#Bootleg Final Fantasy feels | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

leam1983 · 6 months

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On Evolving Tastes

1989: "I know of no other games than Super Mario Bros. 1 through 3, Tetris, Doctor Mario and Mickey's Mousecapade. This will last for a few years, until my aunt will introduce me to bootleg 300-in-one cartridges. Ironically, I'll only ever touch Yie Ar Kung Fu, Macross, Mappy, Dig Dug and City Connection."

1990: "Dad's discovered that a store near his office sells Tengen cartridges for a fraction of officially-licenced titles! He gets me Gauntlet on the super cheap, thinking I'll play it once and forget about it, but Gauntlet becomes the one game I play the most often."

1996: "Man, Earthworm Jim and Myst are going to dominate this summer vacation! I might even work in some time for a few Mortal Kombat tourneys!"

1999: "I got over my giant snob self and gave Quake and Half-Life a shot. Something's shifted, for sure. I'm not sure, but I might actually like a few shooters..."

2001: "I am a grown-ass man and I cannot stop playing The Sims. Please send help, I'm nurturing an unhealthy God complex."

2002: "I'm really mad at myself for not finding out about Vampire - The Masquerade: Redemption until two years after its release."

2004: "Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines has consumed me."

2005: "Study? Yeah, sure, I do - but Unreal Tournament 2004 is where it's at - whenever Black & White 2 doesn't consume for weeks on end."

2006: "My Dad introduced me to SimCity 3000 several years too late, which is introducing me to the wacky world of PC retrogaming. I now use his beige croaker of a clerical machine to work on Isometric metropolises while snapping my fingers to some real-ass Jazz bops."

2007: "I resisted for two years, but finally caved in to Guitar Hero. It's also the best excuse I had to get a Slim PS2."

2008: "I used my paycheck from my first Real, Adult Man Job at the campus to get myself an XBOX 360 and Fable II! I'll spend years playing it while ignoring the game's obvious flaws!"

2009: "I kinda hate myself for it, but I splurged on a PS3 after a friend showed me Super Stardust HD."

2010: "Fuck you, getting myself a Wii for the express purpose of playing the Metroid Prime Trilogy. Also, ow, this exact fucking thing will also send me off to my first serious GP appointment as an adult, for a Carpal Tunnel Syndrome diagnosis. I'll spend two years wearing a wrist brace and playing through all three games in short bursts. The tendon responsible for retracting my right thumb is on permanent fire and every gameplay session puts me through a physical gauntlet, but every new gameplay component the series introduces makes me feel like a kid again."

2011: "Skyrim. Just - Skyrim. I'll perpetrate my first and only acts of professional truancy to devote entire weeks to my quest log. It helps that this winter was particularly Siberian, so I had plenty of excuses to stay home and slay dragons."

2014: "I power through Destiny on the PS3 and spend about four months being extremely hooked onto the game's universe and lore. I'll design character after character even after finishing the main quest four times, because I finally discovered what Halo stans have been enjoying for years - which is an approachable and still complex Fantasy/Sci-Fi shooter that hasn't yet lost its narrative compass...

Luckily, I also find out about Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and realize I have a thing for Uruk-Hai labelled as "The Friendly". I'll spend a year at the pace of an hour or two per day trying to populate my two camps with nothing but Friendlies."

2015: "As is usually the case, I come into this a few years too late and discover the joy that is Saints Row: The Third. GTA never grabbed me, while Volition's total lack of self-seriousness delights me. I buy Saints Row IV immediately after finishing my first run-through, and find that Volition's writing team is the only thing that keeps me going. If it weren't for JB Blanc's mouth-watering portrayal of Emperor Zinyak, I'd be playing a fun, if average third-person shooter."

2016: "Bigger job titles means more disposable income, which means my first custom-built tower PC after years of prebuilts - and a PS4! Destiny 2 and GTA 5 are big ones on there, but the first one disappoints me with how it gatekeeps the lore behind high-skill activities that are unfriendly for players with navigational or reflex-related issues (i.e. moi) and the second turns absolutely turgid at any moment that doesn't feature Trevor Philips.

Seriously, who do I have to call at Rockstar to let them know I don't give a rat's ass about Michael DeSanta's midlife hoodlum crisis?!"

2017: "Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, baby! Copy and paste my fixation from 2014, except now Friendlies are voiced by JB Blanc. Thank fuck for apartments, 'cause I wouldn't have wanted my folks to see me aggressively blush any time a Friendly crossed swords with me, claiming to want to be my pal."

2020: "Welp, guess it's nothing except slaying demons and building an island commune on my brand-new Nintendo Switch... Oh, and wouldn't you know it, Cyberpunk 2077 just came out, and in such a state that I won't seriously touch it until September 2022..."

2021: "What's happening to me? Why am I so psyched about Power Washer Simulator? Why did I spend nearly as much time in Mechanic Simulator 2021 as I did in Skyrim? Why do I persist in being hyped for House Flipper despite reports of horribly unoptimized code?"

2022: "I might as well embrace it: I have no hair on top and grow a mo' in an afternoon, I can only maintain a very mild case of fitness and there's fifteen to twenty pounds I just can't get rid of no matter how hard I try. I am a Dad, now. I have the Dad Bod - the real one, not the one perpetuated by misaligned kiddies who'd call British Pop Music starlets Daddy - and I am now oddly hyped for Construction Simulator. I've finished Cyberpunk four times, played through Elden Ring twice, and I'm at the point where I'd honestly be excited by a game that finds some way to simplify the act of grading papers.

I dream of a twist on Papers, Please where one plays as a lecturer and where the goal of the game is to grade papers while avoiding interpersonal or professional scandals, as well as meeting faculty quotas..."

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steve0discusses · 2 years

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Yugioh Season Zero: The Yo-yo Crimes of Jounouchi Pt 2

OK, last we left off, we were in a different Youtube video. This one I grabbed off of 2 different videos (you’ll see their watermark in the corner change) and it makes me appreciate the quality that our other episodes have been, honestly. A little bit of compression going on in these, just to give you even more of that nostalgic feel of watching a bootleg anime from the 90′s your brother got from his weird high school friend’s Napster account.

Because this is done with subtitles on, it takes more caps to cover it. Part of why I rewrite the dialogue in these recaps is to help abridge stuff, and so consider yourself warned...there’s a lot of caps in this one. For most of you, that’s probably not much of a problem. But I’m just letting you know because...I sure wasn’t expecting it to be over 40 caps for half an episode, and I’ll probably just type less to make up for that. (Tumblr keeps Erasing All My Words anyway, so this is for the best, but that’s a tech issue I already went into in another post.)

(read more under the cut)

So, to start off, Yugioh and co. walk up to a bar like a really weird version of a bar joke and are like “do you know where we can find the yo-yo gang?” And, much like a video game npc, the bartender was like “I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about, and I heard every part of their intimate conversation. Let me give you all the details, children.”

Hey, PS, there’s an entire Wikipedia entry about the bar joke. And that is wild. Apparently the first bar joke was from Ancient Sumeria, and Wikipedia was like “Here is the Sumerian joke, but we Do Not Get it. Please don’t try to get it.”

The joke being: "A dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one'."

Damn. I can’t believe the Sumerians were onto meme humor before we ever invented memes. They were in the Galaxy brain over there in the land before time, holy crap. Depositing their memes knowing that 7,000 years later mankind would look at the world’s first joke and be like “I don’t get it!” while all the millennials and zoomers with our MB of nonsense memes on our phones are like “No. I get it.” Good on you Sumerians, that is freakin the best joke ever made. 7000 years to get to the punch line of confusing the hell out of all us. Bless.

They promptly tell Miho that everything was resolved and that she should go to bed and she was like “Cool!” and exited stage left. Bye, I guess. Anzu also went home, but she didn’t have to be tricked into doing it, she just went the hell to bed.

(PS, I just realized that if I want to write less...I should probably not look up Wikipedia articles about the world’s first ever bar joke. But y’all, habits die so freakin hard, and I just feel like it’s very pertinent to this Yugioh recap, although I know it’s really not.)

Yuugi and Honda decide to visit the warehouse and harass Jounouchi. In the context of the show, they’re going out of their way to pull their best friend out of society’s systemic downward pull of a life of crime and most likely turning into exactly like his Father. But, the way that it’s storyboarded makes it look a lot like these kids just show up out of the corner and this gang was like “Damn it, again? OMG small children, please leave us alone!”

Honda hands over the symbolism sash, to which Jounouchi symbolically says “Nyeh.”

And Honda didn’t take it very well.

After tending to his kidneys for a little while, Honda decided to go back at it again at the Krispy Cream and do some sort of insane parkour over this completely ordinary fence.

Ah, the very first instance of real duel law where you duel over a relationship. In later seasons duel law is invoked for things like Mai’s marriage and the right to date Tea (and then just kind of forgetting you ever won the right to date Tea twice). But to think the very first time was Honda dueling for the right of Jounouchi to be part of nerd gang because Jounouchi had fallen to the dark side yo-yo gang across the street run by some 40 year old man with blue hair.

How many times is Honda gonna fight with a broom? Like are they just magnetized to his location? where are they even coming from?

Freakin janitor powers over here, put him in a Final Fantasy style RPG. I want to see what his limit break would be.

Not like it matters, because Hirotani very quickly explains why these yo-yo’s are at all a threat.

Which honestly shouldn’t be...so lethal? Seems like the weight is all you need, not really the spikes. But it’s at least stronger than Honda’s janitor stuff.

Unfortunate for Honda that he just destroyed an antique.

So with lightning reflexes, Yuugi does what he does most:

The death yo-yo ricochets back and does this little itty bitty scrape to this guy’s face and he’s real bothered by it. Although it’s like...well dude, you’re a 50 year old high schooler, I don’t think people will notice the scrape compared to everything else falling apart in your life.

And so then the Yugioh Season Zero team was like “oh shoot is it time to torture Yuugi???” and they got hella excited.

Like I thought it was just Yuugi’s class that were a bunch of disturbing criminal disasters, but I guess it’s the whole city. Like...was Yuugi’s class the good school?

I mean, it can’t be, there’s no way...

but like...is there a good school in this universe? How does anyone survive till graduation? If you so much as disgrace a yo-yo, you will get the torture treatment that I sure did expect in Yakuza games, but not so much in Yugioh, tbh.

Just a reminder: This is the third time we’ve beat up Yuugi this episode. Within the first meeting of Yuugi and Hirotani, he beat the tar out of Yuugi within eye shot of Jounouchi. So like...Jounouchi was reallllllllllllllllly lax on that deal, right? Like...he took his toot sweet time to realize “yeah this just ain’t ever gonna happen.”

And then the yo-yo wars begin.

Just like Solid Snake crawling through the radiation chamber.

Hirotani throws his Fyper-yoyo, Jounouchi intercepts with his Eireboy, and Hirotani’s completely terrible yo-yo just flies off the string again because Hirotani should have just sticked to using his fists. No wonder they wanted to recruit Jounouchi so badly, their yo-yo game is so off.

We never get a door to darkness in this episode, dipping our enemies into mind horrors. Instead, we get home-alone style traps. But, this makes sense. Not only do the show makers have to make Yuugi avoid solving problems with magic in front of Jounouchi, they also have to make it Jounouchi’s choice to leave Hirotani behind. If Yuugi did it for him in like...some sort of duel law situation...then that sort of leaves out Jounouchi’s choice in the equation.

Not like this ever really comes up in later seasons, since who even follows through with duel law and marries Mai? But like, it does feel like Season Zero calls out the later Seasons a bit in this regard. Honda got beat up because he tried to win Jounouchi back by force (or game, I guess.) That was just another form of coercion on the heels of Hirotani’s. What Jounouchi actually needed was to make his own decision to leave.

...most other anime I’d be like “I’m sure that’s just a translation error” but not this one.

So Yuugi runs to the roof where Jounouchi will never see this.

My audible sigh reading this line about fight club roof.

These stupid gang members went into Yuugi’s native territory, not just a fight club roof, but on a warehouse? They were dead before they arrived.

This was like maybe 3 frames of animation in just rapid succession, it was pretty silly and good.

Reminder that like 4 minutes ago, Yuugi was about to get like executed on a meat hook.

Speaking of getting executed on a meathook:

Hope you like the idea of glass in your eyes, because this anime’s got it.

They chase Yuugi around, in a sequence that was done mostly to conserve frames, so you rarely saw the ground until this shot:

Lots of falling down this episode, but unlike Tea, who fell from a warehouse ceiling once and just kind of rubbed her ass after and was like “ah damn it.” these guys won’t come out of it virtually unscathed.

Also, Honda is here now:

Jumping off of his symbolic sash trapeze, he decides to do in Hirotani for good.

Hey so like...walk the dog is a fairly gentle walk that a yo-yo does slowly on the ground right?

Just pointing out how sensitive Hirotani’s fingies are.

And he...didn’t appear to be dead, so I don’t have to add to the bodycount...but it’s gonna be a real long road for recovery.

And now, with the gang back together Jounouchi is back at school knee deep in make up assignments he’ll probably completely ignore since we know that in a years time, these fools are going to be trapped on Pegasus’ island, and at that point school will be just that place you talk about when you try to remember why you’re friends with Bakura.

---hey aren’t those chairs attached to the desks?

Because...holy crap, Anzu.

Honestly this is what you see before you die, but I guess Jounouchi died off screen after the episode ended, so I don’t have to add him to the deathcount (again). RIP.

Alright! That took like...8 tries to get Tumblr to save this one, but it managed! (well...I guess “managed” isn’t the word you’d use for a typing program that takes 8 tries to save)

Next time, we’ll be back to S5, for an arc I’ve heard is kind of boring. We’ll see. If it truly is, I can condense episodes into fewer posts. Or maybe it’s a secret gem? I guess we shall see.

And if you just got here this is a link to read all the Season Zero recaps from the start:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yuugi-muto/chrono

(there’s also a link to read all the Yugioh posts we wrote from the start in chrono order but straight up, this file won’t freakin save, and I just can’t even will myself to look up that link again. It’s on the home page of this blog on the right.)

#YGO #yugioh #yu gi oh #Yuugi Muto #Jounouchi #Honda #Anzu #Miho #yo yo gang #Hirotani #Yuugi and the gang do serious property damage

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youreallyshouldtalkmore · 1 year

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1st Year Anniv: Genshin Impact-A Bootleg Gamer’s Thank you

I am not a gamer.

Let’s just get that out there from the jump.

Despite that, there are games I have played in my life here and there. I remember growing up during the era of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. Never got a chance to play them but the one thing that struck me was the world and its characters. I still know Cloud and Sephiroth on sight.

However I've always wanted to play a game with a beautiful world and awesome characters but never got the chance.....until now.

Genshin Impact rather slipped into my life via a YouTube video.

Genshin Impact EP - The Divine Stone Sees the World

youtube

This video was on my feed for awhile until one spring day I finally clicked on it.

The beautiful scenery, gorgeous music and a beautiful man sipping tea under a tree?

Whose writing my aesthetic here?

Who was this and what was it?

Ahh, a game.

But I'm not a gamer enough to buy contraptions to play games.

Hold on! Y'all accommodate the PC players?

And its free?

After looking into it, I finally caved and decided to sign up to play.

And I was hooked!

I came because of the Liyue video but fell in love with Monstadt. I found the world of Tevyat to be the kind of game I've always wanted to play!! An anime fantasy-ish type game!

I love stories and this world's story is so compelling. I'm less interested in having the best and strongest characters. I just largely want to get through the story. I'm a slow player preceding to enjoy the world at a snail’s pace. I started playing Spring 2021 and in Fall 2021 I just started the Liyue arc.

I remember when I finished Prologue III, I unexpectedly got hit with feels. I actually started playing because it was Liyue that captured my attention, but I feel in love with Monstadt and it's characters. I was good until Venti bidded us farewell.

Same for finishing Xinglang’s story quest. I felt like I had to say goodbye so soon to a sister friend that loved to eat and cook! I loved the cook off! I thoroughly enjoy wandering the world meeting the vast array of different characters. And I look forward to the myriad of characters I have yet to meet.

I have even learned some gamer terminology and strategy while playing this game. I rather enjoy trying to figure out how to beat a boss. (Shout out Thank you to all those that make videos telling you how to beat a level, puzzle or boss. Y'all are lifesavers!)

It’s amazing that in a few months I've went from trying to figure out how to make the character go backward and forwards to keep pressing controls and hope I beat the thing to using elemental combat and looking up weapons and stuff. Apparently, I’ve leveled up too in my knowledge of “how to” play a game. I really enjoy the strategizing in this game.

But at the end of the day, I wanted to say, Thank you, Mihoyo for creating a great game and making it accessible to literally everyone! You managed to turn a non-gamer into a bootleg gamer.

I appreciate all your hard work that goes into character design, world design and story arcs. You are really an inspiration to me as some who inspires to tell my own stories and make my own worlds.

So Happy 1st Anniversary and I look forward to another year with Genshin Impact!

Also linked this on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/Desertfyr/status/1442966227060604950

#genshin impact #mihoyo #liyue #zhongli #mondstadt #venti #thank you

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oonajaeadira · 1 year

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Banshee - Have you ever had a paranormal encounter? If so, do tell!

Fantasy - What’s your favorite mythical character?

Superstitious - Are you superstitious (or perhaps just a little stitious)?

I didn’t see if you had reblogged this but I’m sending anyway! 🥰 @fictitious-little-stitious

lol I did post it last night, but I'm happy to answer more!!! Thank you, lil 'stitious!!!

Fantasy - What’s your favorite mythical character?

I answered this for Hazel: LOKI! I kinda fell in love with him based on an illustration and it kinda snowballed from there.

Superstitious - Are you superstitious (or perhaps just a little stitious)?

I have two stage superstitions and two driving superstitions.

Stage superstition #1: If final dress is awful, opening night will be amazing and vice versa. I have often come home in tears after a wonderful last dress, dreading the next day. It's not always true. But it is enough of the time that it sticks with me.

Stage superstition #2: I always have the script in the building. The day it's not somewhere--in my bag, in my dressing room--is the day I'll overthink and a line will escape me and I'll have no way to check. Always have the script.

Driving superstition #1: I have a little bone fishing hook hanging from my rear-view mirror. It's meant to symbolize a safe journey. I started touching it every time I started up my car because I liked how it felt, but now it feels weird if I don't touch it. So it's become ritual now, like if I don't, something bad might happen.

Driving suppression #2: Never play Xanandu in the car. It's my favorite album of all time and I've gone through a tape and two CDs. I used to joke that I've listened to it so many times that I'll probably die listening to it, so I've freaked myself out and I just don't listen to it in the car.

Banshee - Have you ever had a paranormal encounter? If so, do tell!

Gonna put this under a cut 'cause it got loooooooonnnnnngggg

First of all, I have to say that I am a firm agnostic, and although I don't believe in the zodiac, I hold to my identity of Gemini, being of two minds about everything. I both believe and do not believe in everything. I like the idea of ghosts, I latch on to accounts and try to dig into them for both truth and debunking. My romance soul says they are possible and yet my science brain tells me they do not exist.

In my life I've lived in two places I've considered to be possibly haunted.

1. My childhood home.

When I was little, I often had a reoccurring dream of an old man walking in circles in our basement in the night and then just wandering up the stairs, looking around in bewilderment, making his way up to the top floor and looking at me while I slept and wondering who I was.

My sister's room was over the living room. And she told me that sometimes she'd get up in the middle of the night and hear talking. I didn't think anything of this because I heard talking too--my parents' room was below mine and sometimes they'd talk in bed. But she'd hear talking in the middle of the night when nobody'd be awake. She'd look out the window and wouldn't see light spilling out below, just dark. But she'd put her ear to the floor and she could hear some words--a man and a woman, not our parents--and heard names. She new they were called Mary and John.

Years later when we were adults, my parents sold the house and went to the bank to the safety deposit box where they kept the title. They hadn't looked at it since they put it in there decades ago. And it had been owned by quite a few families, but the oldest title was held by a Mary and John.

2. My old apartment.

I used to live in a century-old apartment building that used to be a long-stay hotel. (There's still bullet holes in the mail room from the 20s when there was a bootlegging raid.) I lived there in like 4 different apartments over the years. But in the last one, I had dreams of spirits watching me. Their faces were kinda freaky, but they didn't bother me. I'd just wake up in a dark room and tell them politely to go away and then wouldn't have the dream for another few months or so. Every once in a while, the dog next door would bark at my wall and I'd just look in that corner and politely ask whomever was there to please leave and the dog would stop barking. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I just wanted the dog to be quiet, so I'd just ask, in case there was really someone there. It just became a thing.

Then there was the day my uncle died. Donny was a wiseass and he smoked like 3 packs a day. He'd worked with asbestos a lot in his life. We don't have cancer in our family, but he was putting himself on that track. I liked Donny a lot, but I was the only one of the nieces and nephews that wasn't able to go and say goodbye to him before he died. He died in the morning. That night I was on the phone with another friend of mine that lived in the same building. I had pictures in all my rooms, not nailed to the wall, just above the windows, propped up against the sill. I heard something tumble in the bathroom and when I went to look, I saw that the picture in there had fallen. No matter, it was a paint-by-numbers and that room was hot and humid, maybe the cardboard just got weak and it slipped off the sill. I told my friend on the phone what happened and she's like, "you know your apartment is haunted, right?" Because I'd told her the story of the dog and my dreams of the watchers. And I'm like, "maybe, who can say?" Then I go into the kitchen and sit on the counter, and I'm actually looking at the picture in its frame on top of the window in my dining nook and watch it as it tips forward from the wall and tumbles to the floor. My friend's all like, "what was that?" And I'm like, "fucking Donny. He's probably just stopping by on his way out." Do I believe that? Not fully. I like the possibility though. But I have no other good explanation for any of that at all.

#ask games

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nukenai · 2 years

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Have had a lot of Thoughts in my head today due to listening to Earthbound music, so I wanted to try to write up a “little” thing about my relationship to the series and my currently difficulty with it... and also Super Mario RPG, and Geno, and what those mean to me, because the two series are totally intertwined with my life and each other. I’ve written this sort of thing before but idk, I got Smash on the brain and shit.

TWs for domestic abuse and familial death.

So. I was probably 15 or 16 when I got into the Mother series. I’d started getting into playing Melee a lot more for some reason and I decided to start playing as Ness, the one character I always had severe difficulty with. Long story short I looked up Earthbound, got a ROM, blah blah. My mom wound up buying me a physical copy even though I told her she didn’t have to bc of the price. I cosplayed Ness to like every con. My mom bought me a blue and white striped shirt and HAND PAINTED the white stripes yellow, and surprised me with it one day. I wore my Ness outfit to Brawl’s midnight release.

I honestly don’t remember HOW I got into Mother 3 but I got my hands on a copy. My Japanese teacher let me play it in class because she considered it studying (the fan translation didn’t remotely exist yet). I even got the Mother 3 Deluxe Box, so I have the Franklin Badge (which is now in rough shape from wearing it on my Ness cosplay hat for YEARS), and the Mother 3 gameboy micro! (it’s actually next to me right now, I bought a display stand for it the other day).

My cat is named Lucas! I’m sure most people know that but yeah, he’s named after Mother!Lucas because of course he is.

Back in those days, I kind of lurked on Starmen.net. I didn’t really post on forums much because they were never really my thing and still aren’t, but I just kind of poked around there and was on /v/ a lot in the Mother threads. For some reason, in certain Mother circles, there was a prevailing attitude... which was that you didn’t like SMRPG. The idea was that SMRPG was to blame for EB’s poor sales(????) and that it wasn’t as good of a game(????) and that we should be angry at it(????????). It made sense to me as a 16 year old! I mean, my favorite game ever, Earthbound, didn’t sell well. and that’s why Nintendo doesn’t care about it. And it’s ALL MARIO’S FAULT. AND GENO’S. FUCK HIM.

I didn’t know who Geno was in 2006-2007. Only when Brawl was announced and pre-release hype started did I learn about him. I started seeing him everywhere on /v/ threads and on deviantart, and my dumb ass was like, “who tf?”

Some more quick backstory. I did not grow up with an SNES. For some reason we skipped it. I had an NES, then we had other things like a Genesis and PS1, then N64. We had an SNES briefly when borrowing it from a friend, but the only games we had were DKC and Chrono Trigger. I was like 7 years old at this time so I barely remember wtf was going on then. But, we never owned one, and never had the chance to play ANY other SNES games besides those two.

Our household was a console war-free one. We loved Mario, we loved Final Fantasy. We didn’t care about company or console or anything, we just liked good games. So, SMRPG would’ve been an amazing addition to our house. We would’ve loved it. Somehow, it escaped it. Maybe the world wasn’t quite ready for my intense Geno love yet.

Anyways, I hated Geno in 2007, once I learned who he was. I went around trashing SMRPG, a game I had never played or had any interaction with (I don’t think I’d even seen any gameplay footage wtf), and yelling about how Geno was a stupid character who should never be in any other games, because I, an angry 16 year old girl, said so. (At least I didn’t pull out the line many angry 16 year olds have nowadays, which is that nobody played SMRPG. ?????????)

So Brawl comes out. Quick summary of Lucas’ reveal and my experience: I stayed up until 2am every day to check the Smash Dojo website -- we called it JAPAN TIME! -- but I skipped it one day, because I was in high school. My Japanese teacher asked if I wanted to check “the Super Smash Update” in her class like I usually did if I’d forgotten the night before, but I said nah, it’s fine. I’ll check it at home.

AND THAT UPDATE WAS LUCAS BEING ADDED.

So that was bananas. At this point I already had my cat and he was a few months old so it was all very weird! And we had just moved into a new house.

At that time, I was living with my mom and stepdad. My stepdad was a domestic abuser. He emotionally and physically abused my mom and threw us out of the house on multiple occasions. I was picked up from school more than once by my mom with all the animals in the car and was told, “We can’t go home today”. To this day, half of my belongings are missing forever because we had to leave them behind while fleeing him.

One time when we escaped to where I currently live, my grandparents’ house, my grandmother (who I live with!) berated my mom for being “overdramatic” and only let us stay a week before convincing her to go back to stepdad. Oma has also recently told me that she thinks my mom was “mouthy” and basically deserved to get abused by her husband, so that’s very fun.

Anyways, Earthbound was basically my saving grace during all this shit. I intensely hyperfocused on it and Smash Bros. as a way to cope with the utter shit I was going through. Like I said, I was in high school during all this and didn’t ever miss a day of school because of it. I failed one class only, because my English teacher did not care that I was dealing with not being able to live in my home. Lmao. (I later took a summer class with the best teacher ever, wound up being an extremely formative experience for me. Second day said teacher handed me back a piece of work with an A on it and leaned over my desk and asked, ‘Why are you here? You don’t belong here.’ Very cool guy thank you Mr. Fairchild for looking horrified when I told you my story)

I remember spending a month or two at my mom’s friend Janet’s house while we were trying to find an actual place to live. Me and my mom had to sleep in the same room. Phantom Hourglass had recently come out, that was really fun. I taught Janet’s young daughter about Zelda and Smash Bros. I remember her thinking Roy was cute!! We played a bunch of Melee together.

We eventually got a little house to rent. Brawl came out. Mom went to the midnight release with me, taking pictures of me in my Ness outfit, standing outside in the cold of March because the Gamestop was not big enough for all of us! They held a mini tournament while we were waiting and I had signed up weeks beforehand. (The guy at the counter worriedly told me I had to be 13 to sign up-- i was 18 at the time LMAOOO this is my life). When asked what character I wanted, I nervous yelled, Lucas! So I got to play as Lucas for the first time. But I had to use the Wiimote and Nunchuks and I was shaking uncontrollably. Won my first round though!

So anyways Brawl was great! Loved Brawl. So much fun. Then people started datamining it, and found a list of “lost tracks” - they were txt files of song titles that were removed. I was PISSED because there were like NINE Mother songs on there, and also the Ballad of the Wind Fish. FUCK.

But there was one other song that caught my eye. The title was “morinokinoko”, which everyone rightly assumed to be Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms. (The Smash wiki or the cutting room floor, can’t remember, currently disputes this, but they are morons because mori no kinoko ni goyoujin is literally the Japanese title of BTFM. You fucking morons.)

Anyways, someone put together an album called Brawl - The Lost Tracks. They collected as-official-as-possible versions of the cut songs. I downloaded it and enjoyed some Mother songs and the Wind Fish remix, wherever it came from.

So I was sitting there at my computer, staring at the folder. Squinting at Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms. I was saying to myself, That’s that Geno guy’s song. The Super Mario RPG song, people called it. I had never heard it before. I was bitter and angry at this Geno guy and I hated him and his dumb game. So I don’t know what made me listen to the song. I think I thought something like, how bad could it be? I should give it a chance. It’s music.

And boy, this is long, but I won’t get into it. I’ll just say, I wept at my desk, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world, that I let my anger and stupid ego keep me from a song like this for so long. And just like that, my emotions did a 180 and Geno was like a savior to me. I felt rescued from a lot of misdirected anger and pain. I was going through a lot, you know? It’s not surprising that I acted like that.

When we had that little house we rented, things started going well. Mom started dating this nice guy who had horses. She bought me a copy of Super Mario RPG for my birthday, and a weird bootleg SNES thing to play it on. I remember sitting in my mom’s boyfriend’s house on a summer day, playing SMRPG. I remember staring at the big TV as Geno leveled up and learned Geno Whirl. I took a photo of the TV with my crappy digital camera.

Right as SMRPG entered my life, i felt like things were finally going to be okay.

So then, of course, my mom got sick. She got sick while we were living in an apartment; our rental on the house only lasted so long. Everything was crashing down again. Our lease was up on the apartment, and we had to move in with my grandparents. My Opa (grandfather) had had a stroke and now mom was sick. We lived in the house for a year. I helped Oma care for both of them as they withered away.

Opa died in May 2011, 2 weeks before my birthday. Mom died that October. It was not a good year.

A lot of my memory of that time feels blocked. We could only visit my mom once a week when she went into the hospital in July, supposedly for an overnight stay, but she never left. I was going to college. When she died i took one day off, then was back to class, which horrified my professors but what could I do? I had tests. I remember my friend Rose and her friend running up to me immediately, asking if i was ok. I wasn’t, but like, yeah. It was different than having someone die suddenly. I’d been watching my mom die for months and she had been unresponsive and not conscious for weeks. I had already said goodbye to her a while before that, I guess.

So I guess when I felt my most lost, I still had Geno? I still had things like hope he would get into Smash. I still had Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms. I’d always liked to stargaze, since I was the tiniest kid, but since 2008 I had an extra reason to look up at the sky and hunt meteors and make wishes. Wishes that good things would happen to me and that I’d be alright.

My bad times are so tied to Earthbound and Mother. And after I lost my Mother, going back to Mother 3 - my favorite in the series - was just a little bit harder. I’m not making this up, but my mom really loved Sunflowers and all our houses were decorated with them everywhere. So, that’s fucked up. I have a copy of Mother 3 with the fan translation installed, so it’s in English. A couple years ago I decided to finally play it. I got until maybe 1/3 of the way through Chapter 2 before I had a massive panic attack and breakdown and had to stop playing. Haven’t touched it since and don’t know if I ever will.

It’s hard to listen to the game’s music sometimes. It’s hard to talk about it sometimes. There’s a kind of unspoken agreement going on in my life I guess - my friends pretty much NEVER bring up Mother 3 around me. I don’t know if it’s by coincidence or not, I know not all my friends read my internet posts. But I do actively ask that people don’t talk to me about it now, unless I bring it up. It’s been 10 years but sometimes I am just Not Up for reliving my trauma in public, you know?

Mother 3 has the dead mom trauma, and Earthbound has the domestic violence trauma attached to it. It’s a lot. Super Mario RPG to me is the healing, the better. Yes everything came crashing down, but that was so long after I’d been saved by it. I had something to believe in with Geno and Smash and wishes and stars and music. Something to live for, I guess.

So December 2020 was a bit of a rough year for me, lol. I am legitimately very damaged and traumatized by what happened in December, and I try to joke about it. In the past couple of weeks I’ve been able to say, I do feel like I’m healing just a little bit. But it really feels like the last thing I actually believed in and had hope for was shot down. For a couple months I was legit living my life like it had no purpose and I had nothing to live for. I sold some belongings and was spending money recklessly and almost started drinking.

And I haven’t talked about any of this because literally nobody has asked how I’ve been doing in months. No one has checked up on me or considered that I was seriously upset. I’m only a little bitter about it, but I’ve put a little bit of distance between me and the people who either actively harmed me in December or very blatantly didn’t reach out. I will give credit to the several friends who DID actually send me messages after that shit. I won’t name them or anything but you know who you are, and I’m so thankful for you. It was maybe 3 people? I know it’s easy to get bored of me, but for fuck’s sake.

A friend even told me that some of his friends were sending messages to HIM, asking if I was alright. Which is cool, but maybe also reach out to me? I am human and do need legitimate, active support sometimes instead of nebulous “here for you <3″ tweets on random Tuesdays.

Anyways. That’s baaasically my story leaving chunks of time and repeated Sadness Fits out. That’s the backbone of it I guess. Dealing with the death of a parent at 20 years old is fucked, especially when you were a sheltered baby like me who relied on her mother for everything. I had to buck the fuck up and do everything myself.

Another thing I should mention. I have many family members that live close that are in regular contact with my immediate family. Not a single family member offered any help or support during that time, or even acknowledged what was happening. Not a single family member has ever asked how I’ve been since my mother’s death. No one ever brings it up. No one brings up my mom’s death, or the domestic violence we both suffered. If I try to mention it, I’m told to forget it because it was “so long ago”, but I was also told to do this maybe 6 months after my mom died. My family is not a neglectful bunch, but this was just one issue they could not be fucking assed to deal with, I guess.

Several times I texted my sister, begging to come to her house because mom and stepdad were having a physical fight and breaking things. But she had to work the next day, so you know, of course not. To this day, no apology, no acknowledgment. It’s assumed I have stopped caring, and I’m the bad guy for ever bringing it up.

So like, idk yeah go ahead and say I’m “obsessed with Geno” or whatever. But here’s the reality: I’m a 30 year old adult who has a full time job. I’m in amazing standing at my job and I’m great at it and my old supervisor was angry at my new supervisor for taking her best agent when I got a promotion. I’ve been in the workforce since a few months after my mom died. I hold down a job. I pay my bills. I’ve got pets and horses I care for. I have a car I make payments on. I have NO debt. I’m not exactly a 19 year old on twitter who calls an anime character their Comfort Character and talks about them nonstop, and who also cannot make phone calls without having a breakdown afterwards.

I don’t wanna be shitty toward other people who weren’t forced to put up or shut up as aggressively as I was. But I get very annoyed at my accomplishments being degraded, my single-handed progress disregarded because “man, all she cares about is Geno getting into Smash”, or whatever. My family is very like this, getting on my case about having fucking tattoos or pets without ever asking me what I do at my job.

I work very, very hard. And I currently live a life I’m proud of that I enjoy. But because of a life of emotional abuse (from my mom, definitely, but this isn’t the time), I’m constantly second-guessing myself. I’m stupid for wanting a couple more frogs even though it would add about $15 a month to my expenses and they would make me extremely happy. I’m wasting my time getting a trainer for Rogue because I was stupid to get her to begin with. Shit like that. Idk.

But deep down I know I’m proud of myself and I know my mom would be proud of me, so I just wish I had the energy to tell people to fuck off more. Who cares if they think I like Geno too much, or whatever. I’m at a place in my life where I’m the priority, and I can afford to make myself happy, so I’m gonna do it. It’s a fucking miracle I’m still alive with all the shit I’ve been though and I can still get through a day with a smile on my face.

This isn’t really an ending and went kind of off the rails. It’s all happening bc on the drive home from the vet (Barnaby just had an establishing visit, no concerns), I put on this song and just sobbed my whole way home, thinking about all of this. I honestly feel that if Mother had remained my Primary Thing, I would’ve continued to be angry and bitter and would’ve never begun to heal from the things I went through. And maybe I’ll never completely heal, but most things don’t ever completely heal.

10 years is a long time to kind of actively avoid an entire series that means so much to me. I’ll dabble periodically like I am now with putting on my Mother playlist and crying at it for hours. But hey, I’m getting there. I’m trying to work through my hurt in my own way. And if gets to be too much, there’s always the 10 hour loop of Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms, which I super actually legitimately have on my ipod. (It’s a 180gb one, it does not care).

So.. I guess that didn’t really address a LOT, but I kind of just wanted to rant and scream incoherently about how my relationship with the Mother series became very complicated very quickly, and how SMRPG basically rescued me from falling into the worst possible places.

And as I was driving home I was thinking of something, about how painful it is for me that Geno leaves at the end of the game. Because when he leaves, it means wishes can come true again. If I never beat the game, Geno never leaves, but Star Road remains broken and wishes cannot come true. So I have to say goodbye to him in order for things to go back to normal.

But I said something on twitter earlier that was more stupid than profound. I said that if I wind up being the last person alive who cares about Geno, then so be it. Because he’ll never be truly gone or forgotten until I’m gone. And I’m so fucking obnoxious about my love for him that through whatever legacy I’ve left, he’ll be remembered, too. Even if every other person on earth forgets about him, there will still be me. And if I hang in there, he’s hanging in there.

This song. This song.............. This song is really, really a lot in regards to all this, and him, and it’s what I’ll end this mess on.

#the longest thing in the world #but it's much much feelings of mine #click read more to learn my life story!#not the whole thing just the most formative parts... not in a good way tho

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game-boy-pocket · 1 year

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Well, now that they're all finally out... my feelings on each of the new Smash Bros characters is this.

Inkling was inevitable. But that doesn't mean I wasn't thrilled to see them. Splatoon is a great new IP, though I personally worry about how similar the games seem to be 3 main entries in, but that's nothing to do with Smash. Fun to play but hard to learn. A- ( the minus is for no Octo alt ).

Ridley felt like he should have been inevitable, but was fighting against some pretty strong biases. But he finally made it and i'm very happy. I do think he could have been a tad bit bigger though. Even if they had to slow him down a bit. A

Simon very happy with this character, and honestly surprised he didn't get in sooner. Castlevania may not be as strongly associated with Nintendo as it used to be, but it's one of the first games that come to mind when you think of the NES as well as the SNES. He was in a TV show with Megaman and Pit for goodness sake. And I enjoy using him. A- ( minus is only for no chronicles alt )

Richter was a cool addition, if there was one other Belmnot to be added, i'm glad it's him... but I am more of a Simon guy. Side note, I wish they took the echo fighter character a little further. It seemed like branding clones as echo fighters is all it took to make people more accepting of the idea, only for them to just stop short of three or four new ones, and not even include super obvious ones like Shadow the Hedgehog or Blood Falcon. Anyway A- ( minus is for no symphony of the night alt )

King K. Rool being revealed was one of my top five Smash moments. Donkey Kong is not a neglected Nintendo franchise. But it has undergone some changes that long time fans don't care for, including the removal of the main antagonist, this guy, who has a gigantic personality. He's a very fun character and it's so good to see him come back ( pls appear in the next DK game pls pls pls ) He also happens to be very fun to play as. A++

Isabelle is where Smash reveals kind of started to lose me a bit. Animal crossing is a big series and all but I really felt like the one villager is all the game really needed to properly represent the entire series. You don't need a lot for Animal crossing. And the fact that Isabelle was a relatively new character, who seemingly snatched the role of series mascot from Tom Nook, well it kind of rubbed me a little wrong. She seemed unnecesary... but she is actually more fun to play as than villager, and she's cute. So I don't totally hate her. B

Incineroar was a poor way to end the base game lineup for me. Pokemon just isn't a very respectible series anymore in my eyes and Sun/Moon was the first game in the series that I found too boring to finish. Pokemon just doesn't excite me, and with each new announcement, I'm becoming actively disgusted by it. I would have loved a wrestler character in the game, but the fact that it had to be a pokemon kind sullied it for me. Yeah, I just can't pretend to like this inclusion even if it is a huge Nintendo IP. C-

Dark Samus is a character I am kind of indifferent too. I didn't think we needed her, but I think she's a cool addition to the game. A bit of a waste to make her an echo though, her abilities are very different from Samus in the games if I remember right, I honestly don't remember much of Metroid Prime besides the first one. Still, she's cool. B+

Daisy is an oddball for me. I know she is in Super Mario Land, but her main identity comes from the Mario Spinoff games, and I just don't play those games. They don't appeal to me. I like Mario platformers. And to me, if a character is in spinoffs almost exclusively, they don't count as core Mario cast members. And frankly it's a little odd to me that she's plucking turnips and summoning Toads. The citizens of Sarasaland are not Toads. And she wasn't in Mario 2... but she's not hurting anything I guess so B+, needed "Hi i'm Daisy" taunt.

Chrom is a Fire Emblem Lord alright. He's also an echo. So I don't care. C

Piranha Plant honestly felt like a little bit of an insult to me. I've always hated when Mario games start featuring low level mooks without names as playable characters in the Mario spinoffs while ignoring the likes of Wart, Tatanga, E. Gadd, or th extended DK/Wario cast or RPG characters. It's part of why I don't care about Mario spinoffs. That being said... it is, at the very least, extremely fun to play as. B-

Joker may very well be the most out of place character in this series. He's certainly one of them. Maybe I would feel different if I played Persona, but I don't. So to me he's like the worst thing they added to this game. D-

Hero felt like he should have been in Smash Bros before cloud did. Dragon Quest may not be as popular in the west as it should be. But it's definitely the most important and influential JRPG to the history of video games... that being said, I wish the DQ3 hero was the default costume. I really enjoy playing as him. A+

Banjo and Kazooie finally getting in is without a doubt my favorite moment in Smash History. Not even Sonic got me as hyped as they did. I wish there was a way to make younger fans see this character the way us old timers do without seeming like we're trying to force them to like him, but it is what it is. I love these guys and they're my most played character. A+++

Terry is a character i'm not familiar with. He just kind of looks like a bootleg Ken to me. I think they could have picked a better SNK rep. Metal Slug would have been nice, shooters are sorely under represented in Smash. Do we have anybody besides Samus representing shooters? And she barely qualifies. C

Byleth is a Fire Emblem Lord alright. But you know what, they're honestly the only FE character that feels like they're representing the gameplay of Fire Emblem particularly well while the others were just kind of generic sword slingers... that being said... was this the best way to end fighter pass 1? B-

Minmin was not a character on my Radar. I thought it would have been Springman or no Arms character at all... I am just happy ARMS made it in at all... but really, it should have been base game content. If only to support the new IP. A-

Steve was a character I was opposed to at first. I saw him as a rival to Banjo. And I also saw Minecraft as a dumb zoomer game. A joke. But people made compelling arguments for the importance of minecraft, how successful it is, I actually downloaded Minecraft on my Switch, played it, had a relaxing time, I still play it, and I was actually able to play with my friends who don't own Nintendo consoles. It has cross play. The cross play is really what won me over as it being really cool to have in Smash, as it really brought me together with friends. Steve is tough to use, but great fun, as long as it's against a computer. I can't fight humans for shit, hah. A- ( the minus is for that cursed short enderman alt )

Sephiroth rubbed me the wrong way. Another Final Fantasy character wouldn't have been so bad, but did it have to be another FFVI character??? Couldn't it have been something from before FF made the jump to total steampunk/sci-fi to better represent the series roots? He's fun to use but idk, I just take no joy in him... at least we got more FF music I guess. C-

Pyra/Mythra is a character I have zero opinion on. B ( for booba )

Kazuya is not a character i'm familiar with, and if there had to be another fighting game character, one from Namco, I feel like Soul Calibur should have been it. Bring the Link crossover back around. It seems Tekken has no presence on Nintendo as well... but whatever. I have no strong feelings. He's fun to combo with but I suck as him. B-

Sora makes me sad. I don't dislike Sora. He has a fun design. I like the idea of Kingdom Hearts... I just think the story of those games is very weird and dumb and confusing, so the games themselves are kind of overrated. I really think people only like it for the pretty character models and intricate costumes. I thought people liked it for the Disney stuff but I'm suprised to hear most KH fans seem to want more FF stuff and less Disney stuff??? The only thing that makes the game unique??? Should be dialed back??? That being said... I don't like Disney. It is an evil company. And Disney getting in bed with Nintendo makes me very anxious. D

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aion-rsa · 2 years

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The Public Enemy Solidified Gang Rule Under James Cagney for 90 Years

https://ift.tt/3vfQifQ

William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931) turns 90 this weekend. When the film first came out, a theater in Times Square showed it nonstop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The movie marks the true beginning of gangster movies as a genre. Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar may have hit theaters first, but The Public Enemy set the pattern, and James Cagney nailed the patter. Not just the street talk either; he also understood its machine gun delivery. His Tommy Powers is just a hoodlum, never a boss. He is a button man at best, even if he insisted his suits have six buttons.

The Public Enemy character wasn’t even as high up the ladder as Paul Sorvino’s caporegime Paul Cicero in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. But Cagney secured the turf Edward G. Robinson’s Rico Bandello took a bullet to claim in Little Caesar, and for the rest of his career Cagney never let it go.

Some would argue genre films began in 1931. Besides mob movies, the year introduced the newspaper picture with Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page and John Cromwell’s Scandal Sheet; Universal Pictures began an unholy run of horror classics via Tod Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein, with the two turning Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff into household names; and Howard Hawks’ Scarface would land the knockout for the gangster genre, even if it didn’t get released until 1932.

Sadly, the classic “Gangster Film” run only lasted one production season, from 1930 to 1931, and less than 30 films were made during it. Archie Mayo’s The Doorway to Hell started the ball rolling in 1930, when it became a surprise box office hit. It stars Lew Ayres as the top mug, with Cagney as his sidekick. For fans of pre-Code Hollywood, it is highly recommended. It includes a kidnapping scene which results in the death of a kid on the street. Without a speck of blood or any onscreen evidence, it is cinematically shocking in its impact.

Both Little Caesar and The Public Enemy earned their street cred, defying the then-toothless 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, which preceded the Hays Code. After New York censors cut six scenes from The Public Enemy to clear it for release, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) set further guidelines for the proper cinematic depiction of crime.

Public Enemy director Wellman was an expert in multiple genres. He spit out biting satires like Nothing Sacred (1937) and Roxie Hart (1942), and captured gritty, dark realities in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and Story of G.I. Joe (1945). He won his only Oscar for A Star Is Born (1937). The Public Enemy is the first example of what would be his trademark: stylish cinematography and clever camera-work. The dark suspense he captures is completely different from the look of German expressionism. It captured the overcast shadows of urban reality and would influence the look of later noir films. His main character would inspire generations of actors.

“That’s just like you, Tom Powers. You’re the meanest boy in town.”

Orson Welles lauded James Cagney as “maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera.” Will Rogers said watching Cagney perform was “like a bunch of firecrackers going off all at once.” The New York City born performer explodes in this movie. Even in black and white, Cagney’s red hair flares through the air like sulfur on a match. It turns out to be a slow burn, which will reach its ultimate climax in 1949’s White Heat. The Public Enemy is loaded with top talent, but you can’t take your eyes off Cagney. Not even for a second. You might miss some tiny detail, like the flash of a grin, a wink, or a barely perceptible glare.

Cagney had a simple rule to acting: All you had to do was to look the other person straight in the eyes and say your lines. “But mean them.” In The Public Enemy, the characters communicate without lines. When Tom and Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) sneak a peek into Larry the Limp’s casket, we understand this is the first time the two young thugs lost someone their own age. The scene barely implies how fortunate they are not to be in that box, but their curiosity is as palpable as the loss of their last shred of innocence.

Cagney was originally cast as Matt, and scenes were shot with him in the role. The parts were switched mid-production, but they didn’t reshoot the flashback scenes, making it look like the pair swapped bodies between 1909 and 1915. It’s a shame because Frankie Darro, who plays the young Matt, made a career out of playing baby face Cagney, and later joined the East Side Kids franchise.

Former “Our Gang” actor Frank Coghlan Jr. took on the role of young Tom. He takes the lashes from his cop father’s belt, backtalking him the whole time. Tom Powers is reprehensible. He never says thank you and doesn’t shake hands. He delights in the violence and sadism. Powers doesn’t go into crime because of poverty; he just can’t be contained. Cagney’s mobster mangles, manhandles, maims and murders, and still needs more room in his inseam.

Dames, Molls, and Grapefruits

Besides defying the ban on romanticizing criminals, both The Public Enemy and Little Caesar broke sexual codes. There are explicit signs that Rico Bandello represses his sexuality in Caesar. Scenes between him and his friend Joe, and his gunman Otera, thinly veil homoerotic overtones. Public Enemy’s Powers, by contrast, subtly encourages the gay tailor who is openly hitting on him.

There are strong indications Putty Nose (Murray Kinnell) is grooming Tommy and Matt for more than just fenced goods. Look at the way Putty sticks his ass in Powers’ face while he is shooting pool. Putty Nose’s execution at the piano is creepily informed by the unspoken sins between the men. Tommy relishes the kill.

However, Tommy doesn’t relish being manhandled when he’s too drunk to notice. While the gang goes to the mattresses in the movie’s gang war, Tommy is raped by Jane (Mia Marvin), his boss Paddy’s girl. Powers protests the best he can, but the camera angles leave no doubt. Tommy wakes up hungover, horrified, and feeling impotent. Matt, however, has no trouble getting “busy” with his girlfriend Mamie, played by Joan Blondell, in one of the scenes trimmed by the censors. Blondell, Jean Harlow, and Mae Clarke, who plays Tommy’s girlfriend Kitty, represent a glitzy cross-section of white Roaring Twenties glamour. In the opening credits, when Harlow and Blondell smile at the camera, male audience members of the time blushed.

Harlow was Hollywood’s original “Blonde Bombshell,” starring in the movie that coined the term. Her earthy comic performances would make her a major star at MGM, but she was a dud to critics of The Public Enemy. Hers was the only part which was criticized, and the reviewers were brutal, declaring her voice untrained and her presence boring.

Harlow’s greatest asset had to be contained within the Pre-Code era. Straddled with a wordy part as a slumming society dame, she is directed to slow her lines to counter the quick patter of the rest of the cast. Yet Harlow uses that to her benefit in the film’s best moment of sexual innuendo. While telling Tommy about “the men I’ve known,” she pauses, and appears to be calculating them in her head before she says, “And I’ve known dozens of them.” When an evening alone with Tommy is cut short, Gwen’s exasperation over the coitus interruptus is palpable. Members of the Catholic Legion of Decency probably had to go to confession after viewing the film for slicing.

Most people know The Public Enemy for the famous grapefruit scene where Powers pushes a grapefruit into his girlfriend’s face. “I wish you was a wishing well,” he warns, “so that I could tie a bucket to you and sink ya.” Tommy treats women like property. They are status symbols, the same as clothes or cars. Kitty’s passive-aggressive hints at commitment get on Tom’s nerves. He can only express himself through violence. There are rumors Cagney, who would go on to rough up Virginia Mayo in White Heat and brutalize Doris Day in Love Me or Leave Me, didn’t warn Clarke he was going to use her face as a juicer. According to the autobiography Cagney by Cagney, Clarke’s ex-husband Lew Brice loved the scene so much he watched it a few times a day, timing his entrance into the theater to catch it and leave.

Both actors have said it was staged as a practical joke to see how the film crew would react. It wasn’t meant to make the final cut. Wellman told TCM he added it because he always wanted to do that to his wife. The writer reportedly wrote the scene as a kind of wish-fulfilling fantasy.

The screenplay was written by Harvey F. Thew. It was based on Beer and Blood by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon. The unpublished novel fleshed out press accounts of the bootlegging Northside gang leaders, Charles Dion “Deanie” O’Banion, Earl “Hymie” Weiss, and Louis “Two-Gun” Alterie. Cagney based his Tommy Powers character on O’Banion and Altiere. Edward Woods was doing his take on Weiss. The book reflected the headlines in the Chicago papers, which reported Weiss smashed an omelet into his girlfriend’s face.

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By David Crow

The Trouble Squad

The Public Enemy borrowed from the day’s headlines in other ways too. Hymie Weiss was assassinated in October 1926. It was the first reported “machine-gun nest” murder. It is recreated in the killing of Matt Doyle. While shooting the sequence, Cagney ducked real machine gun fire to bring authenticity to the scene. Also taken from real life is the fact that after O’Banion was killed in ‘24, Alterie’s first reaction was to do public battle with the killers. This is similar to Tommy’s final shootout at Schemer Burns’ nightclub headquarters.

Leslie Fenton’s dashing mob captain Nails Nathan (“born Samuel”) flashes the greatest grin in mob movie history. He is based on Samuel “Nails” Morton, a member of O’Banion’s mob. Both “Nails” were driven to their coffins the way it is depicted in The Public Enemy. The real Morton died in a riding accident in 1923, and “Two-Gun” Alterie and some of the other gang members went back to the stables, rented the horse which kicked Nails in the head, and shot the animal. Mario Puzo may have been inspired by this scene when he wrote The Godfather. It is not only tie to the Francis Ford Coppola movie. Oranges have as much vitamin C as grapefruits. Another similarity between the two films is the threat of being kidnapped from the hospital by a rival gang.

The Powers brothers’ relationship vaguely echoes the one between war hero Michael and Sonny Corleone, who believes, as his father does, soldiers were “saps” to risk their lives for strangers. Donald Cook, who played Mike Powers, didn’t pull any punches on the set. In the scene where he knocks Tom into the table before going off to war, he really connects. Wellman told Cook to do it without warning so he could get that look of surprise. Cook broke one of Cagney’s teeth, but Cagney stayed in character and finished the scene.

“It is a wicked business.”

After the stock market crash, get-rich-quick schemes seemed the only way through the Great Depression. The gangster was an acceptable headline hero during Prohibition because the law was unpopular with the press. But after 1929, the gangster became the scapegoat villain. The Public Enemy was the ninth highest grossing film of 1931. But the genre lost its appeal after April of that year, as studios pumped out pale imitations and audiences got tired of the saturation, according to the book Violence and American Cinema, edited by J. David Slocum. Religious and civic groups accused Hollywood of romanticizing crime and glamorizing gangsters.

The Public Enemy opens with a dire warning: Don’t be a gangster. Hoodlums and terrorists of the underworld should not be glamorized. The only MPAA rule the film didn’t break was portraying an alliance between organized crime and politics. The studios passed the films off as cautionary tales which were meant to deflate the gangster’s appeal by ridiculing their false heroism.

Through this hand-wringing, however, Cagney turns false heroics on its head with the comic brilliance of a Mack Sennett short. Stuck without a gun, he robs a gun store armed with nothing but moxie. Powers never rises in the organization. He takes orders and whatever the boss says is a good cut, only asking for more money once from Putty Nose. Unlike Rico, who rose to be boss among bosses, Powers has no power to lose. This is just the first gig he landed since he was a regular “ding ding” driving a streetcar, and it connected with audiences like a sock on the button. They identified with the scrappy killer, and it surprised them.

Even Gwen notices Tommy is “very different, and it isn’t only a difference in manner and outward appearances. It’s a difference in basic character.” Strict Freudians might lay this on his mother (Beryl Mercer), the greatest enabler Cagney will see until White Heat. Ma Powers’ little boy is a budding psychopath knocking off half the North Side, but look at the head on his beer. For audiences at the time, Tom was the smiling, fresh-scrubbed face of evil. He is consistently unsympathetic but likable from the moment he hits the opening credits.

Like Malcom McDowell’s Alex in A Clockwork Orange, he is the fiend’s best friend. Even if it is Tommy’s fault his best pal Matt gets killed. While Cagney spent his career ducking his “you dirty, double-crossing, rat” line from Taxi, the actor wasn’t afraid to play one in Powers. He’s not a rat in the sense he’d snitch on anyone. He’s the last of the pack who sticks it out for his pals when his back is up against the wall.

A Hail of Bullets

Tommy Powers goes by this credo: live fast, die young, and leave a corpse so riddled with bullets, not even his mother can look at his body when he’s done. But then, no one can end a film like Cagney. He’s danced down the White House stairs in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), been rolled across the concrete steps of a city church in The Roaring Twenties (1939), and was blown to kingdom come in White Heat. He gets two death scenes in The Public Enemy, a rain-soaked climax, and a denouement as scary as The Mummy. Tommy only brings one gun to the gang fight, and by the time he hits the pavement, he’s got more holes in him than the city sewage system.

“I ain’t so tough,” Tommy says on his final roll into the gutter. Cagney’s first professional job was in a musical drag act on the Vaudeville circuit, and he called himself a “song and dance man” long after retirement. For The Public Enemy, conductor David Mendoza led the Vitaphone Orchestra through such period hits as “Toot Toot Tootsie (Goodbye),” “Smiles,” and “I Surrender Dear.” But the song “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” is the one which lingers in the memory. Martin Scorsese has cited it as a reason his films are so filled with recognizable music.

Street violence comes with a natural soundtrack. Transistor radios accompany takedowns. Boom boxes blast during shakedowns. Car stereos boost the bass during drive-by shootings. In The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, mobsters feed quarters into a jukebox to cover up sounds of a beating.

In The Godfather, Part II, a street band plays traditional Italian songs while Vito Corleone puts bullets in the neighborhood Black Hand, Don Fanucci. The last thing we hear in the abrupt close to the mob series The Sopranos is a Journey song. The first thing Tommy’s mother does when she hears her boy is coming home from the hospital is drop a needle on a record.

The ending leaves us with two questions: Who killed Tommy, and what’s his brother going to do about it? We figure whoever did the job on Powers was probably a low-level button man from Schemer’s rival outfit. Probably even lower down the ladder than Tommy, and on his way up, until another Tommy comes along. Crime only pays in the movies, Edward G. Robinson often joked.

Mike’s reaction to the bandaged corpse is ambiguous. He’s already shown outward signs of the trauma following the horrors of war. Is he clenching his fists in anguish or anger? Is he broken by the battlefield or marching off in vengeance, a soldier on one last duty? Cook’s exit can go either way.

After 90 years, The Public Enemy is still fresh. It’s aged better than Little Caesar or Scarface. Cagney wouldn’t play a gangster again until 1938, but the image is etched so deeply in the persona, audiences forget the vagaries of villainy Hollywood could spin, and the range of characters Cagney could play. He and the film continue to influence filmmakers, inform culture, and surprise audiences. Tommy Powers was just a mug, but those streets are still his.

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gothprentiss · 3 months

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long annoying nightwish post under the cut

i have these regular phases where i revisit nightwish and just like really think about their music and i’m in one now again lol.

dead boy’s poem is one of maybe two or three nightwish songs which is categorically not better live (nightwish is almost always better live. i find the studio versions of most of their post tarja oeuvre, and most of what they did after over the hills & far away, kind of unlistenable in a way that i think is 50% production and 50% they’ve usually had the kinds of vocalists whose charisma and skill really shine in live settings, tarja for just sheer wild power, floor for variation of style and tone) and it drives me so specifically insane.

like okay so beauty of the beast is one of my all time favorite songs of theirs and it is endlessly hurtful to me that it’s only got lq bootlegged live versions, but every time i’ve heard a live version of it it also kind of sucks because they seemed really deadset on pushing marco’s vocals during the century child era so you get really showy riffs on his lines from him, and tarja somehow dialed back— despite nearly drowning him out— as he drags his way through interminably long notes. the fact that he can’t fully hold those notes is doubly funny in the context of a song of that length, because you can hear tarja flagging, too, when you get to the end, and sounding better ragged and a bit off than he’s sounded the whole way. that’s a digression. the point is that tarja-era nightwish became slowly hampered by their belief that their sound wasn’t contingent on her voice in particular, and not choosing a male vocal whose voice actually complemented hers (they sound horrifically shrill when layered together, and trying to push his vocal lines relative to hers only exacerbates this) makes century child a very hard listen. in fact at times it’s actively disrespectful to her, vocally: their cover of phantom of the opera— which is the kind of song you only cover because you have a vocalist like tarja, because you can’t say you heard marco’s vocals and went god DAMN are these the vocal stylings of a michael crawford i am hearing?— renders the final showy high note an obviously pitch-corrected scream which is mixed under marco’s, frankly, yowling. and she can obviously hit a high enough note to carry the song, she does it live every time. “ooh we have a trained opera singer let’s do the famous opera-inspired song with the famous operatic moment and make it our most obvious use of pitch correction of all time” <- my tuomas impression. whatever.

anyway once also sucks but that’s because it takes the depressive rendition on nightwish’s central themes and imagery that begins with century child and sanitizes and fractures it, so you have the desire to experience childlike wonder at the world outsourced to tiresome fantasy themes on dark chest of wonders, or the sort of radio edit feel of nemo; they retread the worst of century child with planet hell and romanticide, which are slaying the dreamer and dead to the world’s uglier, edgier twins. ghost love score is an incredible song but fundamentally feels like an attempt to make a ‘better’ beauty of the beast, without any of its urgency or character: beauty of the beast is an artist’s manifesto, all its weirdnesses a reflex of nightwish’s language and lexicon; ghost love score seems afraid to linger on anything other than a general gesture towards longing and lost love, conditions under which the songwriter still must write. i’m a long time fan of ghost love score— like tattooed-on-me fan— but its relative showiness (length + vocal/choral performance), Epic Fantasy Movie sound aesthetics, and hit record formula low lyrical density and specificity are both what makes it the fan favorite over beauty of the beast and what makes it weaker than its predecessor. like i think it’s easy to say that nightwish has throughout its career made use of song length as a way of experimenting with both structure (their shorter songs can be very structurally samey) and self-articulation, and i think you could get the impression (as i once did) that they were working towards a song like ghost love score, which has become their paradigmatic long song. but realistically their long songs or, in the case of angels fall first, their sequences which add up to long songs (lappi i-iv) have always been the album in miniature, a rehearsal of its themes, a coherent and wandering statement of its message and values, and are present from the outset, on all albums except oceanborn.

but anyway so two albums which are, for various reasons, worse than oceanborn and wishmaster were. oceanborn’s got 2 flaws, for me, which are 1) a lack of a middle ground (maybe moondance, but i think that’s because it’s an instrumental; gethsemane feels close but no cigar) between their developing symphonic power metal sound and their piano-ballad-style lighter songs, like swanheart or their walking in the air cover. this is really apparent when you get to wishmaster where they’ve found this ground, in songs like come cover me and deep silent complete, which balance the natural bombasticism of tarja’s vocals with instrumentals which have finally found that the sort of janglier side of power metal instrumentation can be toned down to a sparkle, and it lends these songs a gorgeous night sky quality that would have enabled some incredible mid-range shit on oceanborn. 2) is a sort of general sameyness, which is true across most of nightwish’s oeuvre: you’ll typically have two or three songs which are slightly different takes on the same sound, structure, and idea. it wasn’t as present or obvious on angels fall first, though, so it feels more notable as a problem here, where it first emerges, as opposed to anywhere else in their oeuvre where it’s just a thing about them.

wishmaster is arguably less varied but it has more of a gradation of complexity, heaviness, and speed across its tracks, and trades the (exuberant, exultant) speed of oceanborn for a more sort of melodic and fantastical sound aesthetic. i love oceanborn’s exuberance (especially how it sounds live— you can see on from wishes to eternity how that speed and vibrancy really complemented tarja’s vocal style at that time, both in their richer, more bombastic quality, and the way that she actually delivers the notes— there’s this incredible wild edge to her singing, which always feels like she might genuinely fly past the note she’s going for, and it delivers so well on the album’s focuses on wilderness and myth/legend. it’s also one of the few times i’ve seen a symphonic power metal group really do something incredible with a classical or operatic vocal. another time is the pre-chorus drums in pythia’s moon on the mountain, which suddenly build speed as they approach the chorus while emily ovenden’s vocals don’t, so you get this incredible sensation of her vocals floating over the track, as well as a moment of purposefulness and clear articulation in their otherwise fairly overworked instrumentals, where it feels like every single person in the band is fighting to be heard, and ovenden’s just gotten lucky that the mix settled things in her favor.

ANYWAY all i was gonna say was that dead boy’s poem (from wishmaster) is sort of… maybe you wouldn’t pay it much attention out of context. it was probably the last time i did one of my big nightwish phases that i really got hit full in the face by it. it’s one of their cursed little british kid spoken word voiceover songs, which makes it a hard sell for me: this kid serves as tuomas’ avatar, more or less, so it invariably marks his more self-indulgent lyricism (worst offender by far the poet and the pendulum, but see also my beloved beauty of the beast). but anyway ANYWAY. the point is that the kid does his thing for a couple of line over this very gentle swelling of a flute, which fades through reverb to silence, and THEN tarja starts with “born from silence, silence full of it / perfect concert, my best friend / so much to live for, so much to die for / if only my heart had a home” and you get this gentle guitar slowly coming in from the second line, the keyboard slowly emerging as the verse progresses… like it’s LITERALLY Born From Silence. in the second verse this builds out slowly, becoming not heavier but more fully symphonic. and still we’re dilating on the themes of music and silence— “sing what you can’t say / forget what you can’t play / hasten to drown into beautiful eyes / walk within my poetry, this dying music / my love letter to nobody”— soft swell of the chorus on that final line, and THEN the drums kick in and the guitars amp up. and if you’re like “jesus yeah sona i get it that’s fucking ham handed as shit” imagine how much worse it would be if the line “born from silence, silence full of it” were not, as it were, Born From Silence itself, and if this sort of meditation on music as simultaneously tuomas’ only form of self-articulation and also always impossible, always working against a silence, always working towards a meaningfulness that can’t be found in life— imagine if there weren’t anything resembling thought about instrumentals there? anyway the live version is nearly that lol. like you never get that moment of just vocals against silence, or against guitar so quiet it feels like it isn’t there at all, only the memory of that flute reverberating. like maybe the thing is that nightwish can’t help but be heavier live since a lot of their lightness is constructed in production— again, i WUV tarja forever and everyone who says she’s overrated is either doing the normal bad-faith overrated vs underrated discourse or just bought nightwish’s cruel and misogynistic attacks on her hook, line, and sinker (SAD!), but for a long time she really didn’t have much variation in tone and style, and had kind of a single volume and presence in a song (loud, rich, powerful). it did create the simultaneously sweet and embarrassing phenomenon where vocalists without her skill or presence would be doing tarja-style vocals they weren’t quite equipped to do (see for example xandria’s neverworld’s end where my beloved manuela kraller, a relatively green vocalist— only started seriously singing in her early 20s, and couldn’t have been more than 31 at that time— does a totally serviceable job in studio but sounds thin and strained live because it’s really hard to sustain that particular sound when it’s not natural to your voice).

anyway. my god. if i ever manage to just say one brief thing about nightwish ever in my life someone had better give me a medal because it’ll be an unbelievable achievement in human will and spirit

#musicposting #SORRY im BORED

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overthinkinglotr · 3 years

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Aragorns ranked based on how funny they are

5.Rankin-Bass Aragorn:

Shows up late in the movie with little explanation. Gandalf’s like “you should do a suicide-mission march on the Black Gate” and Aragorn’s like “eh sure I guess I wasn’t planning on doing anything else today.”

All in all he’s not as funny as the other Aragorns, but he gets points for Just Rolling With It and for that sick helmet.

Funniness Level: 7/10 love how his fashion sense is the polar opposite of Bakshi Aragorn

4.Musical Aragorn:

The musical in general is a hilariously amazing mess and I love it. It was also drastically rewritten many times over its run, so Aragorn’s characterization varies depending on the version.

In the the bootleg I listened to, I *think* what they were going for was.

Aragorn hides his true identity from everyone until the second act. Then he finally reveals he’s the Lost King of Gondor to Boromir, as Boromir is dying. And while that’s a compelling idea it’s also funny bc Boromir’s just like:

“Dude--”

“You couldn’t have told me this sooner???????”

If I remember right the musical implies that Arwen is also one of the few people Aragorn has told about his true heritage? I think this means Musical!Aragorn apparently only reveals he’s the Lost King to a) the pretty girl he’s crushing on and b) the handsome man he has homoerotic subtext with. VALID

Funniness Level: 9/10 your crush would probably be more impressed to hear you were the Lost King of Gondor if they weren’t busy dying from multiple arrow wounds

3. Book Aragorn:

FUN FACT: Aragorn sings more in the books than he does in the actual musical. The musical cut all of Aragorn’s songs. The cowards.

He’s only a “loner” for the Aesthetic....... He makes the hobbits feel sorry for him by saying “a hunted man often wearies of mistrust and longs for friendship” right before introducing them to his friend Glorfindel, and his friend Elrond, and his friend Arwen, and oh yeah he’s friends with Bilbo too, and---

Also. There’s a moment in the “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” where Aragorn’s like “I’m in love with Arwen” and Aragorn’s mom says “well she’s out of your league” and Aragorn responds “so I have to be sad and alone for all my life???” and his mom is like “yup.” Iconic

Aragorn has way too many names and way too many of them have to do with his long legs. Strider, Wingfoot, Longshanks, Telcontar (Strider in Elvish, the last name he takes as King.) He’s got 50 names and half of them are variations on “Daddy Long Legs”

Funniness Level: 100/10 would be a lot higher but I deducted points bc I’m kinkshaming his obsession with legs

2.Peter Jackson Aragorn:

PJ Aragorn is so terrified of the burden of being king that he tries to hide from it. He just wants to be free.

In the Two Towers Aragorn and Eowyn discuss what to do with an unruly battle-scarred horse. Aragorn tells Eowyn that the horse should be set free.

It doesn’t matter if the horse is kingly. It doesn’t matter if, as Eowyn says, he’s a royal horse that once belonged to the king’s son. Because the horse is sad.

Even if he’s a kingly royal horse, he is very sad.

People are expecting too much from the horse and it’s making him scared!!!! He’s not a bad horse, he’s just panicking because he feels trapped!!!! So they should set him free, Aragorn insists. He just wants to be free.

“He has seen enough of war,” Aragorn says as he walks away. And you wonder if he’s talking about the horse............... or himself.

Because PJ-Aragon just wants to be free! Free, like the horses! He relates to the horses! The horses are like him, because they too feel trapped and they’re rebellious and unruly and desperately long for freedom!!!!!!!!!

“You just don’t understand me, mom Elrond!!!!!”

Funniness Level: 20000000/10, he’s the protagonist of a Horse Girl Movie who somehow stumbled into a fantasy epic

Ralph Bakshi Aragorn:

Ralph Bakshi Aragorn is serious, sober, noble, and regal.

John Hurt voices him, and his performance is honestly one of the best parts of the movie. He’s legitimately a good Aragorn!!! And on paper, he seems like he would be the least funny Aragorn.

But just.

Just.

He’s a Very Serious Aragorn but he dresses like:

The hobbits walk into the Prancing Pony and Aragorn’s sitting in the corner, no pants, with his bare legs stretched out like he’s trying to seduce them.

And no one ever comments on this!!!! Aragorn is always Rolling to Seduce but none of the other characters acknowledge it!!!!!

Then there’s the animation. The Bakshi film was made by a team of inexperienced animators who relied on tracing over live-action footage as a crutch, which is why the animation looks Like That(tm). The character’s faces float around their heads and their movements, especially in the battle scenes where the live-action reference wasn’t that good, are always.......hmmmmmm.

Aragorn vs Ringwraith WHO WOULD WIN???

Funniness Level: 3000000000000/10 sparks joy

#lotr #overthinkinglotr #long post #''will you ever be over horse girl aragorn''#no #no I will never ever be over it #like #I totally get why people don't like PJ Aragorn #but to me it's like #HE JUST WANTS TO BE FREE LIKE THE HORSES #HE IS LIKE A WILD HORSE WHO CANNOT BE TAMED #me explaining why I love PJ Aragorn so much:#''it's about how he just wants to be free like the horses''#also yeah again #he was my comphet crush when I was 12 so I have a soft spot for him #there's no way to analyze media objectively and all that

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