#ah the issues of setting up a cinematic universe and establishing everything for the main bad guy to be endgame

[castrovulcant]

What a time to remember that I am superhero trash

[f4liveblogarchives]

Fantastic Four Vol 1 #214 & #215

Mon Sep 9 2019 [01:29 AM] Wack'd: OH GOD YOU CAN SEE BEN'S RIBS. WHY. HOW

[01:31 AM] Wack'd: Johnny decides that if an aging ray could make them old he just needs to find a supergenius to build a de-aging ray to make them young [01:31 AM] Wack'd: Seems simple, sure, just find someone on Earth who can cure old age [01:31 AM] Wack'd: That won't break the setting at all [01:32 AM] Bocaj: Endgame Hulk intensifies [01:32 AM] Wack'd: Jarvis is a good

[01:32 AM] Bocaj: I do like Jarvis [01:32 AM] Wack'd: (He can't be that allergic to nuts, he lives with a half-dozen of 'em) [01:34 AM] Bocaj: HAH [01:34 AM] Wack'd: HOLY SHIT THIS HELICARRIER DESIGN. GLORIOUS

[01:34 AM] maxwellelvis: Bean [01:34 AM] Bocaj: Why does it have a handle [01:35 AM] Wack'd: This is what you want. The underside seems hostile to the concept of landing and there's huge deadly propeller blades giving off massive gusts of wind where people are walking around and launching planes [01:35 AM] maxwellelvis: And it looks like it's got a giant metal- [01:36 AM] Wack'd: There's a dong yeah [01:36 AM] Bocaj: I didn't want to say dong but yeah [01:36 AM] Wack'd: Anyway Tony is taking care of a radioactive waste problem and the decontamination procedure takes 25 hours so he's out [01:37 AM] Wack'd: Not like everyone's in stasis. Definitely a real ticking-clock situation [01:37 AM] Bocaj: Writer of this book: "Fuck the shared universe" [01:37 AM] Wack'd: In fairness if you look to the Marvel Cinematic Universe you get the opposite situation where it seems like everyone's just too stupid to call each other [01:38 AM] Wack'd: "Everyone's conveniently indisposed" is a good answer that keeps the main characters centralized [01:38 AM] Wack'd: If you have the space to spare. I'm not asking for every MCU movie to have a scene where they call up all the other heroes and get sent to voicemail [01:40 AM] Wack'd: So anyway Johnny decides to ask if anyone on Xandar has a fix. Answer: no. Also: we're in the middle of a war, please call back later [01:40 AM] Wack'd: Johnny is about to give up when he's attacked by SKRULL X! [01:41 AM] Wack'd: Skrull X has all Super-Skrull's powers. Since Super-Skrull is dead at the moment [01:41 AM] Wack'd: He's a fairly transparent substitution [01:43 AM] Wack'd: I have to say that this is remarkably well set up? They established this dude was here before the aging ray even appeared. Weird to see this level of long-term planning

[01:44 AM] Wack'd: Skrull X is dead now. Bye Skrull X. [01:44 AM] Wack'd: You would think a dude with Johnny's powers would be more fireproof but I guess not [01:47 AM] Wack'd: Anyway with the aging ray in hand, Johnny wakes Reed up so he can use the rest of his strength figuring out how to reverse it. Last time we saw him he was at deaths door but I guess now he's ambulatory enough to make this work [01:49 AM] Wack'd: This is a good scene. Keeps Johnny central to the plot and lets him expand his range. Can't solve everything by brute force. Or brute heat I guess

[01:51 AM] Bocaj: I admire how they make welding dramatic [01:51 AM] Bocaj: I'm not being facetious [01:51 AM] Wack'd: Welp

[01:51 AM] Bocaj: In greenest day, in darkest night [01:51 AM] maxwellelvis: "It's working! My gray is going away gradually!" [01:52 AM] Wack'd: It is not, in fact, working [01:53 AM] Wack'd: Holy shit dude

[01:54 AM] maxwellelvis: Marv's just warming up. [01:54 AM] maxwellelvis: Wait until he writes for the Titans, then you'll see primo angst. [01:55 AM] Wack'd: So of course, it did actually work. It just took a while. [01:56 AM] Wack'd: (Given that the aging ray took three days to kill them, it's definitely a little weird that he expected instant results, but patience has never been Johnny's strong suit) [01:57 AM] Wack'd: Awwww

[01:57 AM] maxwellelvis: Yaaayyyy [01:59 AM] Wack'd: WE HAVE BEEN SPARED THE RAVAGES OF TIME

[01:59 AM] maxwellelvis: And so the Comic Book Stasis... begins [02:00 AM] Wack'd: A good way to commemorate...uh...milestone issue 214? Anniversary year 19? I've got nothing

[02:02 AM] Wack'd: Anyway I guess that's it for tonight. Nice to end on a story-ending note [02:02 AM] Bocaj: When they cheer at the screen, who are they cheering at in universe? [02:03 AM] maxwellelvis: Us [02:03 AM] Wack'd: @Bocaj : HERBIE [02:03 AM] maxwellelvis: Doop [02:06 AM] Bocaj: Fair enough

Mon Sep 9 2019 [04:37 PM] Wack'd: This one has Blastaar. From ish 62. He's a negative man from a Negative Zone [04:37 PM] Wack'd: Gotta keep recycling z-listers I guess [04:37 PM] maxwellelvis: He hates both Annihilus and the Four. [04:38 PM] Wack'd: So we open in media res! Professor Randolph James' lab blew up but the Four contained the blast [04:38 PM] Wack'd: Reed warns Prof James to take his very dangerous work more slowly and use more safeguards. What is that work? *shrug* [04:38 PM] maxwellelvis: And I'd say he's about a B-lister at most. He's crossed paths with the X-Men, Thor, and Hulk, since then. [04:40 PM] Wack'd: Ben objects to eugenics

[04:40 PM] Wack'd: Anyway the Four hurry back to the Baxter because an alarm just went off [04:41 PM] Wack'd: Ah yes, experimental scientists, well known for their immense wealth

[04:42 PM] Wack'd: Back at the Baxter--Blastaar! Fight fight fight [04:43 PM] maxwellelvis: I guess that's a reason for a bunch of Hell's Angels to start bullying a scientist. [04:43 PM] Wack'd: Well that's concerning

[04:43 PM] Umbramatic: oh [04:44 PM] Wack'd: Anyway they lose track of Blastaar in the sewers and give the Avengers a courtesy heads-up [04:45 PM] Wack'd: Oh no! It's a supervillain origin story!

[04:45 PM] Wack'd: *siiiiiiigh*

[04:46 PM] Wack'd: 🎵 Guess what I'm a Watcher now 🎶

[04:47 PM] maxwellelvis: GOOD LORD! GIGANTISM! [04:47 PM] Wack'd: And then he turns the neighborhood toughs into mice with his mind [04:49 PM] Bocaj: Why did he choose to wear a toga? [04:49 PM] Wack'd: Look it's the ultimate in human clothes evolution [04:49 PM] Wack'd: Also this is a cliffhanger. Reed doesn't see James do this so he's like "come back to the lab to run some tests" and James is like "you're my only friend so yeah sure" and then we cut outside and the toughs are mice [04:49 PM] maxwellelvis: It's like, half-toga, half-wrestling trunks [04:50 PM] Wack'd: THE ULTIMATE IN HUMAN CLOTHES EVOLUTION

[cosmosbunnies]

How Fire Emblem Fates tried, and failed, to live up to Awakening.

Fire Emblem Awakening was a tonal and mechanical masterpiece. It set a new bar for Fire Emblem games and the like, so Fates had a lot to live up to. And boy, did it try. And fail. I've got about a million complaints about this game, but I'll list my top three here:

Setup

Fire emblem awakening's avatar, Robin, was relatable. Not in deep ways, but we could sympathize with their situation. They knew exactly what we knew about the world – nothing. They awoke with amnesia and were found by the royal family. Amnesia is a wrote plot point, but its popularity is not baseless. In games especially, dropping the player into the second act allows for swift action, and playing catchup in the story comes for naturally to a player who knows everything their character does, meaning dialogue and exposition can come across as being natural and not ham-fisted.

On the other hand, we have Fates. Mind you, I have only played Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, but I believe these problems extend to Birthright as well; the setup is bad. Instead of giving our player character no knowledge of the world around them via amnesia, they use a different method; seclusion. Corrin as a character is locked away inside of the Nohrian castle throughout their entire childhood and is only allowed in the outside world during the rising action of the story. This, akin to Robin, gives them no knowledge of the world around them. There's one key distinction, however; the family. In Conquest, Corrin knows their family well, and there is an existing dynamic that was built up long before we, the player, entered the scene. So, while Corrin knows nothing of the war and the land, they know much of these characters – and we do not. This flows very poorly. The characters end up awkwardly barking out their relationship to our main character in expositional dialogue before we ever end up even fighting alongside them, instead of having those relationships grow in real-time as we play and allowing us, the player, to form a relationship with the cast based in mechanics while Corrin gets to know them in the narrative. Corrin already loves the cast, regardless of what we think, and we have no choice in the matter. Fates makes the erroneous assumption that the player's interest in the world around them exists in a vacuum, but in reality an average player is interested in how the world exists in relation to the established characters and mechanics, not in the Deep Lore. In fact, Deep Lore is called just that because players who desire knowledge of the world are willing to go to greater lengths to uncover it than players who do not care. This is what in-game history books are for.

Marriage

Fire Emblem Awakening introduced a new mechanic: marriage. Your characters' relationships would grow organically as they fought, and this would eventually lead to (straight) marriage, which would eventually lead to children. The plot of the game involved time travel, and thus a new system was born; the child soldiers. Children are born of your units, your units die in the future, and those children grow up alone and scared, learning to fight for themselves. Eventually, they all get together and use the fire emblem to go back in time. They meet their parents. They introduce themselves. They fight, as they always have, but this time with hope renewed. This created a fantastic dynamic; a younger solider in their prime, with a child they know they'll eventually have but are meeting for the first time. Throw in some well written, natural dialogue, a few fun time travel jokes, and you've got yourself a compelling personal story. It also tied into the main plot in a significant way, having Lucina be a product of this same time travel fiasco. Fire Emblem Fates takes a… different approach. Halfway through act II of the story, you enter an alternate universe. The place is strange, scary and full of mindless evil entities. You meet a character who had been presumed dead, and you fight your way out with him in tow. Upon leaving, you're informed that if any of your characters mention this alternate reality to anyone, they will cease to exist. The point is then dropped, and the unrelated story continues. This puzzled me… A lot. Why did this exists? Was is setting up a structure for a future plot point? Was it world building? I had no idea, I was completely confused.

And then Corrin married.

This was my first marriage in the game, as honestly, none of the characters (save for Niles/Odin, and Effie/Mozu) had what I saw as a real connection, so I waited some time. Corrin and Keaton got married. A popup appeared onscreen afterwords. “A baby was born. The baby is placed in an alternate reality to grow up safe from harm, but a side effect of this reality is that time flows differently, making the children grow up very quickly.” Ah. I see. It makes sense now – the alternate universe is a plot contrivance, created in service to the brand of “You can have children and fight alongside them.” So then you pluck these kiddos from their isolated homes one by one, skipping over the major plot hole of 'Corrin spent nine months fighting while pregnant and then had a baby in the middle of a war? How long did this war take?' and jumping right to “Let's recruit child soldiers.” And so you do. You recruit every child to fight, much to the apparent behest of the mother and father. There is no reasoning to explain why these sensible adults are asking young teenagers to fight in a deadly war. It's simply a fun mechanic, and the game does not expect us to think about it. Except it strips the system of its most important aspects: A) The children do not HAVE to fight to save a doomed world, and B) The parents and the children know one another well. This has removed both the believability of the plot point and the charm in the interactions, leaving us with strange relationships bland dialogue that has an overabundant use of the word “daddy,” which should be purged from every writer's page as it is written.

Incest

You can just. You can just marry your siblings in this game. And have children with them.

At first I though Camilla's apparent attraction to the player character was simply because she was explicitly designed for horny fans to drool over. While this is still true, it's not the only reason she shows an interest in her sibling, as she's more than willing to marry and have children with them. “Oh, it's fine!” You might say. “They're not siblings by blood, you see, so it's morally fine!” Which is the stance the game seems to take. I am not going to explain why incest bad. I will also not drone on about how in the game's counterpart, Birthright, your player is related by blood for plot purposes, but as not to miss out on banging your siblings, each sibling will explain just before marrying you that you're actually not related to them by blood either. Nope, definitely not going to touch that subject.

Small gripes:

I lied about only listing three things. Here are a few notable issues

-You can dress your characters up in stupid looking accessories that add nothing to the game and 95% of the time clip heavily inside the character's model. The characters ASK you to dress them up, and some of them even comment on how silly this is during a war.

-“A+” rank is a cop-out created in an attempt to appease the Queer community without alienating any fans, and the fact that they couldn't be bothered to write any dialogue for the A+ rank relationships shows their lack of interest in queer representation while they sit back and get praise of major publications for “progressivism”

-In the Japanese version you pet your friends on the face Pokemon-Amie style to get them to like you more. I am glad they removed this for the western release

-In the final cinematic, they paid a team of animators to animate your character's first-person experience as they run face-first into their sisters boobs, which joyfully go “Boioioing” and shake like maracas as you reel.

-Sometimes you walk in on your allies naked in the hot springs. You walk all the way in, sit down, relax and stare at the naked peer for seconds before they say “Hey I'm uh… Naked here.” As which point Corrin goes “Sorry!” and sprints out of the room with the speed of a cheetah. I do not know why this happens.

-Keaton is unreasonably erotic when you marry him. Fully voice-acted, he whispers sweet nothings into your ear as the screen fades to black. He is a furry's wet dream. This is not a complaint.

-The story toys with this “abusive father with a family of children who are closer for having a common enemy with whom they have a love/hate relationship” thing, but fails to say ANYTHING meaningful on the subject. It's just empty story dressing

-At one point, you have to choose to either kill or spare a person who just tried to kill you. If you spare him, he joins your party. This goes nowhere, and puzzles me as a narrative choice. He doesn't even bother to betray you or anything, he simply stops mattering.

-Nohr should be dark, gloomy, fun and interesting, and instead it fails to spark the imagination even slightly, instead being “Bland fantasy setting but some of the trees are dead.” Give me some purple and black in that color palette! C'mon!

-There are two wolfskin characters. They are different genders, different heights and weights, but use the same exact model in wolf form. Compare these to the bunny people in awakening who have my heart forever, and this is a major insult.

Thanks for reading