crops alone. In fact, he's so rich, I'm thinking he can just singlehandedly carry Komorebi's economy. Which I will now put into effect by getting him to give people money as a form of investing in their businesses. But of course, the Sims 4 being the 8th wonder of the gaming world that it is, has already hurt itself in its confusion. So far some issues have occurred, the coop is not producing any eggs, although I'm not sure if I'm doing anything wrong, or if its just another fabulous bug.

There's no dispute, however, that this next issue is a known bug which I've just learnt about. Basically almost all my crops reverted back into a dirt pile, like they had just been planted. I thought it's cos I did something but Googled and turns out NO, this is just another issue with the game. Below, you can see how the whole crop field just turned into a nipple museum.

I found a modder who took her own time to FIX ANOTHER ISSUE FOR FREE and it works. But you know what? I wish to live in a world where I didn't need to have to mod a game to make it function as intended. To me, a mod should be adding cool, novel or bizarre things to the game, not making it WORK. My Sims 2 game was modded to hell and back, and that's only because I was forcing the game to be something it wasn't. Namely a very niche, period specific farming game. On its own, very little about the Sims 2 bothered me enough or was broken enough that I had to mod it out. If anything, things I had to mod out were gameplay features that worked perfectly as intended, but were just annoying, not actively broken. Things like newspapers rotting, magic spells needing raegents, or Sims waking up to react to weather. I played that game for 20 or so years and would 100% still be doing so if my computer hadn't died. I would be here continuing the story of Cottage Hills, having had whole plotlines about Saqhaba, going back to Shang Tao, and searching for the other gifts of the Goddess all over the world. Instead I'm here, about 3 months into this game, and already ranting about how it's a broken product. Gardening shipped with the Sims 4 base game, and it's 100% just broken. Honestly, this game is so demoralising and its eating away at me. You can't help but look at it being cute and you think it's got some things going for it and then BAM it goes tits up bonkers as if it was coded by a bus seat. You can sometimes see the devs having fun with something, and I do want them to, but then you see all the lazy shortcuts, sloppy execution, reused animations and just the massive amount of things that have no purpose or gameplay, and it just erases any goodwill when you realise how much they're charging for the experience. The fact that basic things in the game just don't work, while they're out here selling useless shit clutter for basements and greenhouses, including a disassembled Sims 1 Livin' Large heart bed, is just such a big sweaty fuck you to the players...

Sigh sorry for the rant. I tried to stay positive but this game is doing too much y'all. At least its ~pretty~.

[felassan]

Check out this video interview with Mark Darrah, ‘On Anthem’s Launch, Dev Advice, And Leaving BioWare’. It’s interesting and pretty substantial. He talks about a bunch of different things, including his YouTube channel, things BioWare could’ve done differently, crunch, whether he’ll write a book about his gamedev experiences, gamedev pitfalls, Anthem’s troubled development, the development of projects he worked on including DA2, cancelled projects (and what happened to them) including Jade Empire 2 / ‘Jade Modern’ / Revolver and Mass Effect: Corsair, the reasons why he left BioWare and Dragon Age 4.

I recc giving the whole thing a watch, but if you’re not able to, here are the Dragon Age 4-related quotes and other especially interesting-to-me portions transcribed for ur convenience! (under a cut due to length):

Mark: "There is a tendency for projects that are small to think they're amazing, because it's so much easier. Like when I ran Sonic [Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood] - it was a 20 person team - it's just so much easier to make things go smoothly than when you have a 200 person team. So I think that we've made progress, but as Dragon Age pivots into production and that team gets bigger and bigger, it will be interesting to see if that's true or if it's just the blindness of being a small team. Like when Inquisition was in the throes of shipping, both Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem would love to talk about how they were 'doing things right!' and then they fell in totally different holes, but still fell in a bunch of holes after Inquisition shipped. So I do think that there is a hubris that comes from a project in early development where you feel like this time you've figured it out."

---    Mark: “As Dragon Age [4] was moving towards production, I could see that like, the team, I've been told by people that they've never met a team that more wants to be in production than Dragon Age team. But what ended up happening was, in order for the team to really explore the space properly, we had to sort've train them to be in pre-production. But that meant that that team no longer really wanted to be in production, they wanted to be in pre-production. And so, looking at what was going to be required to pivot that team into production, it wasn't a challenge that I thought I was up to any longer. I think that team, once they get into the mindset, is capable of moving entire mountains, and will move entire mountains, but they need someone that can lead them through that."

Interviewer: “Yeah, from the outside it's striking that you and Casey Hudson left at the same time. It sort’ve definitely implies a ‘fuck this’ moment for the two of you. If it was just you saying ‘I can’t do it’ then it’s understandable.”

Mark: “Yeah, no, I mean, it’s hilarious, because, we definitely were not coordinated. That was, as near as I can determine, there was nothing that triggered us on the same moment other than maybe just a sort’ve mounting, just, like, this friction, being at the, I would say, the GM and EP, the point at which the [something?] friction and the project friction meet, and you’re just sort of grinding there. But I don’t think there was a massive injection of anything late last year that triggered that. Not that I can point to. For me, yeah, I do think it was, weirdly, a coincidence. Casey and I have stayed in touch, we didn’t leave to go form a studio together or anything.”

---

Interviewer: “Are you being torn apart a little bit internally about that pressure of, ‘I know if I just made a video that said, The Secrets of Dragon Age - not even Dragon Age 4, whatever the hell that thing’s called at this point - but just, The Secrets of Dragon Age: Origins’, like, you know that  audience surely would show up. I imagine there’s that community that’s screaming at you, like, ‘Tell us something we don’t know about Dragon Age, tell us about the future!!’, versus, trying to play it a little more straight and actually offer gamedev advice.”

Mark: “Yeah, for sure, absolutely, like, looking at, there is an entire segment of YouTube which is ‘Dragon Age fans talking about Dragon theories and watching the trailers and picking them apart’ and I could do that, and that would be, I feel like that would almost destructive to everybody, because I could deflate all the theories, some of which are completely completely wrong, some of which are amazingly right. But I think, like, I don’t think the community actually wants that. They might sort’ve think they do, but I think if I just sort’ve pulled away the curtain, I think it’d be like, ‘Ohh.. but now what are we gonna talk about? :(’ Like I don’t think that anybody wants that honestly. It would be great for my metrics but I don’t think anyone really wants that.”

Interviewer: “And not to offer you advice, but like I think there’s somewhere in the middle. Like when they have the next teaser trailer for the next Dragon Age project, you could do a reaction video to that and it would be your most viewed thing by a mile, and you wouldn’t be stepping on anybody’s toes.”

Mark: “Yeah, I have thought about that exact thing. Cause we’ve now moved, I think, beyond the horizon of anything that comes out of Dragon Age at this point, like if they’re at EA Play, and I don’t know if they’re at EA Play or not, then whatever that is will be something that I didn’t have anything to do with, so we’re reaching the point where I can now, I feel like, start to provide, yeah, reaction videos from the perspective of, an incredibly well-informed outsider.”

---

Interviewer: “And you must know, even though you’re not inside the studio, like, just have an appreciation how much that [MELE’s good success and good reception] can do for the studio’s morale. I’d imagine it’s just night and day.”

Mark: “Oh, absolutely, like. Andromeda and Anthem being the last two things before the remaster, that is a cloud that hangs above the studio for sure.”

Interviewer: “Yeah, I mean I remember visiting for Dragon Age: Inquisition, it must have been, and it was still, like, the Mass Effect 3 ending, I feel like, even visiting the studio for two days, you could feel that like, funk, of just like ‘ugh, good Christ, we’ve gotten the crap kicked out of us’.”

Mark: “Yeah, I mean. The Mass endings is an interesting one for me. Because, it’s not the choices I would have made to end the game, but those are the choices that were made. I wonder... I don’t like ultimatums, and I feel like with Mass 3, the team kind’ve gave into an ultimatum. The community was so angry that we then released new better endings to ‘fix it’, and it’s not that that’s a bad piece of content, that’s a good piece of content, but I just worry that, the internet today, seems almost like... a reaction to the Mass 3 endings. Almost like, the internet learned that if you just yell loud enough you get what you want. And I don’t think that’s real, because it’s Mass Effect, it’s not Star Wars.”

Interviewer: “But I mean, if it wasn’t the ending of Mass Effect 3, it would have been something else in that era of Voices On The Internet Being So loud that it causes a big company to pivot and be like ‘Okay, we’ll try and make you a little bit happier, please just relax everybody’.”

Mark: “Yeah, totally. So I mean, I don’t think Mass Effect bears the brunt of the blame of toxic fan culture. But certainly it’s one of the very first examples of that culture managing to make something happen.”

---

Mark: “Now I do feel that maybe I overlearned that lesson, because, something that I did a lot on Anthem was talk about how, you know, ‘this is not a BioWare-style game, this is not gonna have the storytelling that you’re used to’. And I think maybe I overstressed that. I do think that at the end of the day where we are with Anthem today, if you were a BioWare fan that liked all our other games, and you play Anthem with an eye to playing it as a storytelling game, it’s certainly not our best, but it’s not bad.”

Interviewer: “So Anthem marketing and messaging was hurt because you were overlearning the lessons from Sonic, that’s the takeaway?”

Mark: “I do think so. I do think that like, I don’t think it was from the marketing perspective, but I do think that both Casey and I overstressed [that]. We didn’t want people to get mad at us for making a game that wasn’t a very good storytelling game, so we wanted to get ahead of that message and say like, ‘it’s not a very strong storytelling game, it’s a game about all this other stuff’, but, at the end of the day, it is a storytelling game, it’s still in there. And those are the people that stayed away. And if those people hadn't stayed away, I’m not saying the game would have suddenly done [awesome], but it would’ve softened the narrative a little bit, I think.”

Interviewer: “Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m sure you understand this better than anybody, but that’s such a loaded term to say ‘This is a BioWare-style game’, and obviously there’s that era of EA where they were trying to say that every project within EA was a ‘BioWare-style’ game and so, it’s interesting to hear you kind’ve, hemming and hawwing about how much to lean into, ‘no no, this one is 100% BioWare, this one is 73% BioWare’ - it’s such a murky thing.”

Mark: “It absolutely is, I mean, and I even said these things. Like we made MDK2, well, we made it, so I mean is that a ‘BioWare-style’ game? Is Baldur’s Gate a ‘BioWare-style’ game? But if it is, then how is Mass Effect a ‘BioWare-style’ game, and certainly I don’t think anyone would argue that Mass Effect is not a ‘BioWare-style’ game. So that term has to evolve as the studio continues. But I think for whatever reason, for a variety of reasons, I guess, with Anthem we were worried that maybe we’d pushed it a bit too far. And then I guess we did.”

Interviewer: “Did you enjoy any part of working on Anthem, or was it just a matter of putting out so many fires that it was just nothing but stress til the end?”

Mark: “It was stressful for me. I mean. I have a weird - the last ten years of my career at BioWare seemed to involve a lot of helping people land their planes. And that’s what Anthem was for me, I wasn't there from the beginning. I was helping to land it. I think there’s a satisfaction that comes with landing a game, with finishing a product, and I felt that with Anthem as well, and there were a lot of talented people on that project that I’d never worked with before, and that was great. It was great to, y’know, figure out these people that had only ever worked on a Mass Effect, that I’d never worked with before, their skills and abilities. I really like understanding the strengths and weaknesses of a person and building around that. I didn’t really have an opportunity on Anthem to do that because y’know, we were just trying to get the plane on the ground, but I think, having learned about what those people could do, that’s very gratifying because it lets you imagine what you could do with them in the future.” 

Interviewer: “Yeah, if things aligned magically, but for you you realized it never was gonna align, and it was always just right on the horizon of being able to cobble this amazing talent together and focus it down.”

Mark: “Yeah, I mean - I think that I, the mistake that I made on Anthem, I think the biggest mistake, was I’m used to getting a team that pushes back on me in a certain way. So as I’m sort’ve pushing the stick down to get the plane to hit the runway, I’m used to pushing it sort’ve too far, because I know that the team is gonna push it back and then we’re gonna end up where it should be. And I think that given the state of the team on Anthem when I came on, and given the differences in personalities of the leaders there, versus the ones that I’d been working with for ten years, that’s not what happened. I think if anything, I pushed it down, and then they grabbed it and pulled it even further, because they were desperate for help in decision-making, and I was providing decisions. And they were grabbing onto that, and so I thought we were on this glide slope [motions], I was aiming at this glide slope expecting that we were gonna be like [this], but instead we were like [this], and so we, yeah, we landed that pretty rough. But, I mean, it was my call, I’m the one that said we shouldn’t push to move this, not because I thought it was perfect, but because the only path I could see to making it way better was moving it a lot. And when you’re in the last eight, nine weeks of a project, I could only see like, if we were gonna move it, we [would] have to move it like a year. And that’s - in a public corporation that’s a hard argument to make.”

---

Mark: “One of the most expensive things a project can do is slip. Because, your team, when you do that your team is at its maximum size, so if you got 200 people working on a project and you move a month, well that’s 200 staff months, you just got a bunch more expensive just by moving a month. Whereas actually adding more people, well if you only got a month left, to add 200 staff months to a project, you gotta add 200 people, that’s a lotta people. Moving the date is one of the most expensive, and you can reach a point where it’s like, look, it’s not worth it, if we move the date it’s gonna cost more to continue this project than it’s gonna make, so we’re not gonna. But rarely is that the case, you’ve already spent the money you’ve spent, so the only cost that matters is the cost going forward.”

Interviewer: “So, do you regret not pushing for Anthem to be delayed a year or was it good just to get something on the ground so that we could start building to take it off again with a living game?”

Mark: “Yeah, honestly, I don’t regret it, the [team/game?] was tired and it didn’t have another year in it, and I think a lot of the things that are super obvious now, some of them we knew, some of them we knew, like the balance, we had done one, clean balance pass, by having QA come in and hotseat their way through the game over Christmas break. Like literally playing the game 24 hours a day. We’d done basically that once. So we knew that, we knew that. But a lot of the other things kind’ve only came out once it was out in peoples’ hands. I think the path that I wasn’t capable of seeing at the time that could’ve maybe resulted in a better game would’ve been to put it into beta, like a real beta, in the state that it was in, and run it like that and then release it a year later. But I don’t know if there was the will to do that frankly. There might be now... I think Anthem taught EA a lot of lessons.”

Mark: “[on Cyberpunk] I think many of the same things happened there [as with Anthem]. They had a team that was tired and it wasn’t ready but they couldn’t see the path to getting it more ready. If the team is too tired, just taking another two months just isn’t gonna get you what you think it’s gonna get you.” [source]

[potatoof69]

alternatives for honey impact because fuck them

I know a lot of the genshin community know that honey impact was being taken down and now is back up on another server, but I haven’t seen a lot of people that are actually taking Honey’s response seriously and not like it’s just a harmless joke:

Yeah, no. This is literally so disgusting. Fuck honey impact, seriously. If you can still defend them after this, or even laugh at it, then you better ask yourself why you’re fine with defending someone who steals shit and profits “5 digit numbers” off of it, and then proceeds to throw a tantrum with ablest and racist insults to target game devs, not even the owners who actually call the shots. Why are you yelling at people who live off of coffee and fix bugs in their code all day? I doubt they give a shit about company revenue, they’re just trying to fix stupid bugs and remember to stick in semicolons. I know that hating on big companies is all the rage these days, but Honey isn’t even talking about Mihoyo’s greed or anything; they chose to target their ability to speak English and use mental illnesses as an insult.

Honey Impact seems like the best place to find info on genshin chars rn, but here are some alternatives to use so we aren’t giving these assholes even more money:

1. Paimon.moe. This is pretty much the best alternative I’ve found so far, even beating honey in my opinion. It has a wish counter for you to keep track of your wishes past the six month mark on Genshin’s history page, a page to see characters’ ascension materials, scalings, base stats, constellations, talents, and even a quick little guide for each character. It has calculators to find how many resources you’ll need to ascend a weapon or build a character, and even for friendship farming. It has a database with materials (and what day to farm them), weapons, furnishings (including which are the special ones for which chars), and artifacts. It’s got an achievements checklist so you can keep track on what you have to do next. It also has a reminders tab to remind you about stuff like the parametric transformer or logging into Hoyolab to get the daily rewards. It has a timeline that keeps track of all the genshin events in a neat format. Also, no ads at all on this site, yoohoo! Honestly, I’m surprised I haven’t been using this earlier.

2. KeqingMains. This has base stats and scalings from level 6 onwards for each character along with their constellations and passive talents. It also has damage calculators and even lots of in depth theorycrafting guides and pages for each character. It has info on combat mechanics, artifact sets, weapons, world environment, and each enemy in the game. If you want to know all the meta about playing Genshin, here’s the site to go to. Also no ads here, so you aren’t bombarded with “i just fucked my stepmother” manga ads all the time.

3. Genshin Wiki. This has a ton of stuff, like voicelines, stories, base stats, and ascension materials for all the characters. It also has lore and scaling for all the weapons. If you want to see Artifact and book lore, it’s got that too. This is basically the go-to site for all the lore.

4. Hoyolab. Yeah, Mihoyo’s actual legal forum. They have an interactive map on the site, which actually shows a ton of useful stuff. It shows chests, oculi, world quests, NPCs, fishing spots, monsters, wood, local specialties, puzzles (sorted by what kind, too), ores, books, recipes, and even heat sources if you’re ever stuck in Dragonspine with sheer cold chasing your ass down. Along with all the puzzles, chests, and oculi are also videos on how to solve them.

5. Finally, Adblocker. If you really have to use Honeyhunter (to look at leaked chars, I guess), use adblocker. Using Adblocker makes it so the website can’t load ads and therefore owners don’t earn revenue from their ads when you’re looking at the website. So if you really have to use Honey hunter, fuck them up with adblocker. Don’t give more money to their 5 digit earnings that they’re getting by literally stealing data. The person running this site definitely makes more money than the low level employees at Mihoyo so don’t feel bad about fucking them over.

In the end, outside of leaks, Honey Impact is not that useful, nor is it particularly impressive after all. They have no content other than the shit they datamined. Everything on that website is stolen info, and now they even removed watermarks and are literally mocking the people who created all that shit in the first place. Who, by the way, aren’t the ones calling the big shots about main company policies that everyone’s upset about.

Paimon.moe made to-do lists and wish trackers, and is definitely more user-friendly. KeqingMains have better guides and people actually do contribute their own guides and stuff along with the data. Genshin Wiki is a whole database for lore, and Hoyolab has the actual interactive map.

There will always be other leakers. This entire community loves the hell out of leaks. Hell, I like leaks bc I can know ahead of time which characters are coming so my f2p ass doesn’t suffer. I used honeyhunter before all this shit happened, because I thought they genuinely liked the game and it was useful. I also didn’t know they made money off the site, which in hindsight should’ve been obvious bc of all the ads. Yeah, after this, I don’t think they’re doing this for the game or the community, it’s for the money and the clout. Hell if I’m going to contribute to the thousands they make every month after this.

What I don’t like is pretending that leakers are somehow the Robin Hoods, going around generously giving us info bc of course they have no other hidden agenda, right. Yeah, Honeyhunter made thousands off of that site and tons of internet clout, no wonder they’re trying to keep it afloat. Honey Impact won’t always be the only site that goes datamining, others are eventually going to surface and do it themselves. Hopefully those others won’t be racist, ablest, money hungry little bitches. Or Mihoyo might take another step forward and release roadmaps for the characters and render Honey Impact completely useless, who knows.

TLDR; please don’t continue to support Honey Impact. There are lots of better alternatives out there for character and weapon information that you can use. Or install adblocker. Or get your info about leaked chars’ ascension stuff through secondhand sources that repost Honey’s info, bc that way you aren’t actually accessing their site. Because going onto that website does give them money; it isn’t harmless.  

[coffeeastronaut]

top 5 video game levels :)

OHOHOH…. OHOHOHOHOOHOH. im doing this twice bc i wanna talk abt MY favorites and also like mechanically the best ones.

personally:

1. the golden cat from dishonored 1. i just like it so much. Emily :) and it’s so pretty!!! I could probably write a paper about the art inside the golden cat let alone the like actual design of it

2. lady boyles last party from dishonored 1. need i say more. the color the pizzaz the funny aristocrats the guy you can harass till he calls the guards and when they come you can say (drunkly) im an agent of the outsider and then they leave you alone. i used to listen to the ambient sounds of this while i worked i can hear those muffled fireworks in my dreams

3. the opening ray fight in metal gear rising revengence! the fuckin, the PIZZAZZ! the METAL! the SLASHING! its SO much fun. you run up a CLOCKTOWER and EXPLODE and SLICE and DICE. SWAG!!!

4. speaking of platinum games. the final jean/bayonetta fight bayonetta 1! i am so godawful at bayonetta but even with that it is SO mych fun and it brings together so many skills and feels good to play (even when loosing!) in a way that the other jean fights dont- you’re finally on even footing, rather then the backfoot. also, lesbian win.

5. Yakuza 0 final boss rush 💛 the bosses are rewarding and wicked fun. Fuck the kiryu boat though those guns are total bullshit.

Mechanically:

1. I can’t not say the clockwork mansion from dishonored 2 here. Did you know that the entire mansion could actually work irl? Like it’s not just bits clipping through each other- it all has a place to go. The only exception is one room at the very front of the mansion, where the ceiling pulls apart to reveal a higher, cooler ceiling. The dev team decided it would be okay to have 1 swaggy ass moment at the expense of possibility (the bars that make up the ceiling just kind of shoot out the side of the mansion, LOL). there’s so much to go into here both technologically and mechanically- the npc pathing, the clockwork soldiers, the hiding in the walls like a rat, the ghost run being so VERY fast because jindosh’s greatest strength (his big fucked up mansion) is also hos greatest weakness (i am inside your walls and you cant do anything about it HA! bitch.) also tho i hate fighting clockworks its so scary and i am such a baby. on high chaos its a blast tho bc you have so much more power- on low i am so scared. i suspect they will be the end of me several times on my groundhog day run

2. A crack in the slab from (bet you wont guess) dishonored 2. the time travel mechanic is SO fun to play with! my only qualm is that it comes at a time when you’re really laying into your powers, only to loose them here. that’s why this isnt higher. But i live that you can solve jindosh’s lock, i live that it’s different ever time, i love the gang politics of overseers vs hatters, i love granny rag’s hand, i could go on and on and on. Do you have any idea how insane i went the first time i knocked over a rickety balcony in the past and climbed its rubble in the present? cuz it was very.

3. Little nightmares’ janitor library sneak round. My heart is in my throat every time I play, it’s done so very well. Little nightmares gets a lot of shoutouts on this front- encounters are timed excellently to keep me on my toes every time, without feeling overwhelmed or so perfectly timed that it’s a fifty fifty on wether i’ll actually make it. (looking at you, little nightmares 2)

4. Framed. The whole thing. Framed is a puzzle game that involves the player shuffling around ‘frames’ in a comic, to change the course of the story. Specifically the very end of framed 1 is just wonderful- the swing back around to the beginning of the game and watching it all come together is so, UGH, its so cool.

5. Portal 2 wheatley fight. The fucking moon, man

honorary mentions:

the final boss in plunge! It’s hard as hell, but so insanely rewarding. It really pulls all the previous mechanics together nicely, and i cheer every time i beat it. You will play plunge now.

Playdead’s inside’s chicken shooting in the farmhouse! The game is dark, but for me this was the first moment where it really starts to click- the last chick that wasn’t moving. And then you go straight into the factory and it all really kicks off.. phenomenal tone.

undertale papyrus date 💛

Deathloop’s fristad rock morning (hi franky baby im here to kill you again) and updaam night (lets fucking PARTY! get in the meat grinder.)

I thought it would be cheating to include anything from mgs 1-3 but likeyou know. Psycho mantis, sniper wolf (second), vulcan raven (second), liquid fist fight, rex fight, like, you know? And thats just mgs1. we cannot go into mgs2 ill be typing for thirty minutes and we wont even be done with the tanker mission.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Top 10 favorite things about TFS?

Bold of you to assume I can narrow it down to just 10 things, but I’ll try my best. 

Here’s a list of things I LOVE about The Final Season of TWDG, starting from #10 and working my way down to #1.

10. Rosie is best girl and doesn’t die 

Listen, okay? If you give me a game with a doggo companion that I bond with only to have said doggo die for dramatic effect... you automatically lose 2 outta 5 stars on your rating. Case in point: Season 2.

However, tfs knew not to kill Rosie off for dramatic effect, knew it’d be cheap. Plus, Rosie is a sweetheart and I love that she helps Clementine come to terms with her past trauma with dogs and genuinely bonds with her. Rosie is best girl. 

9. Over the shoulder camera/controls 

They’re the best of the series, having come a LONG way since S1. Like, look... Don’t get me wrong. S1 isn’t unplayable or anything, far from it, but they’re not the greatest either. They’re pretty wonky at times, the fixed camera can get annoying when you’re moving around, and sometimes button presses don’t register. It’s definitely something I have to get used to whenever I go back and replay the entire series, and like I said, it’s not the worst controls in the world... but oh man, compared to TFS?

Have you ever played S1 and then jumped straight into TFS just to get a direct comparison of the two? Because I have and it’s jarring how much smoother, accurate, and overall better everything is in TFS.

Just... props, guys. Thank you for the over-the-shoulder, movable camera, thank you for the polished button prompts, and thank you for a run button that has Clementine go into a nice jog rather than a comical run or, eh... does nothing [lookin’ at you ANF... Javi slow].

It’s just so effortless to play. The most trouble I ever have is with doors but that’s a given- Doors make no goddamn sense in this series and I’ve given up trying to learn their secrets. Oh, and speaking of more improvements! 

The shooting mechanic in this game is leaps better than in S1. Y’all remember the Motor-Inn shootout? The one that was such a frustrating pain in the ass?? So much death and anger...

I still die sometimes when shooting the walkers with the bow, especially the ones that are on fire, but it’s nothing compared to the shooting mechanic in S1, so the biggest THANK YOU for that one. It’s actually enjoyable to shoot stuff this time around.

8. Collectibles 

You as Clementine get to pick up various collectibles to decorate her and AJ’s dorm with and it’s great. One of my favorite bits about this game is seeing Clementine wake up in this empty, lifeless room, and see it get brighter and brighter with every collectible you place throughout the game until you reach the final scene with AJ where the room is just FULL of life and personality. Like... it’s officially theirs. It’s such a good feeling! 

And the devs totally didn’t have to add the collectible system in, but I’m so thankful they did. I’m one of those people who gets every single collectible every single time I play. 

7. Ericson’s Boarding School for Troubled Youth

Y’know, I honestly can’t think of a better place for Clementine and AJ to end up than Ericson’s Boarding School for Troubled Youth. It’s awesome, I love it, what a great idea. I also love the sense of wonder when we step outside for the first time and see the inside of Ericson, as well as the others, walking around. Like even Clementine is taken back by it.

Because of course it makes sense for Clementine to end up in a school surrounded by people closer to her age rather than with a group of dumbass adults like in the past three games.

Here it feels like they’re all about on the same level. There’s no older person here belittling Clementine because “she’s just a child and doesn’t get it,” they’re just people, y’know? Hell, if anything, Clementine’s now the most experienced one!

The school’s great! I wouldn’t change a thing about TFS taking place here. The environments are beautiful and I love exploring the world. 

6. Marlon as an antagonistic character/final confrontation 

I have an entire Marlon character discussion/study so I won’t put too much time into this one, but I will say that I love Marlon’s part in tfs. I love him as a surprise antagonistic character, I love how chill he is in the beginning, I love the final confrontation at the end of ep1... I just really like Marlon, y’know?

Ray Chase gives a damn near perfect performance as Marlon, so much so that I wish he survived past ep1 just so that I could hear more of his acting. Marlon himself in an interesting look at a leader character hiding his shame and guilt while trying to maintain control over everyone [including himself] around him, only to be broken down when he’s found out. 

5. James 

I know people tend to be pretty split on James, but I personally really like his role in tfs. I love that they included a character who was apart of the Whisperers, and hell, if anything I’d like to know MORE about James’ past with them. 

I just find him and his whole “walkers are sort of people? kinda?” beliefs. Again, I know some people get annoyed with him because of his beliefs but I think he adds an interesting spin on the whole thing, y’know? Though I do love what a bitch he is if you don’t agree with him hahaha

James is a bitch and I love him, okay? I love his dumb walker mask, I love his dumb boyband hair, I love his whispery voice, and I love his backstory with the Whisperers and Charlie. I love this he’s trying so hard to be this pacifist that he ends up doing the literal thing he said he doesn’t want to do-- hurt people. Y’know... like attempting to kidnap AJ and threatening to break Clementine’s leg in the caves if he’s alive. 

Which, by the way, that whole cave scene is a thing. It’s wild and I love it but not for the reasons the devs probably wanted. Like... it’s a little hilarious? I know it’s not supposed to be! But I can’t take James seriously when he’s walkin’ around his hands on his hips all huffy and puffy, okay? It’s just wild. 

Anyway, I love James and wouldn’t get rid of him. Hell, I’m still waiting for my James with the Whisperers mini-series, Skybound. 

4. Ericson Crew

There isn’t a single character from Ericson that I don’t like, or that I’d get rid of, which is rare with these games. Thinking back to the previous games, there’s always at least one person I could do without or that I didn’t like. I adore all of them!

The Ericson crew just feels closer than previous groups. For starters, they’re way more likable than most in our previous groups. Even when there’s tension [and boy is there tension at points] you still get the sense that they don’t hate each other, unlike in our previous groups. They do in fact love each other as a family and will do what they can to protect one another.

Plus, they’re all interesting. They’re troubled youth and I love all of them! 

Aasim keeps a daily journal where he chronicles everything in hopes of learning from past mistakes to prevent future ones, he’s damn good with a bow, and he’s got a neat little soul patch on his chin.  

Ruby is the tiny yet fiery medic of the group who adamantly believes in manners yet used to chase teachers around with pitchforks. 

Brody is caught up in the twin mess with Marlon but she’s also shown to want an escape, a road trip where she and her friends can go see the beach, but she also suffers with anxiety and panic attacks and isn’t afraid to knock Marlon on his ass or swear at Clementine. 

Mitch is a grumpy, tall boy who looks after Willy like a brother, knows how to make bombs out of manure and propane, and used to fight his neighbors because they didn’t like his face. 

Omar is a sassy chef who has to have every ingredient just right otherwise he’s salty for a week and he can take a bullet to the leg like a champ. 

Willy’s a goober who can climb trees like you wouldn’t believe and he made a bomb of his own in Mitch’s honor that completely wrecked the delta’s ship. 

Tenn is a soft, naïve boy who draws and reads but isn’t afraid to stab a walker bitch if he has to. 

Violet was sent to the school after witnessing her grandmother’s dead, she used to date Minerva who is now “dead,” has abandonment issues,  tries to give off the appearance of a grumpy grump but like once she’s comfortable with you she’ll tell you her life story and do romantic shit like dancing and painting you a pin. 

Louis was sent to Ericson because he was a rich brat who broke up his parents marriage because they wouldn’t let him take singing lessons and has felt like garbage ever since, using humor to cope and push people away, and keeps the façade on until someone’s willing to see past it in which he’ll finally bare his soul to you, name a song he wrote after you, and do everything in his power to keep you and everyone else safe over himself. 

I just... Love ‘em all. 

3. Clementine and AJ’s dynamic 

To think that they almost killed AJ off, or kept him a minor character. That would’ve been a shame and an absolute waste because Clementine and AJ’s dynamic is super fucking good in tfs. 

It’s actually a little baffling that AJ’s as good as he is, from his writing to his voice acting, he’s just great. And his relationship with Clementine is definitely one of my favorites to come from this game. It’s not perfect, but I don’t want perfect. 

I love that AJ looks to Clem for guidance and I love the way our choices affect him, even when it’s a case of the bridge scene. Hate the bridge scene knowing that I gotta sacrifice a character I care about for another I love, but I can’t deny that I love how that choice is made. After everything, do you trust AJ or not? 

Plus, their conversations are so well done, their chemistry is through the roof, and I wouldn’t change it. 

Oh, and the barn scene? Gets me every time, even though I already know everything’s fine and gonna work out. Still gets me. 

2. Clementine is Bisexual

I’ve talked about this in the past, but lemme just say that I love the fact that Clementine is canonically bisexual. 

Doesn’t matter if you’re dating Louis, Violet, or no one, Clementine is still bisexual. The game confirms it through it’s text/subtext and Clementine’s actions that we don’t have control over, and the devs confirmed it. She ain’t straight, she ain’t a lesbian, she is bisexual. 

I can’t express how happy that makes me. Just... 💗💜💙

And with her being bisexual comes her two great love interests: Louis and Violet. They’re amazing, and such an improvement over the previous game’s attempt at love interests... ahem, y’know... Kate.

1. Louis as a character/his relationship with Clementine 

I mean... c’mon. Y’all knew what #1 was gonna be. Do I even need to explain? This entire blog is just me gushing about Louis/clouis. 

Look, Louis is my favorite non-playable character across the entire series. Hell, even when you factor in playable characters, he’s STILL my absolute favorite. Like, even outside of his relationship with Clementine, I find him to be such a compelling character by himself. 

Like I mentioned above, he came from a stupid rich family who gave him everything he ever wanted, but when his father wouldn’t let him take singing lessons, he literally worked for over a year to break up his parents marriage because “you get to be happy or you get to be rich, can’t be both.” 

He gets sent to Ericson where the apocalypse happens, he never gets to make up with his parents, and he ends up using jokes and piano as a coping mechanism to deal with everything, falls into a cycle of being unreliable and the butt of the joke, and lives one day at a time without much thought for the future. 

He puts on the happy jokester persona to push people away from knowing the real him and rarely shares much about himself. Hell, when Clementine does hunting and decides to take care of the walker with him, he actually does let down the wall for a minute to share his view on “this moment” before looking away like “Oof, shared too much-- HEY, GO CHECK ON AASIM :D I’LL BE OVER HERE :D FIXING THE TRAP :D and adjusting the wall ahem--” 

It’s so interesting because you’d think that he’d be more open about his past with Marlon or the twins or whatever [like Violet is] but no, he doesn’t tell you shit about his past until EPISODE 3 and you have to work to get that story. 

I just... I just love him. Could talk about and analyze his character for hours. And I love his relationship with Clementine. It’s just so good. The piano scene where they finally admit their feelings for one another?? That shit has my entire heart. Their entire relationship is my favorite. What else is there to say? 

[silver-wield]

I think i do agree with that anon about aerith being an oudated heroine and tifa is nowadays heroine tifa is realistic badass she doesn’t rely on magic from a stick she trained hard day and night so she can get where she is right now where aerith lives in a wonderful sector taken care off when she become an orphan she didn’t lose that many people in her life even the people who’s supposed to be her enemy treat her well bottom line is she lives like and is treated like a princess (1)

Yes her and her mom were taken and were done experiments on them but can you compare what they gone through on what happened to cloud & zack and just when you want to feel sorry for her i remember i played OG first i didn’t like how she got her way with everyone but then CC got released and i was like seriously girl you BF was killed tragically and you got busy on chasing a guy you barely knew and created a dumb rivalry with the a girl who befriended you out of kindness (2)

When i knew her real story she become more meh to me and started to see how the devs seem to ignore her flaws just because she’s their golden heroine, she always got promoted more than tifa it was really unfair how tifa got treated despite tifa having her own role in the game as a heroine but they only seemed to care about aerith because oh she die,in remake i got reminded again why i don’t like her when she assumed that cloud in love with her 🙄”this girl is so full of herself “me at her (3)

It's curious that when I was watching the making of Remake they never referred to Aerith as a heroine. She's a main character, but Cloud, Tifa and Barret are too. Nojima said he took care with her lines because they're important. Tbf, it makes her sound more like a plot device. She's someone who pushes the overall plot forward, which we see in part one, but she doesn't seem to push the character development forward. If anything, her behaviour towards Cloud forced his development back because he retreated further into that soldier persona around her. He wants to keep his distance because he's suspicious of her, for good reason, and it's even alluded to in the ultimania that the only reason he's sticking around is he's suspicious of her, but Aerith keeps getting in his face which he doesn't like. So, Cloud's trying to find a balance between figuring out Aerith's deal and staying the hell away from her, so ofc he ends up sounding awkward af.

Tifa’s trained her butt off and actually it says in Crisis Core she's got a natural talent for martial arts, which mirrors Cloud's natural talent with a sword.

My teacher tells me I've got a knack for it.

Tifa’s 15 at this point and if she's only just started training then in the span of 5 years she's turned into an expert. She slays. Fact. She's probably on the same level as Cloud since he got some mandetory training at Shinra and was noted in BC he had skills. So, Cloud's had 2 years of formal weapons training, and then he's using Jenova's mimicking to fight like Zack and Sephiroth. Later in AC he'll develop his own dual wield style, so Cloud and Tifa are talented, but also hard workers.

Aerith has magical cetra powers that don't require anything but communing with the planet 😑

The lifestream infuses the water that's in this river, too, so that explains why the flowers grow so well and why there's a pool of water in AC.

Tifa grew up in a ruined dust bowl of a town and despite the fact her dad is the village chief, which gives her a certain amount of comfort, she suffered a lot of hardship as a kid, though it's "normal" hardship till Sephiroth appears.

With how Remake's showing us the mistakes people made about OG, I don't think Aerith was interested in Cloud romantically. She treats Cloud like a child in AC.

Cloud calls Aerith mother. Aerith says she doesn't want a big kid like Cloud. Zack reiterates there's no place for Cloud with them.

This is the JP with subs btw.

So, yeah, I'd say the type of affection between them is more like a parent/child dynamic than romantic. It's only in dismantled and maiden that romantic love is referred to and neither is canon.

Tifa gets just as much fan service as Aerith. Probably more. She also gets promoted in interviews and ads more than Aerith. Of all the 7r promotions I've noticed it's Tifa who gets the most narratively relevant promos. The 7r ad with the new logo included an important scene for Tifa that refers to the later scene on top of the Shinra building that references the promise and also mirrors Cloud's own history with her. It's really a matter of knowing the story and understanding what's being shown. Aerith's scenes are always that red dress, which is fan service (it literally has fans in it) and part of the concept of illusion vs reality. Aerith in her red dress vs Tifa saving Cloud.

People get too focused with the surface and not the bigger story implications. Cloud having made the promise with Tifa and recalling it in chapter 4 means that sooner or later he'll wind up in the lifestream with her where he confesses he always wanted her to notice him.

And I think it's important to realise that Aerith isn't actually aware of everything that's going on in Remake. She's got some knowledge of OG events, but not everything is the same.

In OG, Aerith gave Cloud the flower and walked off. So, in Remake, she sounds confident Cloud's not being hunted because she never saw him being chased by public security since it happened after she left. But, the whispers appeared, meaning Cloud was probably on time to catch the train and not be forced to make a dramatic leap from the bridge, so they forced him to hang around long enough until public security caught up with him.

This is something Aerith couldn't have known because it's not in OG. It's the same with things she wasn't around to see in OG. She never would've seen alone at last, the train roll or anything before Cloud fell through the church roof. After that point, she's using OG as her guide for how to behave with him. And it's failing. It's why she's surprised when he gets mad at her. It's why she says no one will get mad if they make noise, because of the OG rooftop laugh that isn't present in Remake. Aerith in Remake isn't aware of all the advice Cloud's already got from people in sector 7, or the fact he's much more proactive in his affection with Tifa. So, even if she tries to delude herself that he's like Zack (and during the slide scene the GER translation states Cloud reminds her of Zack, not that they're the same rank) Cloud's not playing ball with her. His focus is already Tifa, so Aerith's behaviour during her resolution from his pov makes her look as desperate as Jessie. In JP he comments how one sided her words were like it's a joke she made. In ENG he's referring to the fact that she doesn't listen to him. At all. Ever. Cloud’s opinion doesn't matter to Aerith, and the same is true now because she echoes Cloud's own high affection HW scene line from OG about it being nearly morning. So, indirectly, she's telling the audience what Cloud's choice is.

Yeah, from one angle it just looks so arrogant to act like anyone would fall in love with her so quickly, but Nojima even said he kept the line that way because it could be interpreted like that. It's a comparison behaviour to Sephiroth's arrogance, which also ties in to Cloud being suspicious of her.

This is why they say this game isn't for kids lol

[shinelikethunder]

Fandom Userscript Cookbook: Five Projects to Get Your Feet Wet

Target audience: This post is dedicated, with love, to all novice, aspiring, occasional, or thwarted coders in fandom. If you did a code bootcamp once and don’t know where to start applying your new skillz, this is for you. If you're pretty good with HTML and CSS but the W3Schools Javascript tutorials have you feeling out of your depth, this is for you. If you can do neat things in Python but don’t know a good entry point for web programming, this is for you. Seasoned programmers looking for small, fun, low-investment hobby projects with useful end results are also welcome to raid this post for ideas.

You will need:

The Tampermonkey browser extension to run and edit userscripts

A handful of example userscripts from greasyfork.org. Just pick a few that look nifty and install them. AO3 Savior is a solid starting point for fandom tinkering.

Your browser dev tools. Hit F12 or right click > Inspect Element to find the stuff on the page you want to tweak and experiment with it. Move over to the Console tab once you’ve got code to test out and debug.

Javascript references and tutorials. W3Schools has loads of both. Mozilla’s JS documentation is top-notch, and I often just keep their reference lists of built-in String and Array functions open in tabs as I code. StackOverflow is useful for questions, but don’t assume the code snippets you find there are always reliable or copypastable.

That’s it. No development environment. No installing node.js or Ruby or Java or two different versions of Python. No build tools, no dependency management, no fucking Docker containers. No command line, even. Just a browser extension, the browser’s built-in dev tools, and reference material. Let’s go.

You might also want:

jQuery and its documentation. If you’re wrestling with a mess of generic spans and divs and sparse, unhelpful use of classes, jQuery selectors are your best bet for finding the element you want before you snap and go on a murderous rampage. jQuery also happens to be the most ubiquitous JS library out there, the essential Swiss army knife for working with Javascript’s... quirks, so experience with it is useful. It gets a bad rap because trying to build a whole house with a Swiss army knife is a fool’s errand, but it’s excellent for the stuff we're about to do.

Git or other source control, if you’ve already got it set up. By all means share your work on Github. Greasy Fork can publish a userscript from a Github repo. It can also publish a userscript from an uploaded text file or some code you pasted into the upload form, so don’t stress about it if you’re using a more informal process.

A text editor. Yes, seriously, this is optional. It’s a question of whether you’d rather code everything right there in Tampermonkey’s live editor, or keep a separate copy to paste into Tampermonkey’s live editor for testing. Are you feeling lucky, punk?

Project #1: Hack on an existing userscript

Install some nifty-looking scripts for websites you visit regularly. Use them. Ponder small additions that would make them even niftier. Take a look at their code in the Tampermonkey editor. (Dashboard > click on the script name.) Try to figure out what each bit is doing.

Then change something, hit save, and refresh the page.

Break it. Make it select the wrong element on the page to modify. Make it blow up with a huge pile of console errors. Add a console.log("I’m a teapot"); in the middle of a loop so it prints fifty times. Savor your power to make the background wizardry of the internet do incredibly dumb shit.

Then try a small improvement. It will probably break again. That's why you've got the live editor and the console, baby--poke it, prod it, and make it log everything it's doing until you've made it work.

Suggested bells and whistles to make the already-excellent AO3 Savior script even fancier:

Enable wildcards on a field that currently requires an exact match. Surely there’s at least one song lyric or Richard Siken quote you never want to see in any part of a fic title ever again, right?

Add some text to the placeholder message. Give it a pretty background color. Change the amount of space it takes up on the page.

Blacklist any work with more than 10 fandoms listed. Then add a line to the AO3 Savior Config script to make the number customizable.

Add a global blacklist of terms that will get a work hidden no matter what field they're in.

Add a list of blacklisted tag combinations. Like "I'm okay with some coffee shop AUs, but the ones that are also tagged as fluff don't interest me, please hide them." Or "Character A/Character B is cute but I don't want to read PWP about them."

Anything else you think of!

Project #2: Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Fork (DIY blacklisting)

Looking at existing scripts as a model for the boilerplate you'll need, create a script that runs on a site you use regularly that doesn't already have a blacklisting/filtering feature. If you can't think of one, Dreamwidth comments make a good guinea pig. (There's a blacklist script for them out there, but reinventing wheels for fun is how you learn, right? ...right?) Create a simple blacklisting script of your own for that site.

Start small for the site-specific HTML wrangling. Take an array of blacklisted keywords and log any chunk of post/comment text that contains one of them.

Then try to make the post/comment it belongs to disappear.

Then add a placeholder.

Then get fancy with whitelists and matching metadata like usernames/titles/tags as well.

Crib from existing blacklist scripts like AO3 Savior as shamelessly as you feel the need to. If you publish the resulting userscript for others to install (which you should, if it fills an unmet need!), please comment up any substantial chunks of copypasted or closely-reproduced code with credit/a link to the original. If your script basically is the original with some key changes, like our extra-fancy AO3 Savior above, see if there’s a public Git repo you can fork.

Project #3: Make the dread Tumblr beast do a thing

Create a small script that runs on the Tumblr dashboard. Make it find all the posts on the page and log their IDs. Then log whether they're originals or reblogs. Then add a fancy border to the originals. Then add a different fancy border to your own posts. All of this data should be right there in the post HTML, so no need to derive it by looking for "x reblogged y" or source links or whatever--just make liberal use of Inspect Element and the post's data- attributes.

Extra credit: Explore the wildly variable messes that Tumblr's API spews out, and try to recreate XKit's timestamps feature with jQuery AJAX calls. (Post timestamps are one of the few reliable API data points.) Get a zillion bright ideas about what else you could do with the API data. Go through more actual post data to catalogue all the inconsistencies you’d have to catch. Cry as Tumblr kills the dream you dreamed.

Project #4: Make the dread Tumblr beast FIX a thing

Create a script that runs on individual Tumblr blogs (subdomains of tumblr.com). Browse some blogs with various themes until you've found a post with the upside-down reblog-chain bug and a post with reblogs displaying normally. Note the HTML differences between them. Make the script detect and highlight upside-down stacks of blockquotes. Then see if you can make it extract the blockquotes and reassemble them in the correct order. At this point you may be mobbed by friends and acquaintainces who want a fix for this fucking bug, which you can take as an opportunity to bury any lingering doubts about the usefulness of your scripting adventures.

(Note: Upside-down reblogs are the bug du jour as of September 2019. If you stumble upon this post later, please substitute whatever the latest Tumblr fuckery is that you'd like to fix.)

Project #5: Regular expressions are a hard limit

I mentioned up above that Dreamwidth comments are good guinea pigs for user scripting? You know what that means. Kinkmemes. Anon memes too, but kinkmemes (appropriately enough) offer so many opportunities for coding masochism. So here's a little exercise in sadism on my part, for anyone who wants to have fun (or "fun") with regular expressions:

Write a userscript that highlights all the prompts on any given page of a kinkmeme that have been filled.

Specifically, scan all the comment subject lines on the page for anything that looks like the title of a kinkmeme fill, and if you find one, highlight the prompt at the top of its thread. The nice ones will start with "FILL:" or end with "part 1/?" or "3/3 COMPLETE." The less nice ones will be more like "(former) minifill [37a / 50(?)] still haven't thought of a name for this thing" or "title that's just the subject line of the original prompt, Chapter 3." Your job is to catch as many of the weird ones as you can using regular expressions, while keeping false positives to a minimum.

Test it out on a real live kinkmeme, especially one without strict subject-line-formatting policies. I guarantee you, you will be delighted at some of the arcane shit your script manages to catch. And probably astonished at some of the arcane shit you never thought to look for because who the hell would even format a kinkmeme fill like that? Truly, freeform user input is a wonderful and terrible thing.

If that's not enough masochism for you, you could always try to make the script work on LiveJournal kinkmemes too!

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

“i had a dream about the Borderlands are Yours trailer last night for like the 7th time so i guess i ought to do the analysis before i have a breakdown”

find the trailer here

~discussion of the cloth map spoilers occurs in here, but nothing else. if you’re worried about those spoilers do not read~

non-spoiler tl;dr: we discuss why rhys’s head implant is yellow instead of blue in this one particular scene and also go thru a bunch of theories as to what tf is up with Zer0. and some other stuff about giant space lasers

so the intro is pretty much the same as the we are mayhem trailer so we’re gonna ignore that since we figured out where sanc-iii was

pretty sure this scene has been shown already too, in the official announce trailer, i remember taking note of the pink shots

another cov camp on pandora (see elpis in the back). ive said it before and ill say it again i adore amara’s as animations

seen this a bajillion times as well

from we are mayhem near the end. also im still lowkey convinced that robot directly to the right of moze is jakobs. i know i’m probably wrong but... i want to believe. it reminds me of a cowboy

The Are. this is directly below Sanc-III (u can see the wall in the background)

eden-6!!! im interested in the signs in the back there

Prison, Reliance, Jakobs Estate, and... amoe kyuri??? wtf does this say?? idek.

This A Way (glad to know Claptrap will haunt us from beyond Sanc-III)

im interested in the Prison. i wonder if that’s any of those concrete structures/buildings we’ve been seeing across eden-6. i was under the assumption those were like testing facilities, but a prison would also make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

actually

given this sign here over the bridge to the left of the above shot

and the fact we see this concrete structure on the far left in this coming shot

that might actually make some lick of sense...

also can i just say i love the aesthetic of this supply line

so there’s a lot of shots here we’ve already seen and gone over multiple times, im not going to do that again. sorry but... eh.

maliwan = cultists confirmed

i mean if the cult-themed t-shirts being maliwan colored didn’t already cue us in on that, this definitely should lol

and speaking of this shot, i wonder if this has anything to do with Rhys’s building? the one his office would be in. it looks like there are multiple levels to the right of this robo

ah maliwan working with the cult why am i not surprised

rhys gets fucking annihilated (TM)

in all honesty... given this quest name

“Space-Laser Tag” and the subsequent quest “Atlas, At Last” makes me honestly think rhys is about to seriously get fucked up

which sucks. i like rhys. we’ll talk more about this in a second, but i don’t think its coincidence the VHs have come up to the asteroid belt to stop the giant space laser and thus are not on Promethea where the laser is going to hit

better look at this shot, that definitely looks like a rampager to me. i get it, i think. gearbox is hyping up this rampager fight to be super awesome, show it in all the promotional material, have a kickass fight with it, then the twins come in and steal the kill from you. they steal the satisfaction from getting to kill this super hyped-up vault monster.

im picking up what you’re putting down, GB. 

did not realize fl4k actually snaps. how the heck do they do that?? gotta be hard with metal caps as their fingers tbh

404 space station not found

we’re back on the asteroid

... why this gun shoot tentacles :|

this is art

wheres his head going

i was so distracted by the razor blade status effect (??? zeroes??) i didn’t notice the giant-ass A on this banner

OwO what’s this for

~A~

also this which... looks like it could be an amara skill. maybe the one that releases elemental projectiles after an enemy is damaged? feel like we would’ve seen that one already tho.

thinking of this one, im pretty sure we should’ve seen this in one of the many, many gameplay videos (im so jealous) already available.

so if it is, baller, if it’s not, im not too surprised.

it does also seem to be targeting the double cause its shield becomes visible after being hit

i thiiink this is eden-6? in which case it may be that facility tina, brick, and mordy are in (the windows). which may, in retrospect, be that prison we’ve been hearing about

cool angle of the HBC. im pretty sure we’ve seen this shot before, too.

before we get to the actual best part of this scene

this looks very Athenas-like. possibly eridian? although the lights are throwing me off. i suppose the order or someone from the order could’ve built these structures... but what for??

heheheh

also this fucker has those rocks growing out of his head, too

the ones from the alien guns

somewhere outside the RC

back at it again in the space station

also this maliwan thing looks so fucking cool

duuuude looks like the cult got their hands on more than just maliwan hoverwheels, check out that dropship on the left!!! looking cool asf

the cars are STUNNING

holy shit this skin is amazing

very siren-esque

we’ve gone over this clip already but given now that we know the maliwan base thing is on the asteroid, it’s fitting to re-address it i think

a look at one of the metal bois (that im still convinced are jakobs lol)

i love the way this thing looks

the portal seems to be giving off the same blue sparkles we’ve seen on pandora

these

[edit] we also see them in the newest new trailer as Sanc-III zooms off into space. which is interesting.

dunno wtf that means, but yeah. they exist

probably some weird eridian/other dimension shit.

more eden-6

goliath looking amazing. not red and is wearing a helmet, so that’s interesting

looks like a part of the space station

biggggg hallway. im honestly loving how huge these maps seem to be

geniviv! i love her boss fight sooo fucking much.

honestly looks like so much fun

more c a r s

this fucker

probably eridian

i mean it seems to be absorbing the pink-ish energy from the moving stones so i assume its got some sort of link going on

also comparing the mask and arm bit to what we’ve seen rhys hand us on promethea

this thing???

but yellow instead of pink

u kno all this

ye

then again it does sorta ruin the eridian tech so maybe... it’s not lol

honestly my other guess is this is part of that ‘experimental forest’ we’ve seen signs for during the eden-6 demo. dunno why it’s destroying the eridian ruins tho. maybe those pink b e a m s are hurting it? entirely possible. some sorta... life succ ability like Tyreen.

but i don’t think it’s coincidence this thing has shown up right on top of some Eridian ruins/buildings/whatever. the leftmost part though looks like it could be human technology, which is weird. maybe some weird sort of mish mash. human tech that trees/plants grew onto and eridian ruins accidentally powered up. iunno man. im tiored.

rhys’s implant is glowing orange/yellow-ish which is very new

this is from the dev trailer (not glowing at all in the darkness)

from the promethea twitter trailer

and honestly that’s pretty wild to me because in tftbl rhys’s implant glows blue 

shown when he’s in the vault next to fiona

in bl3 during the We Are Mayhem trailer while using his ECHO eye

oh also since i just noticed

from the promethea demo

this scene

also from the promethea demo

they’re missing their monomolecular edge!

we’ll get back to zer0 in a secco

anyway you know who else’s head implant glows?

im not saying katagawa is replacing rhys because their implants are on opposite sides of their heads, but i am saying Katagawa WANTS Rhys in Maliwan and... well, Rhys’s forehead implant isn’t glowing yellow in any other shot we see of him

idk gamers i just think its sus

also rhys is holding onto that thing we see him handing to us in the Promethea trailer

this thing?? you know?

the eridian thingie majig

tho these look like two different areas... unless there’s like a very drastic wall change between angles (which there may be- these fans look identical)

which makes sense that Maliwan would want it (for the big laser thing maybe?? since we know they’re going for activating said laser)

... but honestly i get the feeling this is in some way related to... after the laser. especially since we know that that eridian thingie matches up with this one on pandora

in which case... wtf is the laser for? it definitely looks like its destroying stuff on the surface...

rhys also seems to have knowledge about the eden-6 vault key since he projects it during the dev trailer

me thinks someone got h a c k e r o n i e d

alright galaxy brain theory time:

rhys gets hacked by maliwan not only bc they want a merger, but also because he has info on the vaults/giant space laser, forces zer0 to be maliwan branded now since atlas is joining maliwan, zer0 finds out rhys is not willingly joining maliwan and is instead under maliwan control and tries to forcibly take the key away from him, we stop zer0 and save rhys from both the assassin and maliwan control

🤷‍♂️

Alright but in all seriousness there’s only 2 ways this can go

1. that’s actually our zer0

2. that’s actually not our zer0

and there’s a lot of theories running around about that and i guess we ought to address them

so for 1 there’s a few possibilities:

1. zer0 is a robo/cyborg and got hacked by maliwan (i personally don’t like this one bc i don’t want to know what zer0 actually is. it is a ~m y s t e r y~)

2. zer0 got paid more money to eliminate rhys and is doing so

3. zer0 decided killing their boss would be the ultimate challenge and thus decided to try it out... by joining maliwan

4. they’re faking rhys’s death and/or zer0 is infiltrating maliwan

5. zer0 got the brainwashed/their bodysuit got hacked (i would be interested to see if the monomolecular edge tech caused them to get captured or smth. i mean if there’s a tracker on it, then zer0′s decepti0n wouldn’t exactly work cuz they turn invisible... but they’d still be seen)

6. rhys got the brainwashed/hacked and zer0 is attacking him to get the eridian thingie/key/relic/whatever back

personally i’m curious how they’d play off 1-3 given Zer0 and Rhys are both shown on sanc-iii and zer0 even has crew challenges

im saying idk if the crimson raiders would appreciate zer0 attacking/trying to kill an ally without very good reason.

which is why i’d imagine 4-6 are the more reasonable answers?

also given the explosion of Promethea (what we’re assuming is Promethea) is green and also the laser we see maliwan controlling is purple, i wonder if that’s some brainwashing juice instead of... other stuff. cuz like.

this is elpis’s giant space laser. very radiant and like... ribbon-y? and has all that blue stuff and orbs and mm.

THIS is Promethea’s very solid and has circles and just. looks straight up like a death laser.

and yeah again it could be modified by that human-looking (?) tech around it to be like a brainwashing b e a m or something

or just more precise. that too.

and honestly idk if this could destroy a planet like how we see the planet (that we are assuming is promethea bc of the asteroid belt) in the sanc-iii article

it’s a solid ‘yeah that’s more likely than my theory’. might take a lot of time tho. or maybe those energy rings power it up or deal more damage when they hit the planet...

oh also given Tina literally says “WE blowing up this whole mother humpa”

and the reason im questioning the human-looking tech around it is because

typhon and leda 100% noticed something here. i guess if it was altered by humans after typhon and leda found it then that would make sense?

we’ve also got this from the tree guy, so i don’t know for certain.

anyway number 2

(2. that’s actually not our zer0)

i love these ones

1. that’s 0ne (zer0′s assassin’s assassin from the son of crawmerax dlc)

2. maliwan made a/hired a copy of zer0 and it’s easy to copy their voice/way of speech bc of the modulator (that’s just a fake implanted into atlas to steal all their secrets)

and all of these have the idea that the real zer0 shows up to save rhys at the end of this scene (explaining the blue light)

this

i personally disagree on that being zer0′s sword. tbh it looks more like a maliwan weapon or a laser or smth to me. that said it could be a weird effect because they’re in decepti0n or smth.

most of these theories have the idea that the real zer0 is either off with Fiona or Lorelei or just off on their own and only show up later. i wouldn’t even be surprised, given their line at the end of Tales. you know the one where they diss rhys like “i was talking to her” lol

so i don’t really have much to add to these. personally i believe that’s our zer0 up there, but i wouldn’t be shocked if something happened with the monomolecular edge that allowed maliwan to create a copy of zer0. or brainwash/control them. whichever. 

i do like the reintegration of 0ne into the story, that’d be a hilarious call-back, but i worry it’d be too obscure (a side quest in a headhunter dlc) for the majority of players. we’ll see

it’s weird if brainwashing or mind controlling thru the maliwan tech is the case bc the monomolecular edge isn’t present on their maliwan sword. or their future sanc-iii sword (but that part DOES make sense bc why would they keep that).

(alright also so i just took a bunch of nyquil cuz im sick as a dog so if this devolves into incoherent rambling im so sorry)

ah aurelia

i love her to bits but i don’t trust her because i mean... she worked alongside Nisha and Wilhelm and Alistair dislikes her. there’s like a 50-50 shot she’ll become evil

i would not be surprised if this is a boss fight (door looks frozen over on the left there) but also i would not be surprised if she’s helping us fight off waves of enemies given it looks like we’re in the jakobs manor

like i said 50-50

her attack does make the camera wiggle a bit, usually that happens if the attack injures the player viewing it (with the hud off) cuz it will give a stagger effect

so take that with a grain of salt. also we don’t see aurelia on sanc-iii when hammerlock and wainwright are both there in the group shot in the launch trailer

this fucker i already talked about a bunch in my reddit post on the eridium subject so im going to link that here. i might have already spoken about it on here tbh... i can’t remember lol

anyway here’s the copy and paste from there to here

you can see a huge Tink with Eridium growing out of his head and what look to be Eridium horns. And he's being elementally charged from an Eridian floor tile (in one of those temples, probably the Pandoran one but it could be Athenas, I guess). Kind of like how Bloodwing (also bigger) becomes elementally charged by Jack using element-throwers to change her element. i know it's a cultist tink because on his right shoulder (our left) he has those glow-y pink/purple tubes that are on the CoV guns and other cultists (like goliaths). and while i'm not sure if this is solely Eridian stuff (since they're in a temple) or because of the twins, it's definitely something that should be talked about. 

wait no yeah i did talk about this because of the athenas post. i just remembered lol

uhhh whoops. double dipping i guess lol sorry

still not sure if this is Pandora or Athenas. kind leaning towards Pandora atm

i like how this guy is able to make a cryo wall thing

he goes to smash it but we don’t get to see what happens cuz it cuts to another rampager

dishing out corrosive/radiation (??) attacks while someone shoots it with a fire weapon

this bamf which i KNOW i discussed in that athenas post

also something i haven’t noted is that his roar seems to be activating something here, like a spiral light of dooooom. also more blue sparkles. maybe summoning an assist? or a debuff/attack aoe. 

there is also this weird light near its legs that moves with the camera and sorta reminds me of the weird real-life face talky siren thing. you know the one

very curious as to what this is cause i haven’t seen it in any other scene with a rampager in it. maybe some sort of connection to the spiral/whirlwind thing it’s making?

oh wow im tired now lol

well bl3 is fully downloaded on my computer gamers, so we can officially say it’s happening!!!

[bbs-backlog-challenge]

BB’s Games Of 2019

2019 as a year felt like it lasted two years, and a lot happened in my personal life. Got a new job, learned to drive, got my first car, moved out of the in-laws’ basement into our first real apartment, started my first long-term game of DnD (which in itself has involved a new relationship and an emotional breakdown)- and between it all I somehow managed to play 77 games. Backlog’s down to 35 titles, lads- at this rate, I’ll be down to zero by July 2020. (Not gonna happen.) In 2020, I’d like to explore the SNES catalogue a little more, but before that happens we have to review everything 2019 brought me, in a somewhat chronological order.

- Near A Tomato Carry-over from last year’s post since I was in the middle of playing it at the time. I definitely never quite got a handle on the combat and I think some of the themes went over my head, but I still had fun here, and the 9S hacking minigame never got old. It was a gift from an old friend who I miss. Was nice to reconnect. - SSBU With my new main Zelda, I cleared all of WoL and got every spirit on the Spirit Board. I never really used her before but she’s cute now! Really liked the attention to detail in the spirit encounters. Unfortunately, Cloud is still in the game. - Mega Mans 1 2 and 3 I actually spoke about my experiences with the Mega Men in my BBLC post for Mega Man Eggs, so you should read that right now. - Metroid Samus Returns It’s Good. Like, a solid Good. Never Great, never Bad, just Good. It’s nice to see one of the least accessible games in the series get a remaster, but it feels very disposable, if that makes sense. Like they just needed a Metroid to keep people busy while they reboot Prime 4 development. AM2R is vastly superior, go play that. One point of amusement- the game tells its story without narration, and also seems to pre-suppose you know Metroid lore. I was entertained by the thought of a newcomer to the series being completely mystified by the sudden space-dragon that comes out of nowhere to wreck you at the end of the game. - Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls You can click here to download it, ‘cos it’s free, which is almost criminal. This is one of the higher tier games I’ve played this year. A little bit Mega Man, a bit Metroid, with hints of Touhou and Undertale, it’s pretty tough at times but never to ‘precision platformer’ levels. It’s a lot of fun and the dev deserves your support. - Steve And Ollie RPG Oh, I made this one. Making something else next year? Question mark? - Prof Layton 3 Feels like these are getting weaker as they go along. The story has always been absolute boohockey, but the puzzles feel like they’re degrading in quality too. With over 200 in each game, that’s not super surprising, and I’m glad they didn’t bulk it out with a load of the awful block-slider puzzles. Still, it’s Layton, if you liked any of the other games you’ll like this cos it’s the exact same thing. - Fault Milestone Two Yo, there ain’t a damned thing I can say about Fault, so go play the first one and then play this and you’ll understand. - Full Throttle I never bothered to finish it. The obtuse old Sierra puzzlers were hard enough to deal with back in the day, and just feel kind of inexcusable now. I don’t have the patience for it. - eXceed 3rd Slick and fun bullet hell with a nigh-incomprehensible story and great music. Touhou fans will like it. Music by SSH who is relatively well known in doujin circles. - ASAMU Finished it before writing my BBLC post! - Eternal Senia Everything I said in my post rings true- do your best to look past the wonky translation, because there’s a heartfelt story underneath it. Very accessible gameplay, by design. - Inivisble Inc You have never before been, nor will you ever again be, so aware of having left a door open. I fully expected to hate Invisible, but I got hooked pretty hard. Quite tempted to do another run of it once the backlog is clear. - Pyre GOTY. Supergiant’s best game so far, and that’s not an easy thing to say for this Bastion veteran. I sobbed by the end. I’m not being dramatic- literally sobbed. Please play it. Music and writing and, just, heart, are all top tier. All the Nightwings are the best, but Hedwyn is the best best. - Ellipsis Finished it before writing my BBLC post! - Just Cause 2 I found myself getting bored very quickly. The main missions are all identical (really, they are) and the side missions are very uninspired. Blitzing around in a jet or grappling around a mission target is a lot of fun but it feels very shallow. There’s a lot to do but not really any reason to do any of it. I dunno, it’s a kind of hollow experience, that I nonetheless had fun with. - LiEat It went over my head a little, but that’s more on me I think. These horror-esque, eccentric japanese RPG Maker games usually do. But, it’s neat, and short. If this sort of thing usually sticks on you, I think this is a good title. - Shantae Pirates Curse These games always felt non-essential to me; I’m not sure why they never stuck. They never really go below or above Good. Entirely enjoyable but I don’t feel like I’d have really missed anything if I hadn’t played them. It is, however, absolutely worth investing in for the utterly superb sprite work. That doesn’t sell a game by itself, I know, but Shantae is a pixel art masterclass. - FF5 I’d more or less finished it by the time I wrote my BBLC post, so I don’t have much to add. It’s a refreshingly goofy entry in a series known for taking itself too seriously, even compared to its predecessor. Look forward to my entry for this game in my Games Of 2020 post, having played the Four Job Fiesta! - Touhou 17 It’s mid-tier in the touhou hierarchy, IMO. Didn’t set my soul alight but I did enjoy it. Playing as Wolf Marisa makes the final boss too chaotic to really enjoy, but playing through again with Reimu made it more fun. I beat Extra on my third run through, which gave me false confidence that after 10 years I might actually be good at these games- to then be quickly humbled by attempting Th11’s Extra. Final Boss’ theme song has one of the greatest lead-ins of all time, especially given you start the fight by running away from her! Also really loved the Stage 4 theme as you barrel head-first into Hell (the real one this time), and the haunting, calm-before-the-storm serenity of Stage 5, overlooking the City Of Beasts. - HackNet + Labyrinths GOTY. (Yes, I know I already said Pyre was GOTY; it’s my post, I can have two GOTYs. Make your own damned post!) It’s hard to say what I loved about these games without spoiling too much- just know that they play very much like investigation games, and figuring out the puzzles feels great. Labyrinths technically takes place during the events of Hacknet, with a somewhat more Black Hat approach to things- despite this, play all of Hacknet first, and then play Labyrinths. The expansion introduces a lot of new stuff and much trickier challenges, such that going back to the base game afterwards to finish that would leave it a little hollow- a disservice to how great the ending is. - Mega Man X I said everything I wanted to say in my BBLC post, and anything I didn’t cover was better said by Egoraptor. - Octodad Finished it before my BBLC post! - Chroma Squad The final mission is disappointingly poor, but everything up to that point was pretty good. Huge variance and creativity in the bosses. However, the most fun I got from it was when I realised the game allowed me to customise my team name, transformation name, and other such terminology. Dave, Dayve, Davy, Davina, and Dehve shouting “It’s time to Chromatise, Chroma Squad!” very quickly became “It’s time to shit, you bunch of fucks!” and it was funny every single time. (Personal favourite bit of dialogue- “I tried to shit! It worked!”) - Pyrite Heart Finished it before my BBLC post! - Starfox 2 Finished it before my BBLC post! - Burly Men At Sea Finished it before my BBLC post! - Disc Room Finished it before my BBLC post! - Kokurase Finished it before my BBLC post! Should have broken these ones up a bit! - Metroid Rogue Dawn Very, very impressive romhack let down by a distinctly un-fun final section. They managed to fix so many of OG Metroid’s problems, I’m surprised the gauntlet of terribleness that is Tourian escaped with only a cosmetic change. Nonetheless, it’s free, and the other 95% of the game is superb, even from a purely technical standpoint. - Wuppo I dunno what happened here! I was full of praise for Wuppo when I played it, but somehow I just couldn’t stick with it and just never felt like playing it. It’s a very aimless game, and I wonder if that might be why? It’s a shame, I feel disappointed in myself for not seeing it through, but ultimately I play games to have fun and I just wasn’t quite there with Wuppo. - Super Mario Odyssey I loved it, obviously. I wrote my BBLC post towards the end of my time with Odyssey so most of that stands- I do want to add that the controls always felt a little loose, like I wasn’t quite as in-control as I was in Galaxy. Also Mario prioritises walljumping over ledge-grabbing and it’s super-hard to unlearn that instinct after 20 years. Finally- Long Journey’s End is just bullshit. - Secret Of Mana Dropped it pretty soon after Finning it. There’s some logic to the way the game works, some kind of hidden turn-order system, that I could not at all figure out. My AI companions (useless, btw) would hit an enemy which meant I couldn’t, except sometimes the hit would still register but only actually go through 3 seconds later, without any way to tell which way it was going to go. It takes like 7 months for your character to get back up after taking a hit. It’s just, wonky, and I couldn’t solve the puzzle of how to make the game do what I wanted to do. - Pokemon Shield Still working my way through it. It’s- yeah, it’s pokemon. Get a similar vibe to Sun/Moon with it that it’s kind of unfinished- lots of small (and some not so small) parts of the game just feel like there were bigger plans that couldn’t be realised in time. I’m still enjoying it! They did a great job of making the gym battles, and the whole process of 8-badges-then-champion, feel like a spectacle. I think only the anime has managed it to this degree before. - Earthbound Man, I really, really want to like this game, but the battle system is terrible. I need to play through the game again buffing my party up with cheats or something, because it’s so unbalanced and cheap. Everything else about the game is wonderful, but I got so frustrated with the fights! - Mario Kart 8 Didn’t play any of the single player this time, it was midgi’s christmas present so I just joined a couple of multiplayer games. Absolutely baffled that the game features F-Zero style anti-gravity courses, has Mute City and Big Blue, and even has the Blue Falcon as a selectable vehicle, but they haven’t put Captain Falcon in it. Like he’s ever going to get another game of his own? Let him have this! - Carmageddon 2 It’s pretty clunky by now, being 20 years old, but still plays well enough. The physics are super loose so you slide around like your tires have been buttered. It was more fun when they were zombies instead of just normal people. Missions are brutally hard and should be skipped with cheats. - Neopets After 15 years of playing, I finally got a Ghostkersword. The site as a whole has gone through a lot, and certainly its heyday is long gone, but there’s no other game quite like it. I’m playing the Food Club every day, still. - SIF New phone can’t run the actual gameplay section well enough, so I just log in occasionally to grab free scouts. Here’s another one whose golden years are behind it, sadly, but I certainly still have a lot of affection for SIF. - FF1 Mobile version, which fixes a lot of the bugs with the NES original. This year I completed a solo run with 1 Red Mage, a 4-black belts run, a low-level run, and a 4 White Mages run (which ended up being a lower-level run than the low-level run). I’m fairly comfortable in calling myself an expert in FF1, now. There’s still not really any other games like it- build a party as balanced or imbalanced as you like, and see how they fare. I’d like to build my own game in a similar style, one day. - Re: Live Gacha games and RPG just don’t mix! Both gacha and events do not gel with core RPG mechanics of your character(s) developing in strength as the game goes. It seems impossible to balance the game well- do you cater to the whales who spend and spend until they have the strongest teams possible, meaning the free players or the terminally unlucky can’t stand a chance, or do you cater to those players and give them no reason to spend for the more powerful characters? It’s a shame, because the anime was baffling but in that enjoyable way where you just kind of go with whatever it throws at you, and exploring that in a non-freemium game with a solid beginning middle and end would be really interesting. - Tiny Thief Mobile game that’s not available any more, I think my BBLC post covered it well enough. - F-Zero One of the criticisms most commonly levied against F-Zero is that it wont hold your attention for long. While that’s true, it’s not like you have to make a purchasing decision about it any more- it comes bundled in with the other games you’re buying, so the only investment is time. Ignoring that, it’s still fun to burn around the tracks, and the sense of speed hasn’t ever diminished. The music, too, is underappreciated, with Port Town being my personal fave. - F-Zero GX I can’t believe Nintendo hasn’t done anything with this ridiculous universe for 15 years now. The cutscenes are so hilariously overwrought, and the cast of characters is huge! It could so seamlessly intersect with the Starfox universe, too. There were rumours of a Starfox Racing title some time ago, and I really hope that’s the case. It’d work so well (by which I mean, a particularly enjoyable kind of awful). Anyway, the game still plays great, Story Mode is WAY too hard, Dr Stewart’s theme is a Tune. - Stratosphere This game is from 1998! Build a flying fortress, deck it out with fortifications and weapons and power supplies, then use it to destroy other fortresses. I only ever played the demo as a kid, never got the full game. Took some cajoling to get it to work on modern hardware, but eventually I got in and it wasn’t worth it at all. Wow, that performance, apparently it was designed to run at a terrible frame rate and it wasn’t just a result of my 1998 PC not being up to the task! A shame, but I guess it put one of my ghosts to rest. - DKC 2 The best of the three SNES games, despite the inclusion (and protagonism) of Diddy Kong. Lots to love here, but the OST is top notch. - DKC 3 Not as good as 2, but IMO better than 1. There was a much heavier emphasis on gimmick levels in 3, not all of which hit their target, but does provide a great deal of variety. Consensus is that 2 is better, but if someone claimed 3 was the best DKC, I’d let them get away with it. - King Arthur’s World (SNES) Speaking of putting ghosts to rest… We somehow always managed to get this game whenever we got a SNES, and kid!Beebs most certainly didn’t have the patience for it. Adult!Beebs barely does, either. It’s a very ambitious attempt at some sort of RTS/Puzzle hybrid, somewhat comparable to Lemmings? King Arthur must make his way from his starting position to the throne elsewhere in the map to claim it as his own, using the myriad abilities of his soldiers to get him there in one piece. I decided this year that I was finally going to play through the whole damn thing, start to finish, for the first time ever. With copious use of save states and rewinds, I was finally able to slay this demon. For as fiddly and frustrating as it is, I would still say people should check it out if they have the tools to do so- there’s not really anything else like it, on SNES or otherwise; you’re guaranteed a unique experience, if nothing else. - Oscar (SNES) Terrible. - Spanky’s Quest (SNES) With a name like that, how could I refuse? It’s a weird little puzzler, aping (wahey!) Bubble Bobble and Parasol Stars a little. You’re a monkey who can blow bubbles that stun enemies, but if you bounce the bubble on your head it gets progressively larger and can be burst to send a barrage of similarly-sized sports balls at your opponents to knock them out. You know, just like real life. - Addam’s Family (SNES) This easily-dismissible movie tie-in is actually a very competent platformer with some very, very light metroidvania exploration involved. Gomez has to go through Addams Mansion and rescue the members of his family who have been kidnapped by… something. There’s hidden secrets everywhere and the family can be rescued in any order you like. Genuine recommendation. - Panel DePon/Tetris Attack The only vs puzzler I enjoy (yep. Not even puyo puyo. I know.) I played the HECK out of this in my teenage years, and got crazy good at it. Tendonitis says I’m not allowed to do that any more, but once I shook the rust off I was still pretty strong! It was released as Panel DePon in Japan and was fairy themed, but for the western release they replaced all the fairies with Yoshi characters and renamed it Tetris Attack despite having nothing to do with Tetris at all. Up to you which you prefer- language isn't too much of a barrier here. Soundtrack is killer. - Subsurface Circular Finished it before my BBLC post. Still not decided if I liked the way it ended. - Master Of Orion 2 C’mon. After playing three other pretenders to MoO2’s throne, I had to give the real deal a couple of spins too. It’s Civ 5 in space. Customisable race builds. A whole galaxy to bring peace to, by whichever means you prefer. Would love for someone else to get into it. - Touhou 8 Last minute entry I just played yesterday ‘cos I wanted some Touhou and I haven’t played this entry in a long while. A Solo Marisa Normal Final B run, if you’re interested. Kaguya beast-mode tearing apart the Spell Of Imperishable Night at the end of the game is still an awesome moment, but it’s a shame you can miss the last couple of spells if you take some unlucky hits. - And here’s the list of Bins, which are all covered in their BBLC post: No Time To Explain MoO Skyborn Jumpjet Rex StH 4 Ballistick Munch’s Oddysee Outland Project CARS RiME Magicka Waking Mars Urban Chaos Divinity: Dragon Commander Strike Suit Zero Hell Yeah! Lambda Wars Beta Stranger’s Wrath MoO 3 XCOM Lots more Fins than Bins this year! Good to see!

[zenosanalytic]

4/20/19 HSE 8

Ok back at it

MEAT 15

Cool Fight; Not terribly surprising.

MEAT 16

Dirk’s as much Rose’s father as Rose is his Mother. I guess maybe it’s more convenient, psychologically, to choose a causative direction and stick with it, rather than accept the Mobial nature of their genesis, but for some reason it bugs me this keeps getting overlooked.

Dirk’s over here talking about how right he is all the time and I dont think he was ever right about anything even once in canon(aside from certain aspects of his talk with Dave, and choosing not to kill Hal) XD The only “plan” of his to work was the one re: entering the Session, and 1)he outsourced it to Hal and 2)it only worked because he managed to improvise his way through every aspect of it failing to go the way he thought it would, and even that probably had more to do with their entry being part of HiC’s plan to use them, so she wasn’t trying to wipe them.

Another Thing: I dont think the Ascent Differential is Aspect so much as Personality.

Another Another Thing: That Rose, when discussing her life-long fear of knowledge as a corrupting and ruining outside force(this being a person who always felt her mother wasn’t her mother, in some sense, and responded to that fear by rejecting emotional intimacy with said mother), doesnt see the connection between that life-long fear and her fear that Ascending will be bad, damaging, and corrupting, is Notable. Perspective continues to be important, and lack of self-awareness continues to hamstring ppl in this narrative.

MEAT 17

I feel like this new narrative belligerence on Dirk’s part isn’t going to work out too well for him with a person as aware and recalcitrant to narrative meddling as John. It’s going to be John and WV all over again. This is also a wonderful example of how personal flaw and specificity isn’t solved by Godhood in HS, and can really trip you up; basically all of this, including the “impotence” applies to Dirk, too, when others disagree with the direction he’s trying to push them in, and this whole rant may be meant, ironically, as an example of dramatic irony: basically, that Dirk’s rant about total control and knowledge reveals the limits of his knowledge and will be followed by examples of how limited his control is, which he can’t be aware of, but which the “impotent” audience will.

MEAT 18

...And, almost immediately, John’s objecting to the narration and doing things before Dirk “writes” him doing them(the sigh).

MEAT 19

“So yeah, I’m gonna allow it” Notice how he asserts power over situations he does not, in fact, have power over.

Which is kind of an interesting dynamic to bring up in the context of authorship? I mean: in the realm of nonfictional works an author can’t “make” things happen, only alter for their audience what DID happen. In some respect this is being written as equivalent to that dynamic; the simple admission in M17 that Dirk is misrepresenting events also admits those events happened another way than he’d prefer, meaning it’s also an admission of his lack of power over actual events. And, of course, all the other things I’ve been talking about, and the fact that everyone’s “character” is rooted in natures established in the original work. But in a fictional work an author’s creative power is absolute, and this is a fictional work; though I suppose a derivative or transformational one, which accounts for the shortfall. Another interesting aspect of this is that the “Author” is presented as a Narrator; Narrators merely describe what happened, they don’t create it. I was going somewhere more concrete with this but it popped out of my head >:T >:T

Ok so other aspects of this: I agree that Jane’s been established as a pretty ambitious person, but she was also always a pretty moral person and the way she’s going about this so far doesn’t seem to be in keeping with that part of herself. And also: she literally wants to create shortages, and thus the suffering shortages will cause, for... what? Nostalgia? Because she think she can run Capitalism better than the adults from before all this?? Because Hierarchy is Neat??? Seems like a whole handful of really petty, selfish, and juvenile reasons to me. Also one guaranteed to cause social conflict; I doubt a civ that’s never known material want is going to react too well to sudden starvation and financially-manufactured forced-labor(which, lbr, is what most work in our world is).

Obvsl, as a snake and member of the storied gens Atheris, I agree with Roxy&Calli that patriarchal human concepts of gender are not the end-all-be-all of identity, but what really jumps out to me here is Roxy’s description of the nature of their love for, and previous sexual interest in, Dirk which I find really True. Like: the sentiment of wanting to see children of a person because you really like that person and think they should continue, or of thinking having the kids you might have with another person would be pretty interesting. Also that loneliness is a hell of a drug 8T

I’m trying to figure out why this conversation would be circumstantially simultaneous with The Furthest Ring being “destroyed”, but I got Nothing :T :T :T

MEAT 20

So yeah, Jade’s merging with her Alt!Selves, not too surprising since it was heavily foreshadowed in Endgame.

Given that Sessions are located IN the Furthest Ring, and Sessions MAKE new multiverses, I find it being made out of “negative potential. The absence of a future” pretty ironic :p I wonder if the tentacle hair bit is a nod towards the Horror-Terrors, and theories about them being Players? Rose and Dirk’s view of Ascension would seem to suggest HTs might be SUCCESSFUL players who eventually abandoned their universes out of fear of the damage they’d do misusing their godhood(as it doesnt solve your personal problems), rather than the old HC of them being failed Players.

MEAT 21

My theory about “The Economy” being code for sex doesn’t stop feeling ever more confirmed by this narrative :|

Dirk’s anger at the idea of anyone not thinking he’s right about everything is Palpable on this page. Also I’d just like to note that This:

Is being said by a person currently in the middle of metaphysically manipulating a friends towards her worst impulses(and also potentially some amounts of self-hatred, give her thoughts re: femininity) for the sake of establishing a dictatorship through which she, as his agency-dimmed puppet, will enforce his personal politico-philosophical preferences regardless of what anyone else thinks and he’s saying it about people who just said This:

which is to say: a bunch of political pluralists who are NOT seeking to impose their morality on anyone but rather to establish a system where EVERYONE can SHARE their moral understanding of policy issues and come to a consensus decision on them, within the context of a political society DEFINED by the equality of all as political actors. There’s just so much that’s wrong, weak, and easily dismissable about Dirk’s argument here. Not to mention his obvs, undisguised, physical disgust for trolls >:T

And he’s doing all this Purely because, given his fixation on “Winning”, he wants to Win. Like: he’s not actually even pursuing what he considered good policy; he is, literally, doing this all for Pure Ego, which he has the gall(and lack of self-awareness) to accuse others of acting from. And this self-deluding buffoon is a person who believes himself “Ascended” and therefore possessed of a “higher” and “clearer” perspective on matters above their “petty” concerns about, oh non-humans being allowed to live as they like, or practice any political agency at all, and all ppls being spared unnecessary and pointless suffering due to entirely manufactured shortages. So much (real, actual)Irony, of so many types, in all of this, all at once.

An aside: I am really liking the political-mindedness of these Epilogues so far; really playing to my Interests uwu

The bit about Hybrid babs and shipnames is funny, and it doesn’t read like a shot at the fandom to me at all; it’s more a joke at Dave’s expense given the obvs distress Kanaya’s in and his inability to stop making the situation more awkward(itself prob the result of Bro’s neglect/abuse)

Oh hey look: it’s Dirk the “Omniscient” being distracted, caught unawares and off-guard by the actions of others, unable to handle the role&work he’s chosen for himself(ie “out of his depth”), unable to split his attention between even just two conscious ppl at once, and not knowing what others are thinking. Given this and his handling of Jade’s thoughts in the last section, I kinda feel like it’s less he can actually sense the thoughts of others, and more that he gets some kind of inkling or hunch, or maybe that’s it’s purely just him guessing(that’d fit real well with his comments on Roxy being “inscrutable” to him), or even just having an awareness of the plot he is narrating(and thinks he’s writing). Of course it could also be some kind of Heart thing; not really even access to their thoughts at all, but a sort of awareness of their Agency? Like: Heart is The Self and The Self is expressed through Agency, so he has, in some way, developed an awareness of “Self-Action”, which is to say, Agency? Kinda like how Dave “feels” Time and Jade “feels” Space and Rose “feels” Relevance. Which, just as an asnide, would be something super-basic powers-dev wise, since Dave started having a sense of Time way back in the early Acts, long before godhood. Though I can see how Dirk developing an awareness of OTHERS intentions(and feelings, potentially, given Heart’s other associations) would seem like a big step for him, given how self-absorbed he is.

Ok that’s it for this one I think. I know I’m not being terribly kind to Dirk in all this but, tbf, he’s being kind of a huge snide Dick in basically every respect, and I also don’t have a lot of Chill in me when it comes to 1)arrogant people or 2)manipulators (:T

[arcanaivette]

Lucio Ramblings

With the impending promise of new routes (I am so thirsty for Muriel holy hell), I have been giving a lot of thought to Lucio’s Route.

Now, I know a LOT of the fandom love him (who doesn't love to hate THAT BITCH). And hell, I am A SUCKER for The Villain gets Redeemed romance tropes. But I have some...concerns.

SPOILERS and criticisms below, I will try not be harsh, just pointing things out I am curious to see how it will be handled. I am not attempting to start discourse, just sending some thoughts out into the void for friendly discussion if anyone wants.

So having played through the main three’s routes, and reading Muriel’s and Lucio’s Tales (I’ve unfortunately not been terribly lucky with the new Heart Hunter post cards T-T), I am really not sure how the devs are going to write Lucio’s romance without excusing away some REALLY LEGITIMATELY terrible things Lucio has done.

Again, don’t get me wrong; I love Lucio’s character, and I’m actually really curious and excited to see what they do, but there’s a few things I’m not sure how they’re going to get around and I really hope they get handled well so I can actually love this beautiful asshole.

1. Lucio straight up committed patricide.

     And subsequently attempted to commit matricide as well. And not even in any sort of “honorable” way according to his clan’s traditions. He made a deal with a DEMON in order to WEAKEN them enough so he could easily kill them and FEED THE DEMON THEIR HEARTS! And as a result, since he did not give the demon what was promised, has been trailing this horrific plague of beetles behind him, not seeming to care what it does to the people it effects. We don’t know much more about his parents save for what we see in his very short tale, so they both could’ve been horrifically evil people deserving of that sort of death, but as of right now Lucio comes out of this backstory looking cowardly AND sleazy as hell.

2. Lucio was a marauder and a mercenary.

    After he flees his failed attempt at usurping his mother, we know (vaguely, I think the Wiki talks more about it than the game itself? I’d love more!) he struck out as a sword for hire/marauder of the surrounding areas. Not that mercenaries are BAD, persay, but they are...well, mercenary. They don’t exactly fight for a single cause, good or bad. They fight for themselves, sometimes at the expense of innocent people. Hell, in Asra’s route, we know he used the plague of beetles following in his wake as a means to try and extort goods from helpless villagers. In other words, Lucio learned NOTHING from his failed coup, and instead continues to run from his horrible mistake, leaving destruction in his path.

3. The state of Vesuvia is crumbling.

     In the current timeline, the city looks to be recovering very slowly from the wake of the plague 3 years prior, which according to Julian and Nadia, killed people by the HUNDREDS. Whole sections of the city were left to fall apart and rot. Not to mention, with Nadia being in her coma like sleep, the Courtiers pretty much ignored their duties to the city and left it to rot. However, even before that, Lucio is noted, especially in Julian’s route, for not being particularly proactive in the city’s upkeep or the well being of its lower class citizens. In Nadia’s route, it comes to light he pretty much expected her pick up the entire weight of the city’s issues and problems while he could sit back and party. Hell, Lucio didn’t even REALLY seem to start worrying about the Red Plague till HE contracted it, then becoming desperate for a way to stave off his impending death. Maybe Lucio wasn’t a tyrant, but at best he was a neglectful and selfish ruler, resulting in problems and consequences still felt long after his “death”.

4. Lucio manipulated, tricked and coerced to keep people in his control.

    This one is probably the one that, for me at least, will be the hardest to overlook. Lucio, much like the Devil, uses people’s connections to loved ones as a means to control them and keep them obedient. He tricks Asra’s parents and imprisons them, leaving them at the hands of the Devil and subsequently forcing them to abandon young Asra, thinking they were saving him in doing so. He uses Asra and Muriel’s friendship to indebt both of them to him, threatening the safety of the other while not telling the former they were also in his thrall. More will no doubt be revealed in Muriel’s route, but judging by how angry and terrified Muriel seems of all things Lucio, and how much Asra LOATHES him, they were both no doubt asked to do awful things in Lucio’s employ, thinking they were doing it for the other (Asra even confesses to you that you would never believe the many awful things he’d done under Lucio’s rule). Nadia, when she first met Lucio, was still young and desperate to prove she wasn’t just the baby of her sisters. It’s pretty vague, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have used that desperation to be independent as a means to manipulate her into being his wife, probably telling her of the wonderful opportunities she’d have to use her intelligence and skills to improve the many issues plaguing Vesuvia.

All I’m saying is, Luciois problematic. EXTREMELY problematic. All the characters have their flaws, they need them to be relatable and show growth. But Lucio has the sort of issues that are REALLY difficult to forgive even for the best of characters. I’m not saying it’s IMPOSSIBLE, but it’s gonna take some really interesting circumstances for me to see him as redeemable, and I for one hope to see it done well.

I’m confident in the devs, of course. The writing in this game is amazingly solid, especially for a visual novel. And, frankly, as much of a shit as he is, I REALLY like Lucio, a lot. So I really want to see what they do with all of these things.

If I got anything wrong, or missed something, but all means, reply! I’d love to start a discussion on this!

[breadknight-likes-things]

Gaming's Biggest Disappointments of 2018,  And Their Silver Linings.

Video games were absolutely incredible in 2018, from bombastic AAA games like God of War to smaller, intimate looks serious subjects like Night In The Woods.  We’ve had an incredible year of games, but with all incredible years come some downsides, and even though this post is about the biggest foibles of the year overall, I think most of them are also indications of improvements big and small that we can look forward to.  So these posts are going to be fairly negative, a thing I try not to do on this blog, but hopefully I can interlace enough positive information in there to keep my usual tone up, so without further ado here they are.

The Telltale Closure: 

So I’m going to open with an event from this year that, frankly despite my title, has no silver lining.  The closure of Telltale games was a gigantic bummer in all respects, hundreds of people lost their jobs suddenly, were given no severance and told their health insurance was only going to last to the end of the month.  All future projects were cancelled and the even their currently running Walking Dead season was left half finished in limbo.  Some employees reported having moved across the country for a job at this well known dev less than a week before, only to more or less immediately lose it.  The higher ups running Telltale kept all of their financial issues so close to the chest that nobody below even knew anything was wrong, so when a new round of funding didn’t pull through at the last minute the only thing they could do was fire nearly every worker. In the end this left only a skeleton crew to finish the contract on Netflix Minecraft, and even they got laid off a couple weeks later!  Telltales death is a cautionary tale, and though we now see that The Walking Dead The Final season will be finished that isn’t what we should be concerned about, if it’s this easy for people in the gaming industry to be mislead about how their company is doing, something is seriously wrong.

Fallout 76, Like, In General:

Alright, Fallout 76 is a mess, and I’ve written before about how I can still enjoy it despite it’s innumerable problems, but almost all events surrounding this games release and it’s bizarre descent from “Buggy but fun” to “just not fun” after it’s patches is something that still needs to be talked about.  I think the most obvious thing to be said about Fallout 76 is that this game simply wasn’t done, I have a feeling it was rushed out to give Bethesda a product for this fall and to match up with the release of the masses of tie-in merchandise, but even so the game just isn’t finished.  As a release, the game is chock full of bugs, some visual like your characters power armor not loading right and you just being rendered spindly and nude and some gameplay affecting like enemies re-spawning in a location seemingly at random, leaving you immediately overwhelmed and dead within seconds. 

Thing is though, that isn’t where it stops, outside the game Bethesda Game Studios has shown an alarmingly tone deaf reaction to the player bases complaints.  I’m not talking about the nylon bag thing(never buy $200 collectors editions everyone, it’s never worth it), I’m talking about leaking peoples personal info and acting like it’s not a big deal or trying to placate anger by giving away paltry amounts of in game currency or collections of old games they didn’t even make.  Despite all this however, if you were to ask me my positive feelings on the thing, at the very least I’d tell you Fallout 76 is a promising blueprint for parts of the franchises future.  Even if this game is deeply flawed, imagine this being reworked more as a co-op mode in a more traditional Fallout or even Elder Scrolls game.  We could be looking at a wonderful future of exploring these big Bethesda worlds with our friends and even if the first attempt is rough as hell, it is ultimately still a first attempt, and hopefully one that portends a potentially great future. 

Metal Gear Survive:

Okay honestly, I don’t have a lot to say about Metal Gear Survive because I didn’t actually play it.  Why I’m bringing it up though is my general feeling that Konami is getting more hatred than even they deserve, based mostly around the ugly mysterious breakup between them and Kojima(though reports of how their employees are mistreated are pretty grim).  Survive is an awful game, and a cynical attempt to cash in on both the Metal Gear name and the boost in notoriety Survival Games have been having in recent times.  What the silver lining in this is however, is that Konami is very clearly not afraid to use their IP’s as some feared after that Kojima breakup.  Castlevania is enjoying success as a much loved Netflix show, two Belmonts and Snake both showed up and were well received in Smash Bros and even Zone of the Enders, which even the biggest Kojima fans seem to forget existed, got a full re-release for PS4.  Though we may need to worry about new attempts at these franchises if Survive is any indication, the scary idea that all those IP’s would just vanish seems to have just been conjecture, so instead of those video game things we all love, lets just watch TV!...Hey at least it’s a good show okay! 

The Response to Diablo Immortal:

This section is not about Diablo Immortal being a bad game, because we don’t know if it is, the thing isn’t even out!  This is about the, in my eyes, stupid, childish and cynical response to the games announcement.  What’s the issue with a mobile Diablo game?  I honestly have to ask myself this question every time I see the horrible response so many people continue to have to this benign spin-off to a much beloved franchise. People tried so hard to be mad about this game they’ve never even played, acting like an innocent nervous joke, one made by a dev after being greeted by a round of disrespectful boos, killed their dog.  Making wild claims that Blizzard no longer cares about their fans or IP’s or that they’re doing this as some kind of bizarre intentional slight against players.  Gaming has a real issue with reactionary anger, and we seem to see it happen for both valid and completely invalid reasons multiple times a year.  

People being angry at being nickled and dimed to death isn’t strange, we can so easily see this in Battlefront 2 from a couple years ago, who wants to grind out 40 hours of an online shooter to unlock one character?  Stuff like that is clearly an absurdly bad choice and the anger it engenders should probably be expected, but Diablo hasn’t actually done anything yet and people are already acting like it’s the biggest affront to video games they’ve ever seen.  What’s the silver lining in this nerd fury you ask?  It’s the game itself.  To be honest even if the game is mediocre having a Diablo game on my phone is an enticing idea, and good or bad I can’t wait to find out how it’s going to play.

We can find the good, we can find the bad, but video games remain a unique medium for stories and entertainment, and I for one can’t wait to find out what 2019 has in store for us!(I mean besides hopefully getting some answers on that batshit twist at the end of Gears of War 4 I still haven’t actually written about, i’ll get to it!)

[for-peace-war]

Long Post! Hit J if you want to skip!

My guild has recently had a lot of conversation on Jessica Price and Peter Fries who were recently fired from ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2 development team.  I’m pretty sure that most everyone that could care has heard about it, but what is confusing me is why people are trying to die on hills for two people that really did not come across as anything other than gatekeeping assholes.

To be clear, if you disagree with this statement then that’s fantastic.  Because I am posting this on social media, I am expressing tacit approval for you to respond to it, dislike it, deconstruct it, or whatever you wish.  This doesn’t mean that I have to like what is being said, but the condition that “if I post this on the internet, then someone may reply to it” is a fairly sound one.

To cut through a lot of the fluff, I’ll summarize:

A developer, Jessica Price, was on her personal twitter discussing the problems with MMO development.

Per usual, a mob formed to express their opinions.  It’s the Internet, so that means saying a lot of crude, disgusting, sexist, and absurd things.

Within this mess, one person - Deroir - decided to voice his own opinion.  I wouldn’t say that he’s an expert (I wouldn’t say that she was either since Guild Wars 2 is a mess...) but I will indicate that among the throngs of the “laymen” (as Fries put it), he at least has some affiliation with the IP. 

Deroir Says: Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree *slightly*. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design; (1 of 3) When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. (2 of 3) But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express *their* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options), (3 of 4 cause I count seemingly...) then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread! (End)

To which Price replies: thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude 9_9

And Deroir replies: You getting mad at my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion with you, instead of just replying that I am wrong or otherwise correct me in my false assumptions, is really just disheartening for me. You do you though. I'm sorry if it offended. I'll leave you to it.

The above is their initial discourse and honestly because I don’t feel like posting all of the tirade that follows, I’ll leave it at that for now.

The initial concern was: Should Jessica Price have been fired for ‘going off’ on Deroir? An example of things said:

“Like, the next rando asshat who attempts to explain the concept of branching dialogue to me — as if, you know, having worked in game narrative for a fucking DECADE, I have never heard of it — is getting instablocked. PSA I’m not on the clock here. I’m not your emotional courtesan just because I’m a dev. Don’t expect me to pretend to like you here.”

That is not acceptable, at all.  I would fire anyone that was interacting with my customers while being associated with me, on the basis of that alone.  It is true that she was on her own “private” account, but she was discussing work related information, using her work related title, and using her work related position to open a dialogue (or a monologue, as it seems) with those that were actively purchasing my product.

There have been arguments that he mansplained (read: explained something to her as if she were unaware despite her experience based on her gender) and then secondary calls that “she had dealt with a lot of harassment before so this wasn’t her fault,” but those are two faulty premises:

First, because she was the one that opened this discussion on social media.  If she wanted to avoid responses or only take on “educated information” then she could have either placed it in an article or circulated her complaint among her former co-workers. 

Second, if there was a sea of hateful people that had been harassing her, then this hardly seems like the right time to “take it out” on someone.  I do not know the struggles of women on the Internet, but I know what it’s like be a black person on the Internet so I can say only that while it is true that you will always assume a certain amount of hostility, just taking it out on the first person that speaks is absurd.  

If, for example, there really was a rabid mob crying for Price’s blood, then why wouldn’t she unload her ‘emotional courtesan’ spiel on them and not someone that as objectively as possible was being inoffensive if not a bit tone deaf to her mood? The self-fulfilling remedy that he “was mansplaining” as justification for her very rude tirade absolutely does not address that his only offense was again, speaking to a very neutral point.

What is worse, this has become a matter of someone being fired over her gender rather than the truth of the matter, which is that she was just an asshole.  People are canceled, rightly, from minority groups all the time.  If Kanye West flew off the handle on someone, I wouldn’t rush to defend the ‘slavery is a choice” dude even if it is good to have black men in the spotlight.  Cut the string and let them drown under the undertow of their own shit, as far as I am concerned.

Arguing that systemic oppression mandates random aggression is not appropriate.  Certainly it explains why it happens, but as we all have our own independent dignities then you cannot justify a random attack as one that was “deserved.” Let us remove from the discourse that Deroir was a person affiliated with GW2 and leave it simply at a person says something that a person at a public forum doesn’t like.  Because, private or not, twitter is public and social media...  And that person then starts shouting at them for being an asshole, in what way is that permissible or excusable?

It isn’t.  The company was right to fire her, not because of “capitalism” or “corporatism” but because she acted out of line.  If anything, many of us have learned there is a higher burden against us for the fact we are of a protected class, yet that is not an excuse not to aspire and to strive.  Female developers are pretty undervalued and underrepresented in the gaming industry, so why would she throw away her chance like that?

If you argue, “well she doesn’t have the responsibility of putting on for anyone else other than herself,” then you immediately invalidate the need to protect her.  Being a woman is not the same as being a representative of what women can do. Margaret Thatcher and Joan Rivers are not hailed as feminist icons for a reason.

Now the “gatekeeping asshole” part comes up when you get into the nitty gritty of what Fries, who was also fired (and as far as I know identifies as a male), added to the conversation:

“Here’s a bit of insight that I legitimately hope he reflects on: she never asked for his feedback. These are our private social media accounts — imagine you’re an astronomer and you start sharing some things you’ve learned in the last few months since you began a research project observing Saturn, only to have observation techniques explained to you by a layman ... Jessica is great at her job and deserves to be treated with respect.”

The sentiment doesn’t hold water for quite a few reasons, so let’s deconstruct those because that’s what this post is about.

First, we’ve already touched on “these are private social media accounts.”  Yes, we know they are “off the clock,” but they are discussing their job all the same.

The example of an astronomer also really sets the pace for what is to follow though. Is a game developer like an astronomer?  A person that more or less puts down the tracks that players work through? I don’t think the requirements between the two are remotely similar, but let’s move beyond that and say, an astro-physicist like Neil deGrasse Tyson decides to get into a conversation with some people at a local pub!

Neil is a little miffed about research on Saturn’s observation and one of the pub goers chimes in that maybe it’d help if they used some of the techniques learned in deep sea exploration to observe Saturn.  

Immediately, Neil says “Thanks for the non-answer, my dude” and then returns to say “And by the way, you colonizing piece of shit, I work at the Rose Center of Earth and I know than you ever possibly could, so next time you open your mouth remember that I know more than you ever will because I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you, shithead. I’m not your emotional porchmonkey.”

I mean...

I assume you’re going to get a tap from someone about how that wasn’t okay to say? Now even if there were a lot of people getting boisterous, why pick that person out? Even if this is your “go in moment” why pick a person that’s inoffensive?  Because you have something to prove.  And well, the company has something to prove as well: it isn’t going to allow its image to be tarnished.

But at the heart of it, is this concept that the people she discussed this with are the knuckle dragging laymen incapable of understanding the Promethean wonder that is game development.  If that is the case, then why discuss it at all?  The questions continue to pile and the explanations became weaker.

In the end, I don’t like ArenaNet but I also think Reddit is a disgusting pit of scumbag racists, sexists, and shitlords.  That being said, it really sucks that both of these companies had an easy pass to drop two people that were clearly negative elements to their environments.  

This isn’t a hill worth dying on.  Hell, this isn’t even a hill worth stopping and getting a picture of.  Because at the end of the day?

Jessica Price isn’t right. 

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hey! Er... I was wondering if you could like... recommend me some married!johnlock fic. Also, this is an extra... But I want to say that I really like your blog, and it's one of my favorites (sorry if I wrote something incorrectly, English is not my mother language... Also I'm a little nervous sending this...)

Hi Lovely!

Firstly, don’t apologize for the language barrier! Your English is lovely! Thank you so much for your kind words about my blog!

Next, I’ve made a couple lists before relating to this exact thing:

Marriage and Weddings

Proposals

As for actual fics where they’re actually married? Well, I initially thought I had none until I did this list, LOL!! I’ll also give you some of my “Established Relationship” fics too, just to fill up space! :D

WEDDINGS / PROPOSALS, HUSBANDS, & ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS

A Discourse on the Inadequacy of a Duvet by guns_and_poses (T, 1,005 w. || Est. Rel., Fluff, Humour, Bed Sharing, Romance) – Sherlock keeps stealing the covers when they share a bed because he wants John to move closer to him when they are sleeping but of course doesn’t want to ask. John gets annoyed at first until he realises what Sherlock wants and is more than happy to oblige.

This Isn’t About the Bathtub by cypress_tree (G, 1,142 || Marriage Proposal) – John and Sherlock go to Angelo’s for dinner. In both of their pockets are rings they are going to propose with, but the other has no idea. John proposes first, and Sherlock answers by pulling out his engagement ring.

Bringing Colour to the World by SD_Ryan (G, 1,168w. || Est. Relationship, Sickfic, Fluff, Schmoop) – In which we encounter a sick detective, a snuggle on the couch, and a silly fairytale.

Under The Covers by berlynn_wohl (E, 1,221 w. || Est. Rel., Shy Sherlock, Anal, Fluff) – John would have liked to have the lights on and seen everything, but Sherlock was shy, so they did it this way, always.

John Was Nice Like That by hannah_baker (T, 1,307 w. || Est. Rel., Fluff, Body Worship, John’s Bum) – Sherlock Holmes may not ever sleep, but that hasn’t prevented him from having a kip on the couch with John.

here’s to love (here’s to us) by trustingno1 (G, 1,309 w. || Weddings, Fluff, Best Man Speech) – “I suggested that he ask Greg,” John says, “to which he replied, ‘Who?’,” and Greg pushes back from the table, exasperated. “I then made the mistake of suggesting his brother, to which Sherlock enumerated twenty-three reasons that that was a terrible idea.” (John’s best man speech at Sherlock’s wedding).

So, this is normal for us now? by TooManyChoices (M, 1,445w. || Bed Sharing, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Est. Rel., Cuddles) – John and Sherlock have been sharing a flat, and a life for some time. This is a story of how the glacially slow movement of their relationship makes another agonising crawl forward another inch.

To Sleep, Perchance to…Cuddle by nerdyandiknowit (NR, 1,563 w. || Sleepy Cuddles, Fluff, Stubborn Sherlock, Bedsharing, Cuddles & Snuggles) – Almost immediately after they got together Sherlock formed this dependency on John-he could not (or would not as John believes) sleep without John being there, in bed, next to him.

A Metaphorical Gesture by cyparissus (T, 1,578 w. || Marriage Proposal, Fluff) – “Sherlock, are you–” the words die in John’s throat and he has to swallow and start again, “Are you asking me to marry you?”

and yes I said yes I will Yes by Mithen (T, 1,662 w. || Fluff, Humour, Est. Rel. Marriage Proposal) – Sherlock has deduced that John is going to propose to him, and he’s ready to accept. If only John would actually get around to it…

Biggest and Best by Sexxica (E, 1,815 w. || Est. Rel., Dildos, Sherlock’s Size Kink, John’s Giant Junk) – John Watson has a huge cock. Sherlock wants it inside him. Part 2 of Tumblr Ficlets Gone Wild

The Marriage Proposal Negotiation by Goddess_of_the_Night (G, 2,161 w. || Dev. Rel., Possessive Sherlock, Insecure Sherlock, Fluff, First Kiss, Post Mary) – Sherlock hasn’t ever really done anything the traditional way, so of course it wouldn’t bother him to propose to John even though they’re not even dating. And the fact that John is already on a date with someone else when he decides to do it? Tedious.

You Know, The Old Saying by songlin (T, 2,248 w. || Wedding, Marriage Proposal, Fluff, Engagement) – “Marry me. I need to have you forever.” Unrepentant husbands!Johnlock fluff.

In Which John is Attractive and Sherlock is Angry by kim47 (T, 2,382 w. || Fluff, Est. Rel., Jealous Sherlock) – Sherlock’s reaction to finding out that everyone wants HIS John, and how he told them to piss off and get their own Watson.

Unwanted by 221b_hound (T, 2,436 w. || Est. Rel., Wedding Rings, Asshole Exes) – In the jewellers to collect their wedding rings ahead of the Big Day, an old friend of John’s spots him. Well. I say ‘friend’.Sherlock isn’t jealous. He’s possibly a little bit grateful. That doesn’t mean Lydia Templeton isn’t an idiot. Part 19 of Unkissed

Let the Sun Fade Out by nothingislittle (E, 2,711 w. || Fluff & Smut, Praise Kink, PWP, Obsessed Sherlock, Bottomlock, Heart-Tearing Love) – “He could warm the sun itself, Sherlock thinks, could heat their flat with just his presence, could brighten the room with one dazzling smile or just the sparkling in his eyes. John is everything, he’s beautiful and he shines, he’s everything.”

Extraordinary by queenoftrivia (G, 2,860 w. || Fluff, Marriage Proposal, Morse Code, Est. Rel, Violins) – Sherlock’s deduced that John’s going to Italy to buy him a violin. Even the greatest detective alive makes a few mistakes.

Engaged by lifeonmars (NR, 3,146 w. || Marriage Proposal, Fluff, Holmes Family, Song Fic) – Sherlock did not believe in marriage, but he wanted to be married. He found this something of a surprise. Part 2 of Damage

And as the seasons change, I love you more by Teatrolley (NR, 3,219 w. || Fluff and Angst, Est. Rel., Marriage / Proposal) – A year in the lives of John and Sherlock, essentially.

Unmissed by 221b_hound (M, 3,235 w. || Est. Rel., Pet Names, Insecure Sherlock, Worried Sherlock) – John enjoys a good brawl during a case, and Sherlock begins to worry - when they retire, will John get bored? Will John get bored and leave. But even if John isn't a genius about cases, he knows a thing or two about Sherlock's panic attacks about them as a couple. With only four days till the wedding, he's not about to let Sherlock continue with this misplaced notion that John will be bored in retirement. Part 20 of Unkissed

Straight Shooter by nefariosity (E, 3,249 w. || Est. Rel., Light Dom/Sub, Military Kink, PWP) – Sherlock has a military kink. John indulges him.

Bagged & Tagged by Regency (T, 3,339 w. || Drunken Confessions, Fluff and Crack, Marriage Proposal) – A very inebriated John devises a clever means of proposing marriage to Sherlock. Unfortunately he’s forgotten all about it by the next morning.

In Nomine by Atiki (E, 3,517 w. || Est. Rel., PWP, Anal, Domesticity, Love Confessions, Sherlock Loves John, Overwhelmed Sherlock) – “Alright?” John asks gently, planting a kiss on Sherlock’s left collar bone, smoothing a hand down his chest and belly until it rests in the soft trail of hair below his belly button. John’s smile is all soft and warm. His hand feels tender and solid and real. A soldier’s hand. A surgeon’s hand. A lover’s hand. Oh. “John”, Sherlock gasps. And that’s where it begins. Written for a prompt on the Kink Meme: The only word Sherlock says during sex is “John”.

Rumpled by WhimsicalEthnographies (E, 3,601 w. || Est. Rel., Insecure Sherlock, Fluff, PWP, Proposal, Bottomlock) – Then, halfway through a documentary on river otters that neither of them was paying attention to–how could John, with a gangly, limp consulting detective practically purring in his lap?–Sherlock suddenly bolted upright, looked at John with a perplexed expression and a crinkle above his nose, and blurted, “Marry me.” Part 4 of Longitudinal Cohort

Happy anniversary by Salambo06 (E, 3,772 w. || Est. Rel., Vulnerable Sherlock, Wedding Anniversary, Anal, Texting, Lingerie) – John inhaled deeply, feeling his cock pulse under the silk gown, and he let his eyes travel on the lean body in front of him. Sherlock was kneeling on the bed, their bed, and the picture had been taken so John could perfectly see his bare chest and pelvis. But what mattered most, what made John harden rather quickly, was the pair of panties Sherlock was wearing in the picture. Black, string over each hip and laces that outlined Sherlock’s erect cock barely hidden under the soft underwear.

Equine Arse Anonymity by Kayjaykayme (E,  3,834 w. || Est. Rel., Public Sex, Coming in Pants, Humour, Halloween, Hand Jobs) – Sherlock needs to speak with suspects at a fancy dress ball. He chooses a couple’s costume for himself and John. It is logical, practical and well thought out. John doesn’t agree and exacts sweet revenge.

Love and Hair Dye by WhimsicalEthnographies (E, 3,920 w. || Est. Rel., Body Worship, Self Conscious John, Voyeurism, Idiots in Love, Smutty Smut) – Self conscious John decides to cover the greys on his head, and the colour isn’t what he thought it would be. Now he’s more self-conscious than ever.

Let me be the wallpaper that papers up your room by Teatrolley (NR, 3,966 w. || Est. Rel., Two Idiots in Love, Fluff, Domestics) – Four seasons in the life of Sherlock and John, really.

subterfuge isn’t subterfuge if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing by scullyseviltwin (T, 4,157 w. || Est. Rel., Fluff, Anniversary) – The entire idea was ludicrous, and terrified John a whole hell of a lot.

Fine Print by mistyzeo (E, 4,224 w. || ACD Holmes || Est. Rel, Retirementlock, Glasses, Oral, Hand Jobs, Bees) – Holmes needs glasses, but he’s too much of a stubborn arse to go get his eyes checked. Watson is used to bullying him for his own good. The glasses have unexpected but not unwelcome consequences for everyone.

Keep Each Other Company by orithea (E, 4,600 w. || Est. Rel., Threesome, Self-cest, Time Traveller Sherlock) – One Sherlock is demanding enough. Two of them are impossible to resist. Part 3 of The Time Traveller’s Flatmate

Unforgiven by 221b_hound (M, 4,721 w. || Marriage Proposal, Victor Trevor, Jealous / Protective John, Jealous Sherlock, Sherlock’s Past) – Sherlock’s latest case is for his ex boyfriend, the brilliant and handsome Professor Victor Trevor. John is not too happy about that. But things aren’t what they seem, an old friend of John’s is involved in the case, and John has a few surprises up his sleeve. Also - a proposal! Part 16 of Unkissed

What Happens in Vegas (is legally binding in the United Kingdom) by  moonblossom (E, 5,051 w. || Accidental Marriage, Friends to Husbands to Lovers, CSI Crossover, Fluff & Porn, Bathtub Sex, Hand Jobs, First Time) – When a case sends the boys to Vegas, John comes out of it with a bit more than he bargained for. Part 19 of Prompt Fills, Remixes, Works inspired by others

Midnight Plowboy by weeesi (E, 5,399 w. || Est. Rel., Fake Vintage Gay Erotica, Anal, PWP, Roleplay) – “Does it feel like I’m sure?” John whispers into Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock swallows again.

All the Flavours, Cherry and More by cwb (E, 6,274 w. || Est. Rel., Lip Gloss, Lingerie, Birthday Presents, Insecure Sherlock) – Sherlock feels a blush rising to touch his cheeks, more sensual than uncomfortable now that he knows John isn’t disgusted by him. No, John is responding exactly the way he had hoped.

Abatement by WhimsicalEthnographies (E, 6,816 w. || Est. Rel., Retirementlock, Fluff, Sherlock’s Self Esteem, Grumpy Sherlock) – “What’s wrong with you? You love the cottage,” John glances over to the passenger seat, then quickly turns his eyes back to the road. Driving was still not his forte, but considering Sherlock still couldn’t properly bend and lift his new knee enough to press and release the clutch, he had to make do. Not that Sherlock hadn’t tried to argue his way into the driver’s seat. “I love the cottage for a week or two, John. Don’t be deliberately obstuse,” Sherlock grumbles, sinking further in his seat. Well, as best he can with a four-week-old knee replacement. “And that’s all we’re going for, love,” John says out loud. But what he’s thinking is, shit. He knows.

Caught In The Act by ShirleyCarlton (E, 7,009 w. across 6 stories || Est. Rel, Voyeurism, Character POV’s, Mastrubation, Switchlock) – This is a series of six scenarios written from the points of view of six different people as they accidentally walk in on Sherlock and John having sex.

Beg for Mercy (Twice) by Solitary_Endeavor (E, 7,060 w. || Est. Rel., Bottomlock, Bearded John, Edging, Rough Sex, Idiots in Love, Canon Compliant) – Sherlock hasn’t left the flat in four days, the itch of impatience beneath his skin too great to allow him to suffer interaction with any human being who isn’t John. This is probably a mercy that goes both ways, as he’s driving even himself mad. Sherlock supposes there is a lesson to be learned here about having himself to blame, but of course he blames Mycroft.

Christmas by WhimsicalEthnographies (E, 7,673  w. || Worried Sherlock, PWP, Drunkeness, Christmas, Est. Relationship) – John feels a lump rise in his throat, and it hits him, again, that this beautiful, infuriating creature is his. Completely, one-hundred percent his.

With This Ring by Quesarasara (E, 9,121 w. || Est. Rel., Marriage Proposal, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Idiots in Love, Embarrassing Hospital Visits) – Sometimes even the best of plans go wrong. And sometimes wrong turns out to be exactly right.

the first day of forever by darcylindbergh (E, 11,850 w. || Est. Relationship, Domestics, Light Angst, Insecurity, Emotional H/C) – “I’m going to marry you,” John murmurs with against Sherlock’s smile, and they both giggle in the joy of it. “We’re getting married.”“Yes,” Sherlock says, just to hear himself say it out loud. “We are.” A June wedding. Part 4 of things fairy tales are made of

And if you say the word, I could stay with you by CaitlinFairchild (E, 12,842 w. || Domestic Fluff, BottomJohn / Topping from the Bottom, Fluff and Romance, Dirty Talk, Proposals) – What Sherlock thinks is, On the day I die, be it in a dirty alley at forty or in my bed at eighty, the last thing I will remember is tonight, the way you looked at at me on the snowy pavement, cheeks pink with the cold, breath puffing in frosty white clouds, your heart in your eyes and snowflakes in your hair. I will remember that single perfect moment in my life, that moment I knew I had everything I ever wanted, and whatever happens next, I will die content. What he says is simply, “Marry me.”

Your Eyes in Darkness Glowing by tamed_untranslatable (E, 14,686 w. || Est. Rel., Case Fic, Hotel Sex, Bottomlock, Anal, BJ’s, Porn With Feelings, Homophobia) – Sherlock gets roped into a case in Moscow on his brother’s insistence, but finds that he can’t do it without John.

Never-Ending Cycle by orphan_account (T, 17,211 w. || Christmas, Est. Rel., Proposal, Fluff) – Or, four times Sherlock Holmes attempted to propose to John Watson, and the Christmas Party at which he finally did. Sherlock thinks he’s a miserable failure, John is confused, Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade provide some unsatisfactory advice, and Mummy is, as always, the solution. All in a lovely, fluffy holiday theme.

About Sleep and Coffee and the Existence of Fate by Atiki (E, 17,426 w. || Fluff, Marriage Proposal, Humour, 5+1) – Naturally, John was startled when suddenly the ultimate solution occurred to him: Marriage. This was, of course, a bit of a fundamental problem rather than an actual solution. One didn’t simply use the words “Sherlock” and “marriage” within the same sentence. Not even in a hypothetical context. Five times John kind of wanted to propose to Sherlock, and one time he didn’t have to.

Achieving the Together-Coloured Instant by teahigh (E, 20,776 w. || Est. Rel, PTSD, Codependency, Fluff & Angst, H/C, Smut, Demisexual Sherlock, Experiments) – John wonders if this is how it’s going to be: A life speaking in code, because they’re both too stupid to figure out how to say, “I love you.”

The One With the Proposal by kim47 (E, 22,375 w. || Fluff, Romance, Marriage Proposal) – Proposing shouldn’t be this difficult.

a good old-fashioned happy ending by darcylindbergh (E, 32,731 w. || Christmas, Frottage, Comfort, Est. Rel., Fluff, Insecure Sherlock) – For Christmas this year, Sherlock wants to get John something special: something every fairytale deserves. Part 2 of things fairy tales are made of

Where Else Would I Be? by cwb (E, 34,910 w. || Retirementlock, Domestic Fluff, Falling in Love, Parentlock, Fluff and Smut, Reminiscing) – John and Sherlock’s five-year-old granddaughter spends the weekend with them in Sussex. Sherlock happily indulges her whims, and John takes care of them while quietly revisiting the past thirty years of their lives together.

Resistivity and Relative Charge by liriodendron (E, 41,750 w. || Synesthesia, Angst, Case Fic, Romance, Est. Rel., Homophobia, Religious Content, Victor Trevor, Mild Jealous John, Mild John Whump) – In which Sherlock Holmes meets an old acquaintance, John Watson doesn’t enjoy a trip to the country quite as much as he thought he would, and the past absolutely refuses to stay where it belongs. Part 3 of Conductivity

Bedroom Tales by Junejuly15 (M, 49,950 w. || Friends to Lovers, Through the Years, H/C, Military Kink, First Kiss / Time, Romance, Insecure Sherlock, Voyeurism, Post-TRF, Ficlets, Fluff and Angst, Fix-It Fics) – Bedroom Tales is a collection of John and Sherlock ficlets. They are set at various stages of their relationship and are in no particular order. Some are fluffy, some sexy, some angsty, there is hurt and comfort, romance and love. What unites them is that they all play in a bedroom, but not necessarily the one in 221B.

A Love with No Name Series by aceofhearts61 (G to M, 49,955 w. across 20 stories || Asexual Sherlock / Straight John, Est. Rel., Queerplatonic Relationship, Romance, Cuddling, Fluff, Platonic Romance, Domestics) – In which Asexual!Sherlock and Straight!John are platonically in love life partners.

between each beat are words unsaid by darcylindbergh, hudders-and-hiddles (T, 107,998 w. || Epistolary, Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers, Angst, Happy Ending) – On their wedding night, John and Sherlock gift each other with the things they each said when the other could not hear, the things they each put down where the other could not see: a collection of writings that illustrate the way their love for one another has grown over the years. Part 1 of between each beat

Perdition’s Flames by i_ship_an_armada (E, 63,435 w., || Treklock AU, Est. Rel, Genetic Engineering, Angst & Fluff, BAMF!John) – Sherlock would do anything to save him. Risk anything. Give anything. His money, his life. His soul. What he does, though, is change both of their destinies forever. Genetic re-engineering is the only option left. It turns out researchers underestimated the life expectancy and potential abilities of genetically re-engineered subjects. The British government and what would eventually become the United Federation of Planets, however, had not. Part 1 of PF Universe

Breakable by MissDavis (E, 117,627 w. || Established, Fluff/Angst, Depression, Paralysis, Happy-ish Ending) – After John is seriously injured, Sherlock struggles to figure out how to help him, keep himself sane, and maybe, just maybe, get their life back to the way it’s supposed to be. Part 1 of Breakable Not Broken

A Fold in the Universe by darkest_bird (E, 152,869 w. || Omegaverse / Prime Universe Crossover || OmegaJohn / AlphaSherlock, First Kiss / Time, Friends to Lovers, Established Relationship, Angst, H/C, Dub Con, Humour) – Alpha Sherlock and Omega John are in a relationship. Prime Sherlock and Prime John are not. So what happens when a freak fold in the universe switches one John for the other?

Unkissed Series by 221b_hound (T to E, 184,168 w. across 46 works || Established Relationship, Ace Sherlock) – Sherlock returned from the dead a year ago. John returned to Baker Street six months ago. They’ve been in a couple since then. or at least, not NOT a couple. For two smart men, they sure can be dumb. Luckily, an art thief tries to drown Sherlock, Sherlock has a fever dream and things are about to change.

[pixelgrotto]

Sega and franchise decay

Sonic Forces, the newest 3D game to star a certain blue hedgehog, is out now and receiving middling reviews. Rather than talk about it, I’d rather discuss the 2D Sonic Mania, which came out a few months ago. I never got the chance to blog about it until now, but you can read my Steam review for what it’s worth. I would’ve preferred that the game be composed of all new levels instead of a few new ones and remixed oldies, and in some ways I do believe that Sonic Generations did the “celebration of past and future” shtick a tad better, but overall, I had a good time with Mania. The most impressive thing about it, in my eyes, is how well it captures that 90s-2000s Sega “magic.” It’s hard to describe this in words, but during those years the company’s output, especially their in-house, exclusive stuff, just radiated coolness and creativity that was a little different from what Nintendo was doing. Whether it was the neon visual smorgasbord that encompassed all of the zones in Sonic’s games or the Moebius-inspired fantasy trappings of the Panzer Dragoon series, Sega’s games often seemed fresher and sexier, with dashes of unexpected punk and sophistication in them that the Big N could never really capture. I mean, the run ‘n jump levels and cheery tunes of the Mushroom Kingdom in the Mario games were wonderful, but hell, Sonic 3 featured snowboarding action and a soundtrack that Michael Jackson worked on.

Unfortunately, while the Nintendo of 2017 is kicking butt with the Switch and has upcoming releases scheduled for most of their classic franchises, the Sega of 2017 is in a much different position, and the changes began after the sad failure of the Dreamcast in 2001, when Sega killed off its hardware unit. In the years since, the company’s slowly morphed from a creative house that bankrolled a franchise of games starring an alien-fighting aquatic mammal (Ecco the Dolphin) into a conservative organization that does NOT want to repeat the monetary losses that were suffered during the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast eras, and is therefore highly selective with what it publishes and develops. And somewhere along the way, most of the older franchises that Sega was known for went by the wayside, because their most recent entries either underperformed or they were considered too risky for today’s gaming environment. If you look at the company’s website, you can see a list of what modern Sega considers to be their top tier franchises, and most of them are Western ones that were acquired fairly recently, like Company of Heroes. As far as notable in-house Japanese stuff is concerned, you’ve really only got the Yakuza and Hatsune Miku games (guaranteed moneymakers in Japan, which is why they keep getting made), and Sonic (a guaranteed moneymaker in the rest of the world).  What happened to all those franchises of the past, then? Sega let them decay. Shinobi got its last release - a pretty good 3DS game - in 2011, and there’s been nary a word since. Anything is possible with ninjas, since Capcom brought Strider back from a 15 year retirement in 2013, but for now, Joe Musashi is AWOL. Ecco the Dolphin died in the Dreamcast era, Shining Force seems to have sputtered out after several PS2 and PSP releases that barely resembled the series’ strategy roots, and Panzer Dragoon vanished after Sega’s short-lived flirtation with the original Xbox in the early 2000s. The Oasis series (Beyond Oasis and Legend of Thor) never survived past the Sega Saturn, despite featuring excellent top-down action RPG gameplay that had the potential to go up against Zelda, if Sega had only invested the resources. While we’re on the topic of RPGs, Phantasy Star *sort of* still lives on as an MMO, but the single player entries in the series have long been dead, and even after five years, Sega has still refused to localize Phantasy Star Online 2 outside of Japan. And then we have two really depressing ones - Streets of Rage has been MIA even though Sega went out of its way to issue a takedown notice for a popular fan remake that was released in 2011, and Virtua Fighter, despite being pretty much the earliest 3D fighting franchise, hasn’t seen a real entry since 2006, and only exists as a cheap mobile game now. (I realize there are plenty of other franchises I’m leaving out here like Jet Set Radio, but I decided to limit my focus to games I’d played.)

In the aftermath of Sonic Mania’s release, there were a number of threads on NeoGAF (before GAF, well, imploded), speculating on what franchises should receive a “Mania” type resurrection. And if you’ve read up to this point, you can guess what my answer will be - damn near all of Sega’s old series could use this treatment. New versions of Shining Force and Panzer Dragoon that respect their legacy by emulating the style of their forefathers while introducing just enough new stuff to appeal to younger fans would absolutely make me lose my mind. But I feel that we’re unlikely to ever get a “Shining Mania” or “Panzer Dragoon Mania,” because the circumstances that brought us Sonic Mania are unique. Sonic has always had a robust fangame and ROM hacking community, and it was Christian Whitehead, one of those fan engineers, whose mobile port of Sonic CD just happened to be good enough to get Sega to hire him to port other Sonic games to phones. One thing led to another, and eventually Christian got tasked to take the lead in making Sonic Mania.  Sega’s other old franchises don’t inspire fans and homebrew projects in quite the same way, and even though Streets of Rage came close with that 2011 remake, Sega swooped in pretty fast to nuke that one from the net, and I don’t think they gave any of the former devs jobs. This is because Sega just doesn’t care about Streets of Rage, Ecco the Dolphin, or even Virtua Fighter as much as Sonic. The blue hedgehog is a long-term mascot who’s managed to survive oodles of so-so 3D games (like the new Sonic Forces) to still be popular 25+ years after his birth. He’s not seen as a risk to the conservative Sega of 2017. A new Oasis game, on the other hand, probably is, and why should Sega stretch their lessened in-house production studios on what might be criticized as a Zelda clone when they can instead make another proven thing - a new Sonic, or perhaps a Yakuza or Hatsune Mika spinoff? No, I think the only way some of these franchises could be resurrected is if the original devs manage to grab hold of the license and take to Kickstarter, as is the case with Shenmue 3, a rare success story in this day in age. (Emphasis on the word RARE…and I’d actually rather not call Shenmue 3 a total “success” until the game is out, to be honest.) Franchise decay isn’t unique to Sega. It’s an affliction present in many other production studios, from Square Enix (I miss you, Parasite Eve) to Capcom (the mobile Breath of Fire 6 does not count) to Konami (Contra, Suikoden, damn near everything). Even Nintendo, who have generally done a fine job at avoiding this by bringing Kid Icarus and 2D Metroid back from the dead, have seemingly gone out of their way to not make a new F-Zero game for an awfully long time. But Sega is definitely the king when it comes to the sheer number of oldies that could stand to be updated for a new generation, but won’t be. And Sega are also the only ones to tempt us with Sonic Mania, a game chock-full of easter eggs to old titles that also offers a template which would be PERFECT for something like Shinobi or Streets of Rage…but one that likely won’t be used. Because the magical Sega of yesteryear, the one that got Michael Jackson to fiddle with Sonic 3 and used to be oh so fresh and oh so cool, is not the Sega of today.  RIP, Shinobi, Ecco, Shining Force, Panzer Dragoon, Oasis, single player Phantasy Star, Streets of Rage and Virtua Fighter. Somewhere, in the same alternate universe that Sonic Mania manifested from, the Dreamcast did super well and all of you are on your tenth respective entries right now. 

It’s a blast processing fever dream, but isn’t it a nice one? (Header Sonic Mania screenshot taken by me. All the other pics I jacked from Mobygames.)

[rowdyprofessor]

Saat Soch: IPKKND3 Episode 8

Previous

Here there be spoilers!

1. I’m impressed with this board.

Look at the back of his waistcoat!! I likey. But the pants!! WHY THE PANTS?!!

I liked the way they linked Advay and Chandni’s pain. Advay’s exasperation with Murli is amazing. I enjoy Sobti’s acting so much :D

2. A study in contrasts

I was angry at this ‘lol look at how different they are’ segment last night. It’s the kind of thing you do to establish a romantic couple. I’m disappointed it’s happened so early.

What kind of an alien eats noodle laddoo and raw chilli? This is worse than the bread and tomato sauce. (OMG they’re the same kind of weirdo heathen alien.) There are similarities, though, such as both of them eating noodles.

And while I’m complaining (Hi, I had a bad day!) why on earth do the sisters have matching pyjamas?! And HOW MUCH MONEY IS 7 UP PAYING 4LIONS ANYWAY?!

“Main nafrat ke liye ek family, kuch rishte, aur ek dil toh todh hi sakta hoon.”    [I can break apart a family, some bonds, and a heart for hatred.]

Is he talking about Chandni’s heart or his own? I think he’s unknowingly talking about his own. I think there’s a part of him that knows how easily it would be to fall back into the memory of Chandni -- I feel like he has to constantly remind himself to hate Chandni (like the poem/lyrics).

The colours Veer is wearing are similar to Advay: green and gray and black.

His Abbu is hilarious -- “Kaun banega biscoot!” ... “Tiretube.”

3. Indrani and Chandni

The two mausis aren’t impressed that Indrani wants to replace gehu (wheat) with bajra (pearl millet) and jowar (sorghum) because Chandni says it’s healthier. They suggest that Advay is Chandni’s boyfriend (she must’ve met him on the evil Interwebz), 

The sisters (changed out of their pyjama-wale-kapde) and are talking boys while oiling one another’s hair. The talk turns from boys to beating up boys to Chandni’s nameless tormentor. But he’s not nameless for much longer, because Meghna knows all about him:

Advay. Advay Singh Raizada. London-return. Maths professor, musician, and rich.

Side note: I guess this means we won’t see him professoring. He’s like Shivaay -- never goes to work. Gul did mention that they built that elaborate office set for IPKKND and it didn’t go over well, so maybe she’s given up on giving her heroes actual jobs.

Shikha is convinced that he couldn’t have been behind the poster trick, but Chandni’s flashbacks reveal that she knows better. Indrani is also convinced that it was Advay.

OMFG the editing.

ETA: Look at this shot!! Advay and Chandni are again linked to Shiva and Parvati.

4. Advay’s plan

And here he comes, my drama llama bitwa, yet again marching into this house as if he owns it. 

Advay: “Aap ki beti ki phir se badnaami ho gayi.”    [Your daughter was dishonoured again.]

Ahh. So he knows about her disappearing and how she’s already been shamed for it.

I enjoyed the double meaning in Advay’s words when he addressed Chandni. Wheels within wheels within wheels!! I also loved all the (secret) looks Advay gave Chandni to check whether she was following his plans within plans. He’s obviously enjoying this.

The ASR theme kills me dead.

This was an excellent plan on Advay’s part. Get a stranger -- who can’t connect him to the affair -- to bring up what happened sixteen years ago so he can gauge their reactions and come in as a saviour. This is the behaviour he exhibited in the promos as well.

5. Saas-Damaad

He looks like such a seedha-sadha-ladka when he’s addressing Mrs Vashisht (his future Saasuma). 

I absolutely love this interaction between saas and damaad. I love the way she warns him off Chandni. And the way he sort of stares at her (Is she really taking a panga with me?!) and then is distracted by his two saalis and Mausa-ji as they attack the poster dude. 

Honestly, they’re both such brilliant actors. I find myself thinking, sometimes, that Sobti and Ritu carry this show.

6. No. No. No. No.

I was so angry over this last night.

I loved the wink and the remixed Rabba Ve instrumental, but what the hell is going on here??!!

It’s much too early, in my opinion, for Advay to transition to Romantic Hero. And while I’m absolutely expecting Chandni to fall for his act, she has nothing to fall for at the moment. She has a few genuinely terrifying words and actions and seems bizarrely confused over his intentions.

It’s not that I didn’t expect this, I just didn’t expect it in Episode 8 when Advay hasn’t even done anything to warrant confusion. Some part of me wants to say she might recognise her Dev, but it wasn’t indicated in the flashbacks so I doubt it.

7. Of notes and cages

Kajal Mausi has something sensible to say (for once) about their blackmailer not needing to do anything else after the letter, but Indrani is convinced that Advay has nothing to do with all of this.

I love how Shilpa and Murli are helping Advay!! I also enjoyed the symbolism of a cage, because as Advay says, you need a cage to catch the bird! But again, you have to wonder who is caged here -- Chandni, or Advay himself.

ETA: Look at Indrani putting moonlight (Chandni) in a cage. It seems to me that her actions in trying to get rid of the blackmailer will trap Chandni somehow.

Precap: Again with the pants. I guess I have to get used to the style *sigh*

“Lene nahin, dene aaya hoon.”

Okay, colour me intrigued.

Theories:

1) Advay’s plan is to win her family over and marry her, and then destroy the family from within. Perhaps he will find the blackmailer and ‘punish’ him to gain the family’s trust.

2) Veer will try to prank Advay with hilarious results.

Will I continue?

After the awesomeness of the last episode, I feel like I was slapped in the face with this one. I was hoping to enjoy this show for a while before they started to push the romantic angle. A part of me wonders if they’ve reacted to fan pressure and decided not to make the story as dark as originally planned?

I’ll watch the next one though ... I’ll round off the week!

Next