kundusaysthings

[kundusaysthings]

To add a somewhat pedantic point to this - the surrealist presentation in the film cannot be said to replace dialogue, because the whole point of the film (as I understood it) is that words cannot convey what the characters feel. This is analogous to musicals and martial arts cinema - a race, like a fight scene or a musical number, is the only way to express/understand what Pocket and Tachyon feel.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era (film)

Film as a medium is notable for its combination of audiovisual storytelling, but also for its temporal limitations: almost all feature films range between 90 and 180 minutes, or what is expected to be viewed in a single sitting. This limitation has had a unique impact on the sports narrative in film. A single game in most popular team sports will last 3 hours or more, so sports films have become masters of shorthand, commonly expressed through montage; even a climactic game will depict only a few pivotal moments, with the rest of the game implied by transitional shots of the scoreboard.

While this reliance on shorthand renders possible the compression of a season- or tournament-spanning narrative in a single film, it comes with a sense of detachment from the film's ostensible subject, the sport. With a few exceptions, such as the obscure 1999 Kevin Costner film For Love of the Game (which has a bottle episode-like focus on a single perfect game), a sports film is more about what happens off the field than on: teamwork-building, practice, behind-the-scenes drama, adversity overcome. The actual sport is depicted as a series of benchmarks for progress (the team is bad; the team is heating up; the team is winning the championship), not as a complex combination of strategy and physical performance with its own innate, rules-based drama. For example, the most popular sports film of the past two decades is probably Moneyball, a film that as part of its core premise focuses more on the team manager than any on-field player.

This limitation of the sports film became clear to me when someone got me to watch 100+ episodes of Haikyu!!, an anime about a high school volleyball team. Unfettered by the temporal constraints of film, Haikyu!! delves much more deeply into the particulars of its sport of choice, dedicating as much as an entire season of TV to a single match. There is minimal shorthand, so while Haikyu!! does not eschew training, improvement, and off-the-court drama, it is deemphasized relative to the sport; often, the longform format enables the show to depict these things during matches themselves, as there is enough time for characters to struggle, learn, develop, and overcome on the court. As someone who enjoys sports -- even as someone who does not enjoy the time it takes to watch a 100+ episode show -- I vastly preferred this approach, which centers the story around volleyball ("Volleyball" is, in fact, what the title translates to) far more than what you'd typically see in a sports film.

With this context, the fact that the horsegirl gacha game movie is the best sports film I've ever seen is likely significantly a byproduct of the specific sport the film is about. Horse racing isn't a team sport and an individual race does not take more than a few minutes. Because of this, Beginning of a New Era is able to depict races in full, and depict them often, frequently with minimal narrative tissue in between. The characters themselves are often narratively backgrounded; there are only six characters total with any role at all, and only four with a significant role. Even these four are relatively anonymized within the narrative. The protagonist, Jungle Pocket, is startlingly single-dimensional, devoid of backstory or character traits beyond her all-consuming drive to win. Her rival, Agnes Tachyon, while more superficially eccentric, likewise has no past. Neither interact with anyone who isn't either a fellow racer or a coach; their lives revolve entirely around racing, yet there are no stakes to their races other than their desire to win. They don't need money, or status, or anything else, and the only adversity they face -- besides losing -- is the omnipresent threat of injury, which is devastating because it prevents them from racing. (Three of the five characters who race have their careers curtailed by injury at some point or another.)

What matters, then, is the sport. The sport of horse racing, specifically, a sport relatively low on strategy or complexity, so that there is little opportunity for even the in-depth detail that makes Haikyu!! so compelling. Of course, if there were complexity, it couldn't be appropriately handled given the temporal limitations of the medium. This film introduces two different color commenters across its runtime, who combine for a single one-sentence remark explaining the sport's strategy. By far the more memorable line from the commenter booth comes from the play-by-play commenter, screaming at the end of a match:

AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!AGNES!(Jungle Pocket groans "Tachyonnn")AGNES!AGNES!

The trick Beginning of a New Era pulls is to blast everything, from plot to character to complexity, down to absolutely nothing. In this nothingness, it is able to convey a stark emotional intensity so powerful it compensates for everything willingly discarded and then some. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the film's music, which it rarely uses, often willing to let entire minutes-long races play out with the only audio being the pounding of hooves(?) and the layered panting of every racer, before subtly transitioning into an understated electronic beat. It is strikingly minimalistic, much like all the traditional narrative aspects of the film. It emphasizes the physicality of the sport over the emotions of the competitors. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the film's one training montage, which is not actually a montage because it lacks any music at all.

Montages are ubiquitous in sports media as they depict improvement rapidly, bridging the narrative gap between failure and success. But in this film, the training montage appears near the end, after Jungle Pocket has already won the championship handily (thanks to Agnes Tachyon's injury-related retirement). Without music, the montage makes no emotional statement, but its tranquility (set mostly on an idyllic beach) contrasts the next race, where rain hammers down and Jungle Pocket loses to a field of nobodies due to a mental, rather than physical, block. Retrospectively, the montage suggests a misalignment in Jungle Pocket's priorities, an inability to deal with the true limiting factors holding her back, but the neutrality of the montage itself leaves its position and purpose ambiguous until viewed within the film's greater context. Jungle Pocket is a brutish character, incapable of expressing herself beyond her repeated desire to "be the strongest," and the minimalistic intensity of the storytelling supports her point of view, until she runs up against the wall of her perceived inadequacy compared to the retired (and thus unbeatable) Agnes Tachyon.

Nowhere is this conflict between the physical and the mental more clear than in the film's visual decisions, which range from smear frames devoted to a purely physical depiction of speed and emotion:

To surreal, psychological imagery:

It is this psychological imagery that provides the complexity to a narrative otherwise devoid of it, accomplishing through evocation and suggestion what the script, characters, and sport itself lacks. It culminates in Jungle Pocket literally crushing her mental landscape to bits with her hand, releasing herself from the psychological to participate in a final race that is almost exclusively physical in its presentation. And, of course, this dichotomy of presentation feeds back into the core conflict between Jungle Pocket (physical, brute) and Agnes Tachyon (mental, scientist).

It is also, perhaps, the exact perfect mode of presentation for this utterly bizarre franchise, which has as a conceit (horses are replaced by human girls who are superhumanly strong) something that seems to invite further explanation, worldbuilding, a depiction of a totally reoriented society, but is perfectly content to instead show only horse racing. I watched this film with four other people and they could not stop asking "I wonder if horse girls fought in historic wars" or "Are there horse girls who don't race?", questions the film refuses to even gesture toward answering. This may be a battle of body and mind, but in the end, body triumphs. Well, maybe not. The movie ends, in an utterly surreal curveball, with the characters performing a concert. This concert finale is a violent intrusion of the franchise's gacha roots onto a film that is otherwise virulently opposed to idol aesthetic (or gacha-ism; the limited cast means there are barely any characters being promoted), on one hand reasserting normalcy for the property and on the other hand emphasizing via juxtaposition the emotional intensity of what came before. It's also, perhaps, the perfect conclusion to a work that is so keen on balancing the real and surreal, the minimalist and maximalist, the physical and mental.

[kundusaysthings]

SCP-2721 and why representation matters

Whenever I think about the SCP fandom, I go through this cycle where I marvel at the sheer amount of innovative stuff they have come up with and how they are at the cutting edge of hard sci-fi writing in the modern age (one of the 7000 contest entries was about super slippery ice, back when we didn't actually have an explanation for the phenomenon), and then I remember what happened to SCP-2721 and I become overcome with anger and try to stop thinking about SCPs.

I think the conservative part of the fandom that wants representation for minorites to remain locked up in a small space that is easy to ignore remains alive and well.

For those who are unaware of the controversy - there was an SCP, SCP-2721, that was about a pair of entities intended to be weapons for planetary destruction. You can read it here. In case you don't want to, here's the basic gist you need to know - one of the two entities somehow decided to make art about Homestuck and discuss Homestuck and queer issues on Tumblr, and the other joined a group called Gamers Against Weed as Bones. We're primarily concerned with the first.

A lot of people cottoned on to the fact that the experience of an eldritch mass of tissue orbiting near the earth who empathises with the struggle of trans people and feels similarly trapped in a body that contradicts her desired identity of 'woman enjoying Homestuck and making associated art' was a metaphor of some sort. A lot of people said the SCP was bad because 'Homestuck is bad and has no business being invoked in SCPs'. Even the people who ostensibly were not queerphobic said, "But does it really need to have references to Homestuck? I am queer, but Homestuck isn't even good, why are we invoking it?"

If anyone who believes that comes across this post, here's an idea for you.

The SCP isn't saying that Homestuck is good. The SCP is saying that Homestuck is important. And it is saying that Homestuck is important because art that allows people to find themselves in foreign experiences, that elevates people, that gives people comfort and joy, that leaves people as more than what they were before, is important. No matter what you think about the quality of Homestuck, Homestuck is, and will remain, important in the history of queer literature, because it was the first time a lot of young queer people saw themselves represented in the spaces they were in.

And I don't remember seeing this point raised by any of the people trying to defend the SCP and make sure it didn't get brigaded into deletion.

I think the magic of SCP-2721 lies in how it is also a representation of the experience of trans people and how its text doesn't have the Foundation supress Lyris' expression of her identity. It offers outsiders an interpretation of what being trans is like, a lens to try and understand it, and speaks to how art allows to understand things we couldn't have otherwise. It is actually able to break the box that the 2000-series articles were supposed to be about, but I guess we don't actually want that, eh?

To paraphrase Eli, I will love the SCP until the parts that make me turn to dust.

[kundusaysthings]

Jason Todd and SCP crossover idea

I've been reading a bunch of DP x DC crossover fics with Jason and Danny (sometimes as the central romantic couple, sometimes connected differently) and some of them do manage to utilize the cosmic horror angle well. This got me thinking about how Jason could work in the SCP setting.

From the outset - I think the All-Caste connection gives a great starting point for why Jason coming into contact with the anomalous is sensible. The All-Caste trains him to use soul magic, and trains him to watch for signs of the world stepping to the left of normal. Still, the real first encounter must come within Gotham, while he is established as Red Hood.

Maybe he comes across an anomalous object in Gotham, and somehow ends up interacting with the Foundation. Maybe he comes across some Serpent's Hand members transporting some anomalous texts. Maybe he comes across one of the Children of the Forest, and escapes unscathed somehow. In all cases, he proves to be resistant to the amnestics and memetic agents utilised by the group he is interacting with.

I think it would be interesting to see the Foundation try to deal with him. Maybe this is a symptom of me having consumed all the Kool-Aid, but I think that in this crossover, Jason himself is anomalous enough to merit an entry in the database, and maybe even a Person of Interest file.

I think it would be interesting to have him become a contractor for The Wandsmen (of Kul-Manas). I headcanon Jason as immortal and street-savvy, so I think he would be useful for mapping out places other Wandsmen couldn't risk going to. He becomes the one to produce the first detailed map of Alagadda and Corbenic, by virtue of being able to blend in and walk away from the scrapes when shit gets out of hand. Also, it would dovetail nicely into the storytelling angle of having him walk away from Gotham to grow into a more complete version of himself.

Continuing this thread, it would be hilarious to have Constantine find out somehow, get involved in a few 2-person adventures, get scared shitless, and then have them part for a while. Later, when Jason is back in Gotham (at least part time), we can have Constantine, Jason and the Bats get involved in anomaly-adjacent scenarios where Jason keeps threatening to take John to a live performance of The Hanged King's Tragedy in Alagadda whenever he is minorly inconvenienced. And given that John has seen him use the map he got from the Wandsmen to teleport a guy who he fought once in a bar, John knows to take the threat seriously.

[kundusaysthings]

Jason Todd fic idea

Jason rises from his grave, wanders into and around Gotham, is rescued by Talia, is taken to the League, hangs around being non-verbal and minimally self-sufficient, gets dunked in the best/worst natural spring, comes back rejuvenated.

He comes back with near-total amnesia. He remembers flashes of his death, of flying, and of a long, black cape. He has one clear memory - a large man, dressed in a dark costume, telling him that he is not Jason's father, that he doesn't need teenage rebellion.

Jason decides that given the nature of the memory, and Talia's offer of a place in exchange for guarding her son, he'll stay where he is. He is eventually led to the All-Caste, where he gains a taste for moral philosophy and a desire for formal education so that he can explain to Ducra why staying in a cave to cultivate a cult for fighting immortal monsters does not, in fact, solve the problem of evil.

He takes his A levels (since the November exams are a good way to graduate faster) and goes to university. Probably Oxford/Cambridge. Narratively, I'm going for a prestigious institute with credibility both in biotech and in philosophy/social sciences that is outside North America. This is to indicate that despite Jason's talent, Talia's connections were crucial in getting a seat. My hadcanon is that Talia is the most talented biotechnologist on the planet, it's just that Ra's in his obsession with eternal life has ignored her daughter's actual abilities and ideas.

He learns about effective social policy and graduates wanting to change the world with this newfound knowledge. He also learns that he is gay. His choice in boyfriends causes Talia much distress. (She maintains that they were all bad influences. Ronnie crashed his car twice in one semester.)

Once he's back, he convinces Talia that the three of them need to get out. Using whatever plot mechanics are convenient, Talia ends up in Metropolis heading Head Industries, and has to take Damian with herself. She can either try to hide him from Bruce, or rip the band-aid off and let him know.

It is decided that Damian will live with Bruce for a few years. Jason is there as a bodyguard. Jason is given a small brief about Bruce Wayne, and the three of them go to drop Damian and Jason off at Wayne Manor.

It's a weekend. The Bats are eating breakfast together when the summons come through.

The Bats see Batman Junior and have a collective freak-out. They may or may not recognize Jason. The standard fanon first interaction between Damian and the Bats happens. Jason provides unhelpful commentary as he watches Batman struggle to complete a single normal exchange with his newfound son.

Then Jason turns to Talia and tells her:

"You can no longer complain about my taste in men."

Talia raises an eyebrow.

"You had a kid with that guy."

Before Talia or Bruce can muster a response, Jason adds: "He can't be good enough in bed to justify that level of unearned privilege. Even the Eton kids at Oxford were better than this. Hell, I'm sure Ronnie was better than this."

"Ronnie picked up 12 points on his license in-"

"Your beloved has no idea what milk costs. Ronnie never stooped to that level."

The Batkids laugh out loud. Bruce is dumbstruck. Talia sighs.

[kundusaysthings]

I've been working on a game on and off for about a year. I haven't been able to give it much time recently because of the chemo, but I got back to it recently after a few months of not checking it because I was stuck.

I'm working with Godot in C#, and I have been trying to get a button press to trigger an event across scenes. I tried to figure out why the _pressed() event got triggered in the child scene, but the listener in the parent was not. And today, after months of ruminating on this, I see that the reason is that I had added the callable for the listener in the child scene, and not in the parent scene.

Like, I have been trying to work out signal buses and autoloaders, and all I needed to do was change which scene I had open.

I was able to programmatically generate a non-rectilinear tilemap via code, but I couldn't get a button click to work for nearly a year.

This will haunt me.

[kundusaysthings]

Going through a modded XCOM WotC campaign right now, and this is what one of my best soldiers looks like with the Warden armour (i.e. top-tier armour).

The only way I can explain this is that she is so good at killing aliens that defence is unnecessary. She is an amalgamation soldier, Pistoleer-Rocketeer-Sentinel class. Her kit has gotten to the point where I am chucking her into a group of 6 aliens with 20+ HP on each and expecting that she will kill them all, as long as she can land her shots. And if someone survives her turn, they die to her reaction fire when they try to do anything on their turn, because she is just that good.

Who needs armour when you can kill everything first instead?

[kundusaysthings]

I just noticed what this XCOM 2 achievement was called...

I've been playing this game for over 7 years (including the time I played a cracked version in college because I was too broke to afford to buy games), and I've never known this.

I hate how my brain immediately went to the associated lyrics. Now I'm wondering what a Revolutionary War-style mod would look like for XCOM 2.

I haven't even skulljacked the Advent Officer yet, it's too early for me to be thinking of another campaign with completely different mods.

[kundusaysthings]

I’m sorry but I need to speak my truth; too many people seem to think Syril didn’t do evil things simply because they like him as a character. (This is not a judgement on liking Syril as a character.) You can empathize with a CHARACTER and understand why they are the way they are while also knowing they are a fundamentally bad person.

He had no community to speak of. He came of age during Imperial rule and probably hardly remembers life under the Republic, which to many was the same thing. He lives on Coruscant, which is an incredibly oppressive place to live. He receives a single shaft of natural light in his home at a certain time of day. He lived under the thumb of his oppressive mother.

All of these things allow you to understand how this character is fully rounded as a person and how he has come to be who he is. Syril’s biggest problem is that he simply cannot begin to fathom any nuance. This is shown to us immediately when he talks to Chief Inspector Hyne about the two corpo cops that were killed by Cassian. Hyne immediately understands every bit of nuance to the situation and why, through this kind of malicious compliance, they can keep the Imperials happy and keep their jobs while doing the least. Syril DESPISES this. He organizes a raid and MULTIPLE people get killed all because Syril could not understand the complexity of a situation.

We see this again when he cannot turn his cop brain off and continues his relentless foolish quest to get Andor, simply because he cannot understand that he himself is the one that has ruined everything. He knows the Empire does bad things and STILL pursues Dedra. He helps the Empire with their anti-Ghorman propaganda by being a double agent. He has blinders on so tight that he can’t begin to put the pieces of his own flaws together and how he’s being used as a pawn by the regime until the very last moment. All he sees through the blinders is Andor and Syril’s possible sympathies for the Ghormans evacuate his brain immediately. He aided in dooming the planet. He would get ruthlessly judged in any tribunal had there been any for him.

Great character though!

[kundusaysthings]

As an Indian, I find myself not particularly surprised or aggrieved at this, since this falls into a wider pattern of disappointing Indian representation in Western media. There are also a bunch of other factors, which lead me to see this as the expected result.

First - Vardha Sethu being a British actor was part of why she got cast. Professionally speaking, she is part of the British TV industry. That's why she's on the show that has hired a bunch of British actors to fill out the roster. I feel reasonably confident in my belief that they were not looking to represent Indians in Star Wars, and Cinta was a happy accident.

Second - until Across The Spider-Verse, I didn't think I would ever see decent representation for Indians in mainstream media from the West. And given that a broad character like Pavitr would not count as great representation if he was Black or Latine, I think we're unlikely to have it go much farther than what we have now.

Third - India is not a massive enough market for most Western media to merit special targeting, nor are Indians living outside the country a massive enough demographic to merit special consideration. I don't see this changing anytime soon, at least not enough for Western production companies to take a direct interest. Indians are likely to see themselves represented well only in Indian productions - and even that will depend on which specific sub-industry you are looking at.

Does it suck that the first Indian person to show up in Star Wars got murked for a white girl's character development? Yes, it does. But Hollywood couldn't manage to give Irfan Khan a script worthy of his talent for the decade he spent there, so this is to be expected. Priyanka Chopra has been there for longer, and she hasn't had any of her English-audience work come close to a fraction of her performance in Barfi or The Sky Is Pink.

And hey, maybe they go back to Golak from Visions sometime and we get something better than this.

I would have been a lot more okay with the way Cinta died if killing off black and brown characters for the sake of the development of white characters weren't already a pattern for Andor.

I see the tragic sort of irony in the fact that Cinta seems almost invincible in the face of danger from the Empire— she's so alert and competent and ready for anything— of course it could only be an accident that she wouldn't see coming. And I see the interest in the concept of there being a death on this mission not because of the Imperial crackdown the group was afraid of, but because a green kid could only see that outside danger instead of the even more likely dangers of within-group panic and disorganization.

But it all rings hollow when over and over and over, the writers of Andor kill off darker-skinned characters just so the lighter-skinned ones can have their character development moments. Taramyn and Gorn dying first and fastest at Aldhani, Birnok being introduced just to help Cassian plan before he's killed off immediately so Kino and Melshi can get their moments instead. Then tossing Nurchi in there just to die just because, I guess. The way Clem is mostly there for his death to be a catalyst to Maarva and Cassian.

And so all I can think about watching this scene is wow, what a surprise, we killed off the brown girlfriend so the white one can have her moment of tragedy and eloquent monologue. It makes me furious, it makes me sad, it makes me bitter and resentful that this just keeps happening and happening in a show where I KNOW the writers are capable of doing better and yet they CHOOSE not to every. single. time.

[kundusaysthings]

Andor and LGBTQ+ Representation

Spoilers for Andor Season 2

I'm seeing a lot of people try and litigate if Cinta's death counts as a 'bury your gays' moment, due to the origins of the trope being based in the disposability of queer characters over the straight ones and ambiguity over whether it is actually an essential feature of the trope.

However, I can propose an alternative.

Whether it counts as an instance of the trope or not, what it is, is a kick in the teeth. And the writers clearly want to kick the audience in the teeth. To top it off, Vel's speech to the offending kid is meant to hurt even more while we, the audience, are curled up in pain.

And given the moment we are in, where queer people stand to lose what rights we have gained over the last few decades as authoritarianism rises across the globe, it would be really nice for media that features us to not kick us in the teeth. Even if it is service of its broader themes, even if it fits the story, even if it is given the gravity and weight it deserves. I just don't want to get kicked in the teeth right now.

[kundusaysthings]

"How was I supposed to know they're two different characters? They're both brown! What do you mean, one is Latine and the other is South Asian? Neither of those places exist in Star Wars!"

/s, in case it wasn't clear.

This is what happens when you don't watch things you complain about, or you're simply racist. Those 2 aren't even the first LGBTQ characters in Star Wars, and they've been the official couple for years now. And the most important thing, that's not Bix.

[kundusaysthings]

TW: discussion of drug use

Am I the only one who didn't think much of Bix using what feel like essentially non-prescription sleeping pills to cope with what she has been through? A lot of discourse I have seen feels like it's making a mountain out of a molehill. My parents take sleeping pills/pain medication without a prescription or medical consultation way more often.

[kundusaysthings]

Speculation about the Ghorman Massacre

I have been eagerly anticipating season 2 of Andor, and these are some guesses based on the trailer and films I have been watching - specifically, Sardar Udham.

I think the Ghorman Massacre will be reminiscent of the Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre.

For those who are not aware - this happened in Colonial India in 1919, after the passing of the Black Act that allowed the colonial government to arrest anyone without needing to provide a reason. About 20,000 people gathered to protest this - unarmed men, women and children in a circular park. General Reginald Dyer, under the command of Governor Michael O'Dwyer, gathered a bunch of troops, blocked off all the exits, surrounded the amassed civilians and opened fire. The colonial government admitted to a death toll of 379, which is analogous to the Soviet death toll of the Chernobyl incident being at 31. This was revised upwards after the Hunter Comission - the initial estimate was around 200. Indian sources from around the time put the toll over 1000.

This was a major turning point in the Indian independence movement - it made clear that the British would not leave unless their hand was forced.

When interviewed by the Hunter Comission, Dyer said that he would have used tanks if the streets leading to Jallianwalla Bagh had been wide enough. I think Tarkin will end up doing what Dyer could only dream of.

[kundusaysthings]

The very idea of 'militant liberals' feels like an oxymoron, if we go with the American version of liberalism. And as Saw said, they do look pretty lost.

I understand why some people read the remains of the Maia Pei (sp?) Brigade as undisciplined children engaging in leftist infighting. Because they are. But I think there's a much more rewarding read to what's was going on there.

First, the facts of the matter: 1) the MPB had 5 ships and approx 60 armed fighters, 2) the MPB was led by Maia Pei, 3) there was no clear chain of command outside of Maia Pei being in charge, 4) Maia Pei is probably dead.

The routed remains of the MPB are what happens when you don't have an organized hierarchical force. Maia was clearly a great warleader who was capable of putting together, inspiring, and leading a large rebel cell. But, as the name implies, it was the *Maia Pei* Brigade. These fighters weren't an ideological unit. They were following a strong individual. She had no chain of command and no plan in place in case she died. With her death and the catastrophic loss of most of her brigade the survivors were left with no structure and no ability to regroup and push forward.

The MPB is what happens when you rely on a charismatic strongman. Which is something that MANY militant left wing groups do irl.

[kundusaysthings]

The question of justice over legal immunity was already explored in the Gloria Stanton case - and if there exists a class of reader that somehow took away the lesson that one must always stick to due process for justice, then we know where rot in the DC readership came from.

what people really don't seem to understand about jason's (very justifiable) anger towards bruce is that it's not about bruce leaving the joker alive, it's about the fact that bruce didn't do anything to stop the joker from harming/killing anyone ever again. if bruce had actually done something about the joker (it doesn't have to be murder but something that would stop the joker from causing more harm), jason probably would've been less angry (because the joker being alive isn't the only issue that jason had with bruce) with him.

(yeah, i know all about how the joker had diplomatic immunity but that comic was also pretty islamophobic & and also it was very pro-z10n1st (i.e. one of the candidates to potentially be jason’s mother was a spy for the is***l government) so i'm disregarding everything about that comic)

[kundusaysthings]

Syril Karn is doomed to remain a fascist to the end

I've watched a bunch of videos with people talking about how Syril is a wildcard who could go either way with his allegiances, and seen speculation about how he could have easily been a Rebel instead, if he somehow ended up finding that side more attractive.

Here's why I think this is a shallow interpretation of the Andor show.

As the video 'How to Radicalize a Normie' by Innuendo Studios (link here: https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g?si=UxUauetzOETvTg1r) says, the young fascist man is not exactly looking to conservatism for a political ideology, but for 'the cure to his soul-sickness'. Syril needs to feel like he is worth something - and his mother refuses to offer him unconditional love. In fact, she actually refers to him as an investment - berating him for failing to offer her what she considers a sufficient return, and then gushing with praise when he reveals that he has been promoted. There is a void in his heart that needs something or someone to love him without reservation - and here comes the Empire, that tells him that he is good and worthy simply for supporting its vision of order. The Rebellion cannot offer any of its members the same - sure, it believes in equality of all the people who the Empire would otherwise look down upon, but it needs them to prove their worth before giving them value as individuals. The Empire, however, will allow Syril to passively consider himself better than large swathes of the galaxy simply by being.

Cassian, on the other hand, learns over the course of the series that he is loved and an individual by his family and community, without reservation. The final episode reinforces this idea - Maarva, Brasso, B2EMO and Bix retain their affection for him despite all his flaws - as Maarva relays through Brasso, she 'love(s) him more than anything that he could ever do wrong'. Even Pegla, who was grouchy earlier about Cassian taking the ships he is responsible for, is able to offer unconditional empathy to him upon seeing him after Maarva's death. Cassian is therefore not vulnerable to the Empire's rhetoric in the way Syril is.

I hope this thread gets reinforced in Season 2 - it really makes the anti-fascist critique that runs through the show.

[kundusaysthings]

This is interesting, because I arrived at Signs of the Sojourner from the other end - the roguelike deckbuilder side. And in that space, the data model that is used by Signs of the Sojourner is pretty standard - the game autosaves after each encounter, and only saves at the very start of the encounter since that is the only reliable non-buggy game state. Making choices that you can't turn back on is the norm for that category - and the idea of reloading saves to explore all possible choices didn't really cross my mind. I don't actually mind save-scumming, especially in VNs - I just never thought of this game as a VN. I took the idea of each run being composed of permanent choices at face value - but I guess I would have had a very different opinion if the game had been pitched to me as a VN with added gameplay.

Sadly, I do feel that Signs of the Sojourner is itching for a save and load feature, or a skip feature, or both.

I'm on my second playthrough now. I enjoyed my first playthrough enough to want to play it again, and I'm still excited and eager to play a third time, maybe more. So I say this with love but,

this game is really lacking as a visual novel. Some basic features that I just can't find anywhere in this game.

It is common for visual novels to have multiple endings. It is common for visual novels to have forks in the dialogue trees or other choices that lead to different endings. It is common for VN players to want to reload from the fork and then play out the alternate ending.

If you look at renpy, a popular visual novel engine, save and load and skip are just inbuilt in the engine. Developers do not need to figure out how to implement, it's part of the engine. That's the point of having a dedicated game engine dedicated to a specific game genre.

Signs of the Sojourner seems to have multiple endings. (Though I admit I've only seen one so far!) But when you get that ending, the game just stops. You go back to the title screen. Your save is gone. The only option is to start a new game.

I'm not sure what the devs were thinking here really. Did they want a neat contained narrative with no "game logic" to break the "immersion"? I mean, the ability to dip in and out of a visual novel is a very well trodden convention of the genre. And further, I don't see why it should be any more or less immersive than holding a book in your hands and skipping to a specific page. Something you're likely to do when you've already read the whole book before!

Maybe it's because Signs of the Sojourner is a deckbuilding visual novel specifically. Did the devs want to stop players from having enough freedom to manipulate the deckbuilding for a better deck? The game does autosave every time a change is made to your deck after all.

But there are a number of ways to manipulate for better cards anyway. The game autosaves at the beginning of every new conversation, but only at the beginning. So if the conversation ever goes awry, you can reload and try to take it in a different direction.

This not only helps you turn discordant conversations into concordant conversations, it also allows you to manipulate available card pools in the post conversation card trades.

For example, I had a conversation with Nadine once, the boss of the trade caravan. I played an observant card which allowed me to see her hand. And I saw a double creative double direct card in her hard. That's a high value card! And a pretty rare one too! I was quite happy to see this only on the second trip as well, this kind of high value card usually only starts spawning in the late game, not in the early game.

But since Nadine has a primarily empathy and logic deck, I only played empathy and logic cards. She only played empathy and logic cards.

And the post conversation card trade only allows you to take a card that the conversationalist played, not one they had in their deck or hand but was never played, even if you saw it with the observant ability.

So I reload my save file. Deliberately played a creative card despite creative cards not matching with empathy or logic, forced Nadine to play her rare card, and then played the game from there like normal. I got all the concordant bips instead of the discordants, and I got the happy convo with Nadine AND she coughed up her rare card in the post convo trade!

So you can see how the player is allowed and incentivised to push the limits of the game in order to get better cards. With that in mind, I see no reason to not add a basic save and load feature instead of just relying on autosave.

Now some might say, that this sort of player behaviour breaks immersion and that a good visual novel developer should perhaps discourage it. I personally couldn't disagree more, and I have a personal vendetta against the ludonarrative concept.

I think whether or not story is gameplay is story is a choice. You choose whether or not story is gameplay or not. Let's take forcing Nadine to cough up her rare card as a prime example.

The protagonist Rhea, is the daughter of a travelling merchant. Your mum has provided for you and kept you out of the family business for a time, until her passing and your need to inherit the business.

As you travel and negotiate trade deals with various people around the region, you begin to learn more about your mother, the kind of life she lived in your absense, the sides of her that she wasn't so eager to share with you.

Even with Nadine, who know your mother, (as they were both part of the trade caravan,) can in some conversations be made to admit that she viewed your mother as being smart, too smart. Some people describe your mother as being very kind and very loving, but others call her a shark. Where exactly does the truth lie?

There is a basic narrative to Signs of the Sojourner of the protagonist Rhea leaving her home town of Bartow for the first time and needing to adapt to a larger world and her changing life. The player who does not adapt represents the Rhea who did not adapt. Still stuck in her idyllic childhood. Still needing responsible adults to provide for her. Falling and crashing when not provided for.

The player who adapts represents the Rhea who truly followed her mother's footsteps. Perhaps holding onto some unstated values, but also navigating the harshness and hostility of the wider world full of people each with their own interests.

So, the player who forces Nadine to give up her rare card, simply represents the Rhea who follow her mother's footsteps too closely for Nadine's liking. That's all!

So you can see how I've engaged in metagaming, AND how that metagaming has directly engaged with the game's fiction and themes.

However, there is another issue here. Signs of the Sojourner is really excellently balanced.

It's possible to make the game really miserable by building a very bad deck. But even loading your deck up with multiple high value cards isn't necessarily game breaking. There are a number of complex interacting game systems here that still reinforced the broader core themes of the game.

I'll make an example out of the doggy cards. Those are arguably the best cards in the game. They belong exclusively to an npc you cannot trade with. Thunder the dog is allowed to play doggy cards, and doggy cards match with all other cards. But the player can never at any point collect doggy cards and can never deckbuild with doggy cards.

But hypothetically, even if you could get those cards, Signs of the Sojourner would still be a game where you can't please everybody and where you have to navigate some losses!

First of all, there's the map and the calender. Certain storylines are gated behind specific NPCs who can only be found or talked to in specific map locations at specific days of the calender month.

Meaning that the doggy deck would not allow you to access every storyline on its own, but you would still need to prioritise which npcs you speak to, including when there are mutually exclusive choices and one npc/storyline needs to be ignored and sacrificed in order to pursue another.

Further, there is the fatigue cards. The longer you travel, the more fatigue cards you gain. If at any point you have at least five fatigue cards in your deck, you can draw a full hand of fatigue cards. Playing one fatigue card once causes you to suffer two discordant bips in a conversation.

So there are many ways that even the most powerful cards in the game still put you in the position of having to choose which allies truly mean the most to you and which parts of the story you're really interested in seeing more of.

So I can't understand then why there isn't a save and load feature for exploring different endings.