strangefellows

[strangefellows]

every time i see someone dissing or talking down about the dante is ayin theory as completely impossible/delusional/stupid

i laugh

like. really? REALLY? its fine if you disagree but IMPOSSIBLE or DELUSIONAL? bitch i have a 200+ page evidence theory doc with screenshots

[strangefellows]

Are you feeling burned out over the Ayin blog? It's been a week :( I miss my wet cat man with all the mental illnesses!

GOD, HAS IT BEEN????

I'm so sorry anon, I'm not burned out ;A;

It's a combo of being IRL busy, a little brain fried, and Resident Evil has kind of eaten me a bit.

I'll see about getting to the asks I've got soon, though! It makes me really happy to know people miss him and like him that much.

[strangefellows]

fgo is a very easy game to understand. you suffer unimaginably and then you listen to The Sun In The Abyss and everything is ok

[strangefellows]

because god help me if i ever put this on twitter (and i'm risking my ass even posting this opinion HERE but i want to write out my thoughts on a platform without a word count limit) i'mma put it here under a read more

disclaimer: this is speaking purely from a vibes, story, atmosphere, and character standpoint, as (being someone who primarily experiences most games through LPs and cutscene movies due to lack of consoles/finances) i do not have a grasp of gameplay and combat enough to speak about it as "good" or "bad".

anyway, unpopular resident evil opinion tldr: 7 and village are my least favorite re games despite being absolutely fantastic horror games because of 7's lack of re franchise identity and village's seeming disconnect with the rest of the franchise going forward. i will explain under a cut

i'm gonna start with 7 bc that's my genuine least favorite game in the franchise and oh am i going to get hate for that people are going to burn me at the stake

but listen.

i know 7 was born from how absolutely panned 6 was by the fandom, and how much people loathed it -- an opinion i do not share, as i sincerely enjoyed 6; will discuss this further down -- but in my opinion, 7 overcorrected.

now, preface: 7 is a damn fucking good horror game. it is an amazing horror game. the claustrophobia and dread and atmosphere are fantastic and the bakers are terrifying.

but it is not a resident evil game to me.

to me, the hallmarks, the identity, the core of a resident evil game is as follows:

at least one mansion, or otherwise creepy and unsettling abandoned location/setpiece with vintage or classical architecture and trappings (paintings, sculptures, vintage furniture, rooms and hallways, doors, carvings and frescoes and such)

ridiculous, overly complicated progression puzzles that make absolutely no fucking sense to have been implemented in a building meant for public usage (ie the door keys, the piano)

incredibly fucked up and weird and unique enemy design, stretching the definition of zombie as far as it can go, to the extent of breaking it over its own knee, including infected animals that barely look like the base anymore (lickers, hunters, plagas, majini, and j'avo only scratch the surface)

multiple giant fucked up boss monster designs that go above and beyond, including their fight sequences that require heavy weaponry to even begin to start dealing with them (the gigantes, the giant fucked up bat majini from 5, the fucking t-abyss whale from revelations, every single final boss transformation)

a batshit fuckoff insane villain prone to long wild monologues who can and will infect themselves during this and go even more batshit insane, resulting in a boss fight with a mutated lunatic with superpowers, rocket launcher optional (marcus, alexia, sergei, wesker, simmons, carla, alex, jack norman, saddler, krauser, and nikolai counts sans mutations)

STALKER CREATURE (mr. x, nemesis, ustanak, arguably mendez, et cetera)

while 7 had some mild traits of this nature - the baker house did have a few puzzles, and jack baker did hit the 'crazy villain boss fight' notes plus his final transformation like 10 minutes before the game ended, and marguerite was plenty fucked up and weird, and evie's concept was pretty damn solid - for the most part, it did not feel like a resident evil game.

it was too down to earth; i was watching infinite darkness last night, and that's what i can best describe it as. the traits that make resident evil what they are were sanded down if present at all, to the point it felt like a western horror more than resident evil

now THIS IS NOT A BAD THING, i adore western horror as well - evil within is a favorite, bioshock and dead space are bangers, as is anything by supermassive, and i am excited to see crisoul by blumhouse, i could go on -- but resident evil (and by extension other major japanese horror franchises like silent hill) have a certain something to them, a sensibility, a-- i don't want to say anime-esque quality to them, but a sense of this over the top ridiculousness and willingness to be dramatically weird that does not take away in the slightest from either the horror or the character writing. this is how we get shit like pyramid head and nemesis with a rocket launcher being some of the scariest shit in the series despite also being kinda what the Fuck on paper.

but to go into a resident evil game expecting, well, resident evil, and only getting a sanded down version of the franchise, a fantastic horror game with none of what i'd come to expect from my favorite horror series...it was severely disappointing. chris's 2 minute cameo (outside the dlc) where he looked like temu chris redfield and no chris we've ever gotten before or since did not help.

enjoyed the game immensely, don't get me wrong. it just felt like after 6 was received so badly, 7 overcorrected and in the process shed much of its own franchise identity to please the fans.

and to that i say: 6 was fine, you guys are just mean. it was plenty scary. the action in it was a natural progression from 4 to 5 to 6, it didn't feel jarring. there was a lot of horrifying, claustrophobic moments, we had plenty of weird puzzles going on in the china section, great tense boss fights, and the character writing - in everywhere, but especially with chris's scenario dealing with his trauma and ptsd + jake's scenario and the "sins of the father" themes - was just as good as it's always been. while it's not my favorite of the franchise, i'm still very fond of it and jake and sherry's scenario is a highlight to me as a wesker and birkin fan.

in any case, yeah. tldr 7 was a great game but barely a resident evil game, so i was not a fan.

then came village! and they did so much better with village!

we had the setpieces-- the mansions were stellar! we had the ridiculous puzzles! we had some pretty damn good enemy designs (shoutout to the metal fucker in the foundry)! the boss shit was fabulous (shoutouts to lady's d's mutant form, everything about moreau, and the beneviento dollhouse, bonus for miranda)! lady d was a great stalker! miranda was FUCKING PERFECT for a batshit ranting resident evil final boss! chris was ACTUALLY CHRIS! and the lore we found in miranda's lab tied the whole ass game into the rest of the series thanks to the letter from spencer, which was the cherry on top.

however

where village ended up falling flat for me is how after we kill lady d, and donna, and moreau, and heisenberg, and miranda, and ethan dies....okay now what? this is subject to change, but the fact that the new protagonist we'd come to enjoy is written out of the plot in his second showing ever was incredibly disappointing to me, however well written it was.

if in requiem, they give us solid, majorly important lore and connections tying back to village and miranda, i will rescind my complaint here and village will rise in ranks all the higher.

but if not, then...it feels unsatisfyingly self-contained. nothing is going forward from village. the molded and miranda's cult are gone, as is our newest protagonist ethan. mia isn't a player character, rose is a literal baby (the dlc doesn't count that takes place in the far future). we don't even seem to be addressing the bsaa going rogue plot (if we do i'll be delighted, this is just going off the one trailer so who knows).

but to me, village is a great resident evil game that leaves me unsatisfied with how unconnected it feels to the overarching story as a whole; even the non-numbered titles such as revelations/rev 2, code veronica, and hell with 9's reveal outbreak, are tied into said overarching story. village...doesn't, not yet.

as i said, if 9 does work in village references in a major way, i will be absolutely over the moon, and it will solve a lot of my problems with it. but...unfortunately, 7 will still be at the bottom of the pack, as there's nothing they can do to fix my problems with that one.

from what i've seen so far of 9, this isn't just a return to raccoon city-- this is a return to form. the sanatorium/hotel from the 30 minute demo at SGF complete with horrifyingly monstrous stalker is the resident evil i know and love to death, and i am absolutely delighted.

everyone comparing it to 7 -- i see where you're coming from; it's a combination of recency bias and having this innate dislike for 6, so there's this sense of "7 is the best game" from it being such a departure from the franchise's poorly received direction til then (seen with 5 and 6, though somehow people forget rev2) -- needs to go back and play the classics; 0, 1, 2 and 3 both og and remakes. this is a return to those.

2 is my all-time favorite in the entire franchise, and hearing and seeing what we know of requiem feels like we're back in resident evil 2, in the rpd, dreading the footsteps of mr. x as we frantically try to find the correct door key.

we're going home. not just to raccoon city, but to the franchise i love so much. and i couldn't be more excited to see what happens next.

[strangefellows]

Everybody's feelin' warm and bright It's such a fine and natural sight Everybody's dancin' in the moonlight

Look I love imagining them dancing along whenever I hear that song so. I have the POWER. And can I just say that I am super jealous of Ayin right now? Because yeah, I so am.

[strangefellows]

He would make coffee for the both of them and go up to Ayin while he was working, and he would know that nothing further was expected of him. That he would not have to smile if he did not have to. He could talk at length, he found, and Ayin would not tell him to be quiet. He could be silent as the grave himself, and Ayin would not ask him to talk.

Excerpt is from Lament.

Back when I was writing and illustrating that fic, I wanted to draw something that'd really get across the idea I had, which I couldn't at the time with just my phone. Now, though... now, I can do this.

Which I think probably took me several hours, haha. And hands are still my worst enemy.

[strangefellows]

Kitty!! The rp blog link!!! Kitty!!!!

RIGHT THANK YOU I HAVE BEEN ALL OVER THE PLACE THIS WEEKEND

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SORRY I'M NOT GONNA BE NORMAL RIGHT NOW RESIDENT EVIL 9 ANNOUNCMENT IT'S REAL IT'S HAPPENING

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[strangefellows]

Kitty you should link the Ayin blog on your pinned post!

OH SHIT YOU RIGHT I WILL DO THAT

[strangefellows]

ive seen really interesting theories about dante as the wishmaker and the “observer” being an entirely different entity-maybe even a nod to the players themselves-because of dante learning about w corp by talking to the ids (i dont think the upties were ever mentioned in dante’s notes)

but yeah the fact that carmen is so invested in narrating the sinner’s stories is huge and it means ayin involvement isn’t completely ruled out (maybe one day we get an ayin narrated story and I will jump for joy)

yeah the whole wishmaker and observer thing is SO interesting honestly

it really to me adds more evidence for the dantayin theory because with the way carmen spoke to the listener - dante - about "witnessing, and just witnessing" feels like a deliberate dig at ayin's role in lobcorp as watching everything and feeling helpless for so long in all the loops

but YEAH the fact that carmen is SO invested also feels like. man why would she be SO INVESTED in harassing this little bus and this one specific clock on this bus............

[strangefellows]

The observer & The narrator

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> As the world caves in. _

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heyyy my bestfriend have u seen anything of jia xishmael’s uptie :3

HAHHAHHA FUNNY STORY I WAS COMING TO TAG YOU ABOUT THE SAME THING

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WHO INVITED YOU MA'AM PLEASE LEAVE

THE LORE ON MIRROR WORLD IS WILD but also holy shit does this add fuel to the dantayin theory or what

[strangefellows]

REMASTERED FFTACTICS USING THE WAR OF THE LIONS SCRIPT WITH VOICES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I AM SO NORMAL

[strangefellows]

let's go home!

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@omorinintendoswitchedition I GOT YOUR ASK

I KNOW I AM ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSANE RIGHT NOW

ALL OF THE AYIN-DANTE PARALLELS ALL OF THE AYIN-HONG LU PARALLELS ALL OF THE GOOD FOOD FOR MY THEORY THE CHESED SCENE IM LIVING

[strangefellows]

staggers out of updating my doc it's now at 229 pages holy moly